YOUR LIFE A-Z:NESTING

MANY STORIES WILL BRING CONNECTION

NESTING

NESTING is a necessity for a well-balanced life.  During our busy lives where each detail of our day is demanding our attention it is important to push the off button and stay home for the day.  Don’t just stay home, NEST at home.  Turn off your cellular devices and electronic apps and curl up by the fireplace, pool, or sofa and enjoy being home.  As you begin to notice your space allow gratitude to settle in around you.  Be grateful for what you have.   As you allow the essence of the day to open up to you do whatever it is you want to do in the comfort of your home.  Cook a great meal or order in Chinese food.  Read, write, even write old-fashion letters to people you have been meaning to say hello too.  Listen to music, chant, meditate, sing, dance, or relax into a bubble bath.  Learning to do nothing but NEST is often a challenge because you are not use to having a whole day to do nothing but be.  However, if you put a NESTING day in your calendar once ever six weeks you will learn to look forward to it and you will enjoy making sure that you have some special things around to help you enjoy the NESTING day.  I suggest having a basket full of crayons, paper, fun magazines, candles, bubble bath, and teas to help you move naturally from one thing to another, developing a natural rhythm for being present and relaxing.  Your NESTING day will recharge you.

YOUR LIFE A=Z: BRAVE

READ MY LIPS AND TAKE ACTION

BRAVE

Being BRAVE is not the absence of fear.  Being BRAVE means to act on or to face a situation even though you feel fear or anxiety about it.  For example a BRAVE action requires that you know you need to do and see the risks and possible hardships that might occur and do it anyway.   Sometimes, I hear my clients say, “I wish I was more BRAVE.”  BRAVE does not come in measured amounts.  BRAVE is BRAVE.   When you are forced to deal with a situation that you would rather not have to deal with and face that situation rather than avoid it, then you BRAVE the situation and face what you need to do.  Perhaps it is leaving a job, a relationship, or coping with a difficult scenario in your life.  The action of doing something about the situation is BRAVE.   To do nothing, avoid it or numb out with a substance rather than face it,  is not BRAVE.  BRAVE is not passive; BRAVE is action encapsulated amidst the fear and possible dangers.  To jump into a river to help save someone else’s life is BRAVE.  To jump into the water to save someone else’s life when you don’t know how to swim is stupid, because both of your will drown.   To stand on the shore and wring your hands is not BRAVE.  To look around for something to throw to the drowning person or run down stream while calling for help is BRAVE.  Today give yourself credit for being BRAVE in you life’s situation. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z:WANDER

WANDERING ALLOWS YOU TO SEE MYSTERY

WANDER

WANDER is another action verb.  You can WANDER leisurely through the mall and begin an early Christmas shopping excursion by just WANDERING from store to store.  Or you can WANDER in your mind as you imagine yourself traveling to faraway places of adventure and gastronomical delight.  To WANDER is a relaxing action that allows you to stretch beyond your to-do list.  Take a WANDER today in some near by park, mall, or the town next door and you may have the experience of seeing it “for the first time,” because you are not on a mission.  You are giving yourself permission to amble about in any store looking for nothing in particular and looking at everything mindfully.  This trip of WANDERING may lead you to enjoy something that you never thought possible or you might find yourself WANDERING toward a treasure that will fill your heart.  Give yourself permission to WANDER and if that free-flow makes you too anxious, then go WANDER for three hours and if you start fretting about wasting time, use your breath to bring you back to the here and now.  Tell yourself you will journal about your experience to help make this exercise of WANDERING a mindful exercise for you.  It is important to take yourself on an adventure that allows you to relax into doing only what is front of you.  WANDER in your mind or WANDER with your body, but whatever you do WANDER around and notice the world of wonder as you WANDER.

YOUR LIFE A-Z: LIGHT

LIGHT COMES IN MANY FORMS

LIGHT

When we were in the "B" words, we explored Brilliant.  Today we are going to play with light again.  Light is a form of energy that allows you to see things.  As light changes, so does the image that you are looking at change.  What secret hides in your heart that you have not shared with anyone because it causes you too much shame? What is it that if someone else knew about you that you would just want to go away and never see or talk to them again?   Do you know that most people have a few of those hidden things in their "soul closet? "  So today I invite you to use some of your energy to shine on that dark spot on your soul.   I encourage you to write it down in one sentence.  Look at it.  Notice the shame, anguish, dread that you feel about it.   Imagine a gentle and loving entity reading it with you. Listen to the entity call you by your name:" _________, you are forgiven." Please don't let this sentence make you feel this sad, bad, sick. Let's walk outside and tear this sentence to pieces until it is so small it is like confetti.   Then let's go on a walk somewhere and let's toss the confetti high in the sky and let it fall to the earth creating a compost for plants to grow.  Take a bottle of water with you and pour it on the confetti to give it a great start at decomposing.  Now, let's you and I walk back to the house where you wrote that sentence and write a new one.  I forgive myself.  Love, your light. "  See your Kalon!

