 Now this isn’t about being a narcissist or a rugged individual. This is about living from the heart. Knowing what you need and want is a good thing. And giving them to yourself or asking for them is healthy. You run the risk of projecting your needs and wants onto others and in turn controlling and manipulating others if you ignore those needs.
This is a culture where sacrifice is seen as a good thing. But to leave yourself out of the equation is hurtful to you and those around you. At first it may not seem so. It feels good to be of help. But eventually you become resentful and project your needs onto others, which, as mentioned above, leads you to control and manipulate them. You begin to live through others and when they don’t do what you want, you become frustrated. It can be a pretty strange situation. Let’s look at the word sacrifice. It’s related to sacred. It is to make sacred. You are not making yourself sacred by forgetting yourself. When you’re not in the equation you are not truly giving of yourself…making the act sacred, you are causing harm to you and eventually to those around you. So, how do you get back to making acts of giving, helping, etc. truly sacred? You live from the heart and put yourself first. This isn’t just the oxygen mask metaphor. It isn’t just utilitarian to put yourself first. You are a sacred and valuable being. If you don’t see it in yourself, how can you see it in others? Take ownership of your needs and desires. Honor them and yourself. This way when you help someone else, you’re doing it from a heart that is fulfilled and can truly make any act of giving into a sacred one. This is what living from the heart is all about. If this post resonates and you would like help putting yourself first and making all you do an act of sacredness, contact me to learn how I can help.
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11/28/2017 0 Comments It’s All About the Pause The space between heartbeats, the pause between words, the moment before you take that next breath, the silence between notes. Some say the pause is where you glimpse the meaning, the music or the divine. Sometimes it’s where we meet our sadness or unexpected joy.
The pause is the place of possibility. It’s the space we create so we can make a choice rather than just react. The pause happens when we’re fully in the moment. Susan David, author of Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life, says we often rely on our established patterns of thinking instead of responding to what is right in front of us. The pause gives us the space to see our automatic response for what it is and then think, do or say something else. Without it we become automatons. She says we get hooked when we’re not acting according to our values or clear perception. Here are some common hooks that she mentions in her book. Thought-blaming This is when we blame our thinking for our behavior. For instance, when you think to yourself that someone is avoiding you because they don’t like you, and so take the action based on that thought to cut them out of your life. You don’t really know why they are avoiding you or if they even are. The pause would help you think the next thought mentioned above, that you don’t really know what is going on with that person. From there you could take action based on curiosity rather than a made-up story. Monkey-mindedness This type of thinking takes you out of the moment. It’s a run-on type of thinking where you start with a reactionary thought. For example if someone is late for an important meeting, your thoughts start to fire off left, right and center about how they always do this and how you’re going to let them have it this time, etc. If you took a pause, you would create the space to stay in the moment and not let your mind run wild and get you all worked up. You might also stop yourself from doing something that will only cause more trouble. Old, Outgrown Ideas These are ideas that you still live by but don’t serve you anymore. Like, all men are jerks or I’ll never learn how to swim. They once may have helped you. Maybe a man in your life as a child hurt you and so you made a decision to not trust. As you get older, that idea may hold you back. You may avoid jobs or other situations that include men, and so stunt your growth and life. The pause would allow you to take a better look around and see that your old idea isn’t true. Though it may have saved you as a child, it is now only hampering your life. Wrongheaded Righteousness Why do we feel the need to be right or to have our unjust treatment confirmed? Why can’t we let it go? Our energy is wasted on this type of thinking. When I have to be right or get the last word in, a rift is created in a relationship. When I can’t let go of the past or even the present in terms of someone’s bad treatment of me, I stay in the hurt. I make myself a victim of people’s actions or circumstances and not only drain my energy but lose my power to respond appropriately and in a way that takes care of me. To pause in the middle of the need to be right or to be confirmed is to give yourself an opportunity to see what you’re doing and then choose something else. One of the ways you can train your mind to pause is to practice meditation. This week, I’m giving away some meditation tips, book recommendations and other resources to help you create a practice that works for you. You can sign up here to receive it. If you want to go deeper, A Spell in the Shadows eRetreat helps you relax into winter and these last days of 2017. The first week begins this Friday, Dec. 1 and is all about meditation. The whole program is focused on how to help you slow down and create a more meaningful time during this sacred and hurried season. When you enter 2018 with the ability to pause in grace and gratitude, life becomes so much richer. It’s how you begin to live life from the heart.  This time of year in the US we focus on giving thanks. What if we focused on it every day?
