Vacation

I have just returned from a vacation to Italy. My daughter and I spent 10 days seeing Rome, Florence and Venice. We spent time traveling on planes, in cars, buses, trains and boats. We ate lots of pasta, pizza, cheese, cured meats, gelato and drank wine. We walked - a lot of walking, and saw amazing sites, architecture, art, people, history all around us. It was a great time and I am so grateful that I had this opportunity.

Back at home, once I had a day to recover from a 25 hour travel day back to Colorado, it finally hit me why this journey has been so special.

I thought that I was just going on a fun adventure for my birthday with my daughter, but that was only the surface of the entire odyssey. My journey to Italy took me to an Unknown Zone of a different sort. Beyond eating all the delicious food and drinking all the delicious wine that I wanted -  there was the more subtle shift of letting go of my life. That's right folks, I let go of my life. It wasn't that I let go of thinking about my loved ones at home, or the best dog ever - Tucker, or that I didn't post photos daily to Facebook to keep friends and family updated. It wasn't that I didn't attempt to check my emails several times during my stay. It was simply that I left all need to think about clients, work, bills, my future, my purpose in life, my 3rd act in life, signing up for AARP or not, any thought about my life beyond each day that I was experiencing in that moment was just let go of. Completely.

I took a vacation. I don't know if I have ever realized how powerful that is. I haven't taken many vacations in my adult life -  but there have been a few and they have all been wonderful. The difference this time is that I have really gotten the concept of how important it is to take time away from the constant presence of thinking about living my life. While I was in Italy my days were filled simply with getting from point A to point B without getting too lost and finding the next plate of olives and salami, glass of Chianti or cappuccino. Each day pasta, pizza, gelato and which bus, train or water taxi to take consumed my thoughts to the degree that I had no room to worry about my future purpose in life.

I took a vacation and now that I am home, having spent 10 days letting go of my life, I feel energized and excited about leaping back into my life. I have gained clarity and find myself looking forward to all the potential awaiting me.

And that, my sweet daughter, is the true gift you gave me with this wonderful journey you made happen. 

Wine and Whiskey

Intent and resolutions for the upcoming year swirl around me as I move through this last day of 2012. I am not a big fan of making resolutions that only get forgotten in a haze of guilt as January turns into February. But, heck the world didn't end on the 21st so let's dig in.

Last month was all about letting go. So here I am feeling just a bit more spacious after letting go of all those habitual thoughts and ideas that have clung to me like the perfume of onions and garlic you pick up at some restaurants. In anticipation of divine thought navigation I rub my hands together before placing my fingers on the keyboard.


I am calling in.......wait, it will come to me.....uhhhhh......thinking......hmmmm.

All right, so maybe I don't have any brilliant aha's in the intent area.  What do I want to see expanded in my life? What is really key to my happiness? While this list may seem just the normal stuff, please read the whole paragraph for the full effect.

Traveling (Italy!), sharing good food, wine and whiskey with my family and friends, laughing with great snorts of laughter - with the layers of love that are my family and friends, enjoying stillness and long walks with Tucker, treating myself to a massage at a nice spa, enjoying movies, books and music, having Vista moments from time to time. Sharing joy, light and love with every person I come in contact with.  In short, I intend to prosper in all areas of my life. It won't be enough to simply find amazing work or a fabulous relationship, I need to create a whole prosperous being.

And that is my wish for you - to prosper in your whole being this year. I am raising a glass of Jameson's to you right now. Here is to a year filled with laughter, joy and prosperity!

I Am

On June 21, I gave myself 6 months to redefine myself, knowing that the time had come to make some changes. In those months I had the opportunity to fall deeply into the Unknown. In order to receive all that I was seeking to become I had to let go of everything that no longer  served or uplifted me. I found myself humbled until I allowed myself to let go of the out-grown idea of my identity. I learned to receive and to say yes to gracious offers of help. I learned to listen.

Today as I write this, I am not the same person that I was 6 months ago. I am filled with joy as I look forward to stepping clearly into the new direction of my life. I have redesigned my consulting business to better address my needs and the needs of the client. I am networking and seeking alliances that will bring new messages and fresh ideas to the world.

I want to thank my children who continue to support me in all ways in this process. I know it has been a challenge for them to watch this journey. Thanks also to encouraging friends who have offered words of wisdom and laughter along the way. There is still work to be done, but the way is becoming clear.

