Peace has an outer definition: “a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations: the normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community; public order and security “. Outer peace is possible when enough of us choose inner peace.

Choice – that is what you have. You can choose to be aligned with purpose and values; you can choose self love and love; you can choose to be present rather than resentful or worried. You can choose from inner peace in your thoughts and words and actions to bring about a more peaceful world. What’s possible if you lived peace? What if it took a lifetime to cultivate? What a journey! What if it took a moment to finally find peace and know how to return?

Mini Coaching – Recall times of inner peace in your life.  If you cannot, then imagine it from stories and pictures.  What’s it like?  Who are you being here?  Who are you not being?  What choices did you make to be peace?   Recall times of peaceful expressions among people.  Who are you being here?  Not being?  What choices were made to foster peace?

What did you discover?  What do you want regarding peace?  Leave a comment.

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

I just finished watching  Michael J. Fox  special on optimism.  He visited a country between India and China called Bhutan.  They measure their Gross National Happiness instead of their Gross National Product.  Wikipedia says, “While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH claims to be based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.”

What if we measured our GPH- Gross Personal Happiness. What would your GPH be based on?   Productivity?  Integrity?  Laughter?  Connections?  Income?  Balance?   How are you doing with it?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Miracle in the Sun

Over the last several weekends I’ve planted 70 flowering and vegetable plants.  I watch their brilliance emerge as leaves and flowers, created out of the raw materials of earth, air, and sunlight – it’s so amazing!  Every plant draws on the same materials.  So where do these little seeds get the green, yellow, pink, purple and blue?  I have to go to the store to buy those colors.  How do they design rose petals, cherry blossoms, tomato leaves and their aromas, all from the same materials?  And soon the most fantastic brilliance of all will emerge- round, red, ripe tomatoes; crisp green beans; orange, green, and yellow squash, all full of sugars, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. What intelligence in the soul of a plant! Each has its own unique emerging brilliance.

People have unique brilliance – each uses the same raw materials of food, water, sunlight, air.  Each of us processes these materials through our set of genes, beliefs, desires and talents to create our own amazing lives- full of grace, beauty, challenge, and hardships.   We are such powerhouses of change and transformation – food, water, and oxygen are transformed into bodies that are tall, short, blond, dark, light, muscular, frail, and smart in a variety of ways.  Ideas, beliefs, thoughts, morals, values, and vision are transformed  into art, buildings, software, mathematics, plastic, pollution, walking, cell phones, games, swimming, driving, war, peace, acceptance, intolerance……!  What a masterpiece!  What a kaleidoscope of expression, of brilliance.  What creators we are.  The caterpillar metamorphasis is astounding, yet we do even more astounding transformations every day!   Celebrate your brilliance!

Then Sue Walden wrote the same theme in her ezine.  She was
preparing to do her one day workshop, “Living Beyond Your Limits”
in the UK and found that she did not have her folder and handouts.
She said,  Why not re-create it?  Times have changed and I am not
the same person I was when I designed it 2 years ago.  I wonder
what it would look like now?  She did re-create it and it’s better
than ever.

Finally, Patrick Ryan wrote about change in his mon thy ezine,
“Awakened Wisdom”,  He says the way things are tend to stay the
same, homeostasis.  Change needs to reckon with that force – not be
deterred.

I’ve been working Emerging Brilliance for 10 years now.  I’ve made
incremental changes over the years – and I am very different than I
was 10 years ago in my business.  Yet it feels like a bigger change
is upon me.   I asked myself, what if I close it down and let my
expression in the world re-emerge?  What would show up?  The first
thing that showed up is, “you can’t shut down!”  “You’re branded,
you’re established.”  “Keep it going the same – you’re too busy to
change.” The thing that is persisting, in this case my business,
really does have its own inertia of existence.  Yet what wants to
emerge now that has no room to exist while I busily continue
business as usual?   What old programs, ideas, services are
persisting?  What brilliance is waiting to bloom and just needs
some sunshine and room to grow?

Action
Take a look at your own life. We’re in a time of upheaval locally,
nationally, and globally.  Change is upon us.  What changes are
calling you forth, are demanding attention?  What is it time to
end?  To begin?   Who do you need on your team to make the change
happen?  Who do you need to be?  What’s stopping you?  Great!  Now
take the most inspired, appropriate action to allow and embrace
this change.

Nancy Montier
www.emergingbrilliance.com
Nancy@emergingbrilliance.com
510-886-7374
19053 Helton Street
Castro Valley, CA  94546