Wishing you good health and that all your dreams come true.
You In The New Year
As we approach the new year, perhaps we can pause and hold space for ourselves. To reflect on how we think, speak, and act towards ourselves and each other.
Differences And Learning
You can build walls of fear to hold out what you don’t understand or agree with. Or your can open the window to your soul, the door to you heart and listen, let in, and learn.
Love Light
What is truly causing you discomfort about your situation? What is holding you back from speaking up or acting? It’s not uncommon to feel not enough or to make unbalanced comparisons or to resent or to be jealous. That pattern of thought and feeling is low-frequency. It’s negative and you know it. You know it by how you feel as you go down that rabbit hole. However, in those moments, you can switch on the highest of frequencies - LOVE. You can bring light to how you are feeling. You can be compassionate with yourself and nurture your well-being. There are endless things you can do from looking in the mirror and telling yourself, “I love you.” to meditation to taking a walk to calling that friend who always makes you laugh to dancing in your space to diving into your work or a hobby. Shine your love light on your insecurities.
Patience With Pain
This may seem counterintuitive. When we hurt, we just want it to end. This is not a suggestion for simplicity or easiness. Pain is a natural experience of life just as love is. Sit with it, but no need to be stuck in it. Lean into it, learn from it, and then leave it. Allow yourself to feel it. Allow yourself to mourn. Allow yourself to heal. Pain becomes what you make it. It can become an excruciating lesson or it can become debilitating suffering. The choice is always yours.
Don’t ask yourself, “How long will this pain last?” but instead, gently ask yourself, “What do I need in this moment to heal?”
Setting Intentions
Limiting beliefs yield a limited life. Your fear of failure/judgment tricks you into believing you can’t, you shouldn’t, you’re not enough, you’re not worthy. So, you settle for less than, for comfortable, for safe. There is no growth, but rather, the illusion of progress. Why? Because, “It’s better than nothing.” However, being consciously aware of abundance, endless possibilities, and infinite love can shift your mind’s mantra to, “I am worthy of my magnificence!”
Be
Courageously and lovingly tap into your authenticity and allow yourself to be exactly who you are.
A Love In Progress
Shift your mindset. See all that you do and all that you are as a love experience. Too often, we limit what we can do and who we can be, because we label it as work. It may sound like word play, but think about you “feel” when you are forever referring to learning, healing, adventuring, or changing as work.
Perhaps when it comes to your well-being, it’s less about putting in the work and more about putting in the love.
The Lounge Podcast - Ep.3 How Are You?
Episode 3 is here!!!
Daily Moment of Awareness [10.14.2019]
Moments of awareness shared with you
Maybe it’s not work. Maybe it’s not grueling. Maybe it’s not exhausting.
Maybe….it’s necessary.
When you consider making change in your life, do you cast a negative shadow on the experience? Like, before you even take a step? Think about how you characterize what you need to do or what you are trying to achieve. The more you paint it in a negative light, the more mental blocks you create to get in the way. As if you needed any more excuses.
When you reflect on areas of your life that you believe to be unhealthy or in need of a healthy dose of change, it is helpful to think and speak about the change in a grounding and benefiting way. Ask for the effort and energy needed to move forward. Allow lessons along the way. Be patient with yourself. Say, “Thank you.” for the opportunity.
You affect the process of change by your attitude about change. See it as necessary and welcome it as part of your growth.
Daily Moment of Awareness [10.10.2019]
Moments of awareness shared with you
Today was a day filled with gifts.
It began with breathing in a beautiful morning and deepening my awareness in meditation. Then a 9+ mile run through a blissful autumn scene. Followed by a calming, restorative float session. And culminating with reiki and a full body massage.
My mind was clear. My heart was open. My soul was shining. My body was rejuvenated. My whole being was filled with gratitude.
It is good for your spirit to love and care for yourself.
Daily Moment of Awareness [10.1.2019]
Moments of awareness shared with you
I have been enjoying a pretty steady ritual of daily morning meditation, followed by reading, then a run, then some social media work and then….well, whatever I need to do in the moments following.
