To me, writing is not work. Writing is like dancing with Existence, with Spirit, with God. It’s beautiful and precious. I get more satisfaction and energy from writing than I do from a few extra hours of sleep. Seriously.
Some days, when absorbed in the moment of writing down a stream of thoughts, I lose track of time, and I skip sleep altogether. And I function fine the next day–only with a bigger smile.
Sometimes a string of words will hit me so strongly that I will sit in front of the computer bawling. I cry, not because I am sad, but because I’ve experienced such intense joy that it moved me to tears.
Writing is just one form of creative outlet. I am no more qualified to write than you. And usually, as I relax and flow with my stream of consciousness, and write down whatever comes to mind, the result is surprising to me too. I am just a messenger after all.
Forgiveness is a difficult topic. On one hand, we feel that we have learned to forgive. On the other hand, we find ourselves resisting when we actually try to forgive someone. Implementing forgiveness into our lives is a process.
Sometimes, things work in mysterious ways. Almost a year ago, I took a workshop on forgiveness. Some days, I would feel that I had learned how to forgive, and other days I felt that I had failed. The following is a story of a casual encounter with a stranger that reminded me of all that I have learned about forgiveness.
The other day I was walking my dog and, as I always do, I gave him a little water from the hose in front of someone’s house. I don’t know the owner of the house well. I met him once and I never asked him if I could do this. I always turn the hose off tightly and roll it back up leaving it exactly the way it was when I found it.
What are your dreams? What are you passionate about?
Around the time I graduated University I became fascinatedwith photography. It became my first passion. I dreamed of becoming a professional photographer.
I loved photography, and dove in head first determined to make my dreams come true. I read books, took countless images, invested in equipments, spent countless hours in Photoshop, attended gallery showings, and took classes on specialized subjects.
I loved photography so much that –at one point- I built a darkroom from scratch, rented a large loft space to have my ideal studio setup and eventually married a photographer – who I admired, because he was so confident with his craft and was among the few successful working photographers I’d met. Most other photographers I encountered all struggled to make ends meet.
I never understood why some people would work late into the night and sleep most of their mornings away, but now that I am sitting here, at 1am, listening to the same song on repeat, I get it.
When the rest of the world is asleep, there are very few distractions. There are no phone calls and no urgent tasks that need to be done at this time of the morning. I can completely focus myself on my work and let my creativity glow.
You may have read The Power of Now, or studied the Sedona method. Both these resources focus on teaching you how to get your mind in the present to forget about your worries and to really live in the moment.
When I graduated from fashion school last spring, I, like many other new graduates and job seekers, felt ready to take on the world. I had devoted 4 years to studying the thing that I had hoped would lead to a bright, shining career in the fashion industry, a dream I had held since I was 7 years old.
It didn’t happen like that. After graduation, I applied to over 20 jobs – in the first few months, the only reply I ever got was from a start-up company who insisted that their employees be Japanese and sold t-shirts with crude drawings on them.
Needless to say, my job search didn’t go too well. After a while, there was one position that I applied to when I had just started to give up that seemed to be the light at the end of the tunnel. I fought for the position, and almost got it.
It was a very unhappy and stressful time for me. At the time, I was being overworked at my full-time job in the wedding industry, however, I wanted very much to get my feet wet in fashion – my passion.
I never know what I’m going to write until I actually sit down to write it. Actually, the less I think about it, and just allow myself to relax into the flow, the better the writing usually takes shape.
My state of mind has everything to do with the quality of the final result. Thus, the lack of writing produced in the first 10 months of 2010 – as I was recovering and overcoming post-partum depression.
The biggest gift I received from the Good Mood Blogger contest was, that in entering it, a mental shift took place in me that pushed me over the edge of the mental blockage I was “stuck” in. And for that, I felt like a winner from the very beginning.
The mental blocks (aka. Limiting beliefs) we experience in life – not just in writing, but with taking action toward goals we want to accomplish – can have a detrimental effect which dramatically change the stories of our lives.
If someone who was important to you died abruptly, would you say to yourself, “I wish I would have . . .”? If something were to happen to you suddenly, wouldn’t you want those you care about to have known how much you appreciated them?
If your answer to these questions is yes, then expressing your deep gratitude to those who have made a significant impact on your life should not be put off any longer. There are several good reasons to start expressing your appreciation to these people now.
The sooner you tell them how you feel, the longer they will be able have to take pleasure in the message. Why wait until they’re old or dying? If they do die, there’s no chance at all that they will ever fully appreciate your level of gratitude.
You could miss the opportunity of having the pleasure of giving this gift of extraordinary gratitude to someone who has made a real difference in your life.
They’ll probably be inspired to help others; in fact, the ripples may very well be felt far and wide, and all because you made these individuals aware of how important they are to you.
I recently took my own gratitude journey and reached out to 44 people who had made the most significant impact on my life. I wanted to deliver my gratitude while I still had the energy and before it was too late and the opportunity was lost. I didn’t want to wait until any of our lives were compromised by ill health or imminent death. So I figured that I should tell these people how much they mattered to me long—hopefully, very long—before that happened and I was left with regrets.
Happiness belongs to those who are easily contented.~Aristotle
Here’s a gentle reminder that Happiness is a state within us. It is a chemical reaction based on where we put our focus, and from which perspective we choose to experience the world.
We are the ones who hold the key to lasting happiness. And we are the only ones who can deprive ourselves of the happiness that we all desire and deserve.
Sometimes, all it takes is a whisper of gratitude, to draw our focus back to our hearts and away from the discontentment and negativity that our minds are naturally attracted to.
This past Christmas, I took on the responsibility of cooking for our extended family. And when I was in the kitchen, preparing the food, I found my mind wandering off, thinking about negative things, thinking about things to complain about, thinking about certain people who made me upset.
We live in a society where our worth seems to be validated by how large our network is; how often our Blackberry goes off; how worldly we are from our travels; or how many awesome Facebook pictures there are of us, proving to our friends we live the good life. Not to mention, as we grow older and wiser, there is a constant learning curve on how to gracefully handle evolving responsibility.
So, we resort to multi-tasking. A term I’m all too familiar with:
For the past three years, I’ve adopted wearing several outfits: the Corporate Banker, the weekend Real Estate Agent, the closet writer, the Board Member, the six days a week fitness guru, the overly helpful sister/mentor, the “wherever there was time” Nutrition Coach, the social planner… The exhausting list can be rattled on, but these were my staple outfits.
A few weeks ago, I was standing in line at the grocery store to do some customer returns from my son’s birthday party. The customer service counter at the chain store is also the place where people buy lottery tickets, rent DVDs, buy cigarettes, rent carpet cleaners, along with costumer returns.
There were a dozen people standing in line. Since we were all waiting, in order to kill time, we all tilted our heads to watch the person at the front of the line.
The guy at the front of the line was buying lottery tickets. While making conversation with the person behind him, “All it takes is one ticket.” His face beaming as he continued, “… and then you’ll be a millionaire.”
His eyes sparkled as he said that with absolute conviction that this could be his lucky week, and then he would be “set” for life. He completed his routine transaction of purchasing his lotto ticket and walked away. I wondered how long he’s been buying lottery tickets, week after week, with an undying dream of getting that golden ticket – becoming a millionaire.
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