Thank you, emmajames, for your inspiration.

This morning I found a blogger that has brought inspiration to my day, and her name is Em (twitter name: emmajames). One link I retweeted. 

A second blog I would like to share here. In response to a prompt she received from a site called #reverb10 (the prompt was: what are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011?), Em says that while getting rid of 11 things was easy enough, getting rid of 11 ideas is, as she put it, a bitch.

Getting rid of things is something I, too, can accomplish. In fact, my kids and I just got through purging over holiday break, and it felt fantastic! Similar to losing weight. Get rid of ideas? My life complaints all have carried the same basic theme over decades. If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be lack. As I reflected with a friend on 2010 and what I want for this new year, what came up for me was that I need my bitch back.

It takes a bitch to get rid of ideas. Someone persistent, demanding and desirous enough to want more for herself. Or less for herself, depending on one's perspective.

So first, I would like to thank Em for her inspiration. Not just for prompting me to come up with my own list, but also for inspiring me to write again. It's been a while, so I have borrowed from her to get me off the starting block. Em had some good ones. I've italicized those words and ideas that came from her. Second, I would like to thank her for using the word bitch as a reminder of sorts.

Em says that while she may look and sound like she's overcome her 11, they are still there,'perched in the secret chambers of her soul,' and she has no idea how to get rid of them. I ditto her sentiment. Yes. While I do get that these ideas, at the intellectual level, are false, they are like persistant nags that creep up when I'm feeling...well... tired (there's a clue). They may not go away, but I believe that they can be conquered. I have managed to overcome other ideas that I thought to be permanently ingrained and prominent (that would be a fun list to make). Perhaps looking into how I overcame those might give me more clues. Here is my list.

1) There is not enough time in a day when I am a single, working mother and want to be available for my children.

2) There are not enough resources when I want all that I want.

3) I am misunderstood by my family of origin because I didn't follow their path.

4) It is expensive to grow something (i.e. a business).

5) If I don't multitask, I won't accomplish much.

6) If I'm having fun, I'm not working hard enough.

7) I am not as valuable as others think I am.

8) I will never find a man who will want to share his life and love with me when I am at my worst (I am not good enough) and at my best (I am a threat), and for whom I feel the same.

9) I can't dance. I will look stupid.

10) I don't have enough energy and/or emotional strength to stay consistent in anything I do.

11) I have no idea what I am talking about.

 

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Ways to Increase Connection

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Note to Self...

 

Be honest. It will clear the obstacles from your life and allow others to give you the support you really need. It will bring back your voice, the one you lost many moons ago. It will bring to you a great sense of relief. There is a surrendering in honesty. A surrendering, not of your personal power to an external force, but of your own inner monster to your next most radiant Self. Surrender is the foundation for personal power. There is a saying: you are as sick as your secrets.

 

Acknowledge what you want. The objects of your desires are not what cause suffering. It is the suppression of the desire (a self-denial) or the identification to it (the great illusion) that causes suffering. Our desires guide us to our bigger hungers. An unquenchable desire for material things may mean a misdirected hunger for intimacy and true connection to others.

 

Embrace Tantrums and Mistakes. Tantrums are okay. Kids have them, and then they move on. As adults, we carry them for years. We don’t have them because they make everyone else uncomfortable, which makes us uncomfortable. The result is that our upsets come out sideways. I’m sure you’ve seen sideways. Very scary. As human beings, we are loaded with emotions. They are there to be paid attention to, rather than dismissed, like the dashboard of our car. More often, we stuff our emotions, and we identify with them, letting them dictate who we are, and then we use them to criticize, judge, and enroll others in our stories. Have an honest tantrum and get it over with! But this doesn’t mean use someone else as a punching bag. It means express that you are upset, hurt, and angry. Mistakes? Take the “wrong” turn and you will learn something new. I know. I am queen of making mistakes!

 

Go for Satisfaction. This may make you uncomfortable, but it will increase your Bliss Factor. It’s much less comfortable living in your own skin knowing you’ve walked past a plethora of opportunities. And there are plethoras. You owe it to yourself.

 

Laugh. As often as possible.

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Anecdote to Stress, Fatigue and a long To-Do List

Historically, when I felt anxious, overwhelmed, and completely stressed out, I would go into my soft addictions, which, for me, are eating, talking on the phone, and napping. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that I never felt replenished or energized afterwards. My stressors did not go away. In fact, the monsters grew.

