Today I have a spe­cial guest with us.  Please help me wel­come Nadia Ballas-Ruta, writer  from the Happy Lotus.  I’ve just recently had the oppor­tu­nity to con­nect with Nadia, and read some of her amaz­ing writ­ing.  Nadia is a very pas­sion­ate writer, and I think you’ll feel that in the words below, in what she has to say.  One of her recent arti­cles, 604,800 Amaz­ing Options, takes a look at the time each of us have, and exam­ines how we’re using that.

Nadia has a gift for writ­ing and con­nect­ing with oth­ers.  Get reg­u­lar updates by vis­it­ing her very won­der­ful and uplift­ing site, Happy Lotus.

Have a chair, and enjoy…

Pull Off The Labels

photo credit: Haags Uit­buro

We are so accus­tomed to dis­guise our­selves to oth­ers that in the end we become dis­guised to our­selves.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

One of the ques­tions that I really do not like being asked is: what do you do? I do what­ever I can to avoid the topic when­ever I meet some­one. No mat­ter how hard I try, the ques­tion inevitably comes up.

For those of you who do not know what I do for my day job, I am a lawyer. Now the funny thing is that when peo­ple hear that, the next state­ment always comes “you do not seem like a lawyer”. I laugh each time I hear that because it seems to be the gen­eral con­sen­sus when meet­ing me.

I am very laid back to the point that peo­ple think I have no ambi­tion. I have ambi­tion, I am just not too vocal about it. I place more value on doing than on talk­ing about doing. The rea­son being that if some­thing does not work out, I do not have to deal with the con­cern of being per­ceived a fail­ure. Per­son­ally, I do not believe in the con­cept of fail­ure but many do. Some­times you actu­ally learn more from sit­u­a­tions that do not turn out the way you planned. Soci­ety calls such things mis­takes or fail­ures. In my mind, it is only a mis­take or fail­ure if you do not
learn from it.

I see the pos­i­tive in any sit­u­a­tion which peo­ple think means that I am flaky. Bring in the fact that I am a vegan and have the spir­i­tual jour­ney back­ground and I can under­stand that these traits do not seem lawyerly. As one friend said to me: “I could see you more eas­ily in one of those holis­tic heal­ing places than at a law firm”.

So this leads to the ques­tion which no one ever asks which is: why did you become a lawyer? I went into law because I wanted to be more able to help peo­ple. Many peo­ple are unaware of their rights and I wanted to help them become aware.

I have never regret­ted the deci­sion. Going to law school changed my life in so many ways. It helped me to learn more about human psy­chol­ogy and the mind. I stuck out in law school because I wanted more out of life and it was in law school where my spir­i­tual jour­ney began in earnest. When I grad­u­ated, I vowed to myself I would never work as a lawyer. Goes to show you…never say never.

Back in 2007, I real­ized that the time had come to ven­ture back into law. I was in one of those sit­u­a­tions where my inner voice was clear and it encour­aged me to go back to law. I was not very thrilled at the idea but my inner voice kept insist­ing on it. So off I went back to take the bar exam and the whole process of find­ing a job. If I stuck out back in law school, you should see me now!

On a day to day basis, I work with good peo­ple who I can­not relate to because we look at life dif­fer­ently – to me, life is awe­some. The mere fact that I can walk and take care of myself is a huge bless­ing. This atti­tude makes me seem less intel­li­gent and some of my co-workers do make fun of me. Am I hurt? No, because I know who I am and I am at peace with myself.

Dur­ing my spir­i­tual quest, I learned that your job is NOT a reflec­tion of who you are. It is a role that you play. You are defined more by what you think and feel than by your job title. It is easy to hide behind a title because usu­ally a title cre­ates a pre­con­ceived notion of who you are but in real­ity it does not.
When you pass away, no one will talk about you in rela­tion to your title but rather about how you lived your life.

When you cat­e­go­rize some­one based on their job, you rob that per­son of the chance to vocal­ize who they truly are. You place them in a box and are not open to the idea that there may be more to them than meets the eye. That places you at a dis­ad­van­tage because the per­son may have been of great ben­e­fit to you. So pull off those labels and give every­one the oppor­tu­nity to show their true self!

I’m still away on vaca­tion (this is too much fun!).  Today we have another very spe­cial guest with us.  Please help me wel­come some­one who always puts a smile on my face, Julie from Ran­dom Mean­der­ings.  Julie shares words that are spo­ken from the heart, always, and it’s a place I visit to be renewed and refreshed in life.  For a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what Ran­dom Mean­der­ings is, let’s lis­ten to Julie:

“It’s the world inside my head, what I call “Julie World,” a place of color, curios­ity, and explo­ration, of obser­vances and emo­tions that are mov­ing around in a swirl of con­tin­ual won­der about any­thing and everything.”