I know there is power in the practice of gratitude. When I’m in that mindset of gratefulness, things flow and I’m happier. When I forget to practice, I get moody and suddenly things aren’t flowing. I haven’t yet reached full embodiment of this attitude and that’s okay. I can practice. The only other words I have right now are… Gratitude Is a Sky Filled with Stars Have you seen the Milky Way, its clouds of light pouring into our world? A bed of dark holding light past and present opens my heart, this heart hidden in the darkness of my flesh. A container of love, of worlds, of night become brilliant by the appearance of billions of stars. May you have a blessed Thanksgiving…every day. Thank you for reading. I have a free gift for you. I recorded a guided meditation on gratitude and created a PDF called 5 Ways to Tap Into Gratitude. You can receive them here. If you’re on my mailing list, I already sent you the link in an email.  Sometimes we have difficulty manifesting our heart’s desires. When it’s not working, it may be because we don’t trust it will.
Creation begins with the absence of what we want which invokes the desire. The important thing to remember is that it is never truly absent. A shift of consciousness allows you to see it and trust brings it into your experience. Sounds simple, but in my experience it hasn’t always been. I’ve always had a certain amount of trust that things will work out and they have at the level of just barely. Because I don’t trust the Universe will provide my greatest desires, I protect myself by not expecting much. My early experiences taught me expecting my heart’s desires only leads to heartbreak. A shift in consciousness is required as is a trust so deep that I can expect amazing. I have begun to do this. I look at the beautiful house I live in now after being forced out of my apartment this summer and think wow! We all have different reasons for not trusting ourselves, others, the Universe. Sometimes checking out those reasons is helpful and can aid in our healing. But when it comes down to creating and manifesting our heart’s desires, maybe we need to begin the process with affirmations around our ability to trust. Often we focus our manifesting work on the thing we want. But first it may help to ask ourselves if we believe it’s possible, do we trust it will happen? If the answer is no, then we can take a deep breath, step back and work on manifesting belief and trust. Do you trust? If not, we can talk about it. I can help you with a soul healing session or even with an affirmative prayer. Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart.  Temple of the Goddess Ancestor Altar Photo by Charles Elliott/Beautyseer In the stillness, in the quiet, the ancestors whisper to us. They stand behind us, reminding us that we are exactly where we need to be. They reach out to us in memories and ancient stories. The telling is even in the trees and the earth upon which they once stood. Go there now, physically or in your mind’s eye, and remember. Today is Samhain, the Celtic holy day in which the dead are remembered as the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. Many other cultures celebrate the dead, their ancestors around this time of year. There is Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead or Pchum Ben a Cambodian remembrance of the ancestors. As we move into winter there is a falling away and we are reminded of those who have fallen away from this life. Sometimes we feel as though we ought to be further along our path or should have healed by now. Our loved ones who have walked beyond the veil and our distant ancestors who pierce our lives from time to time exist beyond space and time. They no longer share this amazing experience of living on the edge of creation. It seems their most important message is to just be where you are. Caught in time and space we forget to just be in the moment, standing where we are standing, being who we are. Somehow we believe there is always somewhere else or someone else to be. We reach for perfection and the beloved dead reach out to remind us that it is already perfect. Just sit beneath a tree they say and let the sound of the wind through the branches stir your heart. Feel the sunlight warm your skin and let the sky expand your consciousness. Our beloved dead are everywhere, but we are here, exactly where we need to be. For it is from here they can speak to us and be with us. On this Hallows Eve, give your beloved dead and your ancestors the gift of your presence, of being fully you and fully in the moment. Through you they remember who they were. Through them you remember who you are. Blessed Be! Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart.  Self-care is popular these days. To take time for yourself is important to your health and well-being. Often what constitutes self-care are things like taking a nap, getting a massage, even living your heart’s desire. Those are all good things, but the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to let yourself feel all that you feel.
