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How to Determine What to Focus On in Your Life

Casey Slide is a mother, wife, Chris­t­ian, and engi­neer liv­ing in the Atlanta area. In addi­tion to jug­gling many pas­sions in her life, she shares her tips and insights for lifestyle and finan­cial top­ics on the Money Crash­ers per­sonal finance blog.

Like many peo­ple, I can never seem to find enough time to do every­thing that I need and want to do. With only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, there is no way to squeeze it all into my life.

On a daily basis, I find myself strug­gling as to what aspect of my life I should focus my atten­tion: prepar­ing healthy foods, edu­cat­ing my son, learn­ing how to save money and make money, enrich­ing my prayer life, exer­cis­ing, spend­ing time with friends and fam­ily, and prac­tic­ing my var­i­ous hob­bies. All of these are impor­tant, but by attempt­ing to focus on all of them, I spread myself too thin.

So how do you deter­mine what to focus on in life? To find an answer, you must first answer a series of other questions.

Ques­tions to Ask Yourself

1. Am I Expe­ri­enc­ing Any­thing That Is Life-threatening?

Obvi­ously, if you are in imme­di­ate dan­ger, you’ll be attend­ing to that issue, but this ques­tion goes much deeper than that. Is there any­thing that is going on in your life that is going to harm you if you don’t deal with it? For exam­ple, do you have a seri­ous med­ical con­di­tion that requires attention?

Con­sider your eat­ing and exer­cis­ing habits, as well as your men­tal and over­all health by going to your physi­cian for a pre­ven­ta­tive care check-up. Your doc­tor will be able to tell you if  you are at risk for any poten­tial health prob­lems and what you should focus on now to pre­vent them. If your doc­tor tells you that you are over­weight and have high blood pres­sure and cho­les­terol mak­ing you at risk for heart dis­ease and dia­betes, you need to focus on mak­ing lifestyle changes now in order pre­vent these life-threatening conditions.

2. Are My Rela­tion­ships Strained?

You may be expe­ri­enc­ing var­i­ous forms of stress in your life, but if you do not have some­one whom you trust and who you know will stand by your side, you will be a lot less capa­ble to take on the chal­lenges of daily life. As com­mu­nal beings we need each other for moral and phys­i­cal sup­port. With­out a sup­port sys­tem, we often become unmo­ti­vated and depressed.

If you find your­self say­ing “yes” to this ques­tion, aim your focus at repair­ing tense or bro­ken rela­tion­ships, espe­cially with your spouse. This can be par­tic­u­larly uncom­fort­able if you are deal­ing with finan­cial infi­delity in your mar­riage, but be the big­ger per­son by mak­ing the first move.

3. Are My Finances Suffering?

Once you know you are phys­i­cally healthy and that your rela­tion­ships are healthy, ask your­self if your finances are healthy. You can do this by exam­in­ing the following:

  • Do you have a bud­get you follow?
  • Does your income exceed your expenses?
  • Are you sav­ing for retirement?
  • Are you debt-free?

If you answered “yes” to these ques­tions, fan­tas­tic. If not, then it’s time to get to work on a per­sonal bud­get. You may also want to con­sider ways to make extra money in order to pay down debt, build up your sav­ings, or pre­pare and plan for retire­ment.

Once you have a han­dle on your finances, you can then switch your focus to thriv­ing finan­cially. Per­haps you may even want to start think­ing about how to become a mil­lion­aire!

4. Is There Some­thing I Could Learn That Would Enrich My Life?

I love to learn new things, and there is often so much on my “to-learn” list that I don’t know where to start. So not only is there a ques­tion of if I should focus on learn­ing some­thing, there is also the ques­tion of what I should focus on learning.

The best way to approach this is to first con­sider learn­ing about any­thing that will enrich your qual­ity of life. Per­haps you can learn some­thing to help you save money, such as coupon­ing, cook­ing more nutri­tious foods, or start­ing your own veg­etable garden.

Also con­sider learn­ing things that could enrich your spir­i­tual or prayer life; this will bring you peace and may even be another way to dis­cern where to direct your focus.

5. Where Do I Want to Be in Five Years?

Really, the ques­tion is, what do you want to do with your life? Is there a new career that you would like to pur­sue? If the pro­fes­sion requires school­ing, train­ing, or expe­ri­ence, you will need to devote some of your focus to get­ting that process started.

Is there a goal that you would like to reach? One of my goals is to run a full marathon at some point in my life. When the time is right for me to achieve that goal, I’ll need to make the train­ing my focus.

6. What Are My Passions?

We only live one life, so don’t waste your time on things that do not mat­ter to you. Does it really mat­ter that you watch that TV show? Do you really need to spend an hour on Face­book check­ing the sta­tuses of your for­mer high school friends?

No, you don’t. You need to get up, get out, and start liv­ing. Fig­ure out what really mat­ters to you and make those things your focus. Don’t waste your time and energy on things that you will regret.

Final Thoughts

It can be over­whelm­ing to think about all the ways you can spend liv­ing your life, but the key is to focus on the most impor­tant things while let­ting the rest fall into place.

Once you have a han­dle on areas of your life, such as your health, your rela­tion­ships, and your finances, expand your focus to include goals and pas­sions. Don’t over­whelm your­self by tak­ing on too much, and know that each poten­tial focus has its time and place.

What are you focus­ing on in your life?

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Life
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Our Town ~ An Actor’s Experience

“The pur­pose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste expe­ri­ence to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and with­out fear for newer and richer expe­ri­ences.” ~ Eleanor Roo­sevelt

Today I have Greg Ryan with us.  I met Greg in June of this year, dur­ing our time together work­ing on the play “Our Town”, which we both per­formed in.  Greg is here, shar­ing what this act­ing expe­ri­ence has meant for him.

