an awesome day!

Top to bottom, inside out and backwards it's an awesome day! 

This morning for my birthday my awesome and amazing kids gave me a book called "The Book of Awesome" by Neil Pasricha. It's a treasure of fun and happy bits of life that are, as the title says, awesome!!
For example, page 174 "Your favorite old, comfy T-shirt"; page 104 "That friendly nod between strangers out doing the same thing; page 374 "The last day of school"; page 44 "Hitting a bunch of green lights in a row". 

In my own story over the past couple of days Awesome looked like having my lost wallet returned with everything in it...money included; receiving a misplaced courier package; going to a cheerleader competition surrounded by high adrenaline excitement; holding my little niece's hand and feeling her squeeze my finger as she drifted off to sleep. 
Simple moments of wonder.  They could mean nothing, or they could mean something.  It's my choice and what I choose creates the life that I want.  I need to make a decision, over and over and over again.  Those are the actions of my life unfolding with purpose.  If I set my purpose to having an awesome experience then whatever happens I know the process and the experience will be for my good.  My paradigm of awesome is an internal action that elevates everything in my world.

By feeling an abundance of awesome I find that I can weather the "not so awesome" with quicker turn around time.  There's been a few situations this week that could easily have spriraled into darkness.  Yet, even in the deepest parts of what seemed terribly askew I had an even deeper knowing that this too was awesome. For through the rough stuff love was unfolding in new and wonderful ways.  

To the common phrase "how's it going?" I double dog dare you to reply back to the questioner, "I'm having an awesome day!"  and mean it.  Say it with a smile so it comes from your heart.  Challenge the status quo that robotically says' "not so bad"...or "ok I guess".  Don't guess at your life.  Make it what you want.  Make it awesome through your thoughts, your words and your actions. One small step, one small detail, one small connection at a time allow the awesomeness to unfold.    

My choice is awesome!  I am blessed beyond words in this feeling.  Thank you to all of the wonderful, amazing and happy people who are gracing my day, my birthday with delicious awesomeness.

For more information on the official Book of Awesome check out http://www.1000awesomethings.com/
 or watch Neil Pasricha on http://www.ted.com/ . 

Extremes or Middleground?

I never thought that I'd be saying this but I'm craving life in the middle.  The middle of what?  The middle of extremes. 
I've long had an affinity for going too far one way or the other.  My family will all raise their hands to attest to that.  Not skydiving off mountains or driving at Indy but extremes of thought, involvement, feelings, actions in day to day life. 
I don't just sit on a committee but act as Chairman.;  I don't just start a new job I'm also on the President's Advisor Council;  I don't just watch what I eat but I do the Master Cleanse or the Warrior diet.  I seldom just dip my toes in the water but dive right into the deep end, regardless of the fact that I can't swim all that well. 
This is pretty cool for the fun things in life but that's the thing with extremes they go both ways.
I've been an extremist in not keeping track of financial details which sucks when looking at the bottom line; I go to extremes of disconnecting from people, including those I love; I don't just give away things I don't want but also things I need leaving myself without; I've hurt relationships by being extremely stubborn and defensive...extreme thinking damaging myself and others.

Thus the craving for the middle.  A place where i am not playing catch up physically, emotionally or spiritually.  Living at extremes can be powerfully wonderful as well as incredibly draining.  The roller coaster that never stops for a break unless it crashes.  I talked about crashes in the last blog and their underlying symbolism for that part of us that simply wants to connect...to feel.

I want to feel without knowing that it's an either/or world.  I want to feel that the middle is safe, happy and valuable. Is it the only place I'll live?  Not a chance... but it can be home base from which I can enjoy my past and create a future that I truly desire. 

Life happens in the middle yet this is where I've fought not to be.  Ahhhh...there's the point.  I'm either running into the future or running from the past, still not settled in the only moment I will ever have - this moment.  I've heard it taught many many times but to truly live it will be the grace of moving more peacefully through the world by looking after the details while I'm gazing at the stars.  I can do both which lands me in the middle... not later but now. 

It's all good.

crashing into sidewalks

Have you ever noticed that most people only shovel the snow right in front of their house?  I'm just in from a walk and found it particularly interesting that so many neighbours shovel only their property...and not an inch more.  I bet they have an exact eye for where their property line officially ends and their neighbour's begins. 

