Action Brings Courage

In a recent perusal of my favorite inspirational bloggers and speakers, I rediscovered and owned that my chosen method to accommodate my fears is to procrastinate. Ah yes. However,when I do this, I end up feeling ashamed that I am not getting on with making my purpose a reality and a shame storm repeats itself. More reading brought me this simple nugget of wisdom: Action brings Courage. 

Take any action towards the perceived goal and suddenly, it all feels better. The antidote to hopelessness and unworthiness is action. It immediately resets everything. The action says that you are not in fact stuck but in motion! And you feel suddenly relieved of the previous definition you had of you being lazy and unworthy.

The trick is to figure out how it is that you can keep yourself choosing this action which propels you a bit further and a bit further. I find talking about it gets me going. Handing over my intentions to other people becomes a form of accountability. They heard me say it so I now probably should do something about it. The idea of an action list with steps broken down and actually scheduled into your calendar is also a very crafty to outwit yourself.

But in the end, I suppose you should make double-decker sure that the thing you think you want is actually for you and not for someone else. And then just have compassion for yourself for putting it off. And start again. That is the current story of several different areas of my life which I will be sharing soon.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Drew’s Story of the Spinach Salad

Often we live and experience our lives through an expectation or understanding we developed as children and we’re sure that it is and will always be this way. How do we know our truths are absolute? A truth to us can be completely distorted until we come face to face with it.

Our friend Drew has a story he tells about being in a café in Ireland. And he looks on the menu and decides to order the Spinach salad. Apparently there were other elements that were being offered with the spinach that seemed appealing . His experience up to this point with spinach was that it is a great big green glob that comes in a can. But he figured he’d just eat around it when it came.

The salad comes out and he’s eating it and thinking how good it is and he’s wondering where the green glob is. He’s also relieved that the green glob isn’t there. And then it occurs to him that this yummy green leafy stuff that he’s been eating is spinach in its raw form. And he’s bowled over by how his perceptions and expectations can be so walled off from reality.

If I  attempt to try to do this or invest my expectations, I may surprised how what I think will happen may be far from the truth. How will I ever know what it is like having high self-esteem if I avoid the very risks that will allow for me to develop it. I live an assumption that my diet will always consist of lumpy green stuff and never take a chance to discover the genuine nourishment of the good stuff. 

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

On Bossing Yourself Around

Kids and big folks alike don’t want to be told what to do. At my house we jokingly say,”Because if you tell me to do it, I’m not gonna do it”. We quite openly use reverse psychology on our kids. “Hey Fiona, whatever you do, don’t go to the potty.” And off to the potty she goes. It works every time even though she knows exactly what we are up to. So bossing yourself can prove to be difficult as well.

I think a lot of us never grow out of that punk attitude of not wanting to be told what to do. Besides making it hard to follow instructions to maintain a job, this becomes another problem when we need to direct our own efforts. When we need to administrate and delegate our time and our efforts to meet our goals, we have to tell ourselves what to do and when to do it. If we just spend all of our time letting the wind decide which way we task ourselves, we may end up being quite upset at how we never seem to accomplish anything we think we should be doing.

I know that creativity is a priority for me. And I have read enough to know that I can not wait for the muse to show up to be inspired to write or draw. These days, I may just sit myself down in the morning while I’m still fresh and write or draw before the gym or the grocery shopping. Self-leadership is the term I now understand to mean guiding myself towards my goals. And coming from an undisciplined punk background, this is a steep concept to embody.

Self-trust is my biggest buzz word. Your “word” needs to be good to yourself before you are trustworthy to the world. If you say you will do something, be that to yourself or someone else, you need to do it and make your word good. Building the self-trust within yourself is the number one pathway I can see to authenticity and self-esteem. If you don’t trust you, you aren’t believing in your commitment and your importance to yourself. And none of my goals will mean anything to me anyway.

When we commit to guiding or “bossing” ourselves, and carry out our instructions, we prove we are worthy of the trust and we are building a relationship with ourselves. We are making friends with our Body Buddy.  The inner parent gets to boss but also gets to be proud of what you’ve accomplished. And this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

I Can Cards and Excerpts from my Journal

What could speak louder than the words I say to myself, in private. And it happens that some of those words are in written form in my journal, loud and clear for me to reread. I was struck by gratitude at rereading this excerpt and wanted to share my journal entry here so that you my reader could see what great self-talk sounds like.

“I am on the precipice of seeing myself as who I truly am and how that is valuable to the world.”

“Releasing my wholehearted story was/is magical. It is the story of creativity vs. anxiety. The magic of rediscovering hope. Of beginning again over and over. Of finding my own truths to live by. Of reparenting and reprioritizing my life and self-expression. Affirming, grounding, and cathartic.”

“And I must remember in the end it was me saying yes to the opportunity to prove (or disprove) theories about self. That is an amazing gift that I have denied myself. Except this time. And what I found was that I can put myself to a hard writing task and complete it. I can be edited and not die. I can write well and be truthful. I can put myself to a task and complete it on time, even ahead.”

And armed with this feeling of goodwill toward myself and my abilities, I wrote out some “Can Cards”. Squares within which I wrote all the things I know I can do.

I can write well. I can write with a deadline. I can write, edit, and complete. I can design an event and a window well. I can speak from my heart. I can master computer knowledge. I can design graphics. I can connect with people authentically. I can take and make beautiful pictures. I can ask for help. I can tell my story. I can art anytime I want. I can make friends. I can take time for myself. I can make money. I can parent my children well.

I give you these truths from my heart and my journal so that you may benefit from the understanding that we are ever-changing for the better. And self-trust and self-esteem are within our power to increase for our happier lives. I created all of this from what seemed like an abyss.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Following Your Intuition and Figuring It Out as You Go

First, we need to get something clear about life. You can have a well thought out life plan and have every intention of following some set recipe for living and, guaranteed, something happens to make you change your life course. While its nice to have an idea, be ready to throw it all out. Because life in all it’s quirkiness, is about the magic of the chance. It’s about guiding yourself with your intuition.

Your intuition is the one thing you can trust. Your intuition is always reliable. It will never let you down and will never speak to you in a mean way. Understand, that self-critical voice is not your intuition. And although it thinks it’s doing you a favor, it’s just stealing years from you. Pamper your intuition and she’ll take you happier places and you’ll still get it all done and more.

Second, you’ll figure it out as you go. If you got what you expected all the time, you’d probably be bored anyway. I’ve found that life is what happens when you are headed somewhere and you have to puzzle it out. Usually the solution isn’t something you’d have seen from far out but required you to be paying attention. And you’ll be proud of yourself. Do you trust yourself to do this well? You’ve got a good resolution resume already.

And PS, that place where you don’t know and you’re figuring it out? That’s creativity. People want to argue that they aren’t creative except, anytime you are drawing from life and your experiences, you are thinking and living creatively.

When you take a look at all the stuff you’ve gone through, built up, endured, achieved, and survived, there’s nothing that’s as scary or as big as all of that. Don’t forget yourself. Remember yourself and build from there.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.