Tag Archives: A Better Life

A Bigger Perspective

Posted on by

 

The air is cold and the sun is warm. The sky is clear blue and the birds are calling. I’m sitting outside in the early morning meditating wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat and gloves. My body is comfortable and my mind is at ease. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be for this is a rare moment in meditation where everything is clicking and I am at peace.

But even when everything is not clicking, these moments sitting in meditation are my medicine. It’s where I go each day to gain the perspective I need to be with myself and the world as it is. It’s where I go to find the courage and the clarity to get clear about what I believe in and why. It’s the time I lean into to take stock of the thoughts I keep, while discovering the impact these thoughts have on how I behave in the world.

It’s not easy to be alive these days. Even if your personal life feels solid, it’s impossible not to feel what’s happening all around us. We are mammals after all; wired to sense and to feel our surroundings. It’s how we survive, fact check, attune, belong and assess our environments.

As mammals, we’re always going to feel each other. We’ll always be attuned to how others are experiencing the world. But how you receive other people’s states of being is always a choice.

This is crucial to know now during this very intense time period we are living through. Otherwise, we are left to play the victim to other people’s moods and to the world’s activities. Left to being dragged along by widespread fears. Some of which are real. Some of which are exaggerated. And some of which will always be out of our control.

Right now there’s so much confusion, insecurity, fear and anger being carried by so many of us, it’s easy, one might say even “natural” to jump on that bandwagon. After all, we are herd creatures and we do like to go with the biggest herd for safety reasons. But when we do that we contribute to the overall experience of things being scary and out of control.

As an example, we can continue to spread like a virus the outlandish things we hear coming out of a screen. We can continue to imagine worse case scenarios. We can continue to buy into the fears and the projections about what is going to happen.

Or… we can put our attention on what it is we most want to have happen in the world and live that to the very best of our ability. I know this might seem naive, but there are many schools of thought to back up the power of how our perception of something has the capacity to shift reality.

For instance, in quantum physics, there is something called “the observer effect.”This effect says that when something is being observed, atoms in this case, Life behaves differently. Just based on being looked at. Just by being the recipient of attention, atoms change from states of pure wave potential to becoming something material.

In other words, going from not existing to existing.

Imagine applying this understanding to our current cultural circumstances. Imagine that where you put your attention will call into existence whatever it is you are expecting to have happen. Imagine that your assessment, combined with others choosing to go beyond fear, has the power to tip things in a new direction.

If you knew this to be true, what would you be talking about and thinking about?  

I know it feels like the stakes are very high right now. I know that most people are perceiving things in a certain way. But what if you hold an important place in how things turn out based on what you see and think? Would it inspire you to work with your mind? To chart your own course when it comes to where you put your attention?

I can’t say for sure that one person’s change of mind can change the world, but I can say for sure it can change your world.

Share this article

True Self-Care

Posted on by

 

Last weekend I co-facilitated a restorative retreat at my farm where the focus was on self-care. While I had prepared a lot around what would be the obvious candidates for caring for ourselves, as the afternoon went on, it was amazing to hear how much nuance showed up around what self-care truly is.

We live in interesting and often confusing times. On the one hand, we are encouraged by a multi-billion dollar wellness industry to take better care of ourselves. To buy more things, get more services, do more around our self-care. On the other hand, we have a machine-driven culture that not only does not make time for what we actually need, it doesn’t even recognize it. We see this demonstrated in the unremitting schedules we are attempting to keep and in the rewards bestowed upon those who seem to be able to work without pausing or attending to their needs.

Both are terribly out of whack. False. Misleading. Destructive. And ultimately, very, very harmful to actually caring for ourselves in a way that is real and true.

Self-care is not something to be bought, acquired or negotiated over. Instead, it is built right into you. As a mammal, it is part of your survival response and is your relational glue. It serves as the foundation for your self-worth and is the gas that runs your life. And it is the homage you pay to the Creator for the gift of Life.

It shows up in your natural capacity to set a boundary and to use the word “No.” It is present in your ability to know when you are hungry, tired and need to move, and then to go on to actually satisfy what is being called for. As a matter of fact, self-care, the capacity to know how to take care of ourselves, is inborn and natural. Otherwise, how as a species would we be able to exist?

The trouble is, of course, we have allowed ourselves to be pulled away from what is natural and so when it comes to what we need. We have allowed ourselves to be bought, misled and medicated. I realize this sounds harsh, but without owning up to the part we play in the care that we need, we will never get out of the mess we find ourselves in; the one characterized by more illness, dis-ease, unrest and dissatisfaction than likely our species has ever experienced.

