GRATITUDE

If you can’t find anything to be grateful for it’s probably because it didn’t show up looking the way you expected it to.

SIGN POSTS - Losing your way 2

The sheer fact that you realize you’ve lost your way is a sign that you’re getting back on track.  The fact that you’re reading this blog, or came across a seemingly random magazine article that resonated while waiting in the doctor’s office, or noticed a sign on the back of a bus that seemed to speak to you personally are sign posts.   Sign posts that lead us back to our path are everywhere, when you’re ready to get back on track, you’ll see them.

LOSING YOUR WAY

Whether it’s been years, weeks, months or minutes that you’ve strayed off track, it doesn’t matter.  Get back on it now, go, this second.  Do one little tiny thing that will make you feel like you’re back on track.  Little by little take bigger steps that’ll show you you’re back on track.

Know that you were meant to take that detour, more often than not it was to learn a lesson from something that was still repeating in our lives.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE

This is part of what it means to live your best life.

“Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.”  ~ Ray Bradbury

Reposted from ‘Brain Pickings’ a very cool site, check it out at: http://www.brainpickings.org/

PAIN

Love this:

“To ameliorate pain, feel it.  What you resist you will persist.” ~ Deepak Chopra

SIMPLE vs EASY

Humans are stubborn.  They say they want things to be simple, but in reality they don’t.  They’re suspicious of things that are too simple.  But let’s be clear - I’m saying simple -- not easy.  There’s a big distinction.

So how do you begin to live your best life?  It’s a confusing thing when you first try to understand it but it’s really quite... simple.

The simple part is needing to stay in the present. The best way to do that is focus on your breath, going in and going out -- that’s it.  Simple yes, easy...not so much.

The second thing you do is separate your THOUGHTS from YOU - again, pretty simple in concept, not so easy in practice.

The best way to accomplish the first is to simply do it, pay attention to your breath as you intake air and as you let it go - do it slowly.  It becomes easy with practice.

The best way to accomplish the second is to come to the realization that YOU are NOT your THOUGHTS.  This is mindblowing once you understand that.  The way I found helped me is to first understand what it is to touch the centre of who I am without any words -- I find focusing a sense of calm around the area of my heart allows me access to who I am - gives me a sense of the spirit of who I am.

Then this equation:

THOUGHT

‘RIVER’

YOU

I do it visually - I visualize a bank on either side of a river, on the far bank are my thoughts and as one tries to cross the river, I let it be swept up in it.  My spirit self is on the other side untouched and whole.  The objective is to sit quietly with your spirit self for as long as possible without having any of the thoughts cross the river.  

The only way this becomes easy is with practice.  But there is no question that it is simple.  It requires no special training, equipment, roadmap, outfit, space, furniture, appliance, nothing - just you. Easy!

FOOTPRINT

How do you stand in the world?  Is it apologetic, slump-shouldered and up against the wall?  Is it on tippy-toes stepping over eggshells your nerves frayed, your stomach in knots?  

How do you occupy real estate in your life?  Are you spread so thin and say yes to so many things that you’re showing up as your mediocre self at best?  Are you focusing on curb appeal - what you look like from the outside and neglecting what’s happening on the inside?

You are bequeathed a footprint when you are born, an allotted space that is solely yours to take up.  Some of us forget that and shrink back occupying less and less space, we do this literally sometimes, with dysmorphic body issues: eating disorders to get so thin we almost disappear; never speaking up for ourselves and letting people trample us under foot, staying in abusive relationships that end in others literally ending us.  It is not okay.  

Our space is our space, it is ours to take up, it is ours to maintain, like a garden to plant and weed and tend, to harvest and set seeds free to pollinate again.  It is absolutely okay to build a fence around this garden, as a boundary to others, as a parameter for ourselves that reminds us who and what can and cannot cross it.