Pause a moment within the chaos. Breathe out your frustration. Breathe in with openness. Search for the new Opportunities arising.

2016 has been a very chaotic year, hasn’t it?

I had told my friends in December that I sort of felt like 2016 would be a year Outside of Time: not quite linear with the past, but neither would it be free from past influences. Meaning, just because things went a certain way in the past, that doesn’t mean they’ll go the same way now. We’ll still have to deal with them though, and it may even seem like everything from the past is coming up to be dealt with at once.

That’s exactly how 2016 has been feeling to me. Year of the Id. Everything bubbling up at once, resistant to the old ways of dealing with them.

The upside of this is that we’re getting new opportunities to resolve things that have gone unresolved for far too long. And if the old ‘tricks’ and ‘tactics’ won’t work, then we’re finally forced to resolve them in new ways. Since the old ways clearly weren’t working, this gives us the opportunity to finally move forward.

So if you are also feeling the crushing waves of chaos battering you against the shore — or, worse, the undercurrent pulling you under — take a moment to ground yourself.

Take a deep breath, then breathe it out slowly, releasing your frustration at all that arises.

Take another breath, then slowly breathe out your grief at all that has slipped away.

Breathe in again, this time opening your heart as well as your lungs, letting the breath of fresh air sustain you.

Breathe in another sustaining breath, letting the oxygen nourish your mind, opening it up to fresh perspectives.

Through breathing, create an eye within the raging storm, and let events continue to unfold for you. As they do so, practice acceptance for what’s unfolding, learning to look for the new possibilities opening up.

I have a sense that 2017 has the potential to be a truly beautiful year, filled with progress and possibilities that we hadn’t before thought possible. To get there, we’ll have to make it through 2016, learning as much as we can about how to build the space for such a beautiful year to unfold.

May you find peace and wisdom throughout whatever events are surrounding you this year, and may they bring you to a better place. Just hang onto your center, keep your eyes and mind open, and I trust you’ll make it through.

 

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Others’ troubling behavior is their responsibility, not yours. May you know peace.

Other peoples’ words and actions arise from their own past, and how they experienced it. While you can do your best to help your interactions be compassionate and respectful, you can’t control the other side of it.

It can hurt when it feels people are behaving badly toward you. Perhaps you can even do something to heal the situation. But it would be counter-productive to take on their actions as a part of yourself, letting their troubling behavior become troubles of your own.

It may help to think about why something does bother you so much, and reflect on times that have made you feel that way. Maybe there’s a pattern this feels a part of, a pattern that repeats in your life. If so, what could you do to step out of that cycle? Would you let that cycle go, so you could move on?

Above all, recognize that other peoples’ thoughts and actions remain their responsibility, not yours. Your responsibility is to build and maintain your own inner strength, within the cyclone of human experience.

May you know peace.

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Let go of that tiger’s tail, already. Let it rest.

Over the years I’ve kept this blog, I’ve had a hard time staying consistently present. Unsurprisingly, this is because I feel the pressure to consistently share things that are meaningful. Even if it’s just a short thought or poem, I’ve felt that I need to ensure I’m sharing something of myself to add to another’s day.

Today, I can’t think of a darn thing.

I’m processing the cold germs that have been keeping my son coughing and achey today. The long day of trying to rest together has left me feeling more worn down than recuperated. I want so much for us both to feel completely better tomorrow, so we can enjoy the day. I want to feel PRESENT.

After a pause to sigh, I’m realizing that desire alone is a signal that I’m fighting being sick… again. I think I’ll take my own advice and surrender to the process, so the healing may flow freely without me getting in my own way. Rather than keep trying to hang onto that tiger’s tail, it’s time for me to just let it all go, and rest.

May this serve as Solidarity with you as allow some things to flow more freely for your life, as well.

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Do you hate it when you have to deal with idiots? Maybe you can change your mind.

In any given day, you may interact with people who think of and/or treat you as a complete idiot.

You may feel the same way about them.

But as a rule, it’s counter-productive to dwell on either. What they think of you is their problem, not yours. The reverse goes for what you think of them. If you can turn the interaction into neutral, or at least not as bad, it’ll help you get through it in a better way.

More importantly than that, it can help you practice being mindful of how interacting with such people makes you feel, and what you can do about that. Is there a reason things like that would tend to get to you? Is there a way you could strengthen your sense of self and/or patience and compassion? Interactions like these can be an Advanced Course in finding out more about how your mind works, and how you can make it work better.

Running into people we really feel at odds with isn’t always such a bad thing. These can be the times we can most quickly learn lessons we wouldn’t have mastered another way.

We must be patient with our differences. Our best teachers are often the hardest to hear.

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When the mad spinning of worldly events makes you dizzy, close your eyes and center.

When all the world spins
with Change the only Constant
Close your eyes. Center.

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What might you carry with you from today? What should be let go?

It’s Tuesday.

The sun rose and set.

Birds called to one another.

A breeze rustled leaves.

Words were exchanged: some in annoyance, some in kindness.

