new spring

Last week I took Charlie to one of our favorite parks. It was the first warm day of the year. The first day to play without jackets, and the boy went wild. He ran from slides to swings to climbers, and none of them could keep his interest for more than a minute. He was so excited to try them all. It was pure unbridled joy.

I think we all feel this newfound energy in the spring, especially in cold weather climates. New life is sprouting, the earth is coming alive again. The birds are returning and with them the background music that accompanies our summer. At last our hibernation is over.

Spring has brought about a change in me, and I have been realizing that I want to bring more joy into my life. I feel a longing to spend more time with friends. I want to play more. I want to put aside my to do list and the serious tasks that I have gotten caught up in. I want to stop trying to do everything perfectly, and just focus on having fun.

I think fun is a great antidote to perfect. If you focus on having fun, then perfect doesn't really matter. There is no perfect way to have fun, because fun is spontaneous and wild and riddled with imperfections. When you are focused on just having fun, it doesn't matter if your house is messy when friends come over. It doesn't matter if your best laid plans fall apart at the last minute, because something else wonderful can come out of that.

So this spring and summer, my intention is to focus on fun, and enjoying life. I have a feeling that wonderful things might come of this.

Chicago weekend

We took a weekend getaway to Chicago over spring break for some much-needed time in the city. We spent A LOT of time at museums, had tons of fun playing in the pool with their cousins, and Ross and I got a night on the town (OMG Cuban food!). Now we're all in withdrawal, missing cousins and my sister, missing cities, and trying to catch up on sleep. These days a good vacation means we come home needing a nap, and that's just fine with me.

Trains make little boys happy.

Emerson the fire fighter.

Brothers working together at the water table.


As we were driving out of the city, heading back home, Charlie said, "Daddy, drive faster! Why are all of those cars in our way?" Ross answered, "That's called traffic, Charlie." He is growing up in a place without traffic jams and commutes. We will miss Chicago, but it is good to go home.

A Better Way

A few weeks ago, I read a blog post by Leonie of the Goddess Guidebook that got to the very heart of something I have been struggling with lately.  The title of the post is “How to Change the World Your Way,” and in it she retells the story of how she created her business, which is her true calling.

This story is about how she wanted to be Prime Minister of Australia, and she was on an ambitious track to get there. Then one day she realized that wasn’t the only way for her to change the world, and that she was not meant for being a public servant or the Prime Minister. She was meant to be an artist, and to change the world in a different way. And so she changed course, just like that. She became an artist instead, and found the path that she is on. She has reached tens of thousands of women so far, and has plans to reach many more. She is changing the world in a different way, in her way. By following her heart, her instincts

The reason this speaks to me so strongly is because as long as I can remember I have wanted to change the world for the better. I thought that the best way to do that was as an environmental advocate and organizer and to work to change policy. So I followed that path in college, in my career, and have invested more than a decade into this work. I have an established career I have helped achieve some important policy changes. 

But…my heart is telling me that maybe there is something else. Maybe there is something more I can do. 

Maybe I can change the world in a better way.

I feel a calling to do something different, or to do something more. For one, being an advocate has meant acting professional and hiding the less mainstream sides of myself, and really the less "feminine," creative, intuitive, and emotional sides of myself. Meaning, I feel like I have to "man" it up sometimes. The professional/policy world is so full of masculine energy, which makes sense after the hundreds of years of males dominating our societies and making the rules. I want to break free of those constraints, and find a more powerful and full way to communicate and make positive change.

We certainly need major policy changes, and I plan to keep working for those. We also need more. It is becoming clear to me that more needs to be done than policy alone can achieve. Or perhaps it is that more needs to be done SO that the big policy change we need can be achieved. The problems we are facing as a society are enormous, and require major shifts in our way of life. We need people creating a positive vision of a new way of living that stops damaging our planet and starts healing it.  

For a few years my gut, my inner voice, has been telling me that there is another path for me. It is time I started to explore it. Leonie's post gave me the permission I was looking for to find another way, perhaps even a better way, to change the world. 

Perfect schmerfect

I came across an illuminating audio interview with Brene Brown that was part of a series on successful women balancing motherhood and careers and living a full life.

Brene Brown talks in her interview about how we judge ourselves and how many of us (ahem, me included) battle with perfectionism. This does not mean that perfectionists think we are perfect, rather it means that we hold ourselves and most things we do to an unrealistically high standard. Perfectionism is counter-productive and actually stands in the way of feeling happy and living in the moment and just getting things done. It can be paralyzing, as we wait until something is just right before taking action. We wait until our blog post is perfect before posting, we wait until we've repainted the kitchen to host that dinner party.

And guess what? We post less onto our blog, and those ideas never gets expressed. We host fewer parties, and miss out on the joy of the company of our friends. And on and on. Perfect really *is* the enemy of the good.

The real nugget of genius in this interview is when Brene describes how each of us has our own unique set of circumstances and responsibilities in our lives. No one else has the same family, job, hobbies, skill set, etc. as we do (or the genes and experiences that make up who we are today). So we really don’t have anyone to compare ourselves to.