Today was completely lopsided for me. I was up super late and basically, so my sleep schedule was totally messed up. I actually laid in bed until about 5p. Though I was feeling conflicted about some stuff, unmotivated, and annoyed that I allowed the day to go by, something happened.
I told myself it was ok to deviate from the plan. I recognized I could still accomplish what I do in the mornings, in the evening too. In that moment, I felt ok about not feeling ok. But I also become mindful that making healthy choices to boost my energy, clear my mind, and nurture my well-being are available to me in every moment - not just the morning time.
So, I sat up. I scheduled some social media posts. I leaned into my mediative practice. I read. I got a quick run in. I showered. And I even ran out for some quick fall knick-knack shopping.
Even when things feel off, you can still make choices to align yourself with well-being.
Fear Is Not A Validation
People hear what you say. People see what you do. But people do not experience your life experiences as you do.
Furthermore, we often dial down or even hide our truth. The deep, core experience dancing in our souls and warming our hearts. For as real as it feels to us, we still try to make sense of it. We question it and doubt it. There are so many reasons why we do this and it all points back to fear.
How much do you reveal in your moment to moment?
We tell people what we think they will accept. We show people what we think they will accept. We surrender to fear. We tell ourselves we have difficult choices to make, but what that really mean is we have tradeoffs to make. The tradeoff is our authenticity for someone else's acceptance. Why? Because we allow fear to be a validation for how we choose to live.
Fear is NOT a validation.
words on image: Michael Barata / image: Jez Timms
How You Frame It
Your inner dialogue greatly influences your mood, your behavior, and your outlook about life.
If you are forever re-running something painful from your past in your head, don’t be surprised when the emotions associated with that experience are what you feel. If you doubt yourself or harshly judge yourself, don’t be surprised when you feel “less than.” If you are always giving into fear and telling yourself, “I just couldn’t do that.” don’t be surprised when you don’t make progress.
If you are going through a challenge, how you think and talk about it, matters. A lot! How you frame it is how your whole being responds to it. If you refer to your life (experiences) in a negative and/or defeating way, you will attract more negativity and defeat and feel negative and defeated.
It’s not magic. It’s not being naive. It’s not ignoring the work. It’s all about taking a healthy approach to your life in every moment. Everything you could ever feel or give begins within YOU.
If you’re hurting, acknowledge the hurt, and tell yourself you are healing. If you’re lost, acknowledge being lost, and tell yourself you’re learning. Of course, reinforcing this healthy mindset with healthy behaviors in healthy environments will also help.
words on image: Michael Barat / image: Pixabay
Comfort Is Quicksand
Think about those mornings when every inch of your bed just hugs you? The sheets and blankets have created the perfect temperature, that you almost feel one with them. Your pillow is a soft cloud for your heavy mind.
What else is going here? That’s right. Your comfort is holding you back from beginning your day. Exercising. Meditating. Eating a heathy breakfast. Spending some meaningful time with someone - or even with yourself.
Comfort denies new experience. Comfort ignores creativity. Comfort stunts growth. Comfort delays learning. Comfort teams up with fear to stop you from: exploring, going further, looking more intently, being curious and courageous, and yes, they stop you from living divinely and loving deeply.
Comfort is best experienced as a flowing reminder that you are living. However, it can also be a stagnant stop.
words + words on image: Michael Barata / image: Lisa Fotios
Your Truth Is Enough
No need to figure out life. Your life is your gift. Your truth is the unfolding of it.
Along the way, you will doubt your truth. You will hide your truth. Hell, you’ll even be told your truth is not enough. They are obstacles. You may trip and fall. Get up. It’s your truth.
Your truth is beautiful because it’s your truth. It’s what makes your life, authentic. The highs and lows, the flow and the falls.
Your truth is yours. All of it. The knee-buckling obstacles as well as the awe inspiring beautiful scenery.
words: Michael Barata / image: MaLeK DriDi