Julie really embod­ies this and more in her writ­ing.  Check out a cou­ple of her recent posts, including:

Dawn

The Gift

Julie’s words will inspire and move you.   Stop by and visit, you’ll find a place to call “home” here on the Internet.

With that, I present to you, my good friend Julie, as she shares…

Promises

photo credit: cobalt123

I heard buzzing, low-pitched and multi-toned. It sounded purposeful.

The small mesquite tree I stood under couldn’t have been more than 8’ tall, just a young­ster. It had a pretty shape, full and round, because it stood alone, apart from other veg­e­ta­tion, grow­ing from ground that had been cleared for future con­struc­tion. By stand­ing alone, all its branches were able to reach toward the sun with­out infringe­ment from other trees or even shrubs. This allowed it to grow full and seem­ingly proud and look­ing to all direc­tions equally.

But, for months the tree had been bare, the branches dark and leaf­less. It stood qui­etly. Even in breezes it was silent, with­out leaves to rus­tle against each other. It appeared to be like the trees in colder cli­mates that stood dor­mant for months on end, look­ing lifeless.

Then, sud­denly, overnight it seemed, new leaves appeared. But­ter­flies of vary­ing col­ors and sizes approached. Birds small and large cir­cled and landed. A sturdy breeze helped the branches move, and they seemed to dance with play­ful­ness and delight. All the leaves epit­o­mized happy movement!

Yet, when fuzzy pale yel­low blos­soms appeared and released their per­fume, the world around that lit­tle tree sprung to full-blown activ­ity.  The lifeblood of the tree was pump­ing, again!  More but­ter­flies appeared, dip­ping their anten­nas to the blos­soms. Huge black and orange wasps swarmed, jock­ey­ing for posi­tion, their wings mak­ing an indus­tri­ous hum­ming. Bees added hard-working buzzing sounds. All were eagerly glean­ing sweet sus­te­nance from the tree’s offer­ing. Small black bugs half the size of my small­est fin­ger­nail crawled about the tree, over the leaves, and sat upon the yel­low buds. They were so small and still that I couldn’t tell what they were about, but I knew even they were acquir­ing sus­te­nance from the lit­tle tree.

~ ~ ~

That small mesquite gave me, in the span of a minute, a glimpse into the promises of our own lives.

We all feel the ebb and flow in life. While we love the thrill of the highs, we some­times lament the lulls, although these are our rest peri­ods, life’s lit­tle time-outs.  Every­thing within us slows and we become qui­eter. We use the time to pon­der and won­der, think and process. As we do, parts of us are still qui­etly grow­ing and evolv­ing even with­out our active aware­ness.  It’s good to remem­ber that though we might at times feel overly quiet, too alone, or even empty of pur­pose, some­where deep within us is the promise of our own con­tin­ued growth—and of what we can give.

There are innu­mer­able things we can offer! Each of us has some­thing of immense value to offer the world. It might be com­fort, a help­ing hand, or even a les­son to share.  It might be the joy of com­pan­ion­ship or per­haps sim­ply the pre­cious, uplift­ing gift of a bright, sin­cere smile.  Kind­ness and laugh­ter and hugs and sto­ries and even the sim­ple act of hold­ing someone’s hand… These are the great­est of gifts—little tiny bits of our­selves.  More pre­cious than gold, they don’t cost us any­thing more than a smidgen of our time.

We are like the lit­tle mesquite tree: strongly rooted, patiently grow­ing, and feel­ing assured of our place in the world. Ebb and flow con­tin­ues through­out life.  In all those ins and outs and ups and downs, we are immensely and intensely loved and nur­tured and protected—by those who care for us, by our own souls, and by the infi­nite source of life itself.  We, in turn, can offer a small token of this care to others.

Just in being our­selves, we are offer­ing sus­te­nance to so very many.  We may never real­ize in just how many ways and in what mag­ni­tude our small­est of ges­tures or thoughts will help another.  What does mat­ter is that we express our­selves bravely and hon­estly, offer­ing our lit­tle but oh-so-precious gifts to the world.

And we can be sure there is some­one wait­ing to receive our gifts.  There is always someone.

This, too, is a promise.