To feel all those scary and sad feelings may not seem kind. We don’t like to feel pain, but pain opens us and makes our hearts both tender and strong. To make pain the point is not self-care, but to make only feeling good the point isn’t either. If our focus is only on feeling good, we end up pushing aside some of our inner experience. The message to our heart, to our soul becomes that it’s wrong to feel sorrow, anger, fear, pain. We then need to do whatever we can to keep feeling good. That’s how addiction can start. Sometimes it feels like the pain is too much. In some instances, trauma can break the heart and mind. At those times we need help to mend, to find ourselves in each shattered piece so we can begin to hold them as our own again. Given time and space the heart and mind will put themselves back together in a way that makes sense going forward. We are never the same after experiencing pain. Pain rearranges us somehow. As I grieve my mother and the life that wasn’t, I can feel my heart shifting as every beat brings up memories and a myriad of feelings. The kindest thing I can do for myself is to feel it all. My heart is broken and my mind spins in confusion. But I also know that at the center of it all, the sun sets in order to rise again. A new day is not the same as the last, yet it is still holy. So be kind to yourself. Open up to the feelings as they rise. Let yourself know each one, a wave of emotion moving through you. This kindness to yourself will allow you to be kind to others. Compassion swells as we open to all that lives within. To know our hearts fully is know the heart of another. Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart.  Holding back is a kind of dismissal of our desires, ourselves. Why do we hold back? For me it’s because I’m afraid of rejection or that something won’t work out. Our desires are very close to our heart. When something we want doesn’t come about, we feel pain.
But the pain just shows us how important a particular desire is to us. Some desires are fleeting and when they don’t manifest, we shrug because they weren’t really attached to our heart of hearts. Those that seem to have come with our soul into this world, matter and so we want to make them into matter and have them come into our experience. Because they are so important to us, we fear they won’t come into being. I keep dancing around me deepest desires. I take a little step into them and then I back out. What if it doesn’t work? The truth is what I’m doing right now, what I’ve been doing for a number of years, stems from my desire to be of service. I’ve tried to express it in many ways. Usually I come back to writing. But I hang back for the reasons mentioned above. The thing is I never stop completely. If something doesn’t work, I try again. It seems I’m not dancing around my desire to be of service, I’m dancing with it. This blog post is a part of that dance. As I write this I’m coming to a deeper understanding. I hold back less and less as I get older. My deepest desires will manifest if I don’t give up on them. I think some of the health issues I’ve had and have are from holding back these powerful aspirations that want to be embodied. Instead they embed themselves within me. This quote from the Gospel of Thomas has always stuck with me…for this reason. "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Our desires are powerful. We’re here to experience life at the edge of creation. To dismiss our desires is to deny ourselves. Our heart’s desires are Spirit’s desires to experience a particular existence and to continue Its endless cycle of creation, disintegration, rebirth. We are Spirit rising out of Itself and onto the shores of life. Its pull will always be with us, and someday we’ll leave this edge and dive into this Great Sea and realize we never left. Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart. 10/11/2017 1 Comment Manifesting for Control Freaks The art of manifesting a life you love begins with knowing what you want. I talked about this in a recent blog post called “Am I Doing What I Want or What You Want?” You can read it to help you with this aspect of manifesting. Once you know what you want, you can set an intention and begin working with the creation process consciously.
