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What is your “counter-cultural intention”?

It takes intention and staying power to live counter-culturally.

I spoke those words to a friend yesterday and they struck a cord in her. I took that as a sign to go deeper for, in that moment, they’d just flown off my tongue.

What did I mean?

For me, counter-cultural describes much of what I create as I live into purpose and passion and a life of service. Much of how I spend my life energy is not what society and the world of marketing, consumption and busyness would suggest. I value inner quiet, meditation, personal integrity, the human spirit. Your counter-cultural is likely different and might be choosing health while surrounded by family or coworkers who don’t.

Here’s the thing: we are all called to change the world – to make the world a better place. This amazing video is a powerful request to consider the children, consider ourselves, and heal the world:

Whatever it is that YOU are called to do to make the world a better place around you, DO IT! Don’t wait for a better time. Don’t wait for someone else to take the first step. Set your intention and DO IT. Do it NOW. Create better at work, at home, in your relationships. When it doesn’t feel good or easy, STAY with your intention.

It takes intention and staying power to live counter-culturally.

And it takes each one of us to follow through on our intention to make the world a better place, to live counter-culturally.

What is your “counter-cultural” intention?
What is your staying power?

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My Invitation To You …

Talking with a dear friend and colleague recently about the challenge of choosing “what to do” from all the options available, I found myself saying things like: “Be with each activity. Does this one really light you up? Does it bring out the best in you? What would it be like to let it go?”  

And then it hit me! I love writing to you here and in the Tidbits of Wisdom blog from a space of pure openness and joy. I know that you receive guidance, inspiration, and confirmation of your path. I also know that many of you are wise enough to alter deeply your daily habits over the summer by taking a break from email and blog reading, by taking vacations, by simply watching the sun set over and over and over!

Taking a break, a sabbatical, a vacation is important. Getting out of routine and listening in different ways to Life renews us, heals, provides joy and inspiration of another sort. What I want for you and for me this summer is to experience freedom to choose alternatives, freedom to listen to our own inner nudgings, freedom to experience Life with our whole being – body, mind, emotion, spirit – whatever that means to each one of us. Yesterday, for me, that meant floating down the river on an inner tube with another dear friend and treasuring the sunlight and clouds, the sounds of the birds and the thunder, the conversation and the shared silence.

My commitment to Jeanne for the next two months is to take a sabbatical from blogging and to follow the nudgings for more time in nature, more deep noticing and mindfulness in each relationship, more allowing Life to unfold before me and less planning and projecting, less writing about life and more living the moments in this life. I will write to you each month here … but I will not intentionally create new blog posts in Tidbits of Wisdom. For those of you who will miss them, might I suggest:

  • Try writing your own wisdom! Yes – I mean that! If you had nothing to read but wanted inspiration, what would inspire you? Write it down and listen. Get yourself a new “summer journal” and begin your writing journey.
  • Use Inspiration Cards to guide your personal exploration and writing – order a set of cards for yourself and your friends so you can be with the cards AND away from the Internet
  • Check out old posts which you can choose by category or date
  • Check out some of my favorite books which you’ll find HERE
  • Check out my book, What’s Alive In Me Now? Time for the journey of your life!
  • Spend time with people connecting deeply. Consider the Women’s Circle as one option.

More than anything, I invite you to treasure life this summer and take great care of you!

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Time to remember …

Perhaps you have considered that you are a complex being, not simply a “person”. Maybe not. Yet, think about this. Each of us has a physical body, a mind or intellectual body. Each of us is an emotional being  – has an emotional body. We have a spirit, a personality, an energetic body. Finally, many of us believe that we come into this world with a soul, the essence of Life itself as yet another aspect of our being.

Here’s the catch. Many of us focus on a subset of our wholeness and try to ignore the rest. For some, that means we develop our intellectual body and hope the emotional stays quiet. Others listen only to their emotions and react to life from this center of knowing. There are also persons who have latched on to a spiritual journey and focus solely on its pursuit leaving their human nature to chance. Often the impact of this way of “partial living” is illness, unhappiness, depression, a nagging sense that something is missing in life.

