There’s a big difference between looking through the glass at life and being ankle deep in it.

I just came back from one of those big trips you take when you want to feel alive again. You go not just to get a break from your own knee-deep responsibilities. You hope that by stepping away from your life, you will gain clarity . . . new energy . . . new perspective.

I knew it was time for this trip to Vietnam and Cambodia with my husband. I was starting to feel a comfortable distance from life. Running on autopilot; resting in the ease of routine and habitual choices; feeling victim to the pace of my days; procrastinating; observing my life rather than being fully in it. I even felt distant from my own heart.

So off to a far away land. Immediately the heat, smells, sites and flavors woke up my senses. And then my heart broke open . . . seeing the pain of poverty mile after mile . . . yet feeling the peace behind the eyes and the smiles of everyone in my path.  

Each day I had greater desire to get closer to the people, to be deeper in their worlds.  I would look out of the car window at the rice paddies as we sped along, watching the back breaking work of the straw hatted workers, curious about how rice is grown and harvested.  My desire for a perfect photo for my walls shifted to wanting to experience the feeling of being in the rice paddies myself.  I became obsessed with the idea.  But what was I going to do?  Tell our driver to stop the car and march out through the wet fields and saddle up next to a farmer?

Yes. That was what I was going to do.  We were on a small dirt road in the scorching heat of the afternoon.  I found the courage to verbalize my request, “Would it be possible for me to plant some rice?”  Our guide turned his head with a wide grin.  A minute later my shoes were off, and three dark faces with bright bright eyes were welcoming me to join them.  I slowly stepped into the slippery mud and sank to my ankles. A child like energy burst within me as I felt the mud between my toes. I was handed my own bunch of young rice sproutings that had been pulled by hand just to replant them again evenly in order to maximize the harvest. One by one I pushed the small stem deep into the clay like earth, being coached on the right distance between plantings.  The fully clothed ladies cackled under their hats. It was a joyful moment for all of us.  I could have stayed there all afternoon, ankle deep in life.

I’m back now.  Determined to feel the deep texture of my life and the hearts and desires of those in my daily path.  I’m done with the distance that makes us numb to others and keeps life safe and easy.


What distance are you keeping? Why? What might you gain by rolling down the window, getting a little muddy, allowing a new closeness in your life?

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

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.

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.

This week I decided to try a new recipe. That’s as far as I got.  As soon as I started thinking about the time required to find one, my chest tightened and I headed for my To Do list. Eventually I came back from Trader Joe’s with my usual arsenal of dinners for the week.

It’s a funny thing - how we define Time Well Spent. It’s very personal.   

We all know someone (or we are a person) who:

• Delights in experimenting in the kitchen
• Exercises more times in a week than most do in a month
• Alphabetizes her spice rack with glee
• Creates purposeful, playful, and present time with their children
• Passionately burns the candle of their career climb
• Meticulously designs the details of their home, their wardrobe, or yard
• Has an insatiable appetite for books
• Always remembers the birthday, writes the letter, reaches out, makes time for a coffee
• Has a disciplined practice for centering in prayer, meditation, journaling, or solitude

You get the idea.  We allow ourselves some activities more than others and the guilt free list tends to be short.  It’s fueled by our values ~ what is a worthy endeavor, what brings us satisfaction, how we define accomplishment, what adds to our own sense of self.

l left Trader Joes determined to break my patterns.  I headed straight for Bed Bath and Beyond, where I bought kitchen organizers.  Rearranging an unexpected corner was a gift of calm. I allowed myself some time to find a few new recipes that felt good to make. Today I finally started to help my daughter with a garden she has been requesting for weeks.  With each activity I gave myself permission to enjoy, take my time, and be present.  It was true Time Well Spent.

At this point in our evolution, with all of the economic and technological advances in our society, researchers predicted we would be enjoying significantly more free time.  Yet our culture spins unnaturally fast on a scarcity model, where free time is rarely free from priotizing, justifying, or micro-managing.

There’s no one right definition of Time Well Spent.  However, I believe there is a universal gift we receive in expanding our definition: new energy, new experiences, new learnings, new joy.

What would you like to add to your guilt-free list?  If you need encouragement to spend this time, reach out to the seasoned artist, designer, athlete, gardener, or entrepreneur that you know.  Listen to their authentic enthusiasm.  It will help you be open to new possibilities for your own.