So, what have I learned that I think is important to express to you? I firmly resolve to never define myself by what I don't want or like in the future. I will only define myself with what enriches and improves me and the people around me. I believe I am here to make a difference in the lives of others by touching them, if only for a moment with joy, light and love. I will connect people with the opportunities and ideas that will bring fulfillment and joy into their lives. The time has come to begin the dialog - to have conversations about how we are connected rather than divided. So here it is:

I Am
Joy, Light and Love.
I Am
Abundance, Prosperity and Creativity.
I Am
Beauty, Health and Vitality.
I Am
Resilience, Courage, Strength, Powerful and Timeless.
I Am
Loyal, Kind and Wise.
I Am
Intuitive, Healer, Connector, Valuable and Complete.
I Am
Energy, Stillness and Peace.
I Am
Inspired, Undaunted, Intrepid and Victorious!

Suspension of Belief: Ongoing Adventures in the Unknown Zone

"Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth." ACIM

All right folks, I have some questions:

·      Just because we might have had dreams when we were young and those dreams didn’t come true, were the dreams themselves any less real then the “reality “ we created?

·      Does reality have to be bad or less wonderful than illusion?  If so, why?

·      Why is happiness thought to be just a momentary event?

·      Why is it that the person who was broke and wins the lottery often ends up just as broke as before?

·      Why is it, when someone comes up with a crazy, but brilliant idea, they are told to “get real”?

Wouldn’t it be great to write a screenplay of our lives that would have the audience gasping at the amazing vistas and crying with the setbacks? In my movie, an event would happen at this precise moment that would create an action that would propel me beyond my state of sorrow to heights only dreamed of. The music would shift from boding drama to uplifting fight back music to poignant victory music.  Yes, my movie would have a brilliant sound track.  But…. that is just make believe, just an illusion. Or is it?

We spend most of our lives believing that what we see, feel and experience outside of us is real and that what we see, feel and experience within ourselves is unreal. When I was young my Mother was worried that I was a “dreamer” and because of that I would not amount to much and ultimately I would need to marry well. I kid you not :)  As a result, I buried the dreamer, disavowing her, disowning her and ignoring her.  Ironically, I turned to books.  Instead of laying on my back in the grass and dreaming story after story of amazing future adventures in my life, I would fall into another world written by another person. My mother approved of reading, as it seemed more studious and real. The plotlines weren’t that much different than my made up stories but because they didn’t come from within me, just the action of reading from a book seemed more real and perhaps more helpful in creating a real life.  

Some more questions:

·      Why is it so hard for me to dream again?

·      Am I too old or too tired to be a creator of dreams?

·      What if I just don’t have anything to say that anyone wants to hear?

·      What if my only talent is to read words that someone else has written?

·      What if I fail?

In June, I gave myself 6 months to re-define, re-assess and re-design my mission in life. Since then I have been rigorously challenging my ideas about this person I have accepted as myself and rethinking the idea of how the 3^rd act of my life will unfold.  As with any journey, I have experienced amazing vistas and frustrating, challenging setbacks.  Even as I write this I am facing some disconcerting circumstances.  I am literally and figuratively in suspension.  Not that I am not doing anything.  I get up every day and network, talk to people, rethink my business and breathe.  I think I am doing all the right things.  I am just suspended between what was and what is to come.  I am in that place between the reality of my past and the dream of what could be.  And I ask myself…..do I have what it takes to believe that what is within me is reality and what is outside of me is just an illusion created by old beliefs?

Here is what I believe is true. I desire that today, tomorrow and all my future days are filled with joy, light and love. I know that as a connector of people my mission in life is to work with seekers and teachers alike so that they may find the messages they need to hear and to communicate.  I have more blessings than I can count and among them are my children, my grandson and all my friends.  I thank you all for being on the journey with me. I still have a journey of a little over 2 months to complete my mission of redefining the essence of who I am. Then again, perhaps it will never be complete.

Eye of the Tiger: 6 months to shift update

It has been a month since I made the commitment to spend the next 6 months in the unknown. Last month was not about choosing change, but determining the destination point.  Again, not a place or specific change but how the re-defined me will look, think and act in whatever circumstances that arise.  I needed to know how  “that” would look in order to chart a course to navigate towards the destination.

Choosing the destination.

Around and around my mind has gone. Every possible emotion - all sorts of pain have come and gone in waves and I have spent a LOT of time holed up in the air conditioning with my trusty sidekick, Tucker and my talking bird, Buddy.  Now, one month later, I am bobbing to the surface, half drowned with the grief of letting go, but intact and whole. I have defined the destination. I can see myself, happy and confident, waving at myself at the far side of the ocean. All I have to do is get in the boat and start rowing.

Haha! I don’t want a stinking rowboat! I want an ocean liner! Old me would have rowed.  New me chooses the mother of all ocean liners :)  Ship ahoy!

6 Months to Shift

 As a young girl my idea of the best life ever was having my own pony in the back yard. Then, as a teenager my best life included a pop star boyfriend and a closet full of the coolest clothes. With each passing decade my best life scenarios have shifted so much that during the epicenter of parenthood I think the thought of a hot bath and dinner out was the best thing.

