What we may miss when not listening to our inner voice just might have big consequences. We are all so busy and, in our busy-ness, we just may lose a chance for some of our most important lessons and opportunities, within which lie steps to our evolution.

I signed up for a weekend program advertised to expand my possibilities. Really looking forward to it, I printed my map and took my phone with my GPS, but the trip to the first meeting was harrowing. Used to our small-town traffic, with the combination of 5 lane interstates and missed signs, I found myself lost more than once. I soldiered on and got there late, thinking if this isn’t really worth it, I’m not coming back in the morning! It was really great, but I got lost again on the way home, took some wrong turns, and was fairly well spent by the time I arrived home. I told my husband I probably wouldn’t go back the next day (it was a three day event).  But, thankfully, decided to sleep on it before making a final decision.

This is where the rubber meets the road. I have no idea what kind of resistance I was experiencing on that day, but a part of me continued to push me to go back, even though I didn’t want to go through that drive again. I alternated between feeling like a failure, angry that I got lost, and excited that I had such a good experience while there.

Thank God I listened to the last voice, my inner-guiding voice, my higher Self. It continued to rise in my heart to go back to the rest of the event. When I awoke that second day, I moved through the morning with the idea crystalizing that I  would go.. So, without much thought, I readied and took my IPad, with my route mapped out.

Not only was my experience a deep, transformative treasure but, in addition to the further opening of my spirit and blossoming of my heart, I synchronistically met up with dear friends on a stairwell. With over 500 people in attendance, the chance of running into them was very slight. But there they were. The deliciousness of the rest of the weekend was amazing.

If your spirit is nudging you to take a leap, go to that event, or take that course, or job, or trip. listen to it! Even if you find barriers, hurdles, or obstacles in your path. If you keep hearing that small, steady voice, there is a very good reason to follow.

 

 

 

We all have secrets that we believe, if exposed, would cause harm, others would judge us harshly perhaps, or we would lose standing in our group. So we keep these secrets, even for many years, but at what cost?

 

The first time I had a really, really good job, I lived in dread that an unbalanced, unpredictable relative would find out where I worked and come into the office. I imagined that I would be mortified, humiliated and embarrassed. I imagined it so many times that now, almost 30 years later, it seems as though it actually happened. I think I even dreamed it. But it never came to pass.

 

We all have other secrets, things in our past that we are ashamed of. Every one of us. And it does take energy to hold these inside. As we age, they pile on; and, when something happens that reminds us of one of our indiscretions, one of our secrets, that pain is touched and brought up into our awareness again.

 

If we continue to hold these in, they can make us sick. That tightness in your belly, that sadness in your heart, that pressure in your chest, habitually pushed back down causes anxiety, stress, and the ensuing harmful hormones that course through your body.

But the fix is so very easy— tell someone. Someone you can trust even if it needs to be a professional. The immediate relief will be a powerful healing. Just in the telling, just in the releasing, just in the act of letting it go.

 

It finally occurred to me that this relative, if indeed she walked into our office, wasn’t me and telling this truth of her existence would be healing for myself. So I opened up and freely shared the facts of this relative when the conversation fit. So many others had a common situation,  a relative with mental illness, alcoholism, or other affliction.  I was free. Let her come in now, I was prepared, no big deal!

 

Of course, other secrets are about us and not flattering. But we all have them! No one is perfect and we bury these secrets that make us sick! It is hard to forgive ourselves while these past indiscretions lie inside, taking up residence while waiting to be dealt with and brought into the light. We all make mistakes, we’ve all done things we may see as awful, but we are always doing the best we can at the time. Now you’ve learned more, now you can let the guilt go and do better.

 

You are perfect just the way you are. Your secrets taught you what you needed to know. You’ve grown.  You’ve gained insight and maturity. You can even laugh about most of those old bits of information now.

 

When you are reminded, and they come into your awareness, don’t press them back down. Look at them and let them flow on out of you. Be done with them. Share them and feel the clearing. You are a complex, multifaceted being that cannot be defined by a few silly errant actions, or even a bunch of them! Forgive yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live in a two story home

 

Go up and down often. Forget things. Forget things upstairs so you have to keep running up there. Forget things downstairs for the same reason! You’ll need to keep getting up to find what you forgot!

 

Change the way you move up and down the stairs; sideways, toes in, toes out, skipping steps etc.

 

If you live in a one story home, run or skip from room to room.

 

Get a dog but don’t fence your yard! Then you must go outside with him several times a day and walk him at least once a day down the street. It’s very good for you to be outside.

 

If you have a desk job set your smart phone to go off at least once an hour. Then get up and walk, stretch and squat.

 

Get down on the floor often, playing with your pets or kids, or crawling around looking for lost items or foreign objects. Great for flexibility.

