Tag Archives: Rachel W. Cole

Something Good

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Frozen City Park Pond

Frozen City Park Pond

1. Let’s make some magic in 2014, Susannah Conway’s Unravelling the Year Ahead workbook.

2. My Word of the Year for 2014 and The Importance of Outtakes! from Vivienne McMaster. She also wrote a wonderful guest post for Rachel Cole.

3. Wisdom from Danna Faulds,

Despite illness of body or mind,
in spite of blinding despair or
habitual belief, who you are
is whole. Let nothing keep you
separate from the truth.

4. Puppy reunited with his dad after being found under rubble 9 days after tornado destroyed home on Dog Heirs, (and his name is Dexter). Every time you read a story like this, the dog’s person always says something like this one did, that he’d lost everything but he was okay because he’d found his dog. When disaster strikes, we don’t care so much about our stuff, we just want our dogs (people, other pets) to be okay.

5. Good stuff from Viral Nova: A Retired Mathematician Found A Rotting Cabin From 1830. What He Did With It Is Perfection. and Here Are The 28 Cutest Things That Have Ever Happened. #20 Made My Entire Year. and See That Tiny Entrance? A Guy Just Went Down There… And You Gotta See What He Found. and This Little Terrier Got That Rottweiler Pregnant. And You’re Gonna Want To See Their Puppies, Trust Me. — trust ME, they are stupid cute!

6. Good stuff from Marc and Angel Hack Life: 12 Lies People Love to Tell You and 7 Smart Ways to Deal with Toxic People.

7. Good stuff from Chookooloonks: finding peace and announcing create.2014!

8. Wisdom from Mark Nepo, “No matter how we study or analyze or hone our skills, the greatest teachers have always been love and suffering.”

9. Desire: Hedonism or Happiness? from Jonathan Fields, in which he says,

Sometimes I still need to do the things I hate doing. The things that don’t let me feel the way I want to feel. I don’t entirely buy the fact that if the ride doesn’t feel the way you want to feel at every step along the journey, there’s something wrong.

Especially as a maker, a creator, an entrepreneur. There are times you need to do what you’re least called to do until your endeavor is far enough along to generate the cash, resources, story, energy needed to pay people to do the things that light them up, but empty you out.

10. Marc Johns calls this one life as a tennis racket, but I think you could just call it “Life.”

11. Wisdom from Tulku Thondup,

When I talk about peace, people sometimes mistakenly think that this means detaching yourself from the stream of life. They view peace as if it were something strange, maybe a numbed or sleepy feeling, or being spaced-out and in a different mental zone. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You can be ‘‘peaceful’’ when you are asleep, but that is only the absence of consciousness. The way to truly heal your life is to be awake to its simple joys and to develop an open, welcoming attitude toward all your activities and encounters with other people. You should enjoy yourself and be fully engaged in what you do.

Notice when you feel open and peaceful. Be aware of any feeling of freedom. Awareness is the key. If you are aware of peace, it has a chance to become part of your life. When you feel peaceful, enjoy it. Don’t force your feelings or chase after them or stir up false excitement. There’s no need to grasp. Simply be aware and let the feeling blossom and open. Allow it to expand. Stay with any positive feeling; allow your mind to relax in it. You may find your body feeling peaceful, too. If your breathing feels more relaxed, or you feel a sensation of warmth, pause to notice that as well and enjoy it.

12. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Our habitual patterns are, of course, well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Mindfulness and awareness are key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that it is part of our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but know that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.

13. Artist Creates Elaborate Non-Photoshopped Scenes in Her Small Studio, amazing and beautiful.

14. Real-Life Fox And The Hound Best Friends Will Melt Your Heart on BuzzFeed. This dog reminds me so much of Dexter.

15. How to Love and be Loved, by a dog on Storyline.

16. before the beginning by Sas Petherick.

17. The 2013 Holiday Gift Guide – Part Three from Rachel Cole.

18. 2013 Meaningful Gift Guide from Create as Folk.

19. Sometimes You Just Need a Snack and a Nap from Curvy Yoga.

20. Kid President’s Holiday Gift Guide.

21. A legacy of Mandela from Seth Godin. My favorite line is, “If you don’t require the journey to be easy or comfortable or safe, you can change the world.”