Greg and I had a cou­ple of scenes we were in together, and I’m really tempted to keep call­ing him Mr. Webb (his stage name)!

With that…Greg (errr…Mr. Webb), take it away!

An Actor’s Experience

Com­mu­nity The­ater is an odd bird.  Some peo­ple don’t con­sider it “real the­ater” because it’s not per­formed on one of the big-name stages.  The pro­duc­tions are often found in high school audi­to­ri­ums or back-rooms that you could walk right by if you weren’t look­ing for them .  This pro­duc­tion of “Our Town” was at Sum­mer­Stage, an out­door the­ater in the mid­dle of Lapham Peak State Park, about 30 min­utes out­side of the Mil­wau­kee area.  It’s a lovely the­ater, but it’s def­i­nitely in an odd loca­tion off the beaten path.

Even though I’m over 50, I’m still rel­a­tively new to act­ing. So when a direc­tor casts me I expe­ri­ence a flurry of emo­tions.  I’m ini­tially flat­tered since the direc­tor is essen­tially trust­ing me with the pro­duc­tion. In my short tenure, I’ve seen first­hand how one actor can jeop­ar­dize an entire pro­duc­tion. This mem­ory helps the flat­tery to fade and I turn my atten­tions to my next emo­tion: worry.  Can I actu­ally do it?  Can I mem­o­rize my lines?  Can I really BE this other person?

Under­neath all these ques­tions is the real­ity that I’m putting much of the rest of my life on hold dur­ing weeks of rehearsal and, finally, the play’s run.  For the next two months or so, many evenings and
week­ends revolve around the stage.  Actors spend less time with friends and fam­ily; even their careers can get upstaged.  Will this deci­sion affect their long term rela­tion­ships?  My wife wasn’t all that happy when I took this role because she felt that sum­mer is such a long-awaited time in Wis­con­sin and we’d miss out on activ­i­ties we’d nor­mally do together. Luck­ily, after she observed me falling in love
with this play, she became more under­stand­ing and supportive.

Of all the plays I’ve acted in, none have made me think more about being human than Our Town.  It’s rather amaz­ing, con­sid­er­ing that dur­ing the read through I thought it came off as corny and dated.  But
the more I rehearsed and saw my fel­low actors assum­ing their roles, the more I real­ized that the play is time­less.  Sure, some of the words we spoke may have been from the early 1900’s but the thoughts
that they expressed still ring true today.  How do you feel about a new­born baby?  Or when you dis­cover that the per­son you love actu­ally loves you back?  How would you feel if both your chil­dren died before
you did?

Con­nie Gehl, the actress who played my wife in “Our Town,” needed to cry dur­ing the per­for­mance.  Her sor­row was so con­vinc­ing that I, as her hus­band, was com­pelled to com­fort her so she was not alone in her grief.  Her per­for­mance pulled me in and, I believe, helped me truly embody my part as Charles Webb.  It was just one of the won­der­ful aspects of this production.

Mem­o­ries and Emotions

I’d like to share two more won­der­ful mem­o­ries of this show.  I was mov­ing fur­ni­ture from the stage to another build­ing.  One of the younger actresses stopped me and we chat­ted pleas­antly for a moment.  She said that she just loved inter­act­ing with all these cre­ative peo­ple and she obvi­ously was includ­ing me.  Still feel­ing like a new­comer to the the­ater, I was inwardly sur­prised and flat­tered.  Am I actu­ally an actor?  I guess I am.

The other moment occurred dur­ing the wed­ding scene.  I play the father of Emily, the hes­i­tant bride.  At the begin­ning of the scene, she’s scared and looks to her father for reas­sur­ance.  After a lit­tle
father-daughter chat, I kiss her fore­head, drape her veil over her head and walk her down the aisle.   Well, I walked my own daugh­ter down the wed­ding aisle about three years ago.  This is a priv­i­lege
that fathers of girls have enjoyed for cen­turies and it may be the only time I ever do that in real life.  But because of this play, I was able to relive the expe­ri­ence dur­ing every per­for­mance.   And my
“real” daugh­ter saw the show, too.

When a show ends, I expe­ri­ence more emo­tions.  Sor­row that the pro­duc­tion is fin­ished.  Per­haps, relief too.   I com­muted about 40 min­utes to the venue, but the major­ity of the actors live out in the
Delafield area so I may never work with or even see many of them again.  I’m wist­ful when I real­ize that these peo­ple have passed through a brief part of my life.

Although I do feel sor­row,  grat­i­tude is the emo­tion that over rides all the oth­ers.  I’m grate­ful that Diane Pow­ell cast me in this play.  I’m grate­ful that I was able to work with Ethan, Mason, Amanda,
Con­nie and Lance as well as the rest of the cast and crew.  I’m grate­ful that we had good weather for all of our pro­duc­tion dates. I’m grate­ful to the audi­ence who usu­ally laughed at the right times. I’m grate­ful to my body and brain for hang­ing in there and allow­ing me to phys­i­cally and men­tally han­dle the part.  I’m grate­ful to my wife, Brooke, for sup­port­ing me in a very per­sonal endeavor.  I’m grate­ful to Face­book because it allows me to know some new friends even if they turn out to be temporary.

Well, on to the next audi­tion.  I’ve just been cast in a new one act play, but I’m con­fi­dent that this pro­duc­tion of “Our Town” will stay with me until I play in my own real life funeral scene.

