Take Back Your Life!

“Whatever it is your heart desires, please go for it, it’s yours to have.” ~ Gloria Estefan

Too many of us put off living our most glorious lives. We use all sorts of excuses to stay emotionally safe: when I get more money, when the kids get older, when I retire, when we downsize, etc.
The problem with the do-it-later philosophy is that today’s excuses get replaced with tomorrow’s excuses. Ten years go by and you are still meaning to take that improv class or hike up Mt. Fuji or write a memoir about your childhood roaming through the rain forests of Borneo.

We act like our lives will last forever and we’ve got plenty of time to do that “X” we’ve always wanted to do. It’s hard to know how much time any of us has on the planet. All I’m sure about is that I have today and that’s the best time to commit to something new. Don’t think you are alone. I put off things as well. (more…)

I’ve discovered that imagination gets rusty when we don’t use it. As a young elementary school kid, I painted all kinds of wild pictures with nothing but my mind. No photos, no books, no anything.

I could conjure up what folks looked like, images, scenes from my yard. And I had a distinct style of semi-distortion. Over time, I stopped painting/drawing completely and then when I retook it up around the age of 39, I found it difficult to paint anything without some kind of crutch like a photo, etc

About two years ago, I took a drawing class and forced myself to draw only from my mind. I got better and better over time. In between classes, I might look at a picture of a ferris wheel, but once in class, I painted “wild.” (more…)

On Christmas Eve, I picked up the phone and called five friends, three were home, two were out. I hadn’t spoken to some of them in years. I’d been meaning to call. Yet, the days turned into months, the months into years. One was a best friend from grade school. We reminded each other of a tree we climbed in her backyard, a birch onto which we carved our initials and the initials of boys we liked. I wonder if that tree and the four sets of initials still exist? Thinking about the sets of initials reminded me of my favorite line from one of my favorite movies: The Summer of ’42, “Life is made up of small comings and goings, and for everything we take with us, there is something we leave behind.” We move forward in life, but little bits of us stay behind for others to find. If you haven’t seen that 1971 coming of age movie, I highly recommend it. It’s beautiful and tragic and uplifting and breathtaking. And has no special effects, unless you count the magical things we forget that nature can do.  (more…)

So, I went into the library the other day and saw this book in the new book section called: Social Media Is Bull Shit by BJ Mendelson.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve been feeling fatigued by social media the past few months and thought it might make a good discussion here on social media! Should a discussion on the potential bullshitedness of social media be conducted on-line or in person? Good question.

Can you believe that discussing this topic gave me enough energy to write a blog post?

Maybe I’ve been too engaged with face-to-face interaction in my town and my creativity group, not sure. Actually, the past few weeks I’ve been commenting on this leadership group on Linked In that found me and invited me to join. I must say that I’ve found the questions really intriguing. Is that BS? Not sure.

Anyway, I think part of the social media BS phenom seems to revolve around the promise of making a gazillion dollars if you just spend enough for a high end coach – like $50,000 and up for a year. If you do that they say, then you’ll make it in the biz world. If you don’t want to spend that money (to make them a gazillionaire), then you are somehow not invested in yourself.

Those arguments make me crazy. I tend to think that the earlier folks in the social media pyramidish scheme made it big and the late comers have a harder time because so many folks now understand that it is a pyramid of sorts. I had to get rid of so many newsletters because everyone sounded the same because they were trained by folks who coached them on what to say based on what they were coached to say. Those templates that get passed around.

I’m doing well with my face-to-face organic marketing campaigns. I do good for the world and meet folks that way. Often my clients aren’t the people I meet doing good, but friends of friends who get referred by the folks I’m doing good with or take time to have coffee/tea with. And I’m not doing that to even get clients. I do it because it makes me feel like I’m contributing to the world in some way.

I enjoy listening to folks and sharing my own experiences in the hopes it might be of use to them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I do the thing that makes me feel good – which is speaking out – and if folks want that they contact me.

I’ve met some wonderful folks on social media and that part is bullhumble (golly, is that even a word? I’m trying to find the opposite of bullshit.). It’s the template training that feels fraudulent to me.

How about you? What’s your take on social media? Is it really even social?

thanks! G.

Hello all,

Beginning something new can be really hard for people. They get scared they will fail, so they don’t even start. The right answer syndrome is the most likely culprit. Years of being trained to only see one answer acts as an anti-catalyst. People don’t want to be wrong. They don’t want to fail. They don’t want to feel embarrassed.