I’ve stepped away from the com­puter, and from all my nor­mal daily activ­i­ties, bask­ing in some fun vaca­tion time with my fam­ily.  In my absence, today we have a very giv­ing and won­der­ful guest with us.  Please help me wel­come Tess from The Bold Life.  Tess embod­ies the word bold — in so many pos­i­tive and uplift­ing ways.  And she lives what she writes.  Her words will make you think, and leave you to ques­tion and chal­lenge your­self.  A cou­ple of her recent posts include:

Bold Changes for Bold People

10 Rules for a Bold & Dar­ing Life

Tess is a pub­lished author, hav­ing writ­ten the book “Fly­ing by the Seat of My Soul”.  A free down­load of this book is avail­able here, or you can also pur­chase a soft-cover version.

Keep up with Tess by fol­low­ing her inspir­ing blog — The Bold Life, sub­scrib­ing to her RSS feed, or fol­low­ing her on Twit­ter.

With that, I give you, Tess, as today we look at:

Bold Com­pas­sion in The Jun­gle of Life

photo credit: Ed Your­don

“We are here to lis­ten to our inspired hearts, spread our full pea­cock feath­ers, and awaken the invin­ci­ble love inside us.”  Tama Kieves

In addi­tion to pre­vi­ous prob­lems our eco­nomic cri­sis causes many to feel inse­cure, vul­ner­a­ble and over­whelmed with debt and depression.

Know that if your kids are in trou­ble, your health is poor or you have an addic­tion there is hope. If you’re unem­ployed, have lost your home, are get­ting a divorce, or your busi­ness is fail­ing real­ize you are enough.  Exter­nal events don’t deter­mine our worth as a human being. Our prob­lems, jobs, cars, homes or bank accounts do not define us.

No mat­ter what is hap­pen­ing in your life today, big or small, know that you are OK. What ever the issue is, this too shall pass. It always has and always will.

I believe if you are suf­fer­ing it’s your respon­si­bil­ity to ask for and receive help. If you’re thriv­ing it’s your respon­si­bil­ity to reach out and offer it. I also believe what we need today is com­pas­sion for our­selves and com­pas­sion for others.

The fol­low­ing is an exam­ple of an event that recently occurred and how I han­dled it.

While vis­it­ing a friend in Michi­gan, I found myself in con­flict, frus­trated, hurt and at a loss on what to do.  My next trip was vis­it­ing my mom and dad at Heart­wood Lodge (a con­va­les­cent home) three hours away. Upset I cried most of the way, dri­ving on autopilot.

Upon arriv­ing I noticed their name plate was miss­ing on the wall and was con­fused. I asked the front desk nurse if they had been moved to another room. She replied, “Oh honey, they moved to another place a year ago.”

The crazy thing is I helped them move a year ago! I was so depleted from neg­a­tive emo­tions I actu­ally drove myself to the wrong place. I’ve come far enough in life to know con­demn­ing my behav­ior is use­less. I had brought Girl Scout cook­ies for my par­ents and upon leav­ing I handed them to the nurse and said, “Thank you. And have a nice day.”

Dri­ving to the new place I laughed at myself and decided to get it together while driving.

When we err or when we are down on our luck there is no need to feel inad­e­quate or stu­pid. Shame and blame are wasted energy.  Neg­a­tive self-talk brings us down. Pos­i­tive emo­tions lift us up. I gifted myself with for­give­ness, laugh­ter and humor. After arriv­ing at the cor­rect place I had a great visit and joined them play­ing bingo and eat­ing pizza.

Releas­ing neg­a­tive emo­tions made my visit mem­o­rable. I left them light-hearted and joy– filled. I left fluff­ing my feathers!

Life is dif­fi­cult. Sooner or later every­one faces dif­fi­cul­ties and tragedy. When we have com­pas­sion for our­selves and oth­ers we are all able to feel inspired again. Com­pas­sion trans­forms us.

The fol­low­ing steps are tools for releas­ing neg­a­tiv­ity and prac­tic­ing compassion:

• When you find your­self filled with neg­a­tive self-talk let it go, silently tell your­self to “Stop!”
• Find a quiet place to sit still and calm your­self. Close your eyes and take sev­eral deep breathes. Tell your­self, “Breathe in peace, breathe out anger.” “Breathe in calm and breathe out fear.”
• For­give your­self. Instead of dwelling on the neg­a­tive give your­self pos­i­tive feed­back, acknowl­edge your value and appre­ci­ate the good you do.
• Learn to express your feel­ings and emo­tions within a safe environment.
• Learn patience, step back from a sit­u­a­tion and don’t over react.
• Think well of your­self. Flood your­self with affir­ma­tions. Honor yourself.

With com­pas­sion you have the power to improve the qual­ity of your life. There will always be new music to enjoy and new places to dis­cover. Our future holds new expe­ri­ences, employ­ment, friend’s sun­sets, laugh­ter and love.

With com­pas­sion we can once again lis­ten to our inspired hearts, spread our full pea­cock feath­ers, and awaken the love inside!