You can keep up with Greg at his per­sonal web­site — Our Next Thing, and on Face­book.

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Body Image Issues and Healing Amidst It All

Note:  Today we have guest writer Zeenat Merchant-Syal, of Pos­i­tive Provo­ca­tions, shar­ing a very heart­felt and mean­ing­ful piece on body image.


That Weird Dead Feeling
Creative Commons License photo credit: Kendra Infin­ity

“Do not wish to be any­thing but what you are, and try to be that per­fectly.”~ St. Fran­cis De Sales

On a recent trip to my cousin’s place, who I met after many years, we talked and gig­gles like we were kids. Nei­ther of us felt any older than those days we used to play in the rain and cre­ate havoc dur­ing sum­mer break. All of us lived in dif­fer­ent states/countries but would come together to Mumbai,India for the sum­mer. Its still essen­tially the same sit­u­a­tion, except now we have our own lit­tle ones roam­ing the rooms.

Bat­tling Body Image Issues

In most of these trips and even in my reg­u­lar life then, I was con­stantly bat­tling body Image issues. You see, I have always always been on the plump side. I don’t ever remem­ber being thin. That in itself had never been the prob­lem. The prob­lem was when I would be given free flow­ing, no hooks barred advice at every nook and cor­ner about how I should lose weight. Liv­ing in a home, where each par­ent had com­pletely dif­fer­ent approaches to the way things are sup­posed to be, didn’t make it any eas­ier. One would con­stantly keep vigil of my intake, while the other couldn’t bare the thought of his child being so wor­ried about what she ate.

This tug of war cul­mi­nated into such a mas­sive prob­lem for me espe­cially as I entered my teens. Sud­denly every­thing and every­one was about look­ing “per­fectly media good”. Walk like some­one, look like some­one, talk like some­one other than your­self and you could be the IN teenager. I became that. Although I was still bat­tling the way I saw myself, I put up a brave front and laughed. I was the life of every party, and yeah had the hand­somest guys ask me out. Was all this mak­ing me feel bet­ter? NO! It was actu­ally deep­en­ing the prob­lem I had with myself and push­ing it deeper into my soul…until I was so so deeply scarred. Scarred enough to make hor­rid deci­sions I still regret. I keep think­ing now…”how could I have been so stupid?”

I still remem­ber how I would cry to sleep every night, because I didn’t like who I had become, but felt it was the Only choice I had to be accepted.

Becom­ing The Real Me

There came a point, when the self anni­hi­la­tion had started, that I couldn’t look myself in the mir­ror. In those days, I came face to face with ques­tions of pur­pose. In my most low states I could hear a voice inside me ask me, “Is this what you want to BE? Who are You REALLY? ”

It was only when I met my spir­i­tual teacher, at the age of 16(almost 17), I real­ized how awe­some it could be to be Me. The Real Me. There was this woman, right across the room at a social gath­er­ing, who I couldn’t stop look­ing at. She was sim­ple, neat, smil­ing and extremely lov­ing. She wore sim­ple clothes, no frills, no makeup, no pre­ten­tious­ness what­so­ever. I was so drawn to this woman. She some­how looked like she glowed. I still think she does. She intro­duced me to my soul. And for that I remain eter­nally indebted to her. She guided me, taught me lessons from reli­gious scrip­tures. Showed me the light, so to speak.

As I dwelled into reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­ity and all things Divine..my mind, my body, my heart all came to a cer­tain calm. I real­ized that I am meant to be a cer­tain way. It felt right. That is my unique gift. The phys­i­cal body issues began to heal. As the issues healed, a warm more lov­ing me emerged. A Me even I am some­times flab­ber­gasted by. I stopped cry­ing to sleep, I stopped hurt­ing myself, I stopped being some­one I was not.

The relief of let­ting those masks go, was like tak­ing off a huge moun­tain from my shoul­ders. I never felt lighter, freer than I did in that moment.

Yes, not all peo­ple in my life were fully happy with this trans­for­ma­tion, but they came to accept a hap­pier me.

TODAY

Today, I’m still plump. But hap­pily so. I love myself and things about this self. Dim­ples, warts, moles, crooked teeth, the not so per­fect figure.…I love it all. It keeps me real. I live a very sim­ple but con­tent life today.I am healthy. I walk, do yoga, exer­cise, eat right, smile, help oth­ers heal, help souls become whole and happy. So I’m plump. Big Deal!(smile)…More of me to love More of every other soul in this Uni­verse with :)

I do hope I can instil the same sim­plic­ity, love and calm in my lit­tle girl. As she grows up, I keep think­ing, she will go through some of the anx­i­ety of peer pres­sure, soci­ety pres­sure to look or be a cer­tain way. But I know I will be with her every step of the way, telling her just how Beau­ti­ful she is just as she is. She need never be any­one else!

May we all Hap­pily embrace our awe­some and very real selves. Its one of the most imper­a­tive steps in under­stand­ing and liv­ing in con­stant hap­pi­ness. Know­ing and trust­ing the Divine Plan and liv­ing in the flow of it makes liv­ing bliss­ful. Noth­ing and I mean noth­ing can get you down then.

Today(literally) as I met my cousin, she said, “We were such goof­balls in our teens na. You are still a goof­ball, naughty as ever, but you seem gen­uinely Hap­pier now. What did you have an epiphany or some­thing?” I kinda did and I com­pletely agreed with her, while I baked and we ate home made veg­gie pizza with all our kids.

