Gratitude: daring, courageous and beautiful — Grat Challenge week 4!
I did this: I walked into Bank of America and closed my accounts yesterday. The move from giant bank to local bank is done. (At least I hope it’s done. I hope everything has cleared. I really really do hope I was thorough!)
There was a slight feeling of anticlimax. I was expecting at least to be asked Why. So I volunteered the Why, told the bank officer who was pounding at the keyboard closing my accounts that I want to bank local. He shrugged. Sigh. It may not be important to him; it’s important to me.
Drove down the road to Bank of Alameda and handed Georgeanne my check. I love that she and her bank manager know me by name.
It is done. It is done. It is done!
I am so grateful for three new pairs of SmartWool socks. Including a pair of knee socks. Knee socks make me laugh, make me feel like a kid.
SmartWool and local banking: these things fill me with joyful gratitude.
I am so grateful for my daily walks. It’s three weeks now that I’ve been doing this: long enough to groove a neural pathway (make a new habit). Here’s what I do: I walk carrying nothing, so my arms are free and can gently swing. I walk for 30 minutes. I listen to something. Either some funny or inspirational talk, or to music. I’ve even made a playlist of music I love that’s between 111 and 119 BPM—a tempo range that inspires me to walk in rhythm and with a little bounce. I love my walks.
Sometimes I walk by the bay. Many days I walk by the bay. And many days I urban-walk. Yesterday, just as it was getting dark, I walked from my gym to and around Oakland’s Chinatown. People watching, storefront watching. Listening to great music.
I am grateful for the things that bring me joy. Writing this post and listening to music I love. I have another playlist called Now. I just added these songs to it. Music to wake up to. Music that makes me move my body and sing.
Now playing
Ophelia, The Band
Down South In New Orleans, The Band
Badlands, Bruce Springsteen
Helplessly Hoping, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Teach Your Children, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Helpless, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Guinnevere, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
New York, New York, Frank Sinatra
Pisces Apple Lady, Leon Russell Leon Russell
Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard, Paul Simon
Oliver’s Army, Elvis Costello
Pump It Up, Elvis Costello
Delta Lady, Leon Russell
Blue Moon, The Marcels
Mother And Child Reunion, Paul Simon
Kodachrome, Paul Simon
Slip Slidin’ Away, Paul Simon
Cecilia, Simon and Garfunkel
So grateful for the music of my formative years. The neuroscience geeks say that the music we hear and love from our mid-teens to our late 20s is the music that means the most to us for our whole lives. I also think this is true. I have more emotional connection to the music I was lucky enough to hear at that time in my life than any other music I have loved since.
Gratitude challenge. I am so grateful for the gratitude challenge group. This week I read gratitudes for rain (yes, more rain!), good rest, family, friends, inspired cooking, favors asked and received, lessons learned with grace, generosity extended, and real Tupperware. I gotta say, the more I do this stuff—play the Gratitude game—the more I am convinced that pointing ourselves towards gratitude is a huge act of daring, courage and beauty. Just like waking up every day intending to be happy. Another level of chutzpah. Try it!
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
— Epictetus, Greek sage and Stoic philosopher
Love and blessings!
What’s your January takeaway? What’s your theme for 2012?
There’s been an amazing flow of teleclasses, blogposts, ebooks, trainings this January. They’re everywhere! Just yesterday I signed up for what feels like my thirteenth series of mind-expanding, powerful teleclasses of the month.
January is a month full of powerful offers of support for creating intentions, setting goals, starting out on the path of creating new habits, learning new things. Myself, I’m taking a year-long course, Awakening Joy, which offers monthly evenings of neuroscience of happiness geekery, singing, dancing and meditation. And I’m offering my own teleclass (details below) in a couple of weeks.
As the month winds down, I find myself finally slowing down and discerning what’s most important. I love the idea of creating a central theme for the year. Inspired by the Soul Spackle blog, I’m going with a single word as my theme. A word that will be the center point of all my personal and business growth efforts, that will be the mirror in which I check myself, my thoughts, my words and my actions every day.