YOUR LIFE A-Z: HUMOR

LAUGHTER AND HUMOR IS HEALING MEDICINE

HUMOR

We need HUMOR in our life.  We need activities that we look forward to because they make us laugh or amuse us into feeling better.  Life is serious but life is absolutely lethal without HUMOR.  HUMOR is not just laughing or experiencing something as funny.  HUMOR is a much deeper and personal response to life that allows entertainment and amusement into the daily moments of life.  Look for HUMOR today. If you have a pet or a small child, those moments will not be hard to find but for those caught up in debt, family discord, depression, and loneliness, HUMOR is much more evasive.  In those cases HUMOR becomes a treasure hunt, a deliberate search for amusing, entertaining and light hearted smiles throughout the dullness of the day.  How to find it?  Do you have a special cartoon character that makes you smile?  If so, Google that character.  Search out comedy clubs in your area to enjoy an evening of someone else’s hard working ability to make you laugh.  Think about it, comedians abound in our society for a reason.  We need them in order to survive the hardships of daily living.  Discover what TV shows, music, or people that make you laugh.  Keep a HUMOR chest in your den of movies, ideas, situations, and other things that make you amused, allowing that genuine smile to cross your face from cheek to cheek.  HUMOR is a moment suspended from daily reality that brightens your mood for a moment and is necessary for your survival. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z: NEXT

Life is Waiting for You.  What is NEXT?

NEXT

If you are like me you have a list of things that need to be done.  That list can keep us busy twenty- four hours a day.  However, that list is not really NEXT in our life.  NEXT is a very important word.  On April 24 1996, the Women’s National Basketball Association was born with the words, WE GOT NEXT.  Those words echoed for the first few years as the WNBA took to the court to prove that women were a valuable denominator in team sports.  NEXT meant we are here now.  We have business to do and we are doing it.  What is NEXT in your life? NEXT is not doing the dishes.  NEXT is that important step of action that allows your life to open a new door of self-discovery.  What is it that you have wanted to do that is really important to you?  What keeps you putting it off?  What is the NEXT step that you need to do now in order to breathe life into your NEXT?  Has there been a class you have put off?  Or perhaps there is an entire college degree that you have yet to achieve.  Life changes in a moment’s notice, but nothing happens without forward action.  You have heard the saying; you don’t drive forward by looking in the rearview mirror that is true too about the quality of your daily life.  NEXT is a process of many small steps toward a goal.  It is showing up and establishing yourself as a person worthy of voice and presence in the world you live in.  

YOUR LIFE A-Z TOUCH

TOUCH BY PAYING ATTENTION TO COLOR

TOUCH

TOUCH is a perfect word to follow the word silence. TOUCH is an important part of mindfulness. I invite you to pay attention to the art of TOUCH today.  Look around your environment at choose three items to pick up and TOUCH.  Place the three items by your chair and spend your five minutes in silence.  Afterward pick up the first object and run your fingers around the outline.  Notice the texture, temperature, and feel of the object.  Notice your thoughts and feelings as you take time to get to know this object just by TOUCH.  Then close your eyes and do this again.  Do this again and see if you "see" something that you didn't see with your eyes open.  Repeat this with each item.  This simple exercise will help you be more aware of the sensation of TOUCH.  Reach across your table tonight and TOUCH your partner or your kids.  Pay attention to TOUCHING your pet.  Notice things that you TOUCH, things that are in your daily life.  What is it that you like about your coffee cup, your tooth brush, or even your face?  Get some lotion and pay close your attention to how you feel nurturing your body with gentle TOUCH all over.  Treat yourself to a massage.  What would life be like if you did not have the sensation of TOUCH?  Who in your life needs a gentle touch to the top of their hand? Do that the next time you are around them. Celebrate the power of TOUCH today.

YOUR LIFE A-Z :HAPPY

HAPPY

What is happy to you?  What are you really saying when you say I just want to be happy?  As I have said,  “Happiness is not an illusion, but neither is it a destination.”  I see it as a space within you.  The dictionary defines contentment as a place of happiness and satisfaction.  Being HAPPY is a space or place wherethere is a reservoir of positive energy, decorated with fond memories, and an invitation to sit and enjoy the present moment, using all of your senses of smell, taste, touch, hear, and feel.  Experiencing the moment is a space within you as the moment passed already, so it is a pause button of HAPPY.  HAPPY space is a choice.  We can choose to focus on bad memories, ugly situations, and things in the past that were not fair.  Or we can choose to be anxious and worry about every possible thing that can go wrong in the future or we can place the present moment on “pause,” and allow ourselves to switch channels in our head and enjoy the creation of HAPPY.  If we did this as often as we check our Facebook every day imagine how lush, lovely, and exhilarating our HAPPY space could become.  We would enjoy going there to experience the joy of being alive, as well as the moment of sweet contentment in the facts.  These are the facts: If you are reading this you are alive, be grateful.  If you are grateful you will count your blessings and if you count your blessings you will enter your HAPPY space.  Yep…that is fact.