A pos­i­tive affir­ma­tion I use when I feel a whiff of old imagery com­ing along.… “I am Awe­some. I am Beau­ti­ful. I am a divine cre­ation full of amaz­ing mas­tery.” Heart *Smile*

Zeenat is the founder and writer of the blog ~Pos­i­tive Provo­ca­tions~ Heal­ing You Com­pletely with Pos­i­tiv­ity, Love & Hap­pi­ness!. A Prac­tic­ing Coun­sel­ing Psychologist/Spiritual Counselor/Motivational Speaker/Naturopath by pro­fes­sion (since the past 10 years) and Spir­i­tual Trav­eler & Writer by pas­sion.
Zeenat is also an eter­nal stu­dent and researcher of the school of life and all its real­i­ties. A con­stant learner in the fields of Meta­physics and New age Thinking. 

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My Blog Transformed My Life

Today I have a spe­cial guest with us — Live Lane, from Choos­ing Beauty.  Below, Liv shares a part of her blog jour­ney, and how deeply good that has been for her.  As well, both Liv and I sat down recently to talk about this, and to dis­cuss her upcom­ing “How To Build A Blog You Truly Love” e-course.

The story Liv shares below very much touches upon choos­ing beauty, and how we can all choose to see that in our daily lives.

For those of you who are blog­gers, in the video Liv and I dig a bit more into her upcom­ing e-course, How To Build A Blog You Truly Love.  We both came into this video as video non-experts (yikes!) and there were a cou­ple of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties which cut off the last few sec­onds of the video (in which Liv so gra­ciously thanked me for our time) (and thank you, also, Liv!).

 

My Blog Trans­formed My Life

 

I know it sounds over-the-top, but it’s totally true: my blog trans­formed my life.
 
Before I tell you how, I need to rewind to the day my first son was born in early 2003. I had entered the hos­pi­tal happy and excited, my usual chip­per self. But sev­eral days later, I left the hos­pi­tal a changed woman – sob­bing all the way home. The birth expe­ri­ence had been hor­ri­ble, with one com­pli­ca­tion after another. I was phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally exhausted by the time my baby arrived – blue and barely breath­ing, with his heart on the wrong side of his body and his lung col­lapsed. Mirac­u­lously, he recov­ered in the NICU and is now a healthy, high-energy eight-year-old. But as he got bet­ter, I got worse.
 
I cried a lot. I couldn’t sleep.  I became mas­ter­ful at small talk because I couldn’t han­dle any­thing deeper. I hid my pain really well – at least for a while. My fam­ily even­tu­ally urged me to seek help in late 2005. I was diag­nosed with depres­sion and post trau­matic stress dis­or­der, both the result of “birth trauma” – some­thing I’d never even heard of.  My ther­a­pist, Jeanne, promised me I could heal and that the dark­ness I was liv­ing in could be lifted. It seemed impos­si­ble. But I decided to believe her and jumped into my heal­ing jour­ney. I was will­ing to try any­thing: talk ther­apy, psy­chother­apy, med­ica­tion, med­i­ta­tion, hyp­no­sis, and more. Even­tu­ally, I began to see glim­mers of light. Slowly but surely, I re-discovered the real me.

One day after a ses­sion with Jeanne, a bril­liant rain­bow arched over the inter­sec­tion where I was sit­ting in my car. I looked at the dri­vers around me; they were all too busy putting on lip­stick, talk­ing on the phone or star­ing blankly at the stop­light to look up and notice the stun­ning rain­bow over­head. I won­dered in that moment how many other lit­tle mir­a­cles I’d missed by being too dis­tracted or too depressed. I wanted to take a pic­ture of the rain­bow, just to show oth­ers what I’d seen {remem­ber, our cell phones didn’t have cam­eras back then!}.

My birth­day was only days away and I decided it was the per­fect time to ini­ti­ate a per­sonal exer­cise: take a pic­ture of some­thing beau­ti­ful each day for a year and write about it. I sus­pected it could con­tribute to my heal­ing and cre­ated a very basic blog – a type of web site I’d only just learned about.  I called it One Year of Beauty.

Within weeks of start­ing, I was hear­ing from read­ers around the world who were inspired to find beauty in their every­day lives, too. They kept me account­able; had it not been for those early read­ers cheer­ing me on, I prob­a­bly would have quit on the days it felt impos­si­ble to find beauty. In the end, those turned out to be the most trans­for­ma­tional days. Find­ing some­thing good on a “bad” day was a rush. I was so glad I’d cho­sen to write some­thing about each photo I posted because it forced me to really reflect and prac­tice grat­i­tude. What was so beau­ti­ful about a fallen leaf? Why did the sight of my child’s paint-covered hands make my heart skip a beat? How did I feel stand­ing under a bright blue sky?

Over time, one beauty sight­ing a day mul­ti­plied into many. Though I con­tin­ued to fea­ture just one on the blog each day, I began to notice beauty every­where I went – even in the midst of chaos. My ther­a­pist was floored by the changes in me. I would waltz into Jeanne’s office more eager to tell her about all the good things around me than the fear or sad­ness that occa­sion­ally {instead of always} reared its ugly head. Dur­ing that first year of blog­ging, my search for every­day beauty – and the abil­ity to post it for the world to see – gave me com­fort, hope and a new per­spec­tive.  And the sup­port I received from read­ers was the fuel that kept me going.
 
I’m fast approach­ing the fifth anniver­sary of my blog. It’s now called Choos­ing Beauty because I believe we each make a daily choice – whether con­scious or not – to see or shun the beauty in our lives. It is there, wait­ing to be noticed, eager to inspire us and ready to com­fort us. I learned this from my blog and it changed my life for good.

