My initial reaction was, “I’m too busy to know.”  I didn’t say this out loud.  It felt like an answer that should easily flow.  And the too busy part . . . well, I didn’t want to whine. 

The question was, “What do you want to do on Mother’s Day?”  I have other questions also lined up waiting for an answer. 

What questions are you carrying because you are too busy to drop into that deep place of knowing?

In life there is always something making us busy.  For me the end of school year crazies are putting me in a spin.  But I don’t want to be too busy to know what I want in life.  I don’t want to be too busy to feel the sun, especially on days like today, when it’s begging me to notice it. 

I don’t want to be too busy to...
  Work on big ideas
Celebrate others
  Read
Start important conversations . . . and complete them
  Make love
Hear my child
  Care for my body
Stoke my passions
  Nurture meaningful friendships
Be playful
  Connect with the hearts of others along my daily path

Yep, that’s it.  That’s the answer.  I know what I want to do on Mother’s Day.  How about you?

Blessings,
Amy

It’s hard to predict when you will need to step away. I’ve never been good at anticipating it, but I know how it feels when it arrives.  It’s usually in moments of grappling, discontent, or stress that I’m triggered to step away, without even thinking about the destination. 

It can feel like fleeing, but this urge to move is really the need for new energy.  If you know what energy you need, you will know what direction to step. Sometimes we need to shift into calm. Sometimes we need energy that motivates.  What do you need? 

Step back and contemplate. Think deeply, carefully, and fully. Land in the parts of life you tend to push through, stuff down, or gloss over. 

Step into nature. My yoga teacher Charu Rachlis says it’s always there to help you find the most direct path to your highest self.

Step up and make a decision. Then wear it for a while and see what energy it creates.

Step out of your comfort zone.  Feel the surge of energy that comes from taking a risk, feeling your edge.

Step away, mindfully.  Just stop.  Or go.  Whatever you need to create space for new energy to come in. I stopped writing for a bit.  I felt the need to refuel that tank.  I just spent a long weekend with a dear friend. I needed space from my day to day life. 

And then there’s the Two Step.  I was in a cowboy bar in Dallas last weekend watching the leather boots on the crowded dance floor sliding, twirling, and stomping.  The Two Step is a rhythm of two steps right and one step left.  It’s simple, but requires concentration.  I gave it whirl and it was pure fun! 

When you aren’t sure what step to take, the Two Step always works. Move in the direction of delight! You will receive fresh energy, expansiveness, and a new spring in your step.

Sometimes needs can’t be ignored: a car that doesn’t start, a sick child, an argument, a leaking roof.  This urgent straight forward “tending to” is a constant part of life.

This week I found myself in tune with a different layer of "tending to".  My eyes landed on my silver teapot that hasn’t been polished in a year.  I took an extra moment to look at myself in the mirror and plainly saw the need for a hair appointment.  It was my daughter's birthday and I had a momentary desire to make a cake from scratch rather than out of a box.  As I was standing in line at the dry cleaners I thought about the fact that my mother washed and ironed all of my father’s shirts.

There was a time when tending to life fit.  When silver was polished, cakes were made from scratch and mothers mended. It’s the stuff that in our modern world can feel unimportant or easy to outsource; able to be put off, not mission critical.

Yet everywhere I looked, something was staring back saying, “deal with me”. This part of life can't truly be ignored. You still see it and feel it weighing you down. What keeps calling out to you?

There is a difference between, "dealing with" and "tending to". They have different energies. Can you feel it? To Tend is defined as: To pay attention.

What if you allowed yourself to pay attention to the people and parts in your life that are asking for care, love, time. What if you tended to them without guilt or stress . . . with full breaths that create a sense that it is time well spent?

I decided to let myself be free this week to do some of the little and big things that I dance around, avoiding, week after week. I worked with an amazing rockstar organizer and cleaned up my garage. I dusted the leaves of a plant.  I polished some silver. I mended a sweater. I checked in on a neighbor.

The beautiful part of tending to life, is that life responds and smiles back at you.  Your heart warms. You slow down, nurture, and are nurtured in return. You become more connected with all the parts of life that are there for you: your surroundings, your belongings, your loved ones, your own heart.

What three words described your 2013?  Quickly -- top of mind.  I'd love to know.

On New Year’s Eve, in a circle of friends and family, we took turns seeing what words bubbled up to the surface.  Challenging, exhilarating, progress, complicated, sunny, thankful, persevering were a few.

This morning my own fourth word came forward: Yearning.  Was yearning part of your year too?

Looking back, I had very specific chapters with very specific desires.  I also had an overarching fuzzy sense of yearning that I know sometimes felt restless or stagnant; other times it propelled me forward, even though I can’t name where I landed. Yearning can be intense. It produces energy inside of us that seeps into the world.