 

Do yoga stretches on the floor while watching TV

 

Play music you love so much you want to move! Then chair dance or better yet get up and move! (Make sure you aren’t driving!)

 

Keep items you use in inconvenient places. Place that often used spice in that high cupboard.

 

Shaving in the shower while balancing on one leg develops good core muscles. But Be Careful!

 

Give yourself a good brisk massage while drying off. Move toward your heart. This will get your lymphatic system stimulated.

 

When drying hair, (for women) hang forward from the hips for a good forward bend and volume!

 

Bounce around and dance while you make the bed.

 

Have a routine in the morning even if you are retired or have the day off…up, move and out of the house.

Getting moving will lead to more and more physical activity. It’s all good!!

 

Always first and most important, create a sense of wellbeing within yourself. Make yourself happy, do what gives you energy, give yourself loving kindness, and make it easier on yourself.

For quite some time, we’ve had this affliction, we humans, and it is currently expanding in epic proportions, much like a virus. It becomes dominate in our thinking, changing how we view the world. Whenever any malady grows into a crisis, it becomes loud, screaming for our attention, demanding that this, too, be corrected. Therefore, I am committed to bringing this out into the light, where we can see what we are doing and realize, we do have a choice.

The affliction is feeling offended. We choose to be offended. It clearly is a choice. Let me explain:

When someone on television, in your family, at work, says something you do not agree with, a belief, a ‘fact’, a description of someone or a group, something that you have thought about and makes you feel either protective about self or others, upon hearing it you take offense. Taking offense includes judgment, anger, a sense of superiority, irritation, indignation, criticism, and self-righteousness. Why would we want to feel that way?

Let’s look at a few examples:

Your favorite political candidate is being criticized by a bias news channel. You’re incensed; you believe she isn’t being treated fairly. You think this for a few minutes and your anger grows. You tell your friends, and as you do your blood pressure rises, and as you continue with this line of thinking you find you are building a whole case against this newscaster’s opinion and keep seeing more examples that are similar. You find more and more newscasters that are doing the same thing. It is snowballing; now you are just looking for the offense.

Or:

Someone makes an offhanded comment about your clothing, or the way you worded something, or the choices you’ve made, or even a rejection of the product or service you are offering. You wince. You have a choice about how to react, right at this point. Often our emotions rise and feelings of resentment begin to take hold. We may get stuck in this way over and over again. (Who doesn’t?)

One way out of this and anchor ourselves more firmly in our wellbeing is to realize that the thoughts, opinions and beliefs of others are entirely their business. If someone doesn’t like your attitude, clothes, or words, it really has nothing to do with you! This is their perception, of which you have no control.

I remember when I made a huge career change years ago, leaving the corporate world to begin my own company. It was pretty scary, and one of the challenges was worrying about what other people (co-workers and clients) would think.  I vacillated between worrying about this and becoming angry and offended at the prospect of others judging my decisions! (And boy, some did!)

 

If it weren’t for the following conscious inner dialog I copied out of a *Chopra Newsletter, I would have felt great stress over it.  While I ran every morning I repeated this as a mantra. (*Find a link at the end of this article to the whole publication)

 

• I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others
• I am beneath no one, and no one is beneath me.
• I am fearless in the face of any and all challenges.

 

It worked. Those who didn’t understand my choice and who were critical of it, in the end had no impact on me. I made a choice not to be offended.

 

The next time this feeling pops up, and you feel that offense, remember that whatever others are thinking and believing, it is their dynamics, their perception and reality, and it probably has nothing to do with you!

 

Your job is to bring your full essence out into the world the way you were created.

 

Find the whole article here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do this with a group of trusted and supportive friends or by yourself. Have three sheets, one for recapitulation of regrets & errors, self-sabotaging thinking, etc., and one for good (achievements) self control, growth, aha’s, etc. for  last year… and, of course, one for your 2013 year-end Intended Self.

 

First, begin with recapitulation.

What is recapitulation? For this exercise it is playing your year from beginning to end in fast forward without any judgment. Simply walk through the big moments of your year like you were viewing it through a video camera. Don’t linger on a particular moment and don’t begin evaluating it. Just keep moving through each moment. By performing this ritual right at the end of any year, you can gain a greater understanding of who you are and what you do. Recapitulation can help you process all the words, thoughts, and deeds you experienced over the course of the last year. It is a good nightly practice, too. And after practicing recapitulation, as you become a bit lighter, you will begin to become aware of those behaviors that are nourishing and those that no longer serve you. You will also become more aware of your ripple . . . all the faces, conversations, and interactions you have experienced throughout the day.

When you are doing the exercises, be gentle with yourself.

Build a safe container here of self acceptance, with no judgment.

Only share if it is comfortable.