What parts of you are disconnected?
Is it time for you to re-member?

If you know that you ignore your physical body, just expect it to show up and “perform” as you put all of your energy into your work, consider gifting it with good food and modest movement. If, instead, you ignore your spirit, never thinking about what is truly important to you, never pausing to sense delight in your life, take a break – maybe a short vacation. Nurture your playful inner self. If your emotions are the part of you most ignored (until they blow up at the nearest innocent bystander), your task may be to find time to pause with a trusted friend or family member or perhaps a journal where you can notice and write about what’s in your emotional space with total confidentiality.

Re-membering ourselves takes time and dedication. It is the work of every day in small amounts. It is the journey toward wholeness, self-honoring, ease.

How will you commit to re-membering today?

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Awesome Self-Care … can be a lonely road

RoadLessTraveled
I was asked to write about this topic … and I think I need to make it very simple.

Self-care: honoring what “I” need physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually — nourishing my body, allowing my emotions to be and flow, healing and expressing my spirit, speaking my thoughts without apology.

Look around you. Who do you know who practices awesome self-care? If you are fortunate enough to know even one such person or, better yet, to BE that person, what is their impact on those around them?  My guess is that they are generous, kind, loving, authentic, real and that the gift they give themselves daily can’t help but spill over into honoring everyone and everything around them.

If the impact of deep and powerful self-care is feeling great and being an amazing person to be around:

Why do so few people practice awesome self-care?

Just maybe some of this is true:

  • they live in the excuses of “no time for that” or “that is selfish”
  • they are unable to say no to others; they have poor or non-existent boundaries
  • they don’t love themselves enough

There is one more, rarely spoken of reason:

It can be very lonely.

Think about it. How many people do you know who practice awesome self-care regularly, who are truly devoted to their personal wellbeing and who say no to you when your request interferes with it? Not many! In our society and many others in today’s world, amazing self-care is the road less traveled. You won’t readily find a 12-step group called Amazing Self-Care Anonymous (though you could start one!) or an organization whose core values include each employee practices amazing self-care first. All too often, those closest to us, family and friends, are anything but encouraging when we put ourselves first.

So this practice of amazing self-care can be VERY lonely.

Yet, here is my truth, having been growing my personal practice steadily over the past 10-15 years:

  • The more I take care of me, the more I’m accused of being generous!
  • The more I take care of me, the more I have within me to give and the more I want to give it.

With respect to awesome self-care, I choose to be in this world, but not of it. I can’t imagine any other way to be anymore.

Please, don’t take my word for its value, but do give amazing self-care a try.  Please? If you can’t do it for yourself, consider doing it for those you love. Consider modeling extreme awesome self-care for your children, your friends and for those you work with who aren’t aware that it is a choice and perhaps don’t know how to do it.

How will your amazing self-care impact our world?
What loneliness are you willing to experience …
for the greater good?

Thank you.

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Just for me …

Another noticing today … and this one may resonate with some of you – or not! And I will let that be okay. Here goes. I find it very difficult, with but one exception, to do something that is just for me. The exception is taking care of my physical body. I passionately exercise, eat well, stretch, sleep … in ways that honor my body.

Everything else? Hard.

It is hard to play the piano, just for me. It is hard to take a class, just for me. It is hard to get a massage ’cause it’s just for me. 

It is easy to make time for you, or practice the piano to play for you, or do artwork that has a purpose: for you.

If you can relate … what’s this about?

For me, it is a very old message about service that I learned in childhood. I want to be ready to change the message. Yet even as I write that, I hear a new message in my head that says: “There must be a reason why doing stuff for me is also good for you!” Really? Give me a break!

Must all my actions in this life be in service of something greater?

I have written lots about how taking care of “me” is good for “you”. And I know that to be true. Whether by example, or by allowing you to take care of you, or simply by being in a better mood because I’ve taken care of me, there are many reasons why healthy self-care benefits “you”.

Yet today I wonder:

Is it okay to do something “just for me”?
What can make this register as “okay” in my brain?
What if it isn’t a question for my brain?

To be continued …