A Quality Live

 

Thoughts held over time greatly affect all areas of our lives.  The quality of the thoughts we think creates the quality of the lives we live.  Christiane Northrup MD

What does a quality life look like for me?  What do I need and want for a quality life?

• Safety:   I need to know that my children are well.  I need to feel secure about my finances.  Have things paid for and be able to help my children if they need it 
• Connected with Grace:  Prayer, meditation 
• Connection with family and friends:  I need to feel that my relationships are solid and in a good place with friends and family
• Order:  I need to have my finances in good order.  I need to have my home orderly and tidy
• Gratitude:  I write down what I am grateful for every day, so I remember, this improves the quality of my days and therefor my life
• Authenticity:  I need to be honest with myself and those around me, I need to feel like I am living from and offering others truth
• Intention-being very clear about why I am doing the things that I do
• Attitude-show your wisdom not your scars
• Solitude:  I need time to myself to read and think and pray.  To sort things out in my own mind. To energize
• Something to look forward to:  This can be big or small.  Just knowing something is upcoming that I want or will bring me comfort.  It can be big like a vacation or knowing that I an going to do the wash and have clean sheets on Friday
• Healthy: To feel healthy and energetic
• Nature: Be it the garden or a walk by the coulee.  To be in Nature makes me feel present and at home.  It gives me comfort
• Contributing: I need to feel that I am making someone else life better in some way
• Creativity:  Making something.  Painting, writing, crafting, learning
• Dogs:  I will always have a dog.  They add warmth to my life
• Books:  Books give me comfort, knowledge, escape...they have added to my life in so many ways
• Curiosity: Doing and trying new things.  Learning new things.  Anything from a vacation to a new food.  Doing something different.
• Confident:  To feel confident in myself and in my own skin
• Beauty:  Flowers, colors, nature
• Learning:  I have a natural curiosity and love learning new things, classes, skills, ideas

This list may be something I add to over time, but I definitely want to include these to age well and have them be part of my life path.

The Weight

 

You have been criticizing yourself for years, try approving of yourself and see what happens. Louise Hay

 

I didn't want to put anything about weight in this blog/diary/book/mirror, but it is the elephant in the room.  I don't feel authentic by not including it.  The weight has been such a big part of my life that I have to write about it.  I have to.  It would not be honest to ignore it. There is no ignoring it any longer.  It has taken on a life of its own. It is now the greatest obstacle in my life.  It hinders me socially.  I stay home and don't attend social events because I am embarrassed by my weight.  I have shamed myself.

I have been doing the last supper thing for a while now.  You know what that is?  You binge-even to the point of eating more than want because you're going to start your diet tomorrow.  Then, because it all just sucks, so, so much, you don't start your diet tomorrow and you hate yourself even more.  You hate yourself not just for being fat but for lying to yourself, again...  How can I say I am an authentic person if I lie to myself all the time?

How do I keep my promises to myself?  JUST DO IT.  The most profound words I have ever been given came from Crystal Star Weaver, a hippy dippy from Sedona who told me what I needed to hear:

"No more trying.

Just do it.

Keep loving yourself until you really feel it in your heart"

What would happen if I really lived by this?  What would happen?  I would stop lying to myself because I would be putting in the effort.  Just maybe if I stopped lying to myself, I could move to loving myself wholly, at a 10 level and in turn love others at a 10 level.   Right now, I don't feel that I can love myself at that level.  I realize that is conditional self-love and it makes me uncomfortable.  Do you really love yourself if it is conditional?  I don't think so. Even worse-am I loving others conditionally-that makes me want to vomit.  That is exactly what I don't want to do!

I ask for the Grit and Grace to change my body and my mindset.

Growth

 Every moment of one's existence, one is growing into more or retreating into less   Norman Mailer

I want to grow into more and I don't just mean my pants size!

As I am starting and tending seeds this week, I couldn't help but think about growth. I can't say that I have built bridges or saved starving orphans from fire in my life, but I have tried, throughout my whole personhood I have tried to grow as a human being.

I think back when I went to college.  I was completely socially awkward and inept.  I had no social skills.  I didn't have a clue who I was.  I was human Jello, molding myself into whatever I thought anyone wanted me to be. 

I don't know what stirred me to look at personal growth.  I think it started with the desire to fit in better and to learn some social skills.  I am a curious person, and that curiosity has grown as I age.  I believe my growth started by observing other people.  What they thought, how they acted and what they said and did.  A big part of my growth occurred in college. That people could be different from me without being wrong.  Suspending judgment was a big component of my growth.  Holding judgement and being willing to listen to other points of view.  I didn't grow up with that so that was my first big leap.

The second big leap came with being stressed at work.  I got into management which requires dealing with people, so I started reading books and listening to cassette tapes on how to control stress and manage people.  

Another big leap came with unhappiness in my marriage and that led me to look at myself and what role I was playing.  If I had the money, I spent on self-help books through the years I could have retired 5 years earlier.  From those books I began to look at how I grew up and how that formed me as a person.  It allowed me to look at my responses in a different way.  Was I reacting out of a childhood reflex or was I responding as a rational adult who is conscious of my ethics and values and the effect that my action has on others.

It is an evolution for sure.  Each step leading to growth of my character and values.  I know I have grown in compassion and my ability to forgive.  At this point I have moved on from self-help-did that quite some time ago-along with looking for that recipe for happiness.  Now I read books by spiritual leaders and from their ideas put thought into how I can grow as a person of character and compassion both for myself and to share with others. 