This week my yoga teacher, Sean Haleen, shared the yogic philosophy that we are constantly creating, sustaining or destroying. I started to think about which category yearning falls into.  

I believe yearning can hold any of these energies.  Looking back on your year, did you act on any desires that brought something positive into the world or brought good energy to those around you?

How much energy did you expend to protect or maintain something about yourself or something sacred to you.  Most importantly, can you see when going towards your yearnings were at the cost or destruction of others?

Let me give you a simple example. This week I had a huge yearning to clean, purge and start fresh in the new year.  I became more and more intense as I pushed my daughters to be a part of the one-day house cleansing.  It was a very real yearning that had been brewing within me.

My youngest daughter knows when this yearning surfaces and always asks that I at least let her shut her bedroom door while she cleans (so she doesn’t absorb my energy). I couldn’t help myself.  I had to check her progress.  I knocked to ask permission.  On her dresser top, she strategically piled a bunch of her stuff onto a tray.

I eyed a hammer and gently asked, "Aria do you need this hammer or can I take it downstairs?"

She barked back with a twinkle in her eye, "Yes I need my hammer to hit you over the head when I don't like your parenting style!" 

My desire to create a fresh start, was actually more destructive than productive. The only thing I was creating was stress in my daughter.

This is a natural time to start moving your yearnings forward with fresh hope and energy.  

My wish for you is to live out your yearnings in ways that feel empowering, purposeful, fun, and brave . . . to live out your yearnings in ways that mindfully feed life around you and nurture what you treasure most.

Blessing in 2014!

I entered the cab, my family tumbling in behind me, and saw a well-loved guitar resting in the front seat.  My heart instantly warmed.  I wasn’t sure why.  

We pulled away from the airport curb and the taxi driver immediately put on his personal mix CD of slow latin luscious music.  He gave my husband a few bars to settle in and then handed him an egg shaker (mini maraca).  In a Russian accent he said,  “Go ahead and try.”

It was one AM.  We had been traveling for fifteen hours.  Taking a rhythm test was hardly the mood in the front seat. My girls and I silently waited to see what Alex would do.  He started slowly . . . shake shake tap.  Shake shake tap. Nope, that wasn’t it.

Tap shake tap. Tap shake tap.  Closer, but not quite with the music.

The large bald head behind the wheel nodded along and then gave encouragement, “It’s harder when the music is slow.”

We all listened more intently with this new knowledge and with the second shaker Mr. Cabbie pulled out to add more rhythm to the melody.

I had to try.  It was harder to go slow than I thought.

I went to bed knowing that we had received an important message.  In the morning I understood it.

Most of us just finished a wonderful period of Thanksgiving slow. Lazy days without routine or rhythm.  Now comes the first week of December.  We will be tempted to dive in, fast paced, in our normal rhythm that is easy because it’s the beat we always play.  But what if we were to consciously try to find a slower rhythm as we begin and end our days. 

It will be harder to maintain the rhythm at first.  But we will be more focused.  More expansive.  More creative and kind.  

Take out your imaginary shaker and try this song for practice.  You can do it!

It was a rare peaceful moment.  All the day’s work was neatly stacked on my desk and in my mind.  The driving was over. Although dinner was in front of me and my daughter and a friend were madly baking in the kitchen, I found myself sitting on my bed, chatting with a friend behind a closed door.

Our conversation veered from decisions and stresses to emotions and desires. Then Jenna said, “I just want to live a life with peace for my family and for me.”  

Yes.  The sentence sunk in and settled deep.

There is so much buzz about happiness right now: choosing it, raising it, hardwiring it; but I’m voting for peace. Peace has a different quality about it.  It’s a bit more weighty.  I imagine grounding in peace, like lying on the expanse of sand at Ocean Beach.  

We continued to toss around the complexity of our lives and it became apparent to both of us that you cannot chase peace.  The very act of pushing your way towards it removes the prize.

The times when we most intensely seek peace is often when there is an underlying change that needs to happen.  The focus of my decade of corporate change management work was always to move people and organizations through a change as fast as possible with minimal disruption.

But the more I focus on personal change, I understand that sitting in the space of disruption is meaningful time spent, as unpeaceful as it feels.  

This week I spoke with author Dr. Susan Plummer about her new book Deep Change.  She outlines a fascinating seven-stage process on the journey of deep personal change. Right smack in the middle of the journey is the shift of The Stilling:

“Where we arrive at the threshold between our known selves and world and what can feel like nothingness, with no new horizon in sight, suspended between two ways of being. In this state we wait, with our imaginations stilled, open to the unknown yet unaware of what is to come in the future.”

