Come home to yourself – to the very alive, sweet, precious experience of your own body, your personhood – its culture, values, beliefs, biology, purpose and passions.   Home is your body, your spirit, your mind.  Home is you.  It’s to know yourself as whole, complete, capable,  and creative.   And to feel your energy, your own energy vibrating in your cells, to be fully awake to experience this moment.

Come home.  Why come home to you?

1. To know your own wisdom,  value, values, preferences, purpose.  To get to know you like you know your Facebook community or co-workers.  To discover the culture that is unique to you.
2. To experience the very alive, sweet, precious essence of you.
3. To  love.  To know love – love of yourself and others.   To grow love so that when you’re with partners, children, colleagues, family and friends you have your own wellspring of love to bring to the relationship.  You are not needing love.  You are full and  sharing it.
4. To choose.  The input of the world meets your own personal biology, beliefs, values, and purpose when you come home in order to choose.  Your choices will honor your own personhood – not that of the outer world.  You can say yes to a request from being home rather than from not knowing home and thinking that what others want is also good for you.   You can say no, thank you.  You can honor the wisdom of your body in order to sustain your own inner peace and follow your purpose.
5. To rest.  Your lives are lived at a tremendous pace – every 5 years adds dozens of new distractions, games, shows, demands, and possibilities.  Bodies are built to recieve input – nerves fire and process all over them all day long.  Sleep is a way of coming home.  And so is hitting the pause button in the middle of the day.  When I feel exhausted in the day, often just five minutes of quiet time re-energizes me.

How do we come home? Here are my suggestions – you check out your own biology, life, and style and discover what coming home is for you.

1. To begin, stop  leaving your home, your body / mind / spirit for a period of time each day.   Sit here and just know you.  Even if just for a minute a day to begin.
2. Come home from phones ringing, buzzing or vibrating;
3. and  music, no matter how spiritual it is to you.
4. Come home from digital images flickering through your eyes and brain.
5. Just for these moments,  come home from  people in your space
6. and thoughts churning about problems.  Yes, you can pause them.
7. Come home to your presence in nature, in quiet, in reduced input.
8. Yes – seated, standing, or lying down.  Yes – awareness and senses turned inward.
9. Try the meditator’s way to center -  be aware of your breath. If you are doing this for a minute that is about 10-12 calm breaths.  That’s all.  Be aware of your breath in your nose, throat, chest.  Good.
10. Massage is good for becoming aware of your body.  Start here.
11. At any given moment, just tune in-ward.  After a workout,  during or after a meal, during or after sex, during or after an argument, turn your awareness inward for a deep and pleasurable homecoming.

Now that you have come home, what inspired actions arise from your connection to yourself?  Write them down, then take off!

I offer coaching and workshops on inner peace, and taking off from there

In what ways do you come home to yourself?  What do you discover?

A Leg UP

“One of the great discoveries of human unfoldment is that happiness and joy are not effects, but causes…The happy person is forever encountering things…to vindicate his happy spirit.” Eric Butterworth

Happiness is a choice

Happiness is a choice and it doesn’t come from outside, as much as the advertisers and transformation gurus want us to believe that it does. They say, “Buy this sexy car; great hair color; get your lashes thick, long, with no clumps and then you will be happy.” “Get the relationship, the promotion, the fit body, then you will be happy.”

Our culture and language habits make happiness appear to be achieved by accomplishment or product. This is like people believing the sun revolves around the earth because that’s the evidence. Happiness doesn’t revolve around things or accomplishment. Things and accomplishment revolve around happiness and joy. Watch babies learn to walk. They don’t deprive themselves of happiness until walking is achieved. In fact, they’d probably take a lot longer to learn if they weren’t happy.

So Choose it

I was doing sit up/ crunches yesterday and I didn’t feel all that happy so I didn’t feel like doing them. Then I decided just to laugh as I counted out my allotment of crunches, and it was easy to laugh! It was contagious and kept itself going and lifted my mood for the rest of the day! Hah! I didn’t have to buy a new car, get my hair colored with the latest and greatest, lose that extra weight, or solve global warming. In the moment, in the present, in the now, we can choose. “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” says Eykis.