The reason I say consciously is because we’re manifesting all of the time even when we’re not aware that we are. Often we’re manifesting what we don’t want because we’re not clear on what we do want. That’s okay. Knowing what you don’t want is part of the process of gaining clarity. We make the creative process conscious by discovering what it is we do want. Manifesting what we want not only requires clear direction, it requires inspired action and letting go. Taking action is something I can do. I like to keep busy. Mind you this isn’t just busy-work kind of action. It’s inspired and in order to know what the next step is, you need to let go. Control hinders the process. This is bad news to a control freak. This part drove me crazy for years. I’m still working on it. So, how does a control freak learn to let go and allow their heart’s desires to manifest? First, ask yourself how being in control feels. It can be empowering. It’s important to feel that you have control over some aspects of your life. But it can become rigid and unhealthy when we try to control the things we can’t like people or some situations. Where are you on the control continuum? 0 represents feeling helpless and 10 is obsessive control freak. A good place to be is in the middle, a healthy sense of control over your life, knowing what you can and cannot control. The problem us control freaks have with the creation process is that trying to control is a hindrance. Creation is more about direction but mostly it's about trusting and letting go. I like to think about it in terms of creating art. You intend to paint or write a particular thing. If you try to control the whole process from beginning to end, you’ll end up with that painting of a flower or a poem about a rose, but it will be so much less than you intended. Unique connections and new ways of seeing come from the subconscious which can only be accessed when we stop trying to control the process. We need to consciously intend and then let go so the subconscious and/or the Universe can take over and create something more amazing than we at first imagined. And who doesn’t want that? Letting go requires trust. I wrote about that here. It may help you further understand this letting go thing. If you are between a 7 and a 10 on the control freak scale, you need to practice letting go in order to manifest/create more effectively and easily. This isn’t easy. I know. I’m still challenged by my need to control situations and even people sometimes. Knowing where this need comes from can help. Some of us experienced difficult childhoods and so we developed a need to control situations and others to feel safe. You practice letting go by paying close attention to your need to control when it comes up. Learn to catch yourself and then just look. A teacher of mine once told me to approach my thoughts/beliefs by saying, That’s interesting. It’s too easy for a control freak to get controlling about letting go. This is a big one and takes years of practice. This alone goes a long way towards manifesting a life you love. Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with your control issues and are aware of your need to control in any given moment, you can bring this awareness to bear on your manifesting work. Know what you want, set your intentions, let go and let your subconscious guide you to the next step. One more thing, bring a sense of play to the whole process. Play is a form of letting go. Us control freaks have a tendency to take life too seriously and treating it like a game can help us lighten up and have fun. Once you start consciously using the creation process you may notice that when you get to the let go part there is some resistance. You may immediately start to lay out a plan for the next 10 steps. Busyness sets in and before you know it, you’re stuck. You may be doing stuff, but what you wanted to create isn’t manifesting. By not letting go, you’ve stayed out of the flow. I find myself there a lot, but I’ve learned how to quickly turn off the doing and get into being by relaxing. How does a control freak relax? I calm my nerves by meditating, steadying my breathing, staring out a window or sitting in nature. These things relax me and bring me into the present moment. It is only from the present that we have the power to create. Now is a point of power. This is really important for control freaks to remember because we tend to be future oriented. Now is the only time we have and so the only time we can impress our desires into the fabric of being. This is why during the creation process we imagine already having what we want. There is no future and the past means nothing in terms of what is possible. But we are future focused while setting intentions which can hook us into wanting to control the how and the outcome. Future thinking can drive us control freaks to distraction. Be aware of this and use only as needed. We’re never going to become who we want or have what we want until we get comfortable with being. Becoming is about realizing and embodying who we really are, brilliant, confident, Divine beings. That was a lot. Let’s review what you can do as a control freak to manifest a life you love.
Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart. 10/3/2017 2 Comments Learning to Trust Life Again I was going to write this blog post based on our personal lives and how many of us lose that sense of basic trust we had as children.