I breathed a sigh of relief while reading these words that put shape to a nebulous unsettling space.  Peace percolates from within our place of deep knowing. You can’t race to or push through or chase after it. Connecting to your powerful inner rudder requires stillness.

And then with your compass in hand, peace can mean action: big, bold, uncomfortable, risky action . . . that embraces the change that's been brewing and brings you that freedom known as peace.

I’ve been slipping in the Wonder department lately . . . all in the name of Ease.  Do you know what I mean? Let me put it this way.

Would you like your life to be easier?

What if I gave you the choice:  Would you rather your life be easier or more wondrous?

What does more wondrous mean to you? I'd love to know.

I have a hunch that the idea of adding wonder to your world upped the ante.  After all, “What’s so great about Easy?”, my favorite yoga teacher Charu often asks.  Yet often we wait for life to ease up before allowing ourselves to think bigger about a more deliciously fulfilling way of living.

When we are faced with ease versus wonder, ease often wins.  A simple example in my own life triggered this topic for me. I faced a ten hour road trip on Labor Day weekend that should have been five.  It almost didn’t happen.  My reward was a midnight shooting star extravaganza while soaking in a natural hot spring pool. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, yet I almost did.  The battle against traffic almost sent me in a U-turn back to life as usual.

And then there are the more meaty parts of life that you may face.  Do you make the investment to get a degree or certification in order to grow in a discipline you love?  Do you quit a job to seek a more fulfilling way to earn and contribute?  Do you move to a different city towards a dream?

I heard an interesting lecture by psychologist Kelly McGonigal, How to Make Stress Your Friend.  She ends by saying, “Chasing meaning is better for your life than avoiding discomfort.”

Somewhere in between weekend plans and life plans there is a space that calls us to move forward.  And when we feel we are moving on autopilot, I believe we have an opportunity to grab the steering wheel towards a more meaningful path.  

So, let’s go back to the questions of ease and wonder.  Let me rephrase them:

What does ease feel like to you?  

Could it be sureness, fulfillment, commitment, energy?

What does wonder feel like to you?

Could it be a sense of promise, mystery, stretching, delight, possibility?

Can you invite in more wonder AND ease, at the same time, just by increasing your ability to connect with these feelings? Can you find the calm and sureness within you to handle life’s grind?  It will give you more capacity for wonder:  to take in the uniqueness of each day; to go after what quietly delights you; to take action in the direction of unknown possibility and reward; to seek your shooting star and feel the awe that awaits you.

How playful are you? How easily can you shift into a place of lightness?  

I know I take life too seriously. I may appear light and playful, but often on the inside I am anything but.  Can you relate?

Sometimes our bodies have to tell us to lighten up. My back went out last month.  Last week I went to Las Vegas and got hives.  Literally, all over my body.  Not necessarily surprising.  Vegas can do that.  But to me, the hives symbolized a place of stress that my body, mind and emotions go, even when there isn’t obvious reason to. Even the corners of my natural smile turn down.  I actually have to work at my grin!

My husband looks at me and scratches his head.  He is a great example of someone who uses play as a strategy for lightening his load.  One night at dinner he jumped up from the dinner table and announced he was going to be late.  

“For what?” I asked.

“For my D.J. lessons!”

He forgot to tell me.

The next night, no joke, he pulls me aside, “Don’t tell the girls but I signed up for trampoline lessons tonight.  I want to surprise them and do a backflip!”  

Disappointed he came back after an hour, only learning safety procedures and seat drops; but that didn’t stop him.

The next day he came home late and bruised, “Babe, you’ve got to try Krav Maga!  It’s amazing!”
  It’s summer time, a natural time of year to relax a little and play a bit more.  It is important.  You know the research.  It releases all of the good hormones, keeps us young, and awakens the creative, crusty corners of our brain.  

Martha Beck, in her book Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, talks about play being sacred; a path to wordlessness and expansion.  She also shares that most humans resist learning  “something substantially new” once they reach the age of 23.

How can you be more playful this summer?

I started small by practicing my smile constantly.  It has lightened everything: shopping, driving, typing. Try it! I’m going to seek out small moments to be lighter in my decisions and reactions. 

I committed to play more with my daughters this summer.  I'm talking about sustained, engaged, active play.  I'm not sure why this is so difficult, but I know I’m not alone.  I also know it's important for all of us to model playful behavior for our children to counter the compulsive over-working way of life that grips us all. 

Work has playful possibilities too. Preparing for the launch of my book has been weighing me down. This week I decided to approach it as a playful project.  I already feel more creativity seeping into me!  Is there an area of your work life that feels heavy right now? Can you reframe your relationship with it?

And when it comes to trying something new, I’m going to follow Alex to his next class . . . actually I just learned it’s going to be kite boarding, so maybe not. If you have an experience you want to try, let me know. I’ll be your buddy!