According to my friend and Law of Attraction Coach, Noelle,…You ALWAYS get back what you put out; NO EXCEPTIONS!” So put out joy, fun, whimsy, glee, laughter, chuckles, jubilance, happiness, smiles, giggles, jokes, cheer, ecstasy, playfulness. Noelle is the happiest person I know – she watches her thoughts and nearly always allows the thoughts that feel good, and discards the thoughts that don’t. She does this in the midst of challenges that would put many of us on a downward spiral of despair because we forget we can choose.

Don’t Dumb Down Your Joy

Not only do we mistakenly believe that happiness is a result of circumstances, we also believe that we need to stifle our joy because others don’t have as much or we can’t boast or show pride. What on earth good does it do to dumb down our joy because the world is in a pickle, a spouse is mad or sick?! Eric Butterworth writes, “At the very time when we need more light, we reduce the flame of jubilance, and walk in darkness.”

How Do I Generate My Own Happiness?

To turn up the flame find one small thing to be grateful for – and then another and savor them. Also, we can recall and talk of successes and what works. Simply smiling or laughing changes your energy.

OK, go ahead and laugh. Make up a belly laugh. I was struggling with writing this article – so I just started laughing. It’s much easier to have ideas flow through a joyful mood. I also invite you to see if you can make others happy – that might make you happy. Notice if it’s their choice or you can force it on them.  Just “don’t worry, be happy” this week.

Follow your joy to activities and perspectives that have you thrive. It’s definitely in my territory as a coach -much of my work is about reconnecting people with their purpose, their strengths, and rekindling joy for their lives.

Look up high in the rafters of the circus tent.   Trapeze performers in glitter and glory release one swing and gracefully  fly through the gap for a brief second until they grasp the next swing, perfectly timed for their arrival.  In that brief moment in the gap, all structure is gone and there is nothing.

Are you experiencing the Gap?  Have one or more of your structures crumbled, walked off, or booted you out?  Have you chosen to discard structures in your life?  Are you in the gap that exists before you grab onto the  next structure?

We often struggle, cry, and rail against that gap.  But what a delicious time!  This is where you are creative,  acting on faith, intuition, and courage, even though you may feel terrified.  You know you are alive.   What would it be like to relish this crazy, uncertain, risky but alive moment of life?   What about holding this moment as flying, as needing all your wits and energy, as a demand to draw on your creativity and resourcefulness?

OK, what about you who have no job, been unable to find work, and are losing things that matter to you like cars, homes, and savings?    Where’s the glitter in that?  On the one hand, yes, it’s messy, scary, and undesired.  On another hand,  what skills have you honed or created?  Who have you met you wouldn’t have met?   What have you learned?  What are you willing to learn?  What if you were five years old and didn’t know enough to be scared, what would you do in this gap?  Yes, these are not easy, but they are  what grow us.

I’m celebrating 25 years of marriage this month.   My former husband divorced me and sent me reeling into the gap for a year.  I learned who I was, what I wanted;  I learned that I could be fine on my own; I learned what I wanted in a partner; and I learned where I failed in the relationship.  I would not be here without that gap.

What have you discovered in your time in the gaps?  Will you share it?

Reprinted from 2003

Surprisingly warm for the mountains, day dawns in our campground.   Today my brother and his wife and their two teenage girls, my other brother and I climb Flattop Mtn. – 12,200 feet above sea level and an altitude change of 2000 feet over 4.5 miles.  Packing sandwiches, snacks, and water is quick as we need an early start in order to be able to hightail it off the peak before the afternoon thunderstorms hit.  My nieces had a dream to conquer a peak this year.  Boots, socks, packs, binoculars and cameras all strapped, tied, pulled or slung onto shoulders or feet (appropriately).  We stride out of the campground and hit the trail by 8:40.

