Archives for posts with tag: random

Long before we have even roasted the turkey, we are pushed to go shopping for Holiday gift-giving. I am feeling old and stodgy when I say that (in my day…) we used to celebrate one holiday at a time. But I am not so jaded… (And I am not THAT old!)

At the same time that we are distracted from enjoying the holidays by believing we already need to be preparing the “stuff” for the next one, it is heartening to see a new wave of mindfulness.

On Thanksgiving,  my sister-in-law’s young grandson showed us the yoga pose he had learned in school. A client, who is a teacher, informed me that they teach  meditation techniques in the Head Start program where she works. I see hope.

What do you really want out of the Holiday Season? What is the meaning for you? Are you diminishing the value of the season for yourself in getting distracted by all the To-Dos?

Just as I once read in tips for meditation: 15 minutes per day is great, unless you are very busy, then 30 minutes per day is suggested.

My advice: Slow down. Take time to recharge–sharpen the saw, as Stephen Covey called it. Meditate for 5 minutes before getting out of the car after parking. Stop and take 6 conscious breaths. Pause and notice the sunrise.

The renewed energy and clarity of mind will make up for the time spent. And, who knows, you might just enjoy the Holidays more!

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Each moment is created from the alphabet soup of the cosmos. Each moment is a pulling together from the soup of stuff that makes up our lives, our world, our universe.

As I sit and contemplatively chew my breakfast, I glance at the jumble of letters on the table. The letter tiles from the game of Bananagrams are spread out and available to play at any moment. Effortlessly I form words from the randomly placed letters. In an instant my mind forms words with no pattern or purpose; creating order out of seeming chaos.

It occurred to me that this is the opportunity we have in each and every moment of our lives. We get to pull from the possibilities of life to create our day. And regardless of the result, in the next moment, we, again, have the ability to pull from all possibilities that we allow. Each moment is a new moment. Each day is a new day.

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How freeing.

This means there is no missing out, no wrong-doings, and no failure. We experience a momentary compilation. If it is not in alignment with what we want, it is a mistake, and we move to the next moment and the next chance to compile anew.

AND we are not limited to a predefined alphabet! In life, we potentially have an infinite range of possibilities at our metaphorical fingertips.

Since these possibilities are available to us in each moment, we can safely be in the moment, fully immersed in the experience. We are and have everything in that moment, in the specific combination we created. And yet, it is like a thought–here in an instant and so fleeting that before we know it, another thought takes its place. So the momentary combination is everything and nothing–a creation like the words I formed. They have a certain semantic value for us and we can continually rearrange and reuse the letters of the alphabet to create an infinite flow of words. And we can play with the syntax of combining and recombining those words in an infinite flow of sentences, and so on.

Enjoy, play, and experience each and every moment of your life, knowing that each new moment brings the possibility to create anew.

 

 

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Looking through my photos, an obvious theme emerges: Nature, and specifically Sunrise. If I am not directly viewing one, I live vicariously through FB Friends. I never tire of sunrise.

Each and every moment leading up to the sun peaking over the horizon, is savored. Captivating. The play of subtle shades on the water accentuates the lines of the waves and lends an air of an oil painting to the ocean and sky. The sights, smells, sounds, and feel of the breeze combine to engage all senses in a perfectly orchestrated commencement of each day. Not foretelling, but rather reaching perfection in each step; a string of complete experiences unfolding into a whole, perfect story.

Such is each and every moment of our lives. I believe that to savor each moment as the complete experience that it is, would be the way to honor and enjoy the whole, perfect story of life and ourselves.

There is no condition to meet for perfection to exist. There is nothing to do. It is a matter of perspective. To be open to perceiving the beauty and perfection is not always our first reaction, and yet it is there. Remind yourself of other instances in which, in retrospect, things turned out exactly as–or even better–than desired/imagined.

Breathe deep, and take a closer look/listen/sniff/feel. This moment is unique. It may be difficult to see a sharp, uncomfortable situation as perfect. It is like a tile in the mosaic of your story. Seen alone, it may not convey much, and as part of the whole, it is exactly right–lending contrast, framing, enhancing, continuing a theme, adding accent, etc.

Live and enjoy each moment. And in this way, your perfect life story will unfold and be told.

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My last post was about paying attention to what is directly in front of you, and not looking ahead into the future. The point was that if we don’t take care of the immediate task or deal with what is on our plate now, it changes our trajectory.