We all need encouragement to try new things, to go for new adventures, to try all the things we want to do but that often get relegated to life’s back burner. I had a boyfriend encourage me to sing when I’d been told I had a terrible voice. As it turns out, I didn’t have a terrible voice. His encouragement changed my life. Make that, saved my life. It had a ripple effect across my entire being – from my enthusiasm to my attitude to my self-esteem.  Thank you ex-boyfriend! (more…)

Recently, I returned from vacationing (hiking) in southern Utah. A beautiful and spiritual place. While in the Bryce Canyon National Park Lodge, I stumbled on a book called, “Listening With Your Heart: Lessons from Native America.” Part of me said, “don’t buy it, you’ve got way too many books living in your home already.” But another part said, “This book is calling out to you, bring it home.”

It offers sayings, chants and suggestions to improve your health. Honestly, just being in the wilderness improved my health. I slowed down. I revved up my creativity. I used my body. I met new people. I witness the darkest sky I’ve ever seen. I listened to the birds. I fed my body with delicious food. I opened my eyes to new possibilities. I hiked about 3 miles up a river to a slot canyon that required all my muscular and staying in the moment strengths. (See pic of me sloshing up ahead. Lots of slippy rapids with rocks to traverse, often up to my upper thighs. This part was pretty calm and not too rocky.) (more…)

I’m on this constant non-fiction book adventure. One book enters my life and it leads me to another, and so on and so forth.

Recently, I picked up 29 Gifts: How A Month of Giving Can Change Your Life.

Something about making someone else’s life easier appeals to me. I see so much suffering in the world that I’ve begun to wonder if giving is the answer to all the world’s problems.

The author, Cami Walker, develops MS a month after her wedding. She ends up in a lot of pain, on a lot of prescription drugs, and with a compromised quality of life. Then she meets Mbali Creazzo, an African medicine woman. Her prescription for Cami’s MS? Give away 29 gifts in 29 days. And so Cami does.

Mbali says, “The best way to attract abundance into your life is to be in a perpetual state of giving and gratitude.”

Most of the gifts are small and simple like saving a seat, buying a homeless man tacos, passing along a book, offering some kind words, writing a friend a letter, spending time with a friend or giving your cat a belly rub. But she also suggests giving away something you feel you can’t live without. I did this about 4 years ago. I gave my sister a new shirt I loved because she said she liked it but didn’t have the money to buy it because of her layoff. At first I didn’t think I could give away the shirt. It was mine. It was pretty. It was rare. Then I decided that’s exactly why I should give it away — to liberate myself from materials things.

Cami feels stronger and better with each day of gift giving. She stops needing her cane to walk around the block, takes on consulting jobs, gets closer to her husband. She comes alive and says, “Today, I’m part of a large group of people committee to the vision of a worldwide goodwill movement. Our collective mission is to create a grass roots revival of the giving spirit in the world.”

I love that reason to get up in the morning! Beautiful.

Cami also mentions one of Mahatma Gandhi’s coolest quotes, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Volunteering on various town committees in service to my town gave my life a whole new dimension in fullness. I meet other giving folks and make a lasting impact in my own backyard, which ripples across the planet.

I’m going to do this 29 gifts beginning September 15 and blog about it every few weeks. If you, too, want to give 29 gifts, please visit Cami’s site and sign up: 29 Day Giving Challenge.

As a child I saw the movie Pollyanna starring Haley Mills and never forgot it, especially the scenes where prisms created rainbows on the walls. As an adult, I used to frequent antique stores looking for a lamp just like the one I saw in the movie. I wanted pretty rainbows to dance  on my walls, too.

Recently, I rented the film in the children’s section of the library. I’ve watched it twice. Even better than I remembered because the moral of the story clearly seemed directed at adults. In the film, Pollyanna Whittier’s parents die, so she goes to live in a huge Victorian with her wealthy, spinster aunt Polly Harrington in the town of Harrington. Polly treats her in a cold manner, even giving her a small, dusty room way up in the attic. But Pollyanna’s grateful for the room because she’s never had her own room. (more…)

Hello wild things,

Real writing, the kind that comes from deep inside, will reveal what you want out of life, what’s missing, what’s in the way. We’ve been so molded from the outside in to conform with the consumer mindset, that we sometimes forget our truer selves live inside and they want something different, something unique.

For me, I had to find a way to get that side of me outside so it could free the rest of me. (more…)

A friend sent me a short film clip that explains why it’s so hard to save things that matter to the heart, like nature. It highlights the book by Charles Eisenstein called, “Sacred Economics.” He traces the origins of money and talks about the need to return to the gift economy, where people actually need each other. In our present economy, nature becomes a commodity we destroy to make stuff, to fuel an economy that doesn’t celebrate our humanness.