About Liv Lane

How To Build A Blog You Truly Love is a soul-stirring, blog-boosting e-course for any­one who longs to feel more inspired, excited and rewarded by their adven­tures in blog­ging. Led by inspi­ra­tional speaker, radio per­son­al­ity and vet­eran blog­ger Liv Lane of Choos­ing Beauty, you’ll be lov­ingly guided through an inno­v­a­tive process of self-reflection and in-depth learn­ing. Over the six-week course, you’ll develop your own unique blog­ging blue­print — designed to help you achieve sweet suc­cess and deep ful­fill­ment for years to come. Plus, gain exclu­sive access to Liv’s inter­views with more than a dozen super­star blog­gers on how they’re rock­ing the blo­gos­phere and livin’ the dream.
**
Spe­cial: Sign up here for 20% off this six-week course (start­ing June 5th).  I’ll be at this course both as a par­tic­i­pant and a con­trib­u­tor!
 

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Splish Splash!

“Life isn’t about find­ing your­self. Life is about cre­at­ing your­self.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

Ear­lier this month I wrote about my word of the year for 2011 (SHINE).  This has become a very mean­ing­ful prac­tice, as I really focus on one word, at a deeper level.  As mean­ing­ful as this has been, it is also a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence for me to reflect back on the pre­vi­ous year, and really “see” how that cho­sen word man­i­fested itself in my life.

Today I’m doing exactly that, as I review 2010, and my word that I chose last Jan­u­ary:  SPLASH!.

It’s an honor to be shar­ing these thoughts with Stacey Curnow, some­one who really embraces the idea of liv­ing life from a place of deep mean­ing.  So, today I invite you to join me over at Stacey’s site, Mid­wife For Your Life, as I review 2010 and the word SPLASH in my life. 

Hint:  I don’t think any of my splashes looked exactly like that up above (although I cer­tainly have some crazy kids around here who find that this is a great way to greet the water!)

~ Com­ments Closed ~

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Life Happiness Lessons: What I Learned From a Duck

This arti­cle is from Evita Ochel, writer at the Evolv­ing Beings web­site.  Evita writes very deeply from a place of mean­ing and pur­pose.  Today she shares her words and insights here.

Life Hap­pi­ness Lessons: What I Learned From a Duck

“The pur­pose of learn­ing is growth, and our minds, unlike our bod­ies, can con­tinue grow­ing as we con­tinue to live.” ~ Mor­timer Adler

Liv­ing on a water­front, in a more nat­ural envi­ron­ment, I have the plea­sure to observe and inter­act with nature in many ways. Whether it is the sun, the wind, the water or any of nature’s immac­u­late liv­ing species — Nature is an amaz­ing teacher. If we allow our­selves to fully see, hear and expe­ri­ence what she presents, we open our­selves up to a wise and infi­nite teacher.

In doing so, we open our­selves up to learn­ing about our­selves, our envi­ron­ment and all that is in it. We invite into our­selves learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that can nour­ish our being and soul, and move us for­ward along the path of our per­sonal growth and evolution. 

One of my most recent teach­ers has been a lit­tle vis­i­tor to our prop­erty, whom in allow­ing myself to observe, I learned more from, than per­haps any book or guru. I named our lit­tle vis­i­tor Ethel — and Ethel is a duck. I warmly share with you here today, in Lance’s won­der­ful space, four things that I learned from Ethel for liv­ing out a happy life.

1. Enjoy the Full­ness of Each Moment
It only takes a few min­utes of watch­ing Ethel, to tap into a com­pletely dif­fer­ent space and time. A space in fact, where time does not exist — where there is sim­ply — now — this moment.

Ethel knows how to enjoy her being, her life and her envi­ron­ment. She is never in a rush to do the “next” thing. She is fully immersed in being. She fully takes in each moment.  With Ethel, there is no multi-tasking. When she is swim­ming, she is in the moment of swim­ming. When she is groom­ing, she is fully focused on groom­ing. The same goes for her rest and feeding.  

May you always remem­ber, to enjoy the full­ness of each moment of your life. Each moment is pre­cious and holds a gift for us, in what it can allow us to be, feel and experience.

2. Be Open To Receiv­ing
On a few occa­sions, I allowed myself to offer Ethel some food. It was a per­sonal expe­ri­ence that I felt was right for me, and allowed me to inter­act and con­nect with Ethel on a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion. Each time, Ethel received passionately.

How many times are you open to receiv­ing, when another being is offer­ing you their help, kind­ness, hos­pi­tal­ity or any other pos­i­tive ges­ture? How open is your heart to wel­come in their per­sonal expres­sion of love?

May you always remem­ber that ‘in giv­ing, you receive’ — and ‘in receiv­ing, you give’. It is only when we allow for this bal­ance within our hearts, that we allow our­selves and oth­ers around us the fullest expres­sion of love.

3. Have a Per­sonal Enough
In those few times that I fed Ethel, one of the most remark­able things was watch­ing Ethel know when she had enough. Ethel may not know when or where her next meal will come from, but she knows that fill­ing up too much at one time, is not going to help her.

Do you have your own “enough”?  Whether it is hav­ing “enough” food, or drink or of an activ­ity, a healthy bal­ance is one of the surest way for a happy life. In our soci­ety, we are not always so good at our per­sonal bound­aries of “enough”. We overindulge in var­i­ous things.

Whether it be some­thing phys­i­cal, emo­tional or spir­i­tual, may you find that sacred space within of know­ing when you have had “enough” — as over­fill­ing on any­thing leads us out of bal­ance, and away from liv­ing out the hap­pi­est life ever.

4. Know When To Move On
As of a few days ago, I stopped see­ing Ethel, but I caught glimpse above head of the ducks fly­ing off in groups. Ethel knew that it would not serve her to stay here forever. 