Self-care is not complicated. But it does require some things. Like paying better attention to yourself and to the messages you’re getting around when and where your life is out of balance. It requires being in your body and developing a respectful relationship to it (no matter what your mind or the culture demands). It means turning away from the habits and screen messaging that confuses your capacity to start inside your own self to determine what you need.

Your self-care is a reflection of how you feel about yourself and what it means to be alive. What would it be like to begin today to care for yourself as if you actually mattered? As if you actually knew what to do? No gadgets, apps, programs, books, advice required.

Share this article

The Sacred Thread Of Our Lives

Posted on by

 

I was in a yoga class this week and we were talking about the full moon. It seems in the Vedic tradition, this moon symbolizes a recommitment to that which you hold dear. The teacher spoke of this time as a “Re-tying of the sacred thread.” The thread referring to what is tied around the waist of young initiates with the re-tying referring to a reconsecration of your vows.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the phrase re-tying the sacred thread all throughout class. Even though I didn’t have a lot of words for it in the moment, it felt powerful and sacred. It felt necessary, honest and true. Truly, it felt to me like the greatest thing any one of us could ever choose to do.

That being, to visit over and over and over again what it is we are committing our lives to.

What a True North this would be in a world increasingly less sacred, honest and true. In a world that encourages us to not have a compass by which to navigate, but instead, to be like a leaf in the wind, getting blown all over the place by whatever the prevailing winds are.

But to engage instead with the sacred thread is to choose what it is you stand for, and who and what you will be in the world. No matter what. Can you imagine it? What it would be like if more of us made a commitment to what is most important to us, and then lived by that?

This is not about party politics or forcing your views on another. Instead, this is about a deeply personal vow you make to the sacredness of your own life. One where you begin to walk the path of courage and discernment that says I will pay attention to what pulls my life out of balance. I will get a handle on what my mind is doing and how it is taking me in the wrong directions. I will become accountable for every single action I take with others; foregoing the victim and the need to blame another.

Our lives are like a great tapestry composed of so many threads. So many of which we have left ignored and untended though they be the most essential.

To even be in the position of re-tying your sacred thread is first and foremost to know what it is you have bound yourself to in this lifetime. For this, you need look no further than how you spend your time, money and energy while you wonder to yourself if your daily choices line up with the preciousness of your most sacred threads.

 

Share this article

Living For Today

Posted on by

 

Last weekend I ran in a road race with a notoriously steep mile long climb. As I passed one of the volunteers, as a way to assuage the intense experience I was about to partake in, she said to me quite enthusiastically, “It’s not yesterday!” To which I responded as enthusiastically, “No it’s not!”

She was referring to the fact that the day before the weather had been intense. Huge downpours. High winds. Lightening. But as soon as the exchange was over, I realized what was spoken between us was so much more; serving as a profound reminder to get out of living and dwelling in the past as quickly and as often as I can.

To let yesterday be yesterday as I opened to, and lived fully in, today.

It was easy to see this during the race. Easy to recognize I could dwell on the poor night’s sleep I had experienced, or I could be on the road running and recognizing that I was doing quite well actually. I could focus on a couple of people displaying some poor social behavior at the start of the race, or I could be with what was actually occurring in any given moment. Opting to let go of what had already come and gone, and instead choosing to be with what was right now. And what was right now was filled with some truly wonderful, supportive and energetic people.

If you have ever learned to watch your mind and what it is thinking about, you know how often your mind dwells in the past. How often you live today colored by what was said and done “yesterday.” What that person did or didn’t do for you. How you were overlooked or embarrassed. How your heart was broken. How you were called something that hurt. How something was taken from you.

While we could all argue that something harmful or unfair did indeed happen “yesterday,” it is us who is keeping it alive in the “today.” It is us who keeps going over and over it. It is us who has allowed it to limit us now. It is us who can’t stop thinking about it or living by it.

If this makes sense to you, and you want the freedom and the possibility that exists in a “today” less colored by “yesterday,” get in the habit of checking in with yourself throughout the day by asking “Where am I right now?” Use this question to gauge whether you are in “today” or “yesterday.”

And whenever you catch yourself in “yesterday,” say to yourself “It’s not that time anymore.” 

