A little Wednesday wake up call I wrote for myself. Take it as your own if it feels right ❤

Hey you. It’s okay to sit still for awhile. It’s okay to stay where there is comfort and with what seems stable and secure. It’s okay to rest and recoup. To recharge and regain some energy and strength. It’s okay to wait and ponder. To not know and not move until things become more clear. It’s okay to do nothing if nothing seems to be working.

There will come a time though, that in order to grow, to expand, to create, to learn, to love yourself and others better, to listen to your wise and beautiful heart, that you will need to risk. And risk BIGTIME. You will need to jump off that cliff, arms and legs flailing, not knowing when you will reach the ground. You will need to step on that new path, in total darkness, and it may be rockier than you expect and may have tons of twists and turns. You will need to break down the walls of that nice comfy space you have built around your heart and your life, that feel like your safety and your protection, and venture into unfamiliar openness and the most vulnerable depths of yourself.

Risking will probably at the least feel uncomfortable. It may freak you out and push you up against every limit you think you have. It may scare you so shitless that you want to curl up and close your eyes and pretend that the call to move isn’t happening. But if you can accept all that fear, set it aside for a moment or two, take a deep breath and ground yourself in stillness and quiet, when you think about that next step, that leap, that movement into the new, it will also feel like freedom and peace and truth, and have a warmth to it, like you are coming HOME.

You can do it. Every ounce of courage needed is already within you. You were built for leaps of brave boldness. You were meant to have a life that is full of rich, beautiful, moving, jump up and down with joy experiences. You were meant for wide open, fall back and be caught love, and big, big dreams come true.

It is no longer time to play it safe and small. The world needs you to be all you were meant to be. Take a risk baby. It is so worth it. xoxo ‪#‎riskbig‬‪#‎goforit‬ ‪#‎danggoodlife‬

 

“It’s not about having more time in your life, it’s about having more life in your time.”-Martha Beck

I have been thinking a lot lately about what really makes up a “successful” life. My daughter just graduated from high school last week, and it seems like this is the time that lots of talk happens from college brochures, graduation speeches, and other outside forces, on how to set yourself up for success and have a good life. Of course much of this advice is focused on how our culture defines success, usually involving a high paying job, a nice house and car and other “things”, a long lasting marriage, well behaved, smart kids, and then after these things are in place, you get to feel happy and secure and ride on that train for the rest of your life. Most of us come to see after living adult life for awhile that this definition of success has a lot of holes in it, and even if it is achieved, while we may have a lot of stuff filling up our lives, inside there is an emptiness, as the feelings we thought “success” would give us, like happiness, security and contentment, don’t seem to happen as a result.

Luckily, there is a big shift starting to occur in our society, and more and more people are starting to question what a successful life really is. We are starting to buck up against the still very strong messages of our culture, and look inward to our own personal definitions of what success is and how it looks as it plays itself out in our lives. I have had so many inspiring conversations recently with people who are choosing to trust the directions that their inner compasses are telling them to go, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense and others are being critical of their choices. And not surprisingly, for many of them, a lot of dang good stuff has started to happen, in pretty cool and unexpected ways.

So I wanted to sit down and write a bit on some new ideas for living a successful life. This is kind of my own personal guidebook, a compilation of meaningful nuggets that have risen to the top for me over the years. Everyone’s guidebook I’m sure will look different, a unique gathering of inner knowings based on personal experiences and the lessons learned from them. I share mine as a jump start to really spending some time getting to know exactly what living a successful life means to you, and using this knowledge to chart your own course, in your own way.

So here goes: 🙂

What does success mean to me?

It means feeling free and content and a sense of purpose in my life. It means feeling all of my feelings and letting them transform and expand me. It means waking up each day grateful to be on this planet and for all that I have. It means earning money doing work that feels meaningful and fun and challenging and an expression of my gifts. It means using money to care for myself and others, engage in activities I feel passionate about and have fun doing, and to add sprinkles of meaningful beauty to wherever I may call home. It means loving hard and as unconditionally as possible, and being loved hard and as unconditionally as possible. It means helping the world to be a better place for others. It means knowing I am part of something bigger, something so peaceful, something Divine.

So how do I show up to create this successful life?

Be kind. It makes a huge difference in the world.

Be courageous. There will always be fear. Leap anyway.

Be in each moment as fully as possible. It is the only thing real and is where all the peace and magic lives.

Find your people. Cherish them.

Find what feels like bliss. Do it. And then do it again.

Find the blessings in everything. Even when it is so dark, keep looking for the light. It is there. Always.

Spend time in nature. It grounds and reminds you that you are part of everything.

Spend time doing things that make you say “Hell Yes!” You have a choice on how to spend your hours.

