September 29, 2018

Fears Are Just Stories That We Tell Ourselves




Recently I discovered transformational comedian Kyle Cease by accident on Youtube. The one line of his that caught me in a profound way was-


 "Fears are just stories that we tell ourselves."

Hell yeah! Boy can I apply this to every area of my life. Every day. But when I catch myself in the grip of fear and remember that it is just a story that I'm telling myself, it allows the fear to dissipate and helps me to move beyond it.

Fears really ARE just stories that we tell ourselves. Our minds are like little fear manufacturing factories, the little devils!

One of my mottoes in the last ten years has been, "Do what you are afraid to do"(from the Nike ad)  but I didn't realize that the reason that I'm afraid to do something is because of  the story that I create and attach to it.

And herein lies the unraveling of making our way through our fears and out the back door of them:

Don't be afraid to do what we are afraid of AND understand why we are afraid, and simply catch that it's all a story.

Ha!

Recently I have begun a year long program at Coach Training Institute so that I can become a health and wellness coach. I've been planning on doing it ever since a I started Lines Of Beauty and posted about this amazing woman who coached people till she was 101. I've waited until now to start the program because I knew that I wouldn't have the bandwidth to do it until my mom passed on (or is this just a story of fear that I told myself?)...

Anyway, my new life is riddled with fears but I'm doing my best to toss them up into the air, like little helium balloons, and allow them to fly away.

Kyle Cease's video on letting go of control is another good one.

Enjoy my sweets.

xo



September 25, 2018

Remembering What We Want



Photo by Belovodchenko Anton
I stumbled upon this quote recently:

Discipline is remembering what we want.

It's a good one.

For some reason I have hardly ever been at a loss for knowing what I want. It shifts, and morphs, and re-balances to be sure, but like most of you probably, at any given moment, I am pretty adept at putting my finger on what it is that is going to ring my bell.

So maybe we know what we want, especially the older and wiser we grow. We could make lists about what we want in every little area of our life. From what we desire for dinner to the much bigger picture in life- like how we want our world to be. We could make notes about how we prefer to feel, how much stress we want in our life, how much downtime and together time we need. About what we want to do with our now precious time and who we want to hang with. Basically how we want to operate and maneuver, through the rest of our days.

And more importantly for me right now, how to create the connection and intimacy I crave.

Every day, actually, we make decisions about who we want to be.

So where is the disconnect between knowing what we want and then doing something that is totally not in line with what we want?

Ahh yes- we forget what we want. Sometimes just temporarily, but frequently, for way too long. Or, what we want seems so outlandish and outside the possibility of who we have always know ourselves to be, that we give up on what we want before we even try.

Usually out of fear.

Or maybe it's that we get too tired or too hungry or too overwhelmed, or sick, or too exhausted from having someone else be sick, and we forget to listen to our internal compass. Life happens. Things get in the way. There are bills to pay, and fires to put out and mouths to feed.

Sometimes there are just too many flies buzzing around our head.

Well this I know- the only remedy for remembering what we want- is to slow down long enough, and get quiet enough, so that we can hear ourselves. For some people it's meditation, but for me I can pinpoint so many things in my life, and zero in my happiness, when I am out running, hiking, swimming laps and more recently, biking.

Discipline is remembering what we want.

Gosh I wish I knew this when I was younger.

For more related reading, I've another post here.

Have a good week.

Get quiet.

Listen to our hearts. It's right here with each of us, waiting for us to put our hand on it and take care of it.

Oh yes- and one more thing. I love the magnificence of the photo above. Among other things, like the lighting, I love the peeling paint.

Belovodchenko Anton, you have outdone yourself.