Although a long flight to a warmer cli­mate is going to take time and effort, and the jour­ney holds a lot of unknowns, Ethel knew that ulti­mately this would be for her high­est good. She knew when her present envi­ron­ment no longer served her, and when it was time to move on.

In the same way, we can look at our own per­sonal rela­tion­ships and places where we reside. Are we open to change and know­ing when it is time to move on?  Are we will­ing to embrace a bit of the unknown, to ben­e­fit our high­est good?

Whether it is a rela­tion­ship with some­one, a work­place, a neigh­bor­hood or a per­sonal ven­ture, may you always know when it is time to move on for your high­est good. Trust that in let­ting go and mov­ing on, you too, will find ‘bet­ter cli­mates’.

“Those who con­tem­plate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” ~ Rachel Carson

You can keep up with Evita by sub­scrib­ing to her blog, and fol­low­ing her on Twit­ter.

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Progress Is Not Linear

Visual Complexity
Creative Commons License photo credit: mis­ter­bis­son

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walk­ing back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soon­est is the most pro­gres­sive.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Note:  Please help me wel­come Eduard Ezeanu, from Peo­ple Skills Decoded, here today, as our guest writer.

We all want to progress, although some more than oth­ers. I believe that the atti­tudes and per­cep­tions we have about progress deter­mine to a large degree how effec­tive we are in mak­ing progress and how much we enjoy it.

Here is one per­cep­tion which a lot of us have engrained and it sab­o­tages our lives: the per­cep­tion that progress is lin­ear. This means that con­sciously or not, we see progress like a straight road, which goes directly and smoothly to our destination.

So we expect to con­stantly make progress, and to make progress in the same degree in equal peri­ods of time. In a way, apply­ing this per­cep­tion, we see a 10 year old per­son as twice what a 5 year old is and a 20 year old as twice what a 10 year old is.

I think this is a very stiff and unre­al­is­tic view of progress. Not even a tree grows like that, in a lin­ear way. Why should we expect a human being to do so? If we want to truly embrace progress and have fun with it, we need to real­ize that progress is not lin­ear. Progress is organic.

This mean that we may go through long peri­ods with lit­tle progress, fol­lowed by peri­ods of light­ing fast progress, or peri­ods when we regress, in order to cre­ate a con­text which allows even big­ger progress than the pre­vi­ous one.

Here is one exam­ple I meet often in my coach­ing prac­tice: peo­ple who advance in a cer­tain pro­fes­sional field, until they reach a point when they no longer feel ful­filled in that field. Often, what they need to do is find a field which would be even more ful­fill­ing for them, get in that field and grow in it.

The thing is, mov­ing from a pro­fes­sional field in which you are at a very high level to a field which is new for you rep­re­sents ini­tially a form of regres­sion. But it is this regres­sion which allows you to make after­wards progress in this new field and reach heights you couldn’t have reached in the pre­vi­ous one.

In other words, you need to regress before you can progress again and max­i­mize the use of your poten­tial. It still amazes me how few peo­ple under­stand this at a deep level and are will­ing to do it.

Our lin­ear views of progress often keep us stuck in a fear of regress, fear of change which in the end sab­o­tages our progress instead of help­ing us. We try to grow con­stantly and smoothly, but we end up get­ting stuck and feel­ing sorry for our­selves. Unfor­tu­nately, this is the story of many peo­ple in this world.

I believe it’s fun­da­men­tal for us to have a more plas­tic and real­is­tic view of progress. To under­stand that it’s a tan­gled road rather than a straight one; that we some­times need to dis­tance our­selves from our des­ti­na­tion before we can get even closer to it.

It is only with this kind of a view that we can learn to walk the tan­gled road of life, get to where we want and enjoy the jour­ney as well.

Eduard Ezeanu is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion coach with an attitude-based approach. He helps oth­ers to improve peo­ple skills they find rel­e­vant and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, Peo­ple Skills Decoded, and you can fol­low him on Twit­ter at @EduardSays.

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Lead The Way

Today, I have a spe­cial guest here, shar­ing his thoughts on how we can all lead our lives with love.  Please wel­come Keith Smith, from Straight Up Liv­ing. 

I’ve known Keith for some time, and always find that he speaks very much from a place of deep per­sonal mean­ing and care.  Today is no excep­tion, as he takes a look at the ways each of us can lead…lead from a place of love.

Please read along, as Keith shares some very won­der­ful thoughts on how we can each make a dif­fer­ence, how we can each shine our own amaz­ing light out into the world, how we can each be love in action…

Lead the Way

 

Leadership
Creative Commons License photo credit: somebody_

“Do not wait for lead­ers; do it alone, per­son to per­son.” ~ Mother Teresa

We can look any­where in the world — from our front door step to across the oceans, and see so much that is wrong, so much that needs to change, and so many peo­ple who live in dishar­mony.  There are bright spots out there too, many in fact, and we see them and think “I wish there were peo­ple around here who would do good things like that!”   I believe there are peo­ple like that every­where, and all they need is to see some­one actu­ally doing good things, then they will hap­pily imi­tate those actions.  If you see work that needs to be done, and love that needs to be shown, I encour­age you to be that per­son who takes the first step.  Lead the way.
 