Few and far between are the neighbourhoods that extend the extra effort and shovel just one property more.  Divisions and separations clear and tangible. 

The movie Crash is a poignant, powerful film that tells the story of lives ripped apart through divisions of race.  The stark depiction of a reality of harsh boundaries between people.  The line between me and you is solid, heavy and cruel.  Fear erases the possibility of "us" without mercy and with deep sadness.  Shoveling snow may seem like a stretch to the racial divisions of Los Angeles but big problems start with small problems that never get fixed.

Simple, small steps can bridge the divisions in my neighbourhood, in my city, in my country, in my world.  Be it a unified thought or action.  Without efforts to come together, to expand the borders of "me" there is a trajectory for people to be as the narrator at the beginning of Crash states "... we crash into each other so we can feel something".  Divisions bury the feelings we most desire...love, happiness, joy...

Shovel your neighbours walk...literally or metaphorically.  Your mind, heart and body will be stronger as a result...so too will be your neighbours.  Connect rather than crash.

life through a straw

I drink my tea with a straw...it's the South American mate tea that is most delicious first thing in the morning...best to drink it in a authentic gourd with a mate straw.  Which brings me to my lightbulb moment... my warm tea this cold cold morning was much desired...yet it just wasn't flowing through the straw.  Try as I might I would only get little bits of liquid through it.  Somewhere in it's simple system it is plugged with tea leaves.  This happens.  But I forget to clean it thoroughly everyday.  I give it a once over... making sure the outside is clean and shiny.  After several frustrating attempts at sipping and having no success with a good helping of tea I stopped.  Enough of that straw!
Then I reached into the drawer and pulled out my back up straw.  The one I had forgotten about but found the other day when I was looking for something else.  I put it in the gourd and Voila!! tea.... oodles and zoodle of smooth flowing delicous and nutrious  tea.
Why fight with a plugged straw?!  It's frustrating and senseless.  Life gets plugged sometimes...oftentimes.  Plugged with the build up of people, thoughts, events, stuff, activities, the past, the future, what was done, what we wish hadn't been done.  Just plugged!  If I don't clean out the straw of my life regularly...not just a shiny polish but a real clearing I too will plug the flow of my life.
I don't want that to happen because then I'll miss the delicious flavours of the moment which collectively are my life.  Sometimes a good clearing may mean switching out straws entirely...so be it.  I want life to be smooth flowing and unplugged.
It's not complicated.  Just be clear...be clean not just shiny.  Make sure your insides are uncluttered so life can flow with greater ease.  Write it out, speak it out, pray it out....however you clean just make sure you do it regularly, thoroughly and deeply.  Don't wait for a blockage as it may come in your heart, your mind, your job, your money, your relationship. 
Today I ask myself to be clear of built up emotions so I can be free and clear to be fully present.  Present with myself so I can be present with others.  Unhurried, uncluttered and understanding. 

heart beat



who speaks to your heart?...to whom do you share yours?

i'm pondering tonight the vibrations that move through my heart .... some people, some news, some words, some thoughts that instantly open me to more love, more tears, more smiles, more wondering...it's not everyone or everything ... not always but often... from out of the blue but not really because i know that nothing is coincidence...it's all perfect.... complicated (maybe) but still simple ...

what is it that connects me in those moments.  today.... when i heard the story of a soldier paralyzed by war my heart felt crushed; when i look into the eyes of a friend and i share a revelation of my soul; when i smile at a stranger to let them know they are not alone...or to remind myself; when i read words in a poem that stir my mind to a depth that i feel at one with the vastness of the universe at the same time as being inside the drop of water on the petal of an awakened leaf

alive.  these moments tell me i am alive.  this is why my heart beats...

what if...a look into the eyes of denialism


What if I truly am enough, just like this?  Not five pounds lighter, not more wealthy, not more inclusive, more engaged, more enlightened, more learned, more simple, more complicated, more connected, more more more...

This afternoon I was daydreaming out loud with my daughter what I'd do if I had a million dollar windfall...I'd buy a three bedroom condo and we'd move out of our little one bedroom place into a spacious home with individual places for her, me and my son.  Why she asked...let's just stay where we are.  What we have is enough.  Let's just put the money in the bank....travel...give...invest.  This from my girl who dreams of mansions, limousines and designer wardrobes!