Now there is another factor that I believe needs to be addressed. How do we ever begin to trust life again when random acts of violence make us want to curl up and hide or get a gun and be on guard? Of course, terrorism has been a threat in our psyches (more there than physically in this country) at least since 2011 and truthfully, the cold war left me in constant fear when I was 13. Every day for a whole year I thought about nuclear annihilation. I finally decided that was no way to live and then my father died. I went from the universal to the personal. I think ever since then I’ve been in a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. So how do we trust life again after the Las Vegas shootings, after 9/11, after the cold war and now during the current threat? Nothing seems safe. And if you’ve lost loved ones in any of these or from disease or accidents or it being their time, it rocks your world. It feels as though there is no ground to stand on. If you feel this way, it’s because somewhere along the line you lost your basic sense of trust. One of the Buddhist teachers whose teachings I follow said something like there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that you’re falling without a parachute. The good news…there is no ground. We’re free falling, always, and that’s okay. That’s what we need to trust. No matter what happens we’re okay. That doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain of loss or even feel afraid. It means we let ourselves feel it all and still know we’re okay. Now, I’m certainly not saying the horrible things that happen are okay. It’s not okay that a man decided to take the lives of so many or that politicians hold the threat of nuclear war over us. But if we don’t find our way back to basic trust in life, we’ll never rest and fear and hate will continue to exist through us. The way we can build this trust is through trusting. That means you’re willing to let go of your security blankets. These can be your beliefs, ideas, another person, anything that makes you feel safe but if weren’t there would make you lose that sense of safety. What you’re attempting to do as you trust life again is to trust yourself and your experience, to know that you have all you need within. This is a big step and can take a lot of awareness with you still holding on to all those things that you feel bring you a sense of security. That’s fine. I’ve been doing this for a while. I still hold on to my security blankets. It takes time to build lost trust. But this awareness allows you to have a little trust to use as you move through life. As you use it, your trust grows. Once you are willing to let your false security go you can settle into being. That means you’re willing to be with whatever shows up. You don’t change it, or manipulate it to go the way you want. This is when we sit with our pain and fear and just know it, but we don’t let it control us. Our willingness to just be with it takes some of the edge off. Once you’ve had some practice with being, you can begin to allow life to unfold. We don’t have to control everything. In fact, when we stop trying to control everything, miracles and magic happen. None of this is easy, but as I look around it feels like the most important work there is to do. It allows us to be in touch with our hearts and the actions we take from our trust in life and ourselves will be exactly the right thing at the right time. We’ll know what to do. I know many of you want to do something. Do this work first. At least begin it before you take action. It can be the difference between a world filled with fear and hate and one of love that works for everyone. Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart. 9/25/2017 0 Comments Hustle is the Opposite of Heart Hustle is the opposite of heart.