So, the question is now, what have I learned that I can translate into action that sparks joy in my life and opens me to give joy to others?  What are action steps within my values that will move me forward?

Spirit-solitude, connection with the divine, prayer, nature, meditation, gratitude

Authenticity- truth, integrity, knowing my intention, being present

Connection-family, friends, community, nature, spirit

Contentment- order, organization-home and finances, security

Creativity- growth, learning interest, adventure

Health- being comfortable in my own skin, strong, vibrant

Kindness- unconditional acceptance, seeing the light in all I meet, knowing others are doing the best they can 

My mission is to connect with Spirit so I in turn live authentically, creatively and vibrantly while offering unconditional acceptance to others.

Accomplishment

 I try to accomplish a little something every day  

  My Mom

I have done a number of surveys and tests to define my values.  The one that comes up for me loud and clear is accomplishment.  Even though I don't really want it to be one of my values.  It feels like striving without purpose.  I suppose, looking at it as a positive, it is hopeful and giving each day purpose no matter how small.  

Perhaps if I look at accomplishment as the action steps needed to follow through on other values like authenticity and connection that makes it a bit of a positive in the bigger picture. 

I know I have used accomplishment in the past as an escape mechanism.  Keeping myself so busy accomplishing random tasks that I didn't have time to think about my life.  During those times accomplishment was not a positive it was a way to hide myself, so I didn't have to address what was or was not working in my life.

I, personally, need to be very careful with accomplishment, to use it for good and not to escape real life.  Tasks are not more important than people... ever.  

As with most everything it is the intention that is the deciding factor.  If accomplishment is being used for good-aligning with other values and giving life purpose or for evil-escaping from life and hiding behind the armor of business.

Maybe, with the right intention, accomplishment is purpose-hope and grace in action.

No More Trying

 "No more trying. Just do it. Choose it. Keep loving yourself until you really feel it deep in your heart."  Crystal Starr Weaver

In the-just do it-category I would like to relate a small epiphany I had a few years ago during a trip to Sedona.  Two friends and I signed up to walk the Medicine Wheel with Crystal Starr Weaver.  I know the name would make you wonder about legitimacy, but she was a wonderfully authentic and deeply spiritual person. I found walking the Medicine Wheel with her to be one of the most profound experiences of my life.  That experience was the beginning of this journey. After a good smudging she led us to the parking lot sized Medicine Wheel, the first question was, "how much do you love yourself on a scale of one to ten?"  Yikes, I started silently crying and with tears running down my face said a four.  She said that you must love yourself as a ten. We are only capable of loving others as much as we love ourselves.  

That was an earth mover.  My children are the light of my world, and I was only loving them at a four?  That opened up a can of worms that has yet to have a lid.  When I said I would try to love myself at a ten, Crystal Staff Weaver said, "No more trying. Just do it. Choose it. Keep loving yourself until you really feel it deep in your heart."  

I am, at last, at a point where I am ready to live those words and that is where this pilgramage of Grit and Grace has begun, Do I love myself at a ten level right now?  No, but I'm up to about an 8 so I've doubled it since my epiphany moment.  That is what this pilgrimage is about, loving myself at a ten so I can love others at a ten.  

The Path of Hope

 Beautiful days do not come to you.  You must walk towards them.  Rumi

 

A pilgrimage is the travel of a pilgrim.  One of Webster's definitions of a pilgrim is one who travels to a holy site.  That feels exactly right for me.  Life is a pilgrimage.  Traveling to become my best self. feels a lot like holy work.  Don't we want to be the best souls we can be and pick up wisdom and kindness along the way?  That is what I want.  I want to learn, offer kindness and become a better person step by step.

I start by moving forward with what I have:  Gratitude and Intention. I'll find the rest as I go and change direction if I need be. 

The point of a pilgrimage is moving forward while paying attention. Not, contemplation, writing, and philosophizing but the action of putting one foot in front of the other to find out what is up ahead that can't be seen from where I am today.  That sounds a lot like hope.  That sounds a lot like Grit and Grace.

Movin on....

ABC Always Be Conscious

 If we are numb for the bad moments, we are numb for the good ones too   Brene Brown

 Always Be Conscious is one of my mantras.  

The thing about a trauma filled childhood is that to live through the tough times we develop ways to separate ourselves from the present.  I used food and fantasy to remove myself from reality because it was just too difficult for a little girl to stay present.  As a young married adult, I was so focused on building the perfect family I was two steps ahead of what I was actually doing. To numb the pain of perfection I smoked and when I quit smoking, I ate.  By numbing the present moment, we numb the good feelings and the bad. Allowing ourselves to feel our feelings in real time releases the bad feelings instead of holding them in our cells and forcing us to use the plunger of addiction to keep them forced down. The same holds true for the good moments, if we felt those feelings instead of numbing them, we would remember the good times more clearly.  Isn't that what we want? Release what doesn't serve us and hold on to the moments of Grace.

I have a few strategies I have been using to stay conscious on this journey.

1.  Breath work:  Just breathing, feeling my breaths or saying a mantra like So Hum

2.  Gratitude:  As I go through the day, I look for things to be grateful for

3.  No numbing:  On this journey I will not numb with alcohol, food or by being two steps ahead of the moment. I was going to write try not to numb but want to remain true to: No more trying.  Just do it.  Choose it.  Keep loving yourself until you really feel it deep in your heart.  

I will just do it, I choose it.