Instead, we tend to compare ourselves to the ideal. We compare our mothering to the most committed mother we know. We compare our work to the best in our field. We compare our fledgling new business to someone who has a thriving business already. We compare our volunteer work to Mother Theresa. This is where the perfectionism comes in. We compare ourselves to the very best at it, to what we see as perfect. Then, naturally, we fall short because we are shooting so high, and then we beat ourselves up about it.

The secret is to - you guessed it - stop comparing ourselves. Recognize that we are unique, and just do our best. That is enough. 

I just need to show up, do my best, follow my heart, and trust that things will unfold as they should. Everything is as it should be on this fascinating journey.

P.S.

Brene Brown had a lot of great insights into parenting as well, which sheds more light on this post, and on motherhood and judgment and life in general.

She says that where we are in our own journey towards wholeheartedness (and feeling worthy), is a far better predictor of how our kids will turn out than anything else. We cannot give our children a stronger sense of self worth than we have ourselves. We need to model for them the kind of people we want them to be, we cannot teach it any other way. So...time for me to put down the parenting books and keep doing this kind of work on myself.

Another great things she talked about is this mythology that our journey ends when we have kids. It isn't true. In the early years of mothering you shift into self-sacrifice because babies need so much of you to survive. But after the first few years, we don't need to put ourselves on hold anymore. There doesn't have to be self-sacrifice. We can continue our journey as full-color, living, growing, vibrant human beings. In fact, to be a good parent, we must!

There is so much more to learn from her about being vulnerable and overcoming shame and being authentic. Luckily, she has written several books about it.

Taking Responsibility

A few weeks ago, out of the blue, a dear friend sent me links to videos by Andrew Cohen that she watched in her meditation class. The videos were on the basic tenets of Evolutionary Enlightenment, which he wrote a whole book on. I’m not an expert on this stuff, but I walked away with some helpful new insights.

The concept that transformed me the most, and what I keep coming back to, is the idea that we must take responsibility for everything that happens to us. For our lives to be driven more by our authentic selves and less by the ego, and to end all the things that cause us to suffer, we must choose to accept unconditional responsibility for every experience that has happened to us, and for everything we have done to hurt others.

It took me a while to wrap my head around this, and honestly, my first reaction was NOOOOOOO! I am not to blame for all the bad things that have happened to me and all of the bad relationships and encounters in my life! I resisted.

However, I began to see that while others did play a role in these bad experiences and relationships, it is also true that I participate in this world and in all of my relationships, and I am at least partly responsible for them.

So I started to look at those bad experiences from a place of partial responsibility. And do you know what? It was actually liberating.

I began to see that I have the power to change those relationships, and make things better. If I had behaved differently in my relationships and interactions, perhaps I could have changed them entirely. When you take on full responsibility, you cannot be a victim. Ever. You are empowered to change things.

One way that I've found helpful in applying this to my life is to look at the most difficult relationships in my life - the person or people I have the hardest time being around. I began to think about how MY actions had made that relationship worse, had created tension, had triggered mean things to be said. I started to see that I was responsible, and then I began to see how I could start to repair the relationship. I have even begun to see these people with more compassion, and I've been able to take the bad interactions less personally.

It is certainly a work in progress, but so worth it.

He goes on to say that if we take responsibility for all the bad things in our lives, we can move to a place where we are more aware of our true and authentic self, and we can stop living in a guarded way - afraid of being hurt, afraid of what the world might send our way. When we take responsibility, we are in control. We are free!

Facing my shadow

I recently made the decision to focus on finding more inner peace, and improving some important relationships in my life.

Once I made the decision, walah, the universe started sending me the things that I needed for this journey. Perhaps it was just that my attention was now drawn to things around me, and that I had opened the space in my life to explore these things. Whatever the case, the lessons rolled in.

It began by reading an article in Yoga Journal (“Me and my Shadow” February 2012) a couple Sundays ago (I knew it was a good idea to skip church that day!) about facing our negative qualities in order to discover what fears and insecurities lie beneath and ultimately overcoming them.

Let’s face it, sometimes all of us can feel jealous or judgemental or just plain mean. Carl Jung called it “the person you’d rather not be” or your “shadow.” I guess your "dark side" sounds too intense or Star Warsian. Whatever you call it, it is all the selfish, primitive, egoistic aspects of yourself.

In some ‘yogic scriptures’ these shadow characteristics are known as kleshas, which means causes of suffering. Yeah, that rings true. Feeling jealous and insecure is certainly a form of suffering.

The author made the case that this "shadow" holds aspects of your personality that you would rather not take a close look at - things that you are ashamed of and that you do not examine. Your hidden tendency to be judgmental or vain may actually be the underpinnings of your annoyance with your judgmental neighbor or your vain boss. These qualities are often primitive and immature because “they have not been cooked in the fire of our self awareness.” How eloquent is that quote! So when we see these qualities in other people or situations, it causes negative reactions from us that we may not recognize or understand.