My word for this year is Joy. The attributes that Joy contains include:
Ease
Acceptance
Love
Wonder
Simplicity
Connection
Gratitude
Courage
The working hypothesis: The more wellbeing I can connect to in myself, the more of a gift I can give to others.
I don’t do Joy naturally, I’m not very good at it. I always blamed it on nurture, that I was raised in a house where grumpiness and rage ruled. Turns out as humans, we are by nature set up to look for what’s wrong. It’s a protective survival technique. As James Baraz says in the Awakening Joy text, “…the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and like Teflon for positive ones.” It takes a lot of practice to groove new neural pathways that point to, look for the joyful.
I’m going for it! I’m going for that state we can achieve when we’re not under stress, where we can be
calm
content
conscious
creative and
caring
So. I’m committing to joy and running everything—all my habits, choices, actions—through the joy filter, checking in with myself and asking: Is this thing I’m contemplating going to lead me toward joy or away from joy? This is a deceptively simple and quite elegant idea (wish I had thought of it before!).
What’s your theme for 2012 going to be? Share in the comments!
Reminder about the February 13th teleclass:
Write a Love Letter to Yourself from Spirit
Good news! You can still sign up. It’s going to be so much fun. Here are the details:
In celebration of International Self-Love Day on February 13, we will celebrate the love you can feel for yourself so strongly when you’re connected to Spirit, to Source.
This is a love that will hold you in its soft embrace as you envision and act on all the audacious goals you’ve set for yourself in this new year. (Don’t worry if you haven’t set or completed your goals yet, on this call I will be guiding you to your own clear vision of what’s next for you, in all areas of your life.)
In the class you will write a love letter to yourself from Spirit (the Goddess, God, nature…) congratulating you on all the awesome actions you will have taken and goals you will have achieved by the time 2012 comes to a close.
Bonus! Your love letter mailed back to you. As a special bonus for attending this class, if you send me your love letter with a stamped and self-addressed envelope by March 20th, I’ll hold it in a sacred place in my house until December 21st, when I’ll send it back to you. You’ll get your very own love letter from Spirit in the mail! How fun—and powerful—is that?
Date: Monday, February 13, 2012
Time: 1:30–2:30pm Pacific, 10:30–11:30am Eastern. Can’t make the call live? No worries, there will be a recording that I can email to you.
To get your call-in details for the Love Letter from Spirit teleclass, all you need to do is RSVP here, on my Facebook event page. If you’re not on Facebook, send me a note, or a message on Twitter, or send smoke signals. We’ll get you on the call!
Cost: Open contribution. That’s right! I want to fully share this work with you, from my own loving heart, and if you feel full and complete and grateful, and want to give back at the end, then I will invite you to make a contribution to me and my work, so that I can continue doing what I am meant to do. Please relax into this open contribution idea. Toward the end of the call, I will help you work out the right amount for you to donate. For now, please enjoy this beautiful self-loving process we will be sharing together.
Love and blessings!
Enter the (water) dragon
Happy lunar new year! Today in the last day of the New Moon in Aquarius window, we celebrate the first day of the year of the water dragon.
According to a post on 2012dragon.com: “The Dragon is in fact the major symbol of good fortune in Chinese Astrology. The Dragon constellation, for example, is accorded the honor of being the guardian of the Eastern sky. According to tradition the Dragon brings in the Four Blessings of the East: wealth, virtue, harmony and longevity.
“Indeed, of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac the Dragon is the most special, as it is a mystical being rather than an earthly animal. It is sometimes called a karmic sign. In this context that means we can expect grand things this year. Bigger than life is very much a Dragon thing.”
What a powerful metaphor as we step into the last half of winter, which in the bay area, is when the first signs of spring are everywhere.
Now if you’re not a crazy New Yorker transplant like me, you might not be so springtime alert. But me, I’m the one who walked the icy slushy streets of New York in February, the cruelest month, year after year, squealing “Look at the buds on the trees!” “See the tips of the crocuses and snowdrops poking up in the cracks in the sidewalks!” And yes my friends rolled their collective eyes at me. (What else is new?)