Did you wonder how a Life Coach could advocate for anything other than setting a goal and working towards it?!

Please understand, I am all about having a vision, dreams, goals, desires, and wishes! And I believe you must have clarity around these in order to realize them. By advocating for shortsightedness, I am, in no way, wanting you to ignore the steps of clarifying, stating, and working toward your goals. Yet, I am advocating letting go and allowing the unfolding of the path to your goals.

You may have heard the analogy of GPS, when discussing the path to manifesting your dreams. This is the way in which I understood my experience that I outlined in the last post titled Be Shortsighted.

Based on our experiences, we begin to define our desires. Very clearly we paint a picture of what we DO want by experiencing or learning what we do NOT want. Experience helps us whittle out our wants. This clarity is analogous to entering the destination in your GPS–or planting a homing device on our goal. Once we have planted that homing device we surrender the path and the details to the Universal GPS.

We then fill our tank with the excitement of being at our destination–how it feels, looks, sounds, etc. to be there. And we start our engines and roll on down the road. We trust our GPS to stay honed in on our destination. Our job is to keep the tank filled and keep making miles! [Filling the tank is where a vision board, for example, is helpful. Making miles means that you keep showing up, acting in alignment with your values, making yourself available for serendipity.]

That’s where shortsightedness or concentration on the task at hand comes in. We maneuver the car safely through traffic. This requires attention to what is right in front of you.
Even if our goal is a new job, we continue to show up and perform our current job as best we can. Secure in the knowing that we will be shown the next move; our GPS will tell us when to exit or make the turn.

Along the way, we may have to make a detour. Our GPS stays focused on our destination and recalculates the new, most direct route. We can sit back, and let ourselves be guided. If we become attached to a particular path or outcome, we limit the possibilities, and may delay an even better outcome than we could even imagine.

It is in the allowing of events to unfold that the magic happens. We must only continue to keep up the excitement of the overall feeling of the outcome, and keep showing up and being available for interactions. So, getting that new job, may come via that promotion you’ve been working toward, OR maybe a current client is so impressed with your professionalism that they want to hire you for a newly created position in their company, OR maybe there are other possibilities!

Keep up the excitement of being at your goal, keep moving forward, listen to the GPS, and you will reach your desired destination–AND it may be different and better than you ever imagined!

Happy Trails

Driving from Tennessee back to Florida I had some time to reflect on life. So I was wide open to ideas and impressions. A good thing, since one never knows when an inspiration will strike. Luckily, I was aware enough to get the inspiration and not get into an accident.

I was driving on a two-lane road, which was a switch after miles of multi-lane highway, and for some reason I was focused on the van in front of the car in front of me. I saw it slowing down, and reacted accordingly. Yet, I was so focused on the van, and was not paying complete attention to the car directly in front of me.

The car was braking at a much faster rate than the van–or I! In that moment of readjustment, I realized that I/we often tend to do the same thing in life–we focus on something that “will happen” in the future and ignore what is happening right now, right in front of us, directly under our noses.

If I had not been mindful of the car in front of me, I would have crashed into it, and it wouldn’t have mattered what the van was doing, I would have altered my trajectory. Likewise, when you focus on something that may or may not happen in the future, you ignore the now–the steps that lead you into the future. You alter your trajectory.

By staying mindful of the present, the here and now, you lay the foundation for the future of your making, not one overly influenced by external circumstances; you follow your path step by step. You stay in alignment with your self, with your values. You create what you desire  by staying true to now, with no attachment to a specific outcome

Letting go to receive.

Be shortsighted. Be in the now.

PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel

Brilliant white light filters through a prism,
To emerge redirected, refracted as ROYGBIV,
RedOrangeYellowGreenBlueIndigoViolet.
The colors of the rainbow.
The colors of the chakras.
The colors of peace, joy, and happiness.
The arc leading to the proverbial pot of gold,
Lighting up the sky and children’s faces,
As the sun reaches out to catch a raindrop.

What color are you?
How can you be limited to just one?
Are we not each composed of ROYGBIV,
Regardless of how red-blooded, true-blue,
Or green with envy we may seem?
Categories of separated wavelengths,
Walls dividing light give permission to compare,
Form fractional factions, fear.
Division serves to isolate, dissociate, weaken, kill joy.