“How won­der­ful it is that nobody need wait a sin­gle moment before start­ing to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank

Imag­ine, for a moment, how our world would be affected if we not only loved oth­ers, but showed that love through our actions.  I’m not speak­ing of our fam­i­lies or other loved ones, but of cowork­ers, acquain­tances and com­plete strangers.  It is a beau­ti­ful moment when we come to real­ize that we don’t have to wait for some­one else to begin, or for some orga­ni­za­tion to take action.  We can be an activist for love and lead the way!  The world around you needs lead­ers, and not the sort of leader who is elected by pop­u­lar vote, nor those who aspire to have power and recog­ni­tion.  It needs lead­ers who love, and who are not afraid to show that love.  A true leader is some­one who serves oth­ers self­lessly, and who knows that the path to lead­er­ship is through the gate of ser­vant­hood.  If we are to see our world changed for the good, we must love and serve oth­ers.  Isn’t this what it’s all about?  Doesn’t it all come down to this?
 

“Every­one can be great, because every­body can serve” ~ Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.

There aren’t “spe­cial” qual­i­fi­ca­tions required to be an activist for love.  One has only to pos­sess a gen­uine desire for the high­est good for another per­son, and be will­ing to help them get it.  It may seem like a pipe dream to some, but I imag­ine a world in which every­one is lov­ing and serv­ing oth­ers, every­one being loved and served.  Per­haps the entire world will never real­ize this, but I want to find out just how much of it can be!
 

“It is not what we do, it is how much love we put in the doing.” ~ Mother Teresa

The thought of chang­ing the entire world can be over­whelm­ing, and at first glance, may seem a daunt­ing task.  The good news is that we don’t have to change the entire world, at least not by our­selves.  Begin right where you are!  It doesn’t mat­ter if you live in a city teem­ing with thou­sands of peo­ple, or in a rural com­mu­nity with only a hand­ful of neigh­bors, start there!  Start with the peo­ple near­est you; show them that love is real.  Show them that there is hope and that there are peo­ple in this world who care, that offer a help­ing hand with­out ask­ing for any­thing in return.

You may be won­der­ing what it is that you can do to change the world around you.  There is so much to say about this that it would take vol­umes to even begin an expla­na­tion.  Know this, it does not have to be some grand ges­ture that ends up being reported on CNN.  It has been said that life is made up of “the lit­tle things” and that’s very true.  The same can be said about being an activist for love.  The small­est acts of kind­ness, born out of a lov­ing heart, will echo through eternity.

Here’s an exam­ple from my own life.  Liv­ing just down the street from me and Jenny (Jenny is my most awe­some sig­nif­i­cant other), is a nice older gen­tle­man who is a wid­ower. Recently, I came home and found Jenny prepar­ing a plate of food.  I asked her what she was up to and she told me of this gen­tle­man, whose wife died a few years ago, and who now lived alone with seem­ingly few vis­i­tors.  While walk­ing the dog one evening she engaged him in brief con­ver­sa­tion, dur­ing which he com­mented about never cook­ing because it was only him­self at home.  This strummed Jenny’s heart­strings, and that’s why she was prepar­ing him this plate of home-cooked food.  Jenny, her two boys, and I made the deliv­ery.  The look in this man’s eyes, as he received this act of loving-kindness…well, it nearly makes me cry when I think of it.

That’s just one small exam­ple, and I know so many of you who per­form such acts on a reg­u­lar basis.  It is these seem­ingly small acts that are chang­ing the world around you.  It is these small acts that make you an activist for love, a true leader. Besides, there is noth­ing small about caus­ing a per­son to feel cared for, hope­ful, impor­tant and loved. 

Keep up with Keith by sub­scrib­ing to his blog, and fol­low­ing him on Twit­ter.

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A Vacation Of A Lifetime

One’s des­ti­na­tion is never a place, but a new way of see­ing things.” – Henry Miller

A vaca­tion!!  Now there’s some­thing I really love!  It’s great to take a break from the daily things we do, and step into a dif­fer­ent mode of liv­ing our life. 

Today I have a spe­cial guest with us, shar­ing a per­sonal story of a vaca­tion like no other.  Please wel­come Farnoosh Brock, a won­der­ful friend here in this space and some­one whose words always touch upon a deeper mean­ing within me. 

Farnoosh has cre­ated a vibrant space filled with her thoughts on life.  That space, Pro­lific Liv­ing, is one that touches upon the many aspects of truly liv­ing and being fully awake to what life is about.  And the thing is, from every inter­ac­tion we’ve had, I just see this all so being a part of her being.  She truly lives what she writes, and that’s a beau­ti­ful thing to see.  

Sit back and let the words Farnoosh shares touch your soul too… 

A Vaca­tion Of A Lifetime

 

Have you ever left to go on vaca­tion, never to return home?

No?  Well, I have. The vaca­tion of a life­time, quite lit­er­ally, with all its ups and downs, twists and turns, the unknown and the unexplored.

In the spring of 1986, my fam­ily and I left Iran for a real vaca­tion, not just to the beach or the moun­tains of Tehran, but off to Turkey we went! At the time, Turkey hap­pened to be one of the few coun­tries not requir­ing a visa from Ira­ni­ans. It was an easy choice. It was great a spot with all its beaches, attrac­tions, deli­cious food — not as deli­cious as Per­sian food but we wanted vari­ety – and great shop­ping. Plus, it would be my first inter­na­tional trip out of Iran. That meant: no hejab! I was free to wear what I want and at 11 years old, that was the biggest free­dom of all. I exploited it (within lim­its of course, I was with my par­ents after all ;) )!! Suf­fice it to say, this was very excit­ing for all of us, me, my brother, my expect­ing mom and my dad, the plan­ner and the ini­tia­tor among us!

Toward the end of our trip, my dad made an announce­ment. From the way he spoke and looked at my mom, I knew he had already dis­cussed it with her. They are such a team, the two of them, even if they are com­plete oppo­sites. That deci­sion was made on solid ground. Some­times, team­work is imper­a­tive to your survival.