So yeah, it may be cold and rainy and rainy and cold, but I’m seeing the buds fatten up on the trees. I’ve seen two, count ‘em, two, magnolia trees with blossoms on them, high up, where the winter sun can catch a few branches.
Time for a parenthetical rant. I have never put this in writing, but my friends all know that I still, after nearly 20 years in California, fail to understand what happened to seasons here, as they pertain to magnolias. Where I come from (Brooklyn y’all), the magnolias bloom around Easter, when it’s almost always mild enough weather so that the perfume of the magnolias wafts in the air and you can smell ‘em (on a pleasant day) even before you see ‘em.
But here in California? Seriously? The magnolias start to blossom in January, and peak in February, when it’s almost always gray cold and rainy. The aroma? Jam your face into a cold and damp blossom and if you’re lucky and take a very deep breath, you can get a whiff of what should be a delicious cloud of scent surrounding you.
I’ve learned to (almost completely) love the magnolias when they arrive here, because they are the first opening in the door to springtime and gardening, and new life everywhere. They coincide with Imbolc, the marker of the midpoint between winter and spring and the herald of quickening, instead of landing about a month after the spring equinox. I have almost entirely learned to cope.
Okay, rant over. Where was I?
Oh yeah. Happy lunar new year. Seatbelts fastened, change may come fast and furious!
Teleclass: Write a Love Letter to Yourself from Spirit, 2/13/12, 1:30 pm Pacific
Good news! You can still sign up. It’s going to be so much fun. Here are the details:
In celebration of International Self-Love Day on February 13, let’s get together to celebrate the love you can feel for yourself so strongly when you’re connected to Spirit, to Source.
This is a love that will hold you in its soft embrace as you envision and act on all the audacious goals you’ve set for yourself in this new year. (Don’t worry if you haven’t set or completed your goals yet, on this call I will be guiding you to your own clear vision of what’s next for you, in all areas of your life.)
In the class you will write a love letter to yourself from Spirit (the Goddess, God, nature…) congratulating you on all the awesome actions you will have taken and goals you will have achieved by the time 2012 comes to a close.
Bonus! Your love letter mailed back to you. As a special bonus for attending this class, if you send me your love letter with a stamped and self-addressed envelope by March 20th, I’ll hold it in a sacred place in my house until December 21st, when I’ll send it back to you. You’ll get your very own love letter from Spirit in the mail! How fun—and powerful—is that?
Date: Monday, February 13, 2012
Time: 1:30–2:30pm Pacific, 10:30–11:30am Eastern. Can’t make the call live? No worries, there will be a recording that I can email to you.
To get your call-in details for the Love Letter from Spirit teleclass, all you need to do is RSVP here, on my Facebook event page. If you’re not on Facebook, send me a note, or a message on Twitter, or send smoke signals. We’ll get you on the call!
Cost: Open contribution. That’s right! I want to fully share this work with you, from my own loving heart, and if you feel full and complete and grateful, and want to give back at the end, then I will invite you to make a contribution to me and my work, so that I can continue doing what I am meant to do. Please relax into this open contribution idea. Toward the end of the call, I will help you work out the right amount for you to donate. For now, please enjoy this beautiful self-loving process we will be sharing together.
Love and blessings!
Gratitude Challenge week 3
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust, French novelist, critic, and essayist
Grateful for the rain. So grateful for the rain!
Grateful for healing. The bad cough, often a harbinger of longlasting compromised lungs, seems to be backing off. Yes!
Grateful for loving friends.
Grateful that Rowan would go suss out a rental listing in Alameda for me.
Grateful that my sister checked up on me.
Grateful that Heidi and Jeff took me out for New Year’s Eve (Year of the Water Dragon, starting tomorrow) dinner. A veritable feast.
Grateful for the walk around Oakland’s Chinatown today, sourcing lucky envelopes and schizandra and goji berries for ritual takeaways.
Grateful that I completed Brighde’s Dark Mirror by making a copper Brighde’s Cross for the center of it.