It started with trying to drive my daughter to school with my contacts in the wrong eyes, capped with needing to open the refrigerator three times to get out the salmon for dinner (never seemed to grab the right thing), and ended with my daughter finally finding my cell phone on the trampoline. Go figure.

It was truly a Give a Pig a Pancake, attention deficit, perimenopausal day.  I don’t imagine I’m alone.

Haven’t we all perfected the state of Scattered with increasing life responsibility, logistics overload, lack of sleep, the downpour of social media, and imploding inboxes.

Then there are our hormones. How do we distinguish the cause of Scattered among the possible symptoms of:

• “Decreased alertness” from our monthly cycle
• “Difficulty concentrating and memory lapses” during our path to menopause
• “The inability to cope with stress and fuzzy thinking” from adrenal fatigue
• “Impaired working and spacial memory” of chronic stress
• “Mental fog”, an official symptom of thyroid disfunction, (my personal favorite)

There’s no escaping it!

I know you know this already but as the week continues let’s try to commit it to memory (not an easy task):

• It’s not a personal problem. It’s societal.

• It’s okay to stop.  Literally stop.

• You don’t have to hide when you stop.  You can actually tell your boss, your team, your family what you need. They usually see your short circuit coming way before you do.

• Feeling guilty when you stop is personal. It’s between you and your superwoman self.  No one can squash that feeling but you.

• It doesn’t take much. Five minutes ~ set the timer, often.

• Know what works. Cleaning out your inbox on your “break” doesn’t. Grounding requires going inward, shutting out stimuli, finding stillness, shifting your breath. Try literally getting grounded horizontally. Conference room floors work too!

• Be the change: a cliche, but true. Model the self care that the world needs.  Be courageous at work.  Teach your children the life skill of self monitoring and self care by example.

Today I’m ready for more focus, more tasks, more clarity.  I know another wave of Scattered will arrive in the future.  I also know the more often we identify Scattered, care for Scattered, and give it the space and pace to dissipate, the faster we get back on track.  

By track, I don’t mean the treadmill.  I mean a conscious path of self compassion and resilience.

Where does your gaze land? . . . When it’s not on a screen . . . Do you tend to search for a horizon?

I am constantly eying up the path in front of me, feeling the need to navigate.

How funny that my eyesight is starting to wane to a blur right beyond my nose. The drugstore reading glasses are a lovely invitation to more clearly see the richness of my life within the daily transactions while paving my path.

And looking inward, well that can get a bit confusing, like a maze with no marked exit.  Looking inward can quickly shift to looking back.  Peering into life’s rear view mirror can feel like reversing out of your driveway, double checking left to spot the should haves and right to see the could haves.

I have recently been looking up.  Straight up.  This new vantage point is beautifully wide open, even on cloudy days. It’s a welcome break, a clean start.  There is an intense loving energy of sunlight, the promise of space and the free movement of flight against the backdrop of stillness.  

And there are sneakers ~ hundreds of them.  I just started to see them, everywhere.  It’s definitely a city phenomenon.  Hanging from the wires that connect us all, they appear to be left behind and on pedestals for their fine tour of duty. The more sneakers my eyes spot the more I hear their messages:

“Leap!,” they say.
“Forget the horizon. Or the sidewalk down memory lane with all of its cracks. Or even your next step.”
“Try the sky.”
“Feel the freedom of movement without laces”
“Try the path you feel you can’t.”
“Know you aren’t truly held down.”
“Imagine the weight you bare is yours to let go.”

Next time you remove your shoes, let it be a reminder to lighten your step . . .  lift your gaze . . . and find ease in the now.

It’s happening.  The holiday spin.  This time of year can be a mixed bag.  There are lovely traditions, more parties, more to dos, more hope for goodwill on earth, more connection with others.  And often, there is less connection with ourselves.

When you feel disconnected, the intensity of life, in all of its imbalance, pressure, and pace takes over.  I invite you this year to use your light-filled tree, or the trees you see smiling in the windows of others, as a constant invitation to reconnect with yourself.  A favorite Mary Oliver poem came to mind as my family decorated our tree this weekend.  Read it very slowly, preferably out loud.  Let it be your mantra for this season. “Go easy.  Be filled with light. Shine.”

Joy and Peace,
Amy