Okay, so if I look closely at the circumstances that bring out these qualities in myself, then I can figure out why I act this way, and I can change it. There are certain situations and people that trigger these bad feelings in me. I can use these times as red flags, and dig deep to try to understand what is going on in that fascinating primal mind of mine.

I started putting this to practice in my daily life by thinking about the things and people that trigger negative feelings and behaviors, and then looking at the possible reasons behind this. For example, lately I have been annoyed by new mothers. The ones who analyze everything together and compare every decision to make sure they don’t make a poor choice and brag about how their child watches zero television. You know, the kind of new mother that I was a few years ago.

Sure, some of these qualities are just plain annoying. And at first I blew off my annoyance as just a sign that I was moving on from that phase of my life (now that I have a school aged child and school aged things to think about). But there was something more going on inside of me, a deeper irritation, and it was affecting some of my relationships. It was worth a closer look.

When I started to be really honest with myself, I realized that part of this annoyance came from my deep desire to parent well. My children are so important to me and I have invested so much time and energy into their well-being since their births. I don’t want to rehash those conversations about circumcision and diapers and solid foods and decide that I made a poor choice in my child’s earliest years. No thank you!

I also realized that I might be a wee bit jealous of those new moms. I loved the baby years, and while they put me through the ringer, I miss the wide-eyed, excited, five years younger version of myself and that new baby.

When I unravel this and see that they are partly my issues causing these negative feelings, it allows me to look at these mamas with less annoyance and with more understanding. It helps me see these mothers not as competitors, but more as kindred spirits in this together. It even healed an important relationship in my life where I had been misinterpreting motives.

I have applied this to other red flag situations and relationships in my life. It is surprising how quickly this practice helps me transform my feelings towards people and my behavior, in a matter of minutes sometimes.

Imagine a life with fewer negative feelings and less conflict! That sounds like a world with more room for joy and for our better selves to shine through. More space to create good in the world. I really, really want to keep this as a part of my life.

Give it a try. What brings out your shadow emotions? Were you able to heal them?

Check out the next teacher in this journey later this week.

What do I need right now?

You know those times where everything seems to come together? The theme of the novel you are reading, the magazine article you read, and the TEDx video that your best friend sent you all are sending you things that you are seeking, with messages that weave together into one important lesson? Well, I’m having one of those moments in time and I want to share it with you.

It all began when I made the decision to focus on spiritual growth and being a better, happier person. I also wanted to improve some important relationships in my life.

I decided to make this a priority and let my attention focus on that for a while. Then the lessons just started rolling in.

I was explaining this to a dear friend, telling her that I sent my intention out into the universe, and she stopped me right there. What does that mean to send your intention out into the universe? How exactly do you do that?

Oh, dearheart, I’m so glad you asked. For me, it began with this question:

What do I need in my life right now?

We first need to figure out what we need to bring into our lives. Sometimes it is obvious, we are ill so we must push everything else aside and focus on getting well. But often it is not so clear, and very often we just don't ask ourselves the question, so we get caught up doing what we think we ought to do, what we feel obligated to do, or what others want us to do. There is a lot of noise out there telling us what to do. But often those things distract us from what we really need.

If we quiet down and listen to ourselves, even for two minutes, we will know what it is that we really need.

What I like to do is close my eyes, take some deep breaths, and ask myself, "What is it that I need in my life right now?" Sometimes I think about what I need this week or today, and sometimes I think more long term. The answers usually come pouring in: "I need to rest!" when I'm exhausted but haven't given into it yet. Or "I need to play play play with my little boys!" Or "I need to declutter this house so I can think straight." Or "I really just want to work and write!" My inner voice is ready with the answer almost every time, and usually she adds, "I'm SO glad you finally asked!"

It is a mini-meditation. A check in to see if you are being true to yourself.

The lovely thing about asking yourself what you need is that you get to focus your energy on what you feel like attacking. You aren't forcing yourself to do anything you don't want, and I find that I get so much more done that way. You are just tuning into what you are energized to do.

I am really interested in figuring out how to improve myself and my relationships right now in this moment in time, so I enjoy spending my extra time and energy reading about it and journaling and talking to my dearest friends about what I'm learning. I will ride this wave until it wanes, which it always does.

When I checked in a few weeks ago, I heard a resounding, "I need to work on my relationships and myself. It is time to heal, to grow, to find a centering calm again." And the voice added, "And this might take a while."

So simply by the act of acknowledging that I need to work on my relationships and myself, I put my intention into the universe. And the universe starts delivering what I need. Also, I start focusing more on this, and I give myself permission to put other projects on the back burner for now.

There are some other activities that I do sometimes to be more deliberate about bringing things into my life, like creating a vision board and visualizing what I want to see. I’ll write about that later.

But usually, figuring out what it is that I need is all I have to do to get on track. Check back in tomorrow to read about some of the lessons that came from this.

What about you? How do you keep yourself tuned into what you truly need?