Grateful to be a fearless artist!
Grateful for walking every day! A half hour a day, rain or shine.
Grateful for my walking playlist.
And from my companions in gratitude, here are a few of the many gratitudes you shared that moved me this week:
from B: grateful for the sad feeling i get knowing that when she goes the whole generation above me is gone… (I assume I can be grateful for a sad feeling….b/c I am)
from A: my smiling, bouncing baby girl and a husband who doesn’t watch sports on TV
from another B: I am grateful for the gorgeous red flower blooming outside my bedroom window – and, again, that I washed those windows. Such a pleasure to have clean windows.
from K: I’m taking in the simplicity of the moment in.
Isn’t the spectrum of gratitude awesome?
Love and blessings!
Gratitude Wednesday 1/18
It’s a good morning to be grateful! Seriously.
I am grateful for the business coaching I gave myself as a gift. To be in a supported process of discernment, clarifying and repurposing my mission and offers. It is extremely exciting. Yes, it’s also kinda daunting, but exciting nonetheless!
I am grateful that I got the new page up on my website supporting the Love Letter teleclass.
And crazy grateful that for the very first time there’s a button on my website that allows people to send me money through PayPal. Talk about opening up the moneyflow!
I am grateful for a reunion visit with a friend I haven’t seen since 2005, since I left Sacramento. What a lovely visit, walking by the bay and having lunch at Vik’s Chaat. And talking about a possible project we could do together. End-to-end fabulous!
I am grateful that the Awakening Joy class begins next week. Exciting to be in a homework assignment like this one:
“…make a experiment of noticing all the good moments in your life as you go through the day. When you’re experiencing a moment of well-being, peace, happiness, gratitude, or kindness take a few moments to really let yourself feel that positive feeling….as a game, try to be present for those uplifting moments when they’re here. Take a few breaths to relax into the experience by feeling it in your body.”
Now that’s a homework assignment! Sounds like it can deepen my gratitude practice and attitude, which is what drew me to sign up in the first place.
I’m grateful for giving myself the gift of a healing session this weekend. Actually my weekend is full of gorgeous self-love stuff. A visioning, yoga and meditation workshop on Saturday, and two healing sessions on Sunday!!! Plus a haircut. Life is unbelievably rich!
I am grateful for my incredibly comfy and warm bed. For SmartWool socks, fleece shirts and working heaters. For delicious food. For being such an awesome cook. For being brave enough to sing a song to my ritual-planning mates over the phone (I am such a bad singer!). For having a deep spiritual life, with deep ritualized workings in celebration of the turning of the wheel, in reverent honoring of the goddess.
I am grateful for carrying that loving connection to spirit in my heart and for the way it informs every moment of my life.
I am grateful for working inside the spirit of International Self-Love Day on February 13th and for offering a teleclass that will help people to write a Love Letter to themselves from Spirit (which will then get mailed back to them at the end of the year). How cool is that! There’s still room, join us! Oh and it’s free (donation by open contribution, and I won’t ask you to donate until after the work is done)
Love and blessings!
Gratitude Friday the thirteenth / Gratitude Challenge Week 2
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” — Thornton Wilder, American playwright and novelist
Such a beautiful day. I feel lucky, yes I do!
I am grateful that I completed the work around Magnolias West’s mission and vision statement. And it rocks! (If you ask, I’ll share it with you; it’s awesome!)
And I’m grateful to Isabel Parlett, the Soundbite Shaman, who listened to every word and helped me put together all the facets of my mission.
I am so grateful that I got to hear Christine Arylo speak on Monday night. She is an inspired and inspiring speaker, who really really brings the love!
I am so grateful that I listened to the inner voice clamoring to be heard and, inspired by Christine, launched a teleclass to be held on International Self-Love Day. In the teleclass we’ll be Writing a Love Letter to Yourself from Spirit. It’s going to rock!! Please tell your friends!
I am so grateful that I have, as of today, walked for thirty minutes, holding nothing in my hands and letting my arms swing freely, in the fresh air, for five days in a row. I love building new habits!