Breath inhaled, exhaled.

From this day, what is to be carried forward for years to come?

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If at first you don’t succeed, be pleased you’re trying new things.

I spent most of the evening on a new Super Healthy Cupcake Recipe.

It didn’t go well.

Granted, it didn’t go well mostly because of things I did. I over-filled the cupcake cups. I forgot my vanilla is twice as strong as normal, making the vanilla frosting into VANILLA! (frosting).

My little boy was very excited to be part of the cupcake-making process. (The distraction being part of how I lost track of things like that.) He was very much looking forward to enjoying his favorite treat that we made ourselves.

When I got the results into edible-seeming form, he tried it, then tried it again. He was clearly disappointed, but brushed that off and went back to playing. He had been more excited than I at the project, and then I was more disappointed that it didn’t work out.

He did tell me he wants me to keep trying, and that maybe tomorrow or Saturday we can get it right. I told him I’d tweak the recipe a little and do better next time.

After tucking him in, I still kept feeling disappointed the recipe didn’t turn out quite well. It can probably still be a Mostly Healthy Cupcake Recipe, and maybe I can even get it back to Super after I get the hang of it. But I used to be pretty good at making things like this, so it was getting to me.

Finally, I realized that it’s been a long time since I’ve tried this sort of thing. I don’t have the knack anymore, and it took up most of my evening, but I still gave it a good shot. Plus, I’m not planning to give up over it. As discouraging as my time has been lately, that really means something to me.

So as I try to get ready to sleep, I’m reminding myself to take the experience for what it was: I tried something new. Soon, I’m going to try something new in a better way. And I’ll keep at it as I keep getting better.

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Time to hold our threadbare comfort blankets up & see how much daylight peeks through.

The recurring theme today seemed to be people trying to cling to habits or ideas that made them feel safer or more secure, but really didn’t help. Challenges that brought those “comfort blankets” into question just seemed to make that defensive need deeper, bringing up more emotional responses than thoughtful. But then, I guess that’s how comfort blankets operate.

The emotionally challenging air today was most notable in my five-year-old, but it seemed to be affecting most of the adults I spent much time with, including myself. I tried to overcome it, seeking ways to find the holes in any threadbare comfort blankets I may be clinging to against the cold harshness of reality. Again, that’s kind of tough to do, because comfort blankets usually feel cozier than they are, but I tried. It was the least I could do on a day when I had to try to fight against the clinging of other people to things that were hampering what I needed to do.

Sitting here at the end of my day, I think I can say that I did an okay job, but that I only started the process. I feel as though the next few weeks are going to require a lot of us to hold our comfort blankets up to our eyes, and see how much daylight peeks through.

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No Explicit Expectations, No Enduring Regrets.

I’ve been reading a lot this past year, and several people have shared that the secret to happiness and achieving your dreams is to not get too specific. Oh certainly, focus on the general parameters of your goal. What kind of success are you looking forward to? What will it feel like to enjoy it? What are some steps you can take toward reaching them?

When it comes to the specifics though, it’s best to leave those to life to sort out. Prepare for the path you think may lead you closer to your goals, but don’t get hung up on the exact steps you think you’ll have to take. Don’t even get too hung up on the explicit nature of the form you expect your success to take. Dream in vivid watercolor, allowing the details to take shape on their own.

After all, we aren’t omniscient. We don’t know what exactly will be the best path for us to walk toward where we’re headed. We can’t even be sure that we know now how beautifully wonderful our destination will be, let alone the exact time and place, or even shape it will take.

That also holds true for the backtracks and the sidesteps we’ll have to take to get there. So often, the disappointments I’ve faced have ended up being the best path toward a better place that I never even imagined existed. And too often, I’d wasted some time and energy sitting around feeling disappointed about a particular road not working out, when I could have been picking myself back up and walking down the better road that awaited me.

So for 2016, I’m trying to remember: No Explicit Expectations, No Enduring Regrets.

So that way, when it feels like things or even people try to get me down by interrupting the way I thought things should go, I can remember that mantra and say, “NEENER, NEENER, NEENER!”

🙂

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Nevermind the past. May you create a Happy New Year!

Every year by New Year’s Eve, I have a sense of a “New Year’s Prediction” for how the next year will go. I don’t usually share them outside a small circle of friends/family.

Last year, I felt that 2015 would be a turbulent time of rocky rapids, and that if you kept your oars in the water, the currents could carry you far. Slip outside that current, however, and you’d have rough waters trying to right your boat.

This year, I kind of feel like the rapids have shunted us out into the bodies of water we’ll be navigating for a while. Rough rivers, tranquil ponds – they’ll be different for each of us, but it’ll be where our navigation of the 2015 rapids brought us.

They’ll be new waters for us, not directly tied to what came before. We’re not stuck in that same old stream. It’s not as though the past never happened, but we aren’t beholden to it. It doesn’t own us. It doesn’t dictate what we do now, or where we go next. Our present is freed from the chains of the past. Our future is ours to create anew.

May you create a Happy New Year.

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