Spend time with people that inspire you, love you, encourage you, accept you and that are fun! You can love everyone, but don’t have to hang out with them if they drag you down.

Give your time to help others. It is one of your critical jobs on the planet.

Give the unique gifts you have been blessed with to the world. They make a difference.

Give your love freely and without conditions. This may be one of the biggest challenges and also one of the most important in order to create big, beautiful relationships.

Explore new places. It will expand you and connect you to the world in ways that otherwise would not happen.

Explore what feels delicious and exciting and what feels like freedom. These things may also come with a side of being scared, exploring involves adventure into the unknown.

Explore the depths of your soul. Listen to the quiet voices that lead you to what you love.

Know that you will make mistakes. Just learn.

Know that you will disappoint others at times. Be kind, ask for forgiveness when needed, and stay true to your path.

Know that there will be loss and it will hurt. Feel your grief fully and let it open you to more compassion and appreciation and to loving bigger and better.

Make art. In any which way your creative expression wants to come out, let it play.

Make love. Make it with your whole heart, your whole body, your whole spirit. When the connection is big and right, physical intimacy cracks you open to your most precious, vulnerable and giving self, and it is a most sacred sharing with another. Plus, it is damn fun.

Make miracles. Your words, your gift of listening to another, your compassion can set off beautiful chain reactions in the world.

Believe in yourself. You really can do this. Have faith. Trust big time.

Believe that you are love itself. Let it flow out of all of you. Every nook and every cranny.

Believe in the Divine. You are always loved. Always safe. Always connected. Always one.

Here’s to a successful life. 🙂

XOXO

 

Memo for Monday: You are lovable. No matter what. Every little bit of you. Come rain, come shine. Come good and bad. At your finest, and at your worst. When things work out, and when they go wrong. Your lovability doesn’t get less or more. It just is a given. Because you are you, and you are here.

Somewhere along the lines, we tend to get pretty backasswards-y about our lovability. We start to put conditions on it. I am lovable if I act kind and loving. I am lovable if people are happy with me. I am lovable if I have a great job or earn lots of money or have a partner. I am lovable if I look good. I am lovable if I do everything right, etc. The truth though is that we are lovable even if we don’t meet up to our conditions or standards. Our lovability isn’t conditional at all, that is just a story that we have been taught, and learned so well, that most of the time we don’t even realize that we are playing it out, and causing ourselves and others pain in the process.

I would venture to say that a huge amount of our dysfunctional ways of acting come from an underlying feeling of not being lovable. It can cause us to judge others, contribute to addictions, cause us to get on an endless quest to be more and have more, cause us to act in unloving ways to ourselves and others. To feel unlovable is to carry around a separateness and an emptiness because we have forgotten the truth about ourselves. We are completely and 100% lovable, just because. And as much as external things, such as the love of others, can reflect to us this truth, to base our lovability on anything other than our own knowledge of it deep inside our being, is shaky business.

One of the quickest and most effective ways to own your lovability more and more, is to accept and give love to the darkest parts of yourself. These are those things that you feel shame around, find totally unacceptable, and want to hide from others or yourself. For years I carried around a huge amount of shame that I felt needy of love and feeling special, and played that out by trying to show the world how independent and “together” I was. But inside I didn’t feel this at all, and would tend to hang on too tight to people and for too long. As I began to start to accept and give love to that needy part of myself that I thought was very unlovable and wanted to hide from the world, I started to calm down inside. The shame started to lift. I started to share this part of myself with some safe people in my life. I started to feel how I was lovable even when I was in this space. And this part of me began to heal.

We all have our struggles. Our wounds. Our dark spots. We all have times when we have acted in ways that we regret. Sometimes we have screwed up big time and hurt others. Being able to take these parts of us, of our humanness, and offer acceptance and love and forgiveness if necessary, to ourselves, helps us take huge leaps on the journey to self love. And not surprisingly, from feeling how lovable we are, we grow as people and make positive changes in the areas we want to and we show up and love others better. It is a beautiful and peaceful space to live in and from.

So today, take a moment to think of the conditions you put on your lovability. Question that a bit. Think of how the real truth might be that you are lovable as is, right now, every part of you. The good the bad and the ugly. You are lovable when you do something loving and when you are being critical. You are lovable when you get it right, and when you make mistakes. You are lovable when others are pleased with you and when they are pissed. You are lovable when you have money in savings and when you are in debt. You are lovable when you are fit and when you weigh more than you want. You are lovable when others stay and when others go. You are lovable when you have your shit together and when your shit has you in it’s grasp. Your lovability is a constant. It is a given. Come to know it. To feel it in your bones and in the depths of your heart. You are lovable. You are love.

XOXO