I am grateful for my Gratitude Challenge cohort. Have I told you lately how moved I am by your grateful words, by the fact that you are regularly taking time to dial into gratitude?
I am grateful that I am working with such a brilliant, kind and generous coach. What a gift, you are, Yollana!
I am grateful to be so happy! Working with a new affirmation, which, I swear, is making me spring out of bed with a smile. Every day. I’m happy, delighted, to share it: I choose to have faith in love, I release my faith in fear. When/if I’m feeling the fear creep in, I stand with my hands in the position of receiving and I repeat this powerful statement three times. Try it. Warning: your grumpiness and stress just might fade away!
I am grateful for this balmy weather (although I continue to pray daily for rain rain rain!)
And I am grateful for it being Friday afternoon. Email is slowing down, I’m starting to slow down, work is getting complete for today.
Blessings!
Intentions, goals, and doubts, oh my! (and an offer…)
The year has turned,
you’ve got your goals and intentions lists done,
and you begin to wonder,
Can I do it?
You set off in the new year dancing into your most brilliant and audacious visions for yourself and your business. Good for you!
However, in moments of quiet, you might find yourself beginning to hear the whisperings of self-doubt… Can I really do it? Will I fail again? Can I ever make it happen?… When we set bold and audacious goals for ourselves, it can be a field day for all the un-self-loving thoughts and feelings that are hiding beneath the surface.
Where do you get support for your sacred intentions, enough support to hold you and encourage you to keep taking actions, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, every day, to live into your highest good?
These are critical questions for women, aren’t they? Women who walk tall, heads up and tits out, and take their place in the world, despite internal and external doubts and o
bstacles are creating so much important change. Seriously. For yourself, for your family (just think about what you’re modeling for your children when you show up in the world as your most magnificent self!), for your communities, for the world. In our culture now, especially for Americans, where women are too often portrayed and perceived in a less than empowering light, every single action you take as a queenly woman who knows what she’s about is doing a big mitzvah of healing what’s broken. Audacious for sure!
How do you get support and encouragement?
We need a big toolbox, I’m convinced, to create an atmosphere of love and support for our dreams and visions. This toolbox can and should include a variety of things. Here’s a short (and incomplete) list of the things I use for myself and in my practice with my clients:
Meditation—a daily practice by which you can keep connected to Source (the Goddess, God, nature…) and remember you are never alone
Affirmation—my affirmation for this year is I choose to have faith in love, I release my faith in fear. Whenever I feel fear creeping in, I stand in the position of receiving, feel my feet on the ground, look up and repeat it three times—Try it; it’s powerful!
Mentorship —working with a coach, an accountability buddy or a Mastermind group
Wellness—30 minutes walking in the sunshine every day does wonders, as does eating sustainably
Gratitude—a daily practice of finding ten, or fifteen!, things for which you can express gratitude creates a deep foundation that allows the possibility of a positive attitude even when things are challenging. I have a group of women with whom I share daily and weekly gratitudes. Join us!
Generosity—the partner activity that strengthens gratitude. Do something for someone else. Share of your time, treasure and talents. Lather, rinse and repeat.
Join in fun and inspiring events! Oh, and I have one coming up (nice segue into today’s offer, huh?)
Write a love letter to yourself from Spirit (the Goddess, God, nature…)
In celebration of International Self-Love Day—Christine Arylo‘s inspired and inspiring creation—on February 13, let’s get together in a teleclass to celebrate the love you can feel for yourself so strongly when you’re connected to Spirit, to Source. This is a love that will hold you in its soft embrace as you envision and act on all the audacious goals you’ve set for yourself in this new year. (Don’t worry if you haven’t set or completed your goals yet, on this call I will be guiding you to a clear vision of what’s next for you, in all areas of your life.)
In the class you will write a love letter to yourself from Spirit (the Goddess, God, nature…) congratulating you on all the awesome actions you will have taken and goals you will have achieved by the time 2012 comes to a close.
