Posts Tagged ‘Peace’

The sun bounced off the water on a beautiful summer afternoon at Lake Chabot where I was walking with my business partner, Julia.  She’s about to take off for 10 days and won’t be looking for internet connections or have her cell phone on. We started looking at how, even http://www.emergingbrilliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Dreamstime-Mountain-Hiker-150×150.jpgthough we own our own businesses, we don’t shut down and take off for fun.   We need fun, happiness and laughter for health and creativity.

I asked a client who was looking for work for months and frustrated to take a day off for her favorite activity, golf. She agreed not to spend any mental energy on her challenge and fears around finding work during the day.  A few weeks later, she had an offer.  I assert that the peace, centering, and rest afforded by a true, deep, fun chunk of time is invaluable for clear and heartfelt thinking, creative solutions, and results.  You all know that, but do you do it?  Do I do it?  No.

So, since I’m the coach here, I’ll ask the questions you’re expecting, and some you may not be expecting, to uncover something new about fun.  What’s your payoff for “keeping your nose to the grindstone”, for staying in electronic communication even when you’re out for fun, for never taking more than 24 hours off?  If we’re doing it, there’s a payoff.  And an underlying belief.

What’s the price you pay for going and going and going and going with the daily commitments?

Since fun leads to relaxing which leads to reduced stress (which is a physical state in your body that wears on it, not to mention your productivity and joy) which leads to increased health and creativity, what do you need to do to take care of yourself  for fun?  Will a few hours do it?  Or will it take a week or two or a month away?  A woman I’ve worked with has her own business.  She took two months off over the summer.  She was afraid she’d lose all her clients.  Many waited for her.  When she got back, she had more business than ever which has been steady for two years.

What brings you pleasure and joy?  Leave a comment. 

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?

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.

We are deep into autumn here in the U.S. and the energy has softened and cooled from the brilliant summer days.   This reduction in energy and light affects us.  While the West does not pay much attention to the change, the Chinese, for example, recognize the seasons and their influence on the earth and our bodies.  Nature displays the change very clearly – it brings forth vegetables and fruits – the result of the sunshine, nutrients and water building all spring and summer.  The end of a project.  Leaves go to work one last day to produce food for the tree; they give a last brilliant signature color, then let go.  The end of a project.  The animals that hibernate or travel south begin to shut down or shove off.  The end of a project. As the light changes, so do we.   Our bodies start to pull in, its energy shifts to our core away from the extremities as we prepare for less heat and light.  The end of a project, or many projects.  The bright, fast energy of summer is giving way to the softer, slower light of autumn. There is a pause, even a sadness in the air as we say goodbye to the sun.  And it is good.  The rest is good. It is time to gather the vegetables and fruits and clear out the vines that produced it.

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.

Purpose is why you are here. The short version that some Law of Attraction folks use, and other New Age thinkers say, is that your purpose is to experince joy, and / or to learn. Yet each person has their own path of joy. This is a good thing! That way everything gets done!

Here’s an example from nature. An eagle is built to hunt small, live animals. It has a very keen eye, sharp talons, a beak with leverage to tear and pull. It would be ridiculous to insist that an eagle become a vegetarian and eat leaves or seeds. Not going to happen. An eagle is always congruent with its nature. It lives on purpose without questioning. It would starve trying to eat seeds. However, a finch is designed to eat seeds would starve if it tried to hunt small animals. Both are relevant in the systems of nature.

Each individual has a Life Purpose - whether it comes from soul, genetics, or environment, or all three. This is something that you do and be better than anything else, like the eagle is better at hunting than any other way of getting food. You are uniquely designed to be a certain essence (perhaps love, peace, beauty, the sword of truth, joy). You are uniquely designed to do a certain thing in the world (like the eagle to hunt animals). You might put things together, help people find their path, see and communicate the next step, nurture new beginnings or bring harmony to relationships. This is your gift you give to the world.

Knowing your purpose  is a cornerstone of your inner peace. Knowing your purpose allows you to ground and center yourself around your true nature. You are not fighting your strengths – trying to eat seeds with an eagle beak. When you know and align with purpose, you are in harmony and at peace with your nature, rather than resisting it.

Stay tuned for the other cornerstones of peace.
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Action for Dessert!

Notice what you do naturally well and you are happy doing it. Now notice what else. Notice whether you are at peace at those times.  Ask five people who know you what your 2-3 strengths are.  What are those strengths  that they would call on you to do or be because you are a natural at them?  Leave a comment what you think.

Peace,
Nancy

“The hills are alive, with the sound of music.” (from The Sound of Music).
“For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.“   Isaiah 55:12

Surprisingly warm for the mountains, day dawns in our campground.   Today we 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 to hightail it off the peak before the afternoon thunderstorms hit.  My two teenage 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 hiking boots,  Who could ask for anything more?”  My brother was a fierce timekeeper and held the stops to just a few.  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 took hold of my hand again when she needed it and 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.  Grey and brown furry pikas, the size of large guinea pigs, disappear with a warning squeak as we move past in our little rhythm dance.  On distant rocks in their shiny brown and black coats sit imperturbable marmots.  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.  Many groups that passed us earlier are marching down, because thunderclouds are building.

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 lighting 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.”

ACTION
What’s your mountain today?  Tomorrow?  Next week?  What’s the one that might take 10 years to climb?  What’s the first step?  Who or what is stopping you?  Take action this week to start on the mountain you most want to climb. Celebrate the mountains you’ve conquered. Find the people and resources that will help keep you in the game!  And remember you are likely keeping someone in the game, too.

Peace,

Nancy