Remember from whence the colors come.
Trace your steps to the beginning.
Wholeness—not a splitting or splintering into individual pieces—
Is our true nature.
Acknowledge and accept all parts of yourself;
See similarities with others, find common ground;
Barriers dissolve like cumulus clouds after a storm.
Remember. Redirect. Reverse-refract. Reconnect.
Rainbows reconnected emerge as brilliant white light.

~Sarina

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I am going to go out on a limb—or a flagpole, as it were. I just heard again some coverage regarding South Carolina and the flag. The person being interviewed said that it should not be at the State Capitol, which is a place for everyone, and no one should have to drive past there and feel pain. But rather it should be in a museum where it can be honored appropriately.

First of all, what is appropriate? For whom? At what time?

Second, how are you going to affect that someone honors the flag in whatever way is deemed appropriate?

In addition, if someone feels pain, is it because of the symbol or is it because of what they tell themselves, what story they have about that symbol in their mind? So, what should be changed: The story or the symbol?

What are symbols anyway? Isn’t it just something that evokes a story in our mind? So, what is it that has the power: The symbol or the story?

I remember a while ago hearing a story about a black man, who adopted the Confederate flag, or whatever it’s called, because it is not just the Confederate flag, it was a flag before that and there is a name for it (I must research this further). He adopted it as his own; he had it proudly waving on his car. As you can imagine, some Blacks on one side, and some Whites on the other side, had different reactions to his adoption of that symbol.

He owned that flag. He refused to let someone else tell him what story to make up about it. It was amusing to see how, on the one hand, some people were horrified that he could adopt it. But he realized it was just a symbol, and he hoped others would embrace the same philosophy towards this symbol. It was amazing how some of the white men he encountered all of a sudden rejected the symbol; they wanted to have nothing to do with it. So, he helped them change their story about it. He might not have changed their way of thinking immediately, but at least the symbol they had wielded like a weapon was relinquished. This can ultimately diffuse the hate and fear behind a symbol, because it no longer has one rationale on which to cling or one single story which to propagate. Rather than upholding mental bondage, a symbol is slowly sapped of power.

Is that not the more effective way of honoring a symbol? To see it for what it is?

The more we uphold what it stands for—the story based on one time frame, based on hate and fear—the more that is real. And directly or indirectly, even if you don’t want to, that upholds it, that honors that story of hate and fear. What he was doing was turning it into love—seeing the reality occluded by the fear. He was seeing it for the symbol that it was—nothing more and nothing less.

In the same way, that is the lesson we can implement in our every day lives: to take behaviors that we see from our friends, family, and colleagues as symbols. We are the ones, who write the story about it. We are the ones who interpret it, attach meaning to it for ourselves. They are just symbols and we make of them what we want to make of them.

The person in traffic who …, the friend who didn’t …, or the colleague who …

What story are you telling yourself? Is it based on Fear, or is it based on Love?  ~BlinkNFlow

Idiom: Whistling Dixie–If someone is whistling Dixie, they talk about things in a more positive way than the reality. [Whose reality? ;-)]

Universal Law set to music by Rodgers & Hammerstein: My Favorite Things sung by Julie Andrews?

Sound of Music is the stuff of my childhood. I loved watching and singing along. Is that why I lived in Salzburg for so many years, passing by the Do-Re-Mi Pegasus fountain almost on a daily basis?!

Regardless, today as I finished up a coaching call in which my client was working through how to keep his vibration up, I drove away, and turned on the radio. A jazz rendition of My Favorite Things can on. The universe is so perfect! I laughed out loud (after I had sung as much of the lyrics as I could remember).

How can one shift thoughts to positive ones that raise the vibration? Listen and sing along with Julie Andrews!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens…!

Happy Manifesting.

ps: I request, however, that you not serve/eat schnitzel with noodles. What a faux pas! Schnitzel is always served with potatoes. 😉

In fear we cling tight
To the known, sinking stone and

Drown in a droplet.

Be strong, surrender.

Breathe in your desire and Be.

Your wings await you.

The sight of a rainbow brings joy,
A smile to the onlooker’s face. Like magic,
Gracious clouds project these reminder rainbows
Of the beauty manifold in light.
This light is a constant,
Hidden in plain sight.

We need but the eyes to see. Just as
Light all around us — light in us
Burning bright is oft hidden.
Rediscover your light.
Share the joy of your rainbow.
Be your own personal prism.

Shine.