Date: Monday, February 13, 2012
TIme: 1:30–2:30pm Pacific, 10:30–11:30am Eastern
Call details will be provided upon your RSVP, which you can do right here. If for some reason you are one of the two people on the planet without a Facebook account (the event is on my Facebook page), send me a note in the comments, or an email to Sue [at] MagnoliasWest [dot] com, or a message on Twitter, or send smoke signals. We’ll get you on the call!
Cost: Open contribution. That’s right! I want to fully share this work with you, from my own loving heart, and if you feel full and complete and grateful, and want to give back at the end, then I will invite you to make a contribution to me and my work, so that I can continue doing what I am meant to do. Please relax into this open contribution idea. Toward the end of the call, I will help you work out the right amount for you to donate. For now, please enjoy this beautiful self-loving process we will be sharing together.
Last thing: If you know a woman or two who would resonate with this working, please spread the word! Thanks…
gratitude, Monday 1/9
I am simply grateful today.
I am grateful for
gathering with friends
creating our predictions for the year and sealing them up to be opened in the next new year
sharing re-gifts (what a lovely concept, involving the spending of $0!)
gorgeous sunshine
a 30-minute walk by Lake Merritt in the lovely late afternoon
being able to stream the radio show I wanted to listen to while I walked
taking my body work guy’s advice and letting my arms gently swing as I walked
hauling my yoga mat out of the closet and doing some yoga last night
the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which I was able to follow because I just re-read the book. I myself thought it was great but I don’t for the life of me know how anyone who isn’t familiar with the story could follow the plot
fresh and healthy food and homemade kombucha
Living into your highest good in 2012: tips & tricks
The holidays are over. I went to the last of the seasonal social gatherings on my calendar yesterday, and it was joyful to chat and eat good food and exchange re-gifts, a novel concept I totally endorse.
We are firmly in the New Year! Now’s a very good time to put plans and commitments in place that support those goals and intentions you have written, journaled, collaged, dreamt for a fully expressed, successful and abundant 2012.
In case you haven’t completed your goals and action list yet, here are some helpful topic areas to help focus your thinking (with a sample question or two for each one, designed to inspire your intentions in that area)
Business, career
– What holds me back from asking someone to hold me accountable to doing the tasks I have promised to do but find difficult?Family and friends
– Is my circle of friends/family exclusively made up of people who love and appreciate me as I am and who root for my best self-expression?Learning
– What am I studying, where am I deepening my knowledge, what am I teaching to others, how do I pass along my legacy?Fun, recreation
– What am I doing to enjoy this beautiful world? How am I enjoying the gift of moving my body through the world?Health, wellness
– What am I eating? How conscious am I of what I put into my body and how I stretch and strengthen my body?Money, finances
– Are my bills and taxes current and filed/paid on time?Personal growth
– How is my connection with spirit? Have I invited spirit into my heart today? Last week? When?Physical Environment
– How clear is the flow of energy in my home and office? Is there a pileup of clutter that is calling out to be cleared?
Once you have your goals and intentions in hand, it’s so important to put everything, every action that leads you to your goals, in writing, in your calendar. Taking the details (project deadlines, shopping lists, calls to make, workouts, meetings, business networking events) out of your head is a critical step to freeing up space for downloading creative inspiration.
Another useful tip (file this one under productivity and ease). In our age of multitasking distractibility, try this on: When you’re showing up for creative, task-intensive work, turn off your email. Close your Facebook and Twitter tabs (or clients) on your computer. Put your smart devices farther than a hand’s reach away. I know it’s fashionable to think emails must get instant responses, but you know what? Checking and responding to emails when it works for you to do so really works! Even if you work in a culture that expects instant response (you might want to ask yourself how working in such an adrenalized environment is working for you, exactly, but that’s another conversation), you will be surprised to find how workable checking emails once an hour or once every two hours can be. Just by putting this into practice you can (sneakily and effectively) help slow the pulse down just a bit benefiting everyone without them even knowing it!