Write down positive and negative aspects of last year.  Share some of your regrets, accomplishments and goals. Decide what to do with them going forward.

For the negative ones, forgive and release them, within body and without. As you do a body scan, sense where there might be tightness or an ache associated with that memory. Then relax into that space and watch it lift out of the body.  Afterwards you can do some type of final act such as burning the list when you get home, or have a ceremonial burial.

Celebrate accomplishments by making a certificate, giving yourself a fine dinner, awarding yourself a gift, etc.

 

 

Goal setting

Create some accountability through partnership and the importance of stating out loud and in front of others who are supportive. Do not share with anyone who you feel would be dampening, unsupportive, or critical. If it happens, realize that they have no power over you. Use your image of your archetype, mentor, or role model.

 

Exercise: Who are you to be at the end of 2013?

Describe in detail YOU at the end of 2013.

 

How are you different?

What are you doing?

How do others see you now?

What is your environment like?

Who are you surrounded by?

Use all of your senses and emotion.

When you are done with this exercise, have a group meditation with everyone to seal this intention. Then have some fun! We watched an inspiring movie.

 

 

 

We all do it. Whether brought about by a traumatic event or some other reason, we all feel like hiding sometimes. I’ve been thinking about this lately because when I heard Jean Houston, Ph.D., scholar, philosopher and visionary, discussing the times we move inward and away from others, it really struck a bell. While hibernating, we connect more deeply to our own energy; and we can purposely connect to the archetypal energy that we want to possess, i.e. the warrior for courage, or the Buddha for compassion.

 

Then, yesterday, someone came into my office whom I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years. He experienced a deeply-disturbing tragedy shortly before he ‘dropped out’ of our community’s circle. He said he had passed by my office often in the last few years and thought about coming in. Here he finally was. I asked him if he’d been hibernating and he said yes, he had. He withdrew from social life and work life; he closed down and shut down. This is extreme, wildly out of balance, showing us an example of how far hibernating can go.

 

Lest you think it’s always unhealthy to hibernate, that is far from the truth. The truth is that it is normal, usually. If we stand back from our lives and look for cycles of hibernation, action, achievement, and creativity, we will likely find them. I suspect those of us who are introverts will find more periods of  solitary hibernation, and perhaps extraverts may find more periods of going from large groups to small groups of people around them. But it is the same.

 

So what is going on in the normal course of ‘hibernating’? It could be started by an disturbing event, a sense of being overwhelmed or just plain weariness. Many reasons may cause one to go into hibernation.  Some artists and writers purposely seek these periods knowing it is necessary for them to find inspiration and creative energy. It can be an even more productive time if we focus on the qualities we want to possess.

 

Use this time to fill your environment with symbols of an archetypal entity you wish to emulate, whether ancient mythological beings, real people, or other symbols. Wear jewelry that reminds you of your desire, place statues or pictures on an altar, invite this energetic consciousness in.

 

Meditation is a withdrawing from active life as a sort of mini-hibernation. These periods of withdrawing, going within, can be part of a healthy cycle to balance our busy lives and make them more full, more expressive, more varied and colorful. If we continue to meet our responsibilities, while satisfying this need to have time alone in contemplation and solitude, then it can be a healthy thing, just what one needs. If you return to a high level of accomplishment and creative expression afterwards, then you have proven to yourself that you did just what you needed at the time.

 

 

Have you decided on your choice of presidential candidate? Do you think you will only feel ‘ok’  if your candidate wins? Do you watch the news with angst within your body and mind? If not, you really don’t need to read this; but if you are, what I write here may be helpful.

Elections are increasingly ‘in our face’ with the ever-expanding media sources. We are all assaulted with ads all over the TV channels and websites whether we are interested or not. If one  doesn’t bother learning about the issues or the candidate’s position, it must look like a choice between two terrible options!

Ultimately, the choice is decided by the mass consciousness of the country. All of us collectively combined, with our ideas, opinions, beliefs, and where we fall on an evolutionary scale, create a group consciousness. Your intention rings through the land, adding to the energy of others who have similar intentions.

It is much more than simply voting. There are undercurrents within layers of reality that will affect our future, also. Our country, as a whole, has an unprecedented level of consciousness. Our founding fathers made decisions and had ideas that were revolutionary in their time and still are now. They changed the trajectory of human evolution.  Just in the last 100 years, we have come an incredible distance in civil rights, women’s rights, inclusion of different beliefs, lifestyles and ways of expression that make this country a magnet for the oppressed, ambitious and those with dreams of happiness.

So vote what is in your heart and trust that what happens is what we are ready for.

If only she would stop doing that, if only he would listen to me, if only the kids would straighten up, if only they understood……..