“We will be liv­ing in Turkey!”, he said, which opened a very inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion, even though it was any­thing but a dis­cus­sion. Really, the part about liv­ing in Turkey was not shock­ing alto­gether. Many, many Ira­ni­ans had been flee­ing Iran since 1979. How­ever much you loved your coun­try, oppor­tu­ni­ties and free­dom beck­oned you to make a choice, a dif­fi­cult one, and many opted to leave Iran behind. We absolutely belonged in that cat­e­gory. I was rather excited.

Yes, we were going to live in Turkey and I was going to go to school to learn Eng­lish and we would have a new life here together. It sounded won­der­ful. The part I missed in my Dad’s announce­ment was that we will not be going back at all. We had left Iran with exactly two suit­cases for all of us. Only two! I shop a suitcase’s worth of nice clothes on a ran­dom trip these days, if the right mood strikes! But for­get that. I had left Lucky, my beloved dachs­hund genius dog, with friends. I had not parted ways with my life, my school or my house, oh how I loved that house and how sorely I missed it through the years. I had not brought my “stuff” from my room. I had not said good bye to my girl­friends. I had not fin­ished my “busi­ness” at 11 years old in Iran (mind you, I seem to have had some very clear ideas as to how I would have cleared all my “busi­ness” in order to leave the coun­try but alas, it was not to be and I never did return, not to this day, not once).

I still remem­ber our tiny hotel room where my dad made the announce­ment that changed the course of our lives for­ever. I remem­ber the beds, the small bal­cony over­look­ing the gar­den of the hotel, the stair­case, the out­side and the shops. We ended up liv­ing in that room for 3 months with my preg­nant mom when my Dad left to take care of some busi­ness back home. He was seri­ous and we were all in this together as a fam­ily but we cer­tainly wished that it had hap­pened on other terms.

What fol­lowed after my dad rejoined us for good are three long hard and lonely years in three cities across Turkey. We learned Turk­ish (well, my par­ents refused to learn so my brother and I learned for all of us), we learned Eng­lish (and thus my par­ents could no longer speak Eng­lish in our com­pany as their exclu­sive lan­guage), my lit­tle brother was born (we call him a Turk when we want to tease him), we learned that Ankara can get 4 feet of snow but you have to run in the snow if you miss the bus because school is on no mat­ter what, and that it is not at all out of the ordi­nary for the elec­tric­ity or the water or both of those neces­si­ties to stop work­ing for hours at a time.

We learned that we are very dif­fer­ent from Turk­ish peo­ple, even though they were extremely hos­pitable, kind and invit­ing; no mat­ter, we had very few friends while liv­ing in Turkey. We learned that we can do any­thing together as a fam­ily, and it does not mat­ter if we have to start all over again and strug­gle every day, so long as we had each other, we would be okay. We learned that we had no idea we would miss our fam­ily and our friends and our dog so much, and in a world with­out email or inter­net, dis­tance really meant dis­tance and it hurt. We learned that no house in the future will fill the void of 13 Lida Street ever again. We learned the price of free­dom the hard way, and no mat­ter how much of those years in Turkey I for­get, those lessons are always with me.

In the 25 years since that deci­sion shaped the course of our des­tiny, we have reached what I con­sider mir­a­cles of achieve­ment and suc­cess in our respec­tive lives. We are all happy and still a very tight fam­ily. We hardly ever talk about our time in Turkey any­more except to rem­i­nisce about a funny occa­sion here and there. In fact, I can­not wait to go back with my hus­band and visit the beau­ti­ful coun­try which defined the ini­tial mean­ing of free­dom for me. Most of all, I do not live a sin­gle day where I for­get to indulge in my beloved free­dom, a free­dom rooted in utter grat­i­tude to my par­ents for the sac­ri­fices they made.

Farnoosh started pur­su­ing her pas­sions only in the recent years where worka­holism took a back­seat and bal­ance became a sur­vival mat­ter. She has a love for per­sonal expres­sion, writ­ing, read­ing, trav­el­ing, yoga, Toast­mas­ters, and self-improvement and explores these ele­ments and more on her blog, Pro­lific Liv­ing. She is grate­ful to her friend Lance Ekum and thrilled to be con­tribut­ing here to the fun Jun­gle of Life community.

You can keep up with Farnoosh by sub­scrib­ing to Pro­lific Liv­ing, and fol­low­ing her on Twit­ter.

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Healing Love

in your hands
Creative Commons License photo credit: TheAlieness Gise­la­Gia­rdino²³

“Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and heal people’s souls.” ~ Melody Beattie

Heal­ing.  What does that word mean to you?  Is this some­thing that all of us can use, or more reserved for those times when we really have problems? 

Love.  What does that word mean to you?  Is this some­thing that all of us can use, or more reserved for those times when we really need it?

Today I’m shar­ing about a very mov­ing expe­ri­ence I’ve had recently.  An expe­ri­ence that touched upon a much deeper part of me…surrounded by heal­ing and love.

Please join me over at Stacey Curnow’s site, Mid­wife for Your Life,  as I share a deeply per­sonal expe­ri­ence I’ve had recently. 

Love’s Heal­ing Power.

Stacey’s writ­ing is very much focused around see­ing all the good that is in our world.  I am uplifted every time I visit.

When not writ­ing on her site, Stacey has a busy sched­ule — filled with her work as a mid­wife, and a thriv­ing life coach­ing pro­gram she leads.  Out­side of that, her fam­ily is very dear and spe­cial to her.

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