Back to using the calendar. I schedule my life and I live my schedule and when life happens, I am accountable. That takes a little getting used to, at first, but after just a little practice becomes second nature. I find that a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes at night, plus a slightly longer week-to-come session on Sundays makes it so much easier to do the dance of my life with ease.
Speaking of the evening calendar review, I found this powerful checklist on Catherine Hughes’ 8 Women Dream blog (attributed to Jack Canfield, lightly edited by me), which invites you to not only review commitments and scheduling, but to also check in with how you did at bringing your best self to everything you attempted and accomplshed. I love this!
1. Show me where I could have been more effective today.
2. Show me where I could have been more conscious today.
3. Show me where I could have been a better [fill in blank with your dream — coach, designer, parent, traveler, dancer, etc.]
4. Show me where I could have been more loving today.
5. Show me where I could have been more assertive today.
6. Show me where I could have been more [fill in any characteristic that embodies your dream — audacious, fearless, dauntless, fierce, enthusiastic, honest, productive, etc.]
Into action!
If you’ve been a reader of this blog for a while, you know that I offer specific tools and guidance to create a more productive, balanced and abundant business life.
Yet, you might find that you’re not making the progress you desire, or putting everything you read and relate to into action. Perhaps you lack the confidence to follow through on a daily basis. Maybe your motivation lags.
You may be struggling with inner and outer obstacles to your growth and transformation. Or maybe you are overwhelmed by the challenge of balancing the big picture (what you are up to in the world and what it takes to succeed) and the details (the daily actions that will make that happen); keeping them both in focus at the same time.
Whatever the reason, you’re not doing what it takes to have the success you vision while acting in a way consistent with your values.
That’s why I developed my targeted three-month laser coaching program for you. This program will give you the clarity, skills, confidence, and momentum you need to clear the way to your success in every area of your business and your life. Let’s get started! Get in touch today.
Magnolias West Gratitude Challenge 2012—Week one!
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein
I am so inspired by receiving the emails full of gratitude the last few weeks. It’s so moving to share gratitude with others. I read a lot about gratitude, the expressing and writing and sharing of what makes people happy and glad. As Nicola Alesandrini writes in her blog,
There are so many ways to express gratitude. Perhaps the most fundamental way is to grab a pen and make the grateful real by writing it down. Mail it to a friend, put it in a journal, or tie it onto a batch of homemade cookies for a neighbor. Or, gratitude can be read through poetry and simply noted mentally and internally.
However it happens, a pause and intentional moment of appreciation for the little moments and the huge universe that envelops us bring a moment of peace and purity to the every day.
Here are some of the gratitudes that sailed into my inbox this week that brought a big smile to my heart (or as Barbara C. calls them, notes from the land of Gratitudia!):
Barbara C. says she is grateful because “…I have a sense of humor”, that her husband “makes me laugh”, that her daughter, “…just came in, gave me a big hug and told me she would miss me.”
Kim P. is grateful that she “…finally bought the book The Artists Way“. She also says (many times), that “I love my little family life.”
Belinda R. reports that “I am grateful for a taste of liking myself.”
Here are my gratitudes for today:
I am grateful for a beautiful full moon ritual last night
I am grateful for robust health and ease in my body
I am grateful to hear from a body work practitioner that I have a good, well cared-for body
I am grateful for time with my sister at the gym, chatting and taking exquisite care of ourselves in the Pilates studio
I am grateful for mastering new technologies
I am grateful for every expression of gratitude that I express; I am not by nature a grateful woman, and this habit is grooving lovely new neural pathways in my psyche
I am grateful for the balmy weather, lots of sunshine
I am grateful for friends who have my back
I am grateful for my beautiful daughter
I am grateful for long hot baths on a Sunday morning
I am grateful for time with friends
I am grateful for writing and sharing my passion and commitment with others
And now I get to visit with friends in a post-holiday gathering. Time to finish the dish of roasted cauliflower, gold beets and sweet potatoes with a little curried coconut oil and ghee. YUM!
Onward to share conversation, food and laughter with friends.
May this day bring joy and ease to all…
Blessed be!
