1. Truth: I’ve been busy. Taking part in the Your Career Homecoming challenge with Laura Simms, meetings, doctor and physical therapy appointments, teaching, more meetings, working towards our bathroom remodel in various ways, trying to decide when and how to buy a new car, laundry, cooking, taking care of two active dogs, trying to rest and heal but also keep moving, researching how to heal better and faster, considering how I want to move, reading, writing, working, practicing, living. There’s never enough time or energy for all of it.
2. Truth: I’m busy because I take on too much. I want to do ALL THE THINGS. All of it matters to me, is interesting and meaningful and worthwhile. The problem is that my brain and my body are running on two different speeds — my brain says “hurry up!” and my body says “slow down,” and the pattern in the past has been to ignore my body until it collapses.
3. Truth: I’m getting better about taking care of my body, listening and giving it what it needs, choosing how to spend my time and energy more intentionally and wisely, knowing my limitations and respecting them, but there’s still work to been done in this regard, (see how I can turn even slowing down into a project?).
One wish: May we all find a balance between our longing and our limits, and may that space be the happiest of mediums, the clearest middle path.
11. 30 Reasons Why I Write by Jon Westenberg. Things like, “There’s no despair that can’t be held at bay with words,” and “My writing is my own roadmap – it helps me find my way.”
14. The Greatest Commencement Addresses of All Time on Brain Pickings. I know it’s not the right season for this as most students are just going back to school not graduating, but if you want some serious inspiration this is the place.
If you want to know real freedom, you must learn forgiveness. That doesn’t mean collapsing boundaries or giving up or giving in. It doesn’t mean going back. It doesn’t mean absolution or sweeping things under the rug. It means you let go of grasping–and that which has a grip on you. It means reclaiming your own inner sanctuary and ushering out what’s crowding your space. Let go of the need to be right, to be in control, to be understood, to be certain. Let go of what has distracted you from the grace of each moment–your birthright, your presence.
18. Brave Girl University is open for enrollment. It is “a one-stop gathering place for learning, growing and becoming, through hundreds of classes taught by dedicated teachers who offer soulful ways to make life better, happier and more authentic for every woman. From painting to gardening to meditation to relationships and much more. . . access it ALL for just $24.95 per month.” I’ve taken classes with many of these teachers, and am amazed by what a good deal this is.
If something isn’t getting you closer to your heart’s most precious goals, if it isn’t making your most important relationships stronger and more valued, if it is not helping you grow and making your heart sing, maybe it’s time to think about letting it go.
If you will listen very very very closely, you will know for sure what to hold on to…and what to let go…and where to spend your precious minutes and energies.
And this,
You know SO much more than you think you know. Each of us was born with a lovely inner compass…it’s there to guide us. We must tune out almost every voice around us to be able to focus on what this inner voice tells us is true for our own lives.
Please don’t give any heed at all to the useless opinions of others, beautiful friend. Act for yourself. Face your own truths…then act on your own truths. Plug your ears when there are annoying, loud, negative voices that have no business giving you opinions about your own life. Turn off the confusing lies, and be brave enough to tune in to that inner voice that speaks your truth. Those feelings in your gut are your deepest wisdom, and you will recognize the voice of truth by the warm and peaceful feelings it brings.
21. 7 Simple Ways to Soothe Your Soul from Be More With Less. “Sometimes your soul needs time to just hang out with your heart, and your truth.”
23. The Monk Manifesto: Seven Principles for Living with Deep Intention. I had never heard of this before Erica Staab posted about it on her blog. It is “a public expression of your commitment to live a compassionate, contemplative, and creative life.” I think if one were to live according to this manifesto, they would be ridiculously happy, completely content. Or maybe that’s just me.
24. 85 Percent of What We Worry About Never Happens. I heard once that “worrying is like praying for what we don’t want to happen.” This article gives yet another reason why worry is wasted.
“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing” — Cormac McCarthy. We all have to do things we don’t like in pursuit of our goals and dreams. However, if you are doing something that doesn’t directly correlate to you achieving them, then stop. Immediately. In reality, we have but a minute on this earth. Work, live, take chances, love, eat, argue, make mistakes, fight, and screw like you have 30 seconds left on the stopwatch.
32. Where Children Sleep, a photo series from James Mollison, “stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms.”
36. Fundraising page for one of my favorite bears who’ll be doing the Out of the Darkness Walk, raising money for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
1. Truth: I’ve been busy. Taking part in the Your Career Homecoming challenge with Laura Simms, meetings, doctor and physical therapy appointments, teaching, more meetings, working towards our bathroom remodel in various ways, trying to decide when and how to buy a new car, laundry, cooking, taking care of two active dogs, trying to rest and heal but also keep moving, researching how to heal better and faster, considering how I want to move, reading, writing, working, practicing, living. There’s never enough time or energy for all of it.
