Listening to Your Body

I awoke yesterday with a sore shoulder. It got worse throughout the morning but a lunchtime yoga session and sporadic stretching helped. By bedtime my shoulder was fine—problem solved.

It was an easy win because I paid attention and made useful interventions. But it got me thinking about how our body speaks to us. 

Physical alerts—injuries, aches or illness—remind us to check in with ourselves. The sore shoulder encouraged me to look at my posture: how I walk, sit and stand, especially when working at desks and using mobile devices. My sore shoulder reminded me to sit mindfully, take micro breaks and stretch often.

Physical alerts also remind us to check in with Spirit. A sore shoulder invites us to look at what we’re "shouldering." What are we taking on? Do we like or resent our responsibilities? Do we need to adjust any responsibilities or expectations?

Whose Life is It Anyway?

For my birthday I decided I wanted a day of luxury: that my husband would drive me to fun activities, reappear when I was done, pay, and then take me on to the next fun activity, which he'd pay for as well. I was imagining living that way—how great that would be... like a princess. Then it hit me—this is my children's life. Why do I allow my life to be full or stress, worry and recriminations, and not treat myself as well as I do my children?

Living Your Own Life

If you are doing things because that’s the way it’s always been done, then you are living someone else’s life, not your own. How can anyone possibly know what is right for you?

Just because someone else wants you to do things a certain way doesn’t make it right for you. You need to develop the strength to do things your own way. To live life on your own terms. So what if they get upset? That’s their problem, not yours. If you are living in integrity with your highest self, you could not possibly do any different, and someone asking you to do so is not loving.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if we all minded our own business.

Perfect yourself first before working on others. Sure, help out and even offer suggestions, but be ok when suggestion are rejected. Stick to perfecting yourself.

Even what I write here is not an attempt to convince you. It’s thoughts and ideas that occur to me, and that make my life richer and fuller. I hope you can use it, so I offer it to you as a gift. Keep it, pass it on, or totally ignore it; I don’t mind.

Spring Cleaning Preconceptions

3 Life-Changing Realizations

1. Last summer I took up running, something I'd never imagined enjoying, and discovered I like it.
2. I recently admitted I hate staying up late; one of my biggest luxuries is being in my fabulously comfortable bed by 10pm. 
3. One day, while swimming laps at the local pool, I realized mid-stroke, mid-lap, that I hated swimming laps. My whole life revolved around aquatics from age 12 to 25, but that day I knew–and admitted to myself–that I hated swimming laps.

All these life-improving realizations occurred as the result of spring-cleaning my assumptions. When I looked at them in the daylight of honesty and self-recognition, I realized some habits of thought and action were either erroneous or outdated.

It was a lot of work (and will need regular updates). I had to pull all the preconceptions out of my mental closet, examine and retest each one, and throw a whole lot away. Sometimes it seems that the more I get to know myself, the less I know myself. 

But this work is valuable. It's a way to refresh the mind, focus on what enriches life, and make space for new experiences. 

Quitcher Whining!

Committed vs. Uncommitted: What an interesting way to look at complaining! It was introduced to me at a communication course years ago.

Uncommitted Complaining is what you might call venting, grousing, whinging; you don’t like a thing or person, but you’re not going to do anything about it. You're uncommitted to improving the situation. Your goal is only to release your own stress.

Committed Complaining is active, positive and creative. It’s working to understand the issue, creating strategies, and evaluating outcomes. It’s about learning and growth. Committed complaining is understanding what's bothering you, gathering facts, assessing options, and talking it over if appropriate, then taking action.

My friend Julia works that way. Jules is a joy: she asks for and takes advice, installs a fix and then reports back, always including how we helped her. I love hearing of her successes, and appreciate her thanks. The best part is that we never hear of the problem again, unless it reoccurs and she is seeking a new plan. It’s incredibly refreshing to be around someone so empowered. She’s a happy person, fun to be around, not least because she doesn’t go on (and on and on) about the same damn thing. She’s no better or luckier than the rest of us; she just takes responsibility for that which is in her control.

Meanwhile another acquaintance of mine is the queen of uncommitted complaining. She complains about her husband, her kids, her car, her home and her work. When I ask her plans to fix those issues she gets mad and says she just wants to vent.

A big clue to uncommitted complaining is anger when the complainer is asked what they plan to do about their complaint. 

But why would we want to rid ourselves of stress by dumping it all over friends and family? Why would we think they would want it, or are we so selfish that we don’t care? Don’t you want better for those you love?

When you next find yourself complaining ask yourself: Am I committed to solving this problem? Am I seeking answers, approaches and plans? Am I actively seeking feedback or is this just a chance to talk about myself? If I wasn’t complaining, would I have anything else to say?

If you don’t like something, change what you can and learn to accept the rest. Remember, it's our attitude, not circumstances, that most affects our quality of life.

Have a joyful day and may all your complaints be committed ones.

Where Are You Disempowering Yourself?

If you read bios that are found on book jackets, event programs and corporate mastheads, you’ll notice there are no weak words and no waffling. These people didn’t “sort of try to” do X, they did it. They led, created, and manifested. For all we know they did it in their pajamas while eating Fudgy-Os, but in the bio they are organized, driven people who succeed at life.

The language of those bios is strong, positive, and brief. We do well to emulate that style in our communication. Positivity, prudence and brevity should be characteristics of all our conversations, including the ones inside our head—especially the ones inside our head.

Where do you tell yourself that you always make the same mistake, embarrass yourself, or miss that shot? In life, we can disempower ourselves through not asking for enough or dreaming big enough. We can disempower ourselves by seeing what we lack, not the abundance that we have.

Take a look at your life: where can you update some assumptions, spring clean habits that weaken you, and increase your sense of personal power? What if you took yourself seriously?

The Perfection of Imperfection

I used to make mental lists of all the traits I needed to work on so that I could become perfect and thus enlightened. But what I learned is that we are loved–we are love–no matter what we do, no matter how imperfect or righteous we are.

For starters, no one likes a perfect person. We assume they’re hiding something. And it’s hard to relate to the pious. Sure, we admire them but no one invites them to parties. I used to photograph weddings and receptions, and let me tell you, everyone relaxes when the priest leaves.

If there’s one thing universal in consciousness, it’s awareness of our faults. It feels human to have faults or weaknesses. We like to work to remove or perfect them. Which is good.

But reserving loving yourself for when you are perfect is not so good. In fact, it’s the love you give yourself that often weakens those faults. Feeling more loved can lessen their frequency or impact.

Love is an inside job. We can be surrounded by people who love us, but if we don’t love ourselves, we will hardly feel their love, and certainly won’t retain it. We’re like an uninsulated house; the moment the furnace turns off, it’s cold again. We all know someone like that–someone who needs constant reassurance and praise. If we love ourselves, we don’t need externally sourced love to make us feel loved. We can be in a place of darkness and pain yet still powered by an internal well of love.

You can continue to learn and grow while loving yourself in your imperfection. In fact, often our faults point out to us where we would most like to grow. If we are impatient with our family, for example, perhaps we wish to learn patience, or maybe it’s a pointer that we need more time alone. If we gossip, maybe that’s a sign that we give too much credence to the opinions of others and need to focus more on our own life.

Instead of berating ourselves for our imperfections, a loving approach is to thank them for what they teach us, and use them as signals to growth. And to realise that both the question and the answer are within.

Here’s to the perfection of life in all its glorious imperfection!