It takes practice to get out of the habit of dwelling in the past. It takes courage to let go of the identity you have created based on that past. But if you stick with it, you will be rewarded with greater ease, clarity and a much more sane and realistic view of yourself and the world. One that is not rooted in “yesterday,” but in “today” with all of its limitless possibilities.

Share this article

Becoming More Intentional

Posted on by

 

For more than twenty-five years, on every retreat I have ever been on, or any training I have ever participated in, I have always created an intention for my time away.

It was no different when I recently did a walking pilgrimage in Scotland. In fact, I had several intentions I was working with while I was away. One for my body. One for my time on the land. One for my traveling companion. And one for the expression of my life’s work.

Each day as we set out on the trail, I would say my intentions, and each night as I was falling asleep, I would repeat them again. And whenever I would hit a difficult patch on the trail, whether mentally or physically, I would repeat my intentions over and over again as a way to keep my mind focused on what I wanted.

Doing this helped me from falling into old patterns I no longer want to engage in, and as a way to bring me back to the present moment. This daily practice left me with a deep sense of clarity and peace, that served as an anchor and as an abiding focus; even when things got challenging.

Every day we have countless choices around how to think about, and be with, what is happening to us. Unfortunately, it’s too easy these days to miss out on that knowing because of the endless stream of distractions and all the ways we have to numb ourselves out. But ultimately, and unfortunately, this allows us to sidestep the necessity for taking responsibility for how we are living. In the process, we miss out on the enormous sovereignty and empowerment gained that comes with knowing we, and only we, get to choose how to live.

The sidestepping we do creates a weak mind. One that lacks the capacity to focus on what we want and who we most want to be. The result? The world we’re living in where so many of us think and behave in ways that are both personally and collectively destructive.

The way forward becomes then our determination to get clear on what it is we want. What it is that matters most to us. And then to choose for that over and over and over again; refusing to allow ourselves to be lulled into a Life we do not like or want.

It takes guts. And perseverance. But firstly it takes spending time with yourself to get clear on where you want to direct your energies. Once you have even a glimmer of that, create a statement. Keep it positive, present tense and direct. For example, My body is healthy, happy, strong and growing in endurance (one of mine from the trip).

Then, every time your mind wanders into anything but that, affirm your direction by stating your intention to yourself over and over again while you watch, and address, every naysaying, negative thought to the contrary.

Yes, it takes time. And lots of hard won determination. But truly, why not? Why be satisfied with a life of negativity, distraction and self-medication? Why not go for what you actually want?

Share this article

Waiting To Be OK

Posted on by

 

“I am done waiting to be okay.” 

I spontaneously write these words down in my journal one morning. The entry follows on the heels of a particularly difficult night of sleep. One of those times when you wonder if you have even slept at all. All of this follows a week of an achy, cranky hip and a lot of anticipation around an upcoming event.

Watching my mind through the hours of no sleep, one theme emerges over and over again: If things were different I would be better. If I was sleeping, if my hip didn’t hurt and if I wasn’t worried about something, then, then, I would be OK. How everything would be right with the world and I could finally be at peace. If only all these things just weren’t happening right now.

How often are we all waiting to be OK? For something outside of us to make everything all better. The test result. The package to arrive. Another person changing. For the weather, the boss, our partner, anything and everything, to be somehow different as the prerequisite for our OK-ness.

The problem with the waiting game being, we wish our lives away. Always waiting for some other time for things to be better. Different. Never realizing that Life does not revolve around our terms and requirements for what we need to be OK. That the weather will do what the weather will do. As will our friends, families, bosses, co-workers, and at times, even our own bodies.

Because the truth is, even if we get what we believe we need to be OK, there will always be something else that will show up and upend our precarious sense of OK-ness that has been built on outside circumstances needing to line up just so.

It literally never ends. Until, of course, our lives do.

Knowing this, what if we just agreed to take Life at face value? Accepted that being here is not about us trying to make everything OK by our own standards, but is instead, about learning to be OK through it all. Through thick or thin. Through both the wanted and the unwanted. The expected and the unexpected.

But of course this takes practice. Lots of it. So best to begin before the really big things arrive. Maybe with the low stakes moments across your day. For instance, being OK if you don’t get the weather you want, the parking space or the yoga spot you covet. Or being alright with someone making a choice you don’t agree with. Or perhaps, the next time you can’t sleep, letting that be okay. Not making it mean anything other than, right now, you’re not asleep, and that even if you don’t get the rest you need, you will most certainly be OK.