In fact, somewhere along the journey of my life, the magic of a pony in the backyard was replaced by the idea that I needed to make a living and pay the bills. Over time, the best life ever became being able to pay the bills with a “little” left over. I was fine with that. I stopped dreaming. Just so you know, I have a great life, filled with adventure and my wonderful children and lots of love. I just lost my sense of amazing possibilities and settled for too many ideas that were attainable.

Last week, I decided that I was going to give myself 6 months to re-define, re-asses, re-design my mission and my life - again. In short, stepping back into the Unknown Zone. I love what I have created in my life, I just know that there are some aspects that still reflect outworn notions of settling for the attainable and it is time to make a shift. Ironically, I decided to shift my life in 6 months on June 21, which makes the 6-month deadline for a new me December 21, 2012.  To heck with doom and gloom end of the world predictions, if I am going to step back into the Zone to re-design myself there had better be a 2013! 

I mean really, if the world does end, wouldn’t I want to go out with a bang as the best me that I can be? Wouldn’t I want to dream up a pony or a hot rock star boyfriend? Or more than just a “little” left over at the end of the month? Just saying.

So what does this really mean? A new job, a move, a new book group….what?

It isn’t about making changes to change. It is about trusting in a journey of discovery-and this time not just clinging to safety, but finding out if the idea of who I am and what lights me up every day can be enough. Can who I am and what I do become aligned in such a way to create a whole new way of being me? A way of being that includes the ability to see beyond the safe and attainable and to vision a way to sustain myself and live my purpose with joy, light and love?

The first step is taken.  I have alerted the world to my plan. Now comes the fun and scary part. Just sitting with it, writing down all my thoughts, dreaming a little and not getting caught up in fear, because shift implies shifting and the what ifs……yikes, the what ifs are endless. But now is the time to discover the destination and set the course. Let's begin.

What Can You Give?

We have just gotten through the holiday season.  The media has told us that spending our hard earned dollars is an economic indicator.  This year it felt like going to the mall was elevated to a patriotic event.  The more that we spent the more our sad economy would recover and then all would be right with our world.  I understand the principle, but it makes me feel a little bit nauseous. Don't get me wrong.  I am not a Grinch - I love Christmas! I love buying gifts for my loved ones.I just don't know when it stopped being about Christmas and became a power sport.

So now that we have made it to the finish line with the holiday/boosting the economy spending, I am writing about something that I have been doing for the past 5 or 6 months, that has absolutely no effect on the economy and certainly doesn't boost my bottom line, but makes me feel good none-the-less. I give away my money. No, I am not talking about giving my money to tax deductible worthy companies, like the Red Cross, although I do that too.  I give my money to pan-handlers or anyone that I see that looks like they haven't slept under a roof for a while.

You see, for years when I passed these folks standing at the side of the road with their cardboard signs, I felt angry.  I would mumble about the riff-raff that the city did nothing about.  Why didn't they round them up and put them in shelters so that I wouldn't have to see them? I only gave my money to upstanding organizations that did good in the world for me. As hard as it is for me to admit, I think that I wanted to punish them somehow - like driving by without a glance is punishment. Why didn't they just get a job? I work hard for my money - why should I give it to people who will misuse it? Then about a year ago, while driving past a man with his ratty cardboard sign I realized that the thoughts that were in my mind at that moment did not reflect who I wanted to be.

I spent the next few months fighting with my angry thoughts every time I saw a pan-handler.  I tried to see him as he was on the day that he was born - pure and full of potential.  It would work for a moment, but then with the next person by the side of the road all the angry thoughts would flow out of my heart again. One day, after several months of this, I spent a few minutes after my meditation practice and asked in prayer how to rid my heart of these negative thoughts. The answer came immediately and was - give them money. I didn't like that answer and asked again - how do I get rid of these negative thoughts?  And again the answer was - give them money. OK, I thought if that's answer, I will do it.  I immediately went to my wallet and pulled out all the $1.00 bills that I had and put them in my car.

The next day as I was driving into town to pick up my mail, I was filled with eager anticipation to follow through and give my money to the next pan-handler that I could find.  Of course when I was looking for someone to give to, there was absolutely no one around.  It took a few days, but finally there was a man with a sign and I pulled up and rolled down my window.  As I handed the money to him I looked into his eyes and what I saw rocked my world. This was a man, and it didn't matter what choices or events had landed him on the street - he could have been my brother or son and he was valuable. That's it. All the anger left me. What a gift.

So that is what I do.  I would like to be able to afford to give more than $1 bills.  My goal this year is to up it to $5. I think I might be able to pull that off. You see, what I get out of this far exceeds what they get. I now see the people that I felt uncomfortable seeing as valuable. And face it - if they are valuable, then maybe I am too.  What can you give?