Do Something Nice For Yourself
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
pay attention
It began in the summer while leading a canoe trip with a dear friend. She had been embarking on a great personal healing journey and as we paddled and portaged, she kept finding the most beautiful feathers. I was a bit jealous to be quite honest. A few weeks later as summer turned its face toward fall, I also started finding feathers. One after another. Some days I would find three perfectly intact, beautiful feathers on the ground right in front of me. It wasn't that I was suddenly standing under bird nests; I was suddenly realizing important things about starting the next phase of my life.
Shortly after that, my boss, friend and mentor suggested I do a workshop on group leadership. The evening I got on the plane to travel from one coast to the other, I found a feather on the sidewalk, and another right when I arrived. I carried a deep sense of being in exactly the right place doing the right thing for the duration of the workshop.
That was two weeks ago. As I have been settling in to my new life post workshop, the feathers have declined. This doesn't mean that I'm no longer on the right path; I take the decline of feathers as a sign that I am better able to understand and trust my own sense of things and I don't need so many outward confirmations.
I feel better in my ability to read people and situations, I feel more compassionate, and all around me people are being generous and loving. This is why we need not take ourselves so seriously: if we follow the things that intuitively feel right, regardless of the judgement of others, we will find ourselves easily flowing into what we are meant to be doing.
Nobody said it was easy to get in touch with intuition, I'm just saying it is important to pay attention. Look, listen, breathe. What do you feel? What is your body trying to tell you? How do you know you've made a good decision? When things are going well, pay attention to your body and the people around you. When things are challenging and scary, pay attention. Your body already knows things your brain alone can't interpret.
When opportunity arises will you be able to follow your heart?
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Forgiveness
To stop and listen: just stop, just listen.
It is so simple:
the earth sings with love. YOU sing with love.
Forgive yourself for wanting things, forgive others for wanting things.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Power in Gratitude
This isn't about lying to yourself or "making lemonade" it's about choosing to focus on what's going right more than you focus of what's going wrong; it's about taking responsibility for your life and your feelings and either accepting things that are out of your control, or taking action to change them. Practicing gratitude is an excellent way to re-frame negativity. Don't like your roommate? Thank them for challenging your patience. Don't like your body? Thank it for all the things it CAN do: read this blog, let you enjoy the world through your senses, give you a home base for all your brainy endeavors, whatever.
Thank you, reader. You're enriching my life!
Monday, February 13, 2012
Say it out loud!
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Do Something Nice For Someone Else
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Media is like Alcohol
My point here (and this applies to movies, music, news, corporate internet stuff, you name it) is that there is a lot of stuff out there that is designed to make you feel less than perfect, less than wonderful, less than ideal- it's a bunch of lies. They're really clever lies, they're pretty convincing, but the reality is that nothing real is as perfect as that fantasy, and while it is important to have goals and to strive to have good beautiful things in your life, you are the one who should be deciding what those things are. You, by yourself, without corporate media loudly or quietly commanding you, without some weirdly hairless model or some too-clean kitchen or some messed up slogan about how beer makes you cool. You are the one who decides what is important, beautiful, attainable, challenging, and if you tune out media on a regular basis, or only tune in occasionally, you can be a lot surer your decisions are based on your own wonderful self than on corporate manipulation. And knowing you are making your decisions based on things you actually intrinsically care about feels really fucking great!
Saturday, January 14, 2012
walk, write, eat
To the lonely and faint of heart:
walk.
Don’t be afraid – let miles pass
hours
days.
There is nothing to fear.
Walk near water, train tracks, moss
walk lost.
Somedays it takes getting lost to get found.
Walk in the rain, the cold
walk home.
Be in the home of your body
feel what walking feels like in your hips
your pinky toes, your armpits
feel your clothes brush your skin – don’t let judgment in.
Walk until you find something you’ve never seen
it won’t take long.
Walk until you have no idea where you are:
keep going.
Walk until you want to give up:
keep going.
See how long it takes to find stillness of thought:
keep going.
Walk until happiness is the squelching sound of your left shoe
walk until despair doesn’t exist.
Walk until all you can think is littlefeetlittlefeetlittlefeet
and littlefeetlittlefeetlittlefeet and
love.
Feel the vibrations of the ground beneath you
no excuses, nobody has listened in years.
See a magical sand dollar seashell collection
let rain soak you, littlefeet wet, socks felt in shoe
I promise you