Share this article

Standing The Test Of Time

Posted on by

 

It can be so incredibly difficult these days to know what is good for you when it comes to how to take care of yourself. Should you eat the new line of fake “meats” being touted as helping to save the climate? Should you choose the latest drug promising to cure obesity? Should you consider wearing or having embedded into you the latest technology to monitor your health?

In a world moving at the speed of light when it comes to what we are being sold around health and self-care, how will we keep up? How will we determine what a human body actually, fundamentally and always needs to be healthy in the face of so many choices that may not have anything to do with real biological Truths?

As a matter of fact, to try and run down every new fad, food item or pill that hits the market would be a full time job. Basically, out of reach for most of us who are just trying to live our lives, pay our bills and raise our kids. Meaning, that most of us will never devote the time or the energy to thoroughly vet what is coming our way in this regard. This leaves us at the mercy of the commercials and other agendas trying to get us to buy or do something.

What then? Isn’t there something we can return to? A kind of infallible North Star to help us navigate far too many choices, hidden agendas and scare tactics?

I believe there is, and I think of it as “Those Things That Stand The Test Of Time.” What this means for me is looking back across history and to earlier generations to see what was naturally done in the past. Not as a way to romanticize earlier times, but as a solid foundation for determining fact from fiction when it comes to what our bodies truly need to be well. What it is we did before all the technological inventions and marketing schemes.

An easy example to work with is food. Each year, we are bombarded with tens of thousands of new and “improved” food items in our supermarkets. And while this is a great way for Big Food to claim more market share, along with the stellar profits that goes with that, is it actually good for your health to eat what they churn out? The current chronic rates of lifestyle diseases, obesity in particular, would say no. As would the food research that tells us these so-called “new and improved” food-like substances are merely a new take on highly processed ingredients created to trick your taste buds in order to get you to buy in order to create more profits for them.

Does this sound like a scenario where your health and well-being are central in the equation? If not, you are onto something and it’s called using your common sense; the main ingredient in what it is that stands the test of time.

To get even more specific, if we apply standing the test of time to our food choices, some simple questions to ask would be, “Is this something my grandmother or great grandmother would have made for her family? Would she have recognized this as food?”

In a world that loves to complicate things, one of the best ways to navigate our way through when it comes to health, or really anything for that matter, is to get simple. There is nothing more simple than common sense. Nothing more basic than looking at what has stood the test of time.

Share this article

A Curated Life

Posted on by

 

I’m in the midst, on one particular morning, of tending to the new plants, making sauce and creating medicine when it strikes me that if I was on Instagram, if I was a so-called influencer, I would be having a very different experience.

I would have changed out of my comfy clothes and chosen a perfectly curated outfit to go with the homestead/farm feel of the moment. I would be staging my morning and positioning it all just so to give you the impression of just how perfect it all was. I would do this by taking multiple pictures from different angles with multiple filters to give you the impression of a spontaneous and unplanned moment.

In the process, I would have sacrificed all of the naturally arising peace, contentment, presence and gratitude that organically arises whenever I am in alignment with what I love best. Without the pressure to post and perform, I am connected to the abundance of the natural world and to a morning where I have the precious space I need to be with what matters most to me.

This is what is being lost in our ever so carefully curated lives: A chance to be with ourselves in a way that nourishes us. So much so that even when we choose not to take that picture, to refrain from posting, is it not what we are often thinking about even if we are not acting on it? Curated lives as a performance vehicle is so insidious now that it’s with us even when we are choosing otherwise.

What strikes me as the most disastrous, the saddest, the most dangerous even, is that we haven’t considered what we are losing each and every day as we orient ourselves ever-more to allowing the screens to mediate every moment of our existence. Desperate as we are to show others something about ourselves and willing to do so at any cost.

But only after it has all been carefully, carefully curated.

In the meantime, we don’t notice that our self-esteem is in the toilet, satisfaction in our relationships plummeting, our stress accelerating, the chase for perfection never ending, with our very existence reduced down to some glam shot.

Share this article

Making The Necessary Adjustments

Posted on by

 

No matter what guidance I am asking for these days, I keep getting the message that this is a time for pausing and being open to making adjustments in how I do things based in reflection. As opposed to reaction.

While I feel the wisdom in this, following this sage advice can also feel at odds with the pushing out of the Spring energies that I am not only sensing all around me, but also feeling inside of me in terms of what I am called to offer into the world.

And therein lies the rub.

Is it possible to find that sweet combination of doing and being? Is it possible to stand in the presence of a world on fire and not join in? Is it possible to feel all I have to give and to to stay deeply rooted in a place beyond the demands of society?