We were talking while driving out to her dad's in the suburbs...a place that I struggle with as I feel like a total outsider.  My kid's other home is, in my view, a "Martha Stewart" world.  It's lovely.  I try not to judge it but have lingering feelings that place it higher on the shelf than my world.  If I have less am I less...
In my sanest moments I know this not to be true...but yet it lingers bringing up deep beliefs from the netherworld within.

Then tonight pondering thoughts from the most recent book I started reading called "Denialism.  How Irrational Thinking Harms the Planet and Threatens our Lives" by Michael Specter I sit back from the thoughts of denialism on the environment, nutrition and pharmaceuticals to look straight in the eye of what I have been denying... this is good enough...I am good enough just the way I am.  My irrational thinking that takes me into the realms of needing more space and more stuff harms me and threatens the very life that I want to create.  I am my own biggest denier (is that a word?).

One of the hallmark signs of being a true denier is that you overlook the data.  You miss what is presented right in front of you to stay entrenched in your own mindset however wrong and twisted it might be.  Right in front of me was my beloved daughter saying our world was good just that way it is.  Neither her nor my son have ever asked for it to be more... nor for me to be someone who I am not.  Well Jamie would like me to be less embarrassing at times ... but that's par for the course of a 14 yr old.

Hearing my daughter speak so clearly and confidently that what we have here is awesome shook something inside me.  It's still shaking and settling into a new belief.  What if I just let go of trying to be what I'm not...I'm not suburbia, I'm not Martha Stewart...I'm me...who ever that is... and she's a growing, dynamic, caring and loving person.  I don't get it right all the time...to think that I do would be to deny the truth of being human.  I hold myself up to that unrealistic platform all too often....how about I don't.  What if I step into the new year with eyes focused on a greater truth.  How about I have a million dollars in the bank and cozy up with the two most amazing kids on the planet in our happy little home playing Yahtzee while we dream up a family road trip.... to a far away land or off to Saskatoon. 

I'm not stopping my journey of learning, of developing my mind and resources but I feel a shift for it to come from a different place... yes... something is shifting.  I am grateful to have looked into the eyes  of denialism and have it look back out at me... my mirror to higher thoughts.

Check out this book if you are ready to look at your thinking in a new way....

accumulation...

      Power...full



I've been slacking off lately with my daily push up routine.  I don't do push ups on my head like this guy but I thought the picture was too cool not to use.  I do push ups the way Neil taught me.  I was in the routine of doing ten well formed, strength focused push ups in the morning and at night.  If I did no other exercise all day at least I knew that I'd be doing this.  It didn't feel like much but I was something in the name of fitness and discipline. 
A year ago Neil taught me a better way to do the push up.  I had been doing a lot of push ups for several years but didn't have the correct form... I dropped from 50 per set to 10.  I learned that it was better to do ten clean than 50 dirty (so to speak).   I continued to discipline myself morning and night until this last while when I just stopped.  Life got busy, I got tired, I felt frustrated, I just wanted to sleep.  Excuses, excuses, excuses.  Yet even knowing that I was creating excuses rather than results still wasn't enough to get me back on the floor.
Today when I was out walking I was pondering this situation in my life and a light bulb went off... it's not just ten push ups that I'm missing out on, but it's an accumulation of ten.  Ten per set, two sets per day, seven days per week, fifty two weeks per year....that's a possible 7280 push ups per year that I'm missing if I stay on this track.  It's not just one, it's the accumlation of one that makes the difference. 
When I got home I did my ten.  Tonight I'll do another ten.  Tomorrow I'll do another two sets... and so on and so on.  I need and want that discipline so I accumulate strength rather than deteriorate into excuses.

I'm working with a financial coach to help me do the same thing with my money.  A  year from now I want to look back on a year of wealth accumlation instead of a year of "where did it all go?!".   Connections ... physical push ups, financial bank accounts, results or excuses...my choice.  My Christmas gift to myself is an awakening to getting on track so I build powerful outcomes.  Maybe a year from now I will be able to do a push up standing on my head like Mr. Muscle...super cool!!

Happy Christmas wishes to everyone!!  May you have a year of awesome results rather than excuses!!