What to do? I am stressed from work and need to step away. Yoga and meditation would probably feel great, but I can’t get to a yoga studio at the moment, and I am distracted by the housekeeping duties that my house nags, and I know I ought to move my body to get my energy flowing…

How do I find nourishment when I am feeling low energy and in scarcity mode? Can’t I nap first and figure it out in 15 (actually 60) minutes?

So I tried something new. I started by drinking a tall glass of water. I realized that I was thirsty after all and didn’t even know it. Then I started picking up the stuff, from where I call the “hotspots,” where things tend to accumulate: my workspace, the kitchen counter, the dining room table, and so on. I turned on some of my favorite yoga music, connected to my breath, and put away one thing at a time with no other thought than the task at hand: this book goes here. these go there. I sprayed and wiped my countertops with my preferred Bliss flavor of the day until I got them clean and shiny. Somehow I forget how good the aromatherapy makes me feel. I proceeded to put the dishes away. The shoes. And so on.

The next thing I know, not only did I find parts of my house cleaner and less cluttered, I also found myself cleaner and less cluttered… I moved through my emotional disarray. All at once, I took care of my space, I moved my body, got intimate with my stuff (finding gratitude for what I already had), got my yoga and meditation in by being in the moment. Mindfulness. I like to call it Pure Presence.

I read somewhere, “studies show that mindfulness can be helpful in stopping ruminations over things that cause stress.. it helps people keep from dwelling on negative thoughts. Mindfulness can also be used to decrease anxiety over the future. It can provide a break from stressful thoughts and allow you to take a mental break and gain perspective, among other things (I found this in my notes, but without a source– I apologize).

I found a great quote by Winston Churchill who said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Indulging in soft addiction is sort of like stopping in hell and anesthisizing myself. Feels good for the moment. The problem is, once the numbing is gone, I am still in hell, and it is looking bigger than ever. Homecaring is choosing to keep on walking, and mindfully “cleaning house,” on all levels. It connects you to your space, your abundance, and it also crosses off multiple things on your to-do list, which is an excellent added benefit!

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How To Be Alone

I found this fantastic YouTube video this morning called How To Be Alone, written by Tanya Davis, so I wanted to share this with you. What I discovered is that when I am alone, I don't miss a whole lot because I have the space to connect with everything inside and outside of me. Then when I am with others, I come from me.

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Relationships

I am who I am and that is that,

I am who you are looking back,

You are who I am, can you imagine that?

-Guru Singh Khalsa

 

Do you know what makes relationships so fun? Knowing that the other person is simply a reflection of you. There is no ‘other person’. Which means, in essence, we are playing with ourselves. Ha-ha!

Relationships are mirrors, reflecting the current status of our relationship to Self.

When I am disconnected with myself, so are my connections to others.  Likewise, when I am fully in my own space, my connection to others couldn’t be better.

Everything is feedback.

What I experience through my relationships reveal if I am lying to myself or if I am living authentically; if I am giving myself away or if I value myself. This awareness is a gift, for it allows me to change something in myself when I don’t like what I see in the other person, or in my connection with the other person. It is like realizing that I am in a dream, and then finding that I can control what I do in my dream. Taking control of our dreams gets easier with practice. Same of our lives. Anyway, I am all that I have in my control, though my thoughts and actions seem to ripple out and affect change in everything else around me. More feedback! Sometimes I like what I see, and sometimes I don’t. On the other hand, to try and change another person is like trying to comb my hair through the mirror… gotta laugh at myself for trying.

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Role of Relationships

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I am who I am and that is that,

I am who you are looking back,

You are who I am, can you imagine that?

-Guru Singh Khalsa

 

Do you know what makes relationships so fun? Knowing that the other person is simply a reflection of you. There is no ‘other person’. Which means, in essence, we are playing with ourselves. Ha-ha!

 

Relationships are mirrors, reflecting the current status of our relationship to Self.

 

When I am disconnected with myself, so are my connections to others.  Likewise, when I am fully in my own space, my connection to others couldn’t be better.

Everything is feedback.

