Take Back Your Life!

Perhaps this has happened to you. There’s someone you want to call but you feel nervous about it because you either have something to tell this person you think s/he may not want to hear or you’re harboring some negative feelings.

The best solution is to take out a piece of paper and write down 5-10 things you love about this person. Before you call reread the list until you feel nothing but love or warm feelings toward the person you need to call.

This will make all the difference in your own attitude when you call. It will make it easier for you to ask questions so you understand where this person is coming from. Let’s face it everyone is coming from somewhere and it helps if you know where that is. Then you can tell them where you’re coming from.

Makes it easier to find a footpath you can both walk along together.

In honor of women all over the world fighting for their rights, I’ve resurrected something I wrote several years ago. Hope it inspires you in some way …

I enjoy writing because it forces me to reveal my vulnerable side not only to the reader, but also to myself. Back in my late teens and twenties, I often felt trapped behind a locked emotional door. I’d bang, bang, bang on that little window pane hoping somebody, anybody would unlock it, but no one ever did. Knuckles bruised and bleeding, I’d slump down and wonder, “Is anyone ever going to rescue me?”

Many life experiences later, I discovered that the only person powerful enough to rescue me from behind that door was Giulietta. That I have always been the heroine of my own life.

And so have you.

You see, the “theys” don’t want us to know that each one of us has a pair of ruby slippers tucked away in a locked room. Special designer shoes capable of transforming our tentative girlanistas into confident, powerful heroines who can leap tall solar-powered shopping carts in a single glass pump bound. The “theys” prefer we shuffle around with our heads down waiting to be rescued by a bouquet, a mate, a job title, a compliment, a new hair color.

Ladies, what do you say we unlock that room, put on our personal ruby slippers and do something heroic today? Maybe sign up for that course you’ve been circling in the continuing ed catalog for the past three years or get all fired up and pen that “letter to the editor” about a better way to run “fill-in-the-blank” or go down to your local animal shelter and show some timid feral cats a little love?

Muse thx

Giulietta
(click, click, click)

Back in the posting saddle. Went to NYC/Brooklyn to celebrate my birthday and check a few things off my bucket list. Finally rode (survived?) The Cyclone at Coney Island. Glad I didn’t know what was coming.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Hadn’t read up on it, so I got into a roller coaster car and began the chug up to the top not really knowing (or remembering from Space Mountain) what was coming.

That 85 foot drop sure woke me up.

Nothing like feeling you’re doing a freefall with nothing but a padded bar keeping you from being hurtled into the stratosphere.

Top speeds: 60 mph. And it felt like it.

The Cyclone’s been around since 1927. It looks it. It feels like it.

Scary as hell. No make that way scarier than hell. But what a sense of accomplishment when you get off.

Felt brave. Make that real brave.

Hey there,

The best way to get over any fear is to go into it. I’ve always been afraid of rollercoasters. Barely survived a hellish ride on Space Mountain at Disney World in high school. This weekend I’m going to Coney Island to ride The Cyclone. I’m doing it to get over this fear. Have visualized myself leaning into the curves, loving the down hills, standing in line to go a second time around.

It’s supposed to rain, but I’m hoping it holds out long enough for me to do this ride, this flight into fear to get over fear. I used to run away from my fears. Now, I turn around and head straight towards them. The more I do this the less fears I have.

Any fears you’d like to get over?

I’m really into my Four Agreements Card Deck by Don Miguel Ruiz. The cards are physically gorgeous and the words spiritually beautiful. I’ve got a few missing because I give them away when I teach certain life shops. Gave some away in my Letting Go life shop. When they are gone, I’ll buy more. The one I picked for today reads “Replace Fear With Love.”

This is a life lesson I am working on. When I’m fearful of a situation, which usually means a person, I try to close my eyes before talking with him or her and think loving thoughts of this person. You can do this too.

Imagine the person. Then list three things you love about him or her. (yes, you can come up with three.) Then when you talk to him/her, you’ll be coming from a place of love.

Try it!

The best thing you can do for yourself, to live a truly memorable life, is to take off your mask. Sometimes it seems like we’re attending this non-stop costume party, relating and reacting to phony versions of each other. Can’t think of anything more painful or pointless.

The worst time of my life was my twenties. I wore someone else’s mask over my face. I did what I thought a person wearing that kind of mask would do until I connected my unhappiness with the mask. It took a lot of prying but I finally ripped it off.

Revealing the real me felt scary at first but I stuck with it and now I wouldn’t have it any other way

How about you? Is your mask fully off?

Most of us rarely conquer our fears because we run away from the fear. The secret is to move toward it, to see it as your greatest teacher. Fear acts as a lighthouse, guiding your way to the path you need to be on.

After years of emailing, I realized awhile back that I’d gotten afraid to call people up and tell them how I felt ear-to-ear. Now I do that as well as face-to-face. I feel WAY more powerful.