~ Shauna Niequist According to new research by Brendon Burchard and his team, high performing individuals don’t identify with the words hustle and grind. They don’t buy into the idea that you should never be satisfied. The three things he says they do identify with are: full engagement, joy and confidence. They don’t strive, they get satisfied. You can read more in his book, High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way. Last week a convergence of ideas came into my awareness. The quote above by Shauna Niequist struck a chord and then I saw an interview on Marie TV with Brendon Burchard. For a long time I’ve been saying that hustle isn’t the way. Following your heart is the way. I would call things like full engagement, joy and confidence states of the heart. The quote and hearing Burchard speak feel like a confirmation of my work. The heart matters. And not only does it matter, it’s central. Hustle is a bad word. By definition it is all about force. As a noun it means to swindle. To me, the word screams lack of integrity. That may not be your intent, but words have power. What are you doing to yourself when you hustle, to your family and friends? How can you remain whole when you’re so busy there is no time to know what’s in your heart? Obviously high performing people are that way because they do what they love, what brings them joy and in doing that gain confidence. It seems so simple. Just do what you love. But what if you don’t know what that is after years of hustling for someone else’s dreams? There is a way to discover your heart’s desire, live a life you love and be high performing. You must slow down and follow the other four of what I call the 5 Ss of Heart Centered Living. They are interconnected, but it helps me to break them down. Slow There is so much to do. How can you go slow and get everything done? By slowing down your brain can relax. A relaxed brain is a more productive brain. It’s also a quieter brain. Now you can hear what’s in your heart. When you slow down, you can take in more information. In our high speed world we tend to rush past that beautiful rose bush or barely glance at a magnificent sunset. And it’s not just beauty we miss, beauty that enriches our world I might add, we may miss an important detail that would help us solve a problem or create a new program. We can also tap into the subconscious more easily which is the powerhouse of our creativity. Rushing to find an answer often leads us to miss out on a better one if we just gave it time. When we rush around we’re probably also missing the details of our lives like our spouse trying to share a painful moment in their day. Too busy to hear, we don’t give our full attention and so alienate those we love. The heart needs a slower pace than our brains. It doesn’t hustle. It’s the organ of our soul and the soul is here to experience life fully. Steady Once you slow down it’s easier to stay steady. By steady I mean a gentle persistence that is consistent. You don’t give up when it’s difficult and you show up every day. You will be able to accomplish all you need to do and you’ll do it with ease and grace. This allows for full engagement that high performers value. Now this isn’t about being unforgiving in your approach. The key is to be gentle with yourself when you drift off track. Stay in the heart. There will be times you become inconsistent and not feel up to persisting because life will sometimes get complicated and you’ll fall into old patterns or get caught up in the rush of the 24/7 world. It’s a practice. Just keep coming back to the slowness and begin again. Simple It’s so important to keep things simple in order to help you stay steady. Simplify your routine. Declutter your space. The spaciousness created keeps you from feeling rushed. And again, when you don’t feel rushed you can more easily know what’s in your heart. Simplify by getting focused. Most of the things we do are not contributing to our success. Discover those things that bring your closer to your goals and make those the first things you do. Spacious Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~ Viktor E. Frank Creating space in your life allows you to breathe. It’s connected to slowing down, but there is more to it. It’s more than just doing less and clearing out your living space. The most cluttered space we have is our mind. I haven’t mentioned meditation yet, but it can help to declutter your mind, slow down, stay steady and keep things simple. The reason I didn’t mention it earlier is because before you understood the program, you probably would have said you didn’t have time for it. Keep your practice simple. All you need is 12 minutes a day. There is a study by psychologist Dr. Amishi Jha that says 12 minutes is the minimum time you need in order to receive benefits. But you don’t have to start there if you’re new to it. Begin with three minutes and build up. And be gentle with yourself if you miss a day or two. The point of all of this is to live life from the heart and be kind to yourself. I practice Shamatha meditation. Shamatha means peacefully abiding and is about becoming familiar with your mind and ultimately your heart. It trains you to become more mindful and to keep coming back to the present. A daily practice translates into helping you become more present in your daily life. Small Break it down. Take baby steps towards your goals. It’s important to have a greater vision and to remind yourself of it daily, but if you don’t break it down, your vision may simply remain a pie in the sky. Remember, don’t hit the ground running as your bring yourself down to earth. Keep the other practices in mind. They are all connected. Break each vision down into smaller goals and then break each goal into small, easy to do steps. Keep your vision big and take small steps towards it. Keeping it small keeps you from working yourself up into a state of overwhelm, which can lead to rushing and getting lost in your head. The heart is where you want to be. Small, simple steps keep you steady, create space and allow life to move at a slower pace. The 5 Ss are truly all connected. Living them will allow your life to flow with more ease and grace, help you leave the hustle behind and live life from the heart. Please join me over on my Facebook page aka the Live Life from the Heart Classroom. Every week we'll delve deeply into the current week's blog and build our lives from the heart. |
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