What I experience through my relationships reveal if I am lying to myself or if I am living authentically; if I am giving myself away or if I value myself. This awareness is a gift, for it allows me to change something in myself when I don’t like what I see in the other person, or in my connection with the other person. It is like realizing that I am in a dream, and then finding that I can control what I do in my dream. Taking control of our dreams gets easier with practice. Same of our lives. Anyway, I am all that I have in my control, though my thoughts and actions seem to ripple out and affect change in everything else around me. More feedback! Sometimes I like what I see, and sometimes I don’t. On the other hand, to try and change another person is like trying to comb my hair through the mirror… gotta laugh at myself for trying.

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It's that simple

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Trusting the possibilities that change offers

Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote, “the only things certain in life are death and taxes” left out one thing: CHANGE. It happens whether we like it or not. Even when we decide not to make a change, we change, and everything around us changes. That's why things that served us once no longer do. In fact, we expect it. We expect expansion and growth. Can you imagine if, day after day, a flower bud remained a flower bud and never bloomed? And things must also come to an end to make space for new beginnings and new possibilities.

Resistance to it is what I find so curious. Why are we so inclined towards choosing the safety net that we clearly know causes us pain and, at the very least, atrophy?

We tend to focus more on the possibility that things may get worse; that we might fail. We lack trust in our own power to make things great. So we don’t act, and we stay alive for another day, month, year, decade, lifetime, filling our minds, and more accurately, every cell in our body, with justifications. We feel dis-ease.

When something no longer serves me, as scary as change may be, the idea of that very thing staying the same for the rest of my life, or even for the next few years, or months, is even scarier. At times, downright horrifying. It comes down to choosing one type of scary over another. Choosing safety, I find, is disempowering, because typically, it cost me something really big: a part of me that wants to live a powerful, authentic life. Letting go and choosing change, assuming it is in line with my truth, is Empowering with a capital E, because I trusted myself and the process. I listened to, and surrendered to my inner voice.  And that’s the thing. No matter what happens, when my fear is harnessed and I make the leap, I’ve made a huge deposit into my own Empowerment.

Stepping into the unknown can be a bit scary, it is exciting as well. I find that the very idea of it, when a big one is called for, changes the very pattern of my breath, causing my heart and belly to ache.  I am scared shitless. And I feel more alive. Facing the unknown can be like facing death. In fact, it seems many of us would rather face death than the unknown. What we are talking about here – change – does not usually translate into literal death but the end of a part of our world as we know it and into a new one. It translates into a chance at feeling a wide range of emotions (this is a positive because what is the alternative?), experiencing new things, growing, expanding, getting rid of dead weight, and dare I say, becoming happier and more satisfied. And perhaps getting what we want in the process.

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Creativity and Being in My Element

In my research over the past couple of months, I keep running into Sir Ken Robinson, who is known as an internationally renowned expert in the field of creativity and innovation in business and education.

According to Robinson, we have a very limited view of intelligence, and that we confuse it with academic ability. We have a tendency to place creativity and intelligence in two separate categories when, in fact, creativity is fundamentally linked to intelligence. “Education as it is structured today is geared towards the industrial era,” and in light of current economics, “imagination and creativity is what we will need more than anything else in today’s world.”

At every moment, we create. In order to create harmony in this world, we want to create harmony within our world. In order to create harmony within ourselves, we want to be in line with our true nature. Robinson calls this ‘being in our Element’.

To find my element, I pay attention to what inspires me, what makes me want to get up in the morning, what causes me to forget about time and what nourishes me. I also pay attention to my fears, hungers and justifications. More often, my fear has nothing to do with a lion running after me, and more to do with going out of my comfort zone because I am afraid of the unknown, afraid of not being accepted, afraid to fail, or perhaps to succeed. This is important to note, because it means my fear is something to harness rather than to run away from and hold me back.

To live in my element and create what I desire, I make intentions, and I keep my focus on my intentions as my guiding force, then I surrender to the creative process, holding on to my discipline, and at the same time, I ask myself, “am I having fun?” Because if the answer is “no,” I know to realign. The more I stay in my element, the smarter I become. Because when I am in my element, that is, in my own space, I love what I take in and what I share, and I retain everything and see different sides in everything. And it’s fun. In contrast, when I am out of it, my IQ, my EQ, and all of my other cues feel completely downshifted.  

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