Not only do I believe it’s possible, I know it’s necessary. A have-to in a world so star struck by the latest gimmick, hashtag, magic bullet, apocalyptic video or sensational story. We have become such a thoughtless people reacting out of our own fears and allegiance to all the wrong things. Like what the influencers, billionaires, celebrities and villains are doing. In our blindness, we have lost a connection to the necessity of pausing and reflecting; leaving us reactive, and therefore dangerous.

Dangerous because we are colluding with narratives that are at odds with our very nature and with the Nature all around us. The very same energies that tell us, There is a balance and a timing to everything. To live believing we are outside of, more to the point, above that wisdom, is to create chaos and harm through the violation of basic and non-negotiable Life principles.

All of this is happening when what we need most is wisdom born of a kind of steady, slow, thoughtful, decent and time-honored way of knowing and relating to the world. But this kind of approach doesn’t play well in a culture based in ever-increasing speed, volume and the incessant push for more and more, right now. Always right now with the insecure fear that if it doesn’t happen immediately, it’s not worth waiting for.

Or that it just won’t happen at all.

This is an illusion based in our separation from our own truest Nature and the the rules that govern the ways of the natural world. An illusion we have so easily bought into because we’ve been schooled to believe that progress looks like we should always being pushing for more. That we should let the people at the top take care of things. That we should let what comes across a screen tell us want to want. That we should just keep going along with things because this is just how it is now.

But like the Spring energies making all their adjustments to ensure the best growth possible, so can we. We can decide to take up our own lives by creating the space we need to slow down. To do less. To listen more. We can decide to question more what it is and who it is we are looking to to tell us what a good life looks and feels like.

We can do the difficult work of being honest with ourselves around what is not working in our lives as reflected by how sick, stressed and unhappy we are; using all those “bad” experiences to help us course correct into greater balance.

And it all begins by being wise enough and willing enough to pause in order to make the necessary adjustments.

Share this article

Just This Moment

Posted on by

 

I am having one of those days where my thoughts are leaning towards anticipating negative scenarios and engaging in the “what if’s” the mind is so compelled to do. And while at this point I know enough of the machinations of the mind to not go down those rabbit holes, it still can nag away at me as it was doing on this particular day.

While I have many techniques I use to bring my mind back into balance, something happened quite naturally on this day that really struck me. After a walk with my husband where I had laid out my potential “what if’s,” we made our way over to gather eggs and look at what was happening with the starts and seeds we had recently planted.

It took no time at all for my anticipating mind to tune into something life-giving; shifting me out of a chaotic mind to one quite naturally and easily at peace. A mind at ease as it found itself immersed in the bigger picture of Life. All of this with no effort on my part, other than to be in relationship with Something Greater than myself, while spontaneously repeating over and over “Just This,” as I moved through the garden.

The “Just This” was my way of focusing only on what was right before me; whether that was the lettuce I was picking, the conversation I was having or the observations I was making of the seedlings. In effect, immersing my mind in the right now versus the “what if” future.

We so take whatever we think to be truth. As something to believe in and act on. Even when all signs point to the fact that our minds have gone off the rails with fear, anxiety and judgment. And while in this day and age there is no end to solutions for an imbalanced mind from medication to meditation, we can skip right over the most accessible and effortless of approaches to healing our minds.

Here I am referring to the natural world. To the elements and conditions and living beings that we have co-evolved with since we first appeared on the planet; our very home and the clearest reflection of who we are, where we come from and what we need.

Why would we go anywhere else to gain perspective and to ground ourselves in Truth?

Because we have been conditioned to believe that our well-being resides in a screen, a pill, more stuff, more prestige, more “likes,” etc. We have come to experience ourselves as separate from, and therefore not needing the support and the tutelage of what The Earth has to offer us. Unfortunately, many of us have strayed so far and for so long, we have come to see the natural world as foreign, dark and scary. An enemy as opposed to an ally.

But here’s the thing. We are Nature herself. We are created and maintained by the same force. To know this is to tap into the good news that even if we have forgotten, even if we never learned to begin with, all we have to do is to put ourselves in the Presence of the natural world for her to do her work on us.

So find a reason every single day to linger, even for one minute, somewhere outside. Go without agenda. Go and be a listener. Go and allow yourself to get lost in the breeze, a bird singing, some fragrance, a starry night, the feel of rain on your skin. And say to yourself, “Just This.”

 

Share this article