My niece, Julie (not her real name),  has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I have very little idea what it’s like inside her mind and body, but outside it can show up as not focused, excessive worry about future or past events while trying to do a task, and heavy thoughts making heavy, slow footsteps.  Whatever it was, we knew her pace would keep us below timberline all day.  After the first half mile I took her hand and said, “You’ve got your rhythm, and it won’t get you up the mountain today. How about trying another one? Let’s sing, and you match my rhythm.”  She readily agreed (she’s wonderful about receiving support).  We sang and danced, “I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got music, I’ve got my man, Who could ask for anything more?”  “I’ve got hiking boots, I’ve got a trail, I’ve got my family, Who could ask for anything more?”   After a while Julie said she could do it on her own and she spent the next half hour in her new energetic, steady rhythm.  She leaned into that mountain.

At about noon we emerge above timberline. And oh, oh, oh, there are amazing stalks of pink elephant-head flowers blowing in the breeze; red and yellow Indian paintbrush, little purple moss campion hugging the lichen-speckled granite to avoid the wind.    The tundra is an explosion of color, of tiny plants, of adaptation to cold and wind, and rocks, rocks, rocks!  Mountains, valleys, lakes, streams nearly shout with their crisp edges and vivid shapes.

By 1:30 we reach the top!  My two nieces have conquered their first mountain! We flop down in the tremendous wind and devour the best sandwiches the world has ever tasted. The mountain decides that’s enough and throws a hailstorm at us and we scramble into ponchos that flutter like flags.  We begin the climb down.  I hear Julie tell her dad as we keep an eye on the lightning moving across the valley, “You know my disease – that schizo affective thing?  I conquered it today!”  She paused and added, “I can do my homework now.”

Moral of the Story:  An inner shift in perspective, or rhythm, or focus always changes outer results.  A coach joins you  on your journey to help shake your brain out of its patterned perspectives so you can see and achieve new results.  Also, a change in one area produces a change in other areas.  What other morals do you see?

I’ve been loving the Olympics. I see dedicated men and women pouring their hearts, love, time, energy, and bodies into their chosen events.  They are ice dancing, speed skating, bob-sledding, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, solo skating….  Their bodies and purposes are all different, yet they share the common purpose of excellence and athleticism.  The bodies of speed skaters are slim, short with strong legs; the bodies of hockey players are bulkier, and larger. Ski jumpers are lean and long; and bob-sled teams have strong legs.  Their training regimens are all different.  Their athletic purposes are expressed differently – grace, rhythm, creativity for the ice dancers; forward speed for the speed skaters;  strategy, speed, skill, aggressiveness for hockey players;  flight and landing for the ski jumpers.

Like the athletes, many people have the same purpose that can be expressed in different ways.  The purpose might be to be peace, and the expressions might be teaching, leading a march, meditating, or practicing Buddhism.    So, for those of you who thought you loved the work you chose but you are not happy with it, you may need to find another expression of your purpose, one that you are uniquely designed to do.  You don’t necessarily have to change everything.

Last week the people of Port Au Prince, Haiti were tossed, buried, injured, killed, left homeless, and left in grief by a 7.0 earthquake.  The world has rushed to their aid, to do the best we can with what we’ve got.   It is like our own bodies – when a body part is injured our whole repair and protection system bursts into action and rushes to the injury to heal it.

Success is an inside job – it begins in the heart with what matters to you, what you love, and what brings you joy.  Maybe it’s numbers, or music, or cooking, or inspiring, or teaching.  This you knew when you were a child – it is what attracted your attention and was joyful.  Unfortunately, we often choose to ignore our heart in favor of shoulds, opinions, fears.   It can be a long journey back to the heart.

Once you find your way back to your heart, the head does the implementation. It works out the details, gets the help, designs, and plans in service of the heart.

Finally, success is an outside job.  The body gets into action with speaking, writing, building, selling,dealing and doing whatever it takes to bring to reality the heart’s passions and purpose.  This is the most challenging step – to go from the mental, emotional and spiritual energy of the heart and head to the slower, denser, physical energy of the body and of making an idea real.  Just know that it is normal to have bumps and setbacks bringing your brilliance to reality.  

And, when actions and goals are aligned with the heart’s purpose, those goals flow, things work better, and the transition to the physical has more grace and synchronicity.

Moving gracefully from inside to outside, may your success flow in 2010.

Sun and Earth

The wolrld is ours to heal or wound.

Every penny given in care and love to the people of Haiti is a penny of peace, love, hope and healing for Haiti and our world.

Every hand yanking away rubble …  Read More