Then all would be right. That’s what we think, isn’t it? If we could magically change others to fit our ideals, then we would be happy. Of course, we know we can’t change other people and rarely can we change their minds, but don’t we keep wishing?

We hold our happiness out of reach by focusing on everyone else’s words, thoughts and behaviors that differ from ours.  We project our issues, problems and suppressed attributes on those outside of ourselves. This is life’s wonderful way of putting it out there for us to see, so that we may become aware, so we may see… yes, that habit is indeed something I need to look at within myself.

The quick fix is to notice when we do this and remind ourselves that what others do and think is none of our business. They are just where they are supposed to be. They are learning and experiencing for their own higher good. Our reactions to them are our key to insights.

The more lasting fix is to become conscious. Watch those thoughts and find the source inside of us. Why does that person and his judgmental thinking bother us so much? Why do you cringe when you hear her opinion? Why does it bother you to see someone who looks out of control?

We have endless opportunities to observe this in action, especially during political elections when opinions are abundant from passion and hope to vitriol and everything in between.

You always have three choices when noticing your unpleasant reaction to others’ words and behavior:

Our first choice, the usual default, is to allow our minds to be gripped by thoughts that cause more stress; such as, “I can’t believe she said that. There is something wrong with her to think that way.  Doesn’t she know any better?” or “That idiot’s car almost hit me! He doesn’t know how to drive! He needs to get the hell out of my way! *&@#*!” Staying here, (which can set up our whole day to go this way) causes stress, moves us from wellbeing, and may eventually cause illness.

The second choice is to become conscious of our physical and emotional reactions. Move our awareness into our body and its sensations. Notice our heart, gut, muscle tension, posture, etc.  This does two things: it moves us from the stressful train of thought and it allows us the opportunity to relax, take a few deep breaths, and move on mentally.

Third, take the opportunity to back away from the thinking and question it. Question if it is really true. Question why that particular person’s actions have meaning for us. Why does it matter? What does it have to do with us and our own lives?

Just by living, we are going to be triggered. What we do, how we react, and how we allow others to influence us just could define our happiness.

Whether you want more money in your life, more fun meaningful relationships, or more purpose, you might feel held back by your past. Maybe you had a difficult childhood, disappointments in early adulthood, or regrets. These experiences could creep into your present, giving you the feeling you won’t ever have what you want and don’t deserve it.

You can reconstitute your past—reconstruct it, if you will. The past is so full of contrasts and contradictions; impressions held loosely in a dreamy way by your ever-changing emotional state. When you are happy, the good memories may flood in to your mind; but, when you are sad, worried or anxious you draw those past events that match those feelings.

Even if your childhood was largely negative in your mind, I’ll bet you have cherished happy moments to recall if you place your focus on it. There is a trick to how to do this.

The interesting thing is this: that the past and future is quite plastic, and what we choose to focus on has a big impact on how we are experiencing our life right now.

A woman I once knew had a father who seemed to reject her and favored her brother. Even in her fifties, she was still ruminating on how her father hadn’t been the father she wanted. She would fall into this refrain to anyone who would listen. Her shoulders would slump forward and her head would hang down in the retelling. It reached into her present by affecting her attitude toward all men.

I’ve seen in my business people who unconsciously rise to the level of financial success that their parents reached and they seem to sabotage their chances for more. This could also apply to their level of happiness, lifestyle, or even health.

I now see how I could recall the failings of my father, the times where he fell short, disappointed us, causing the family great distress. But I never do. I choose to recall the times he spent listening intently while I wistfully revealed my dreams, the encouragement he gave me and the inspiration that I could become whatever I wanted to be. This is the father he wanted to be, that he meant to be, and the one I remember. I feel very good about him, and feel his guidance everyday. This does change my experience in the present, even though he passed away when I was 21 years old.

We can change our current situation by reconstituting our past. It is a heavy burden to walk around carrying those hurtful experiences on our shoulders. The energy of this hinders our positive movement forward.

We all daydream; and, in those times of daydreaming, we can embellish our proud moments, dwell in the happy occurrences of the past, revel in the tender moments we’ve experienced—especially those pivotal moments that changed our course, began new chapters, opened new vistas and we rose to challenges. Times where we knew we made a good impression, had a brilliant “Aha!” moment, lifted someone else up, or just felt a strong wave of bliss.

When we are happy, we find it easier to reach back and pluck the good memories. So do that. Find those times where what you desire now was present in your past. If you want more abundance, find the times when you were young that felt abundant. Times that you felt loved by intimate others, times where success seemed easy and infinitely expanding.

Surely, dwelling on these memories changes your present and your future. You’re erasing, or at least minimizing, the past negative influences so they lose power. You miraculously become that person who had the beneficial past: the advantageous past that lifts your present life to one where your dreams come true, your talents flow unimpeded, and your gifts grace the world.