22. “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
~Chinese Proverb

23. Good stuff from MindBodyGreen: Why I Don’t Recommend A Vegan, Raw, Paleo Or Gluten-Free Diet and 25 Questions To Ask Yourself Before The End Of The Year and 4 Things Women Need To Stop Apologizing For.

24. Artist weaves delightful ‘bio-sculptures’ & animal habitats out of wood on Tree Hugger.

25. Brené Brown on the Courage to be Vulnerable on the On Being podcast.

26. your daily rock : listen to your life

27. Man’s snow storm ‘bread and milk’ freakout goes viral.

28. Wisdom from Tama J. Kieves

Do not believe your fear. You will not be stuck forever. Things will shift. The way will open. This is a Universe of Love. The only reason it’s hard to trust is because you keep caressing your anxiety instead of moving forward. Take the steps you can take. The light always emerges.

29. The Why We Rescue project is complete, all 50 states are up. This project is one of the best things of 2013.

30. Keep Your Day Job, advice from Austin Kleon.

31. What are you building in the New Year? (Get it down on paper. Start here.) from Alexandra Franzen.

32. From Positively Present Picks: 33 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer, (I don’t necessarily agree with all of these), and Spending Time with Some Difficult People over the Holidays? Consider These Tips. and A Beautiful Mess photo app.

33. Give the Gift of Self-Compassion, another post about the Self-Compassion Saturday series.

34. Another round of ZenPen the ecourse is open for registration.

#reverb13: Day Five

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reverb13Challenge: Did you take on a new challenge? What was it? Is there are challenge you deliberately avoided? What do you want to do to challenge yourself in 2014?

The new challenge was to shift my paradigm, my perspective and behavior, specifically in relation to food and my body, which leads to a shift in the whole shebang really. I entered the year feeling drained, having less energy, filled with a general sense of “this is not working.” I was tired of beating myself up, using criticism as a way to motivate myself, pushing past my limits, denying my needs, not allowing myself to have what I wanted, swinging between starving and stuffing myself, smashing myself to bits. It was a 30+ year failed experiment and I was finally willing to admit it and try something different.

At first, I sought out an expert, someone who could tell me what to do, fix me, heal me. I thought that meant I needed a new doctor, but we all know how that turned out, and I realized that it was actually about self-compassion, and the fact I wasn’t practicing it. I asked women I know to share their experience and practice, got a therapist, started practicing Intuitive Eating with an amazing group of women and brilliant facilitator to support me. I stopped dieting and weighing myself, stopped using external expectations as a measure of my worth, asked my body what it wanted to eat, how it wanted to move, what it needed. With help and support, I am becoming my own expert. I am saving myself by trusting myself.

gorgeous5mattebyandrea

another picture from my photo shoot with Andrea Scher

The challenges I’ve avoided are related to my old habit of attempting to fix everything, thinking I was responsible. There are some difficulties I’ve had to release, in part because they don’t belong to me, are someone else’s problem. I do what I can, what I need to, and let the rest go. I lowered the bar to give myself room, ease, a chance at some success.

What I want to challenge myself to in 2014 — stop being a student and become the teacher, recognize my own truth, honor my own wisdom and authority, immerse myself in yoga teacher training to continue to repair and deepen my relationship to my physical body, change how I spend money so I can use more to manifest the future I’m working towards, put together a beautiful book and continue writing the other one, open my heart to another dog knowing full well it will break my heart, continue choosing a way of being that allows my life to feel like I want it to feel, trust my intuition about what to do next.

“What was the greatest risk you took in 2013? What was the outcome?“ I put myself out there, showed up as I am. One way I did that was to attend three workshops in California with people I adored, some of whom I’d never met in person. These people mattered to me, and there was a risk that we’d meet and feel “meh…” or even worse, “yuck!” That didn’t happen, in fact those connections were deepened, enriched by the time we spent together.

my friend Sherry Richert Belul, who I finally met in person this fall

Another way I showed up, was present is here, this blog.  I wrote a lot about my experience, my struggles and joys, and there’s again always a risk that my kind and gentle readers would respond with “meh…” or even worse, “yuck!” And maybe some did, but others of you have not only stuck around, but offered me such kindness and support. I am so grateful for you.

P.S. Since Besottment typically posts the prompts later in the day, rather than wait, or come back and add to an already published post, I’ve decided to simply respond to those a day late.