Going With The Flow

  
Hawaii is magical. I was washed over with an overwhelming amount of love, joy, and gratitude! I truly intend to hold onto these feelings and spread them into my life at home. 

I approached this experience with the intention of being present and going with the flow. I was not attached to having everything “go my way,” but instead to go whichever way it was supposed to go. I had a couple of challenging moments, which I tried to remember were there to teach me something, but all in all, this method worked perfectly! I was able to meet some amazing, generous, and kind people, who touched my heart. Big THANK YOU to all of them! They provided opportunities to see more and expand my understanding of life.
I didn’t have a single bad day! I think this was because I had no attachment to outcome. I just wanted to be there and absorb as much as possible. Without any specific plans in mind, I found my way to hiking volcanos, snorkeling, whale watching (55+ whales breaching before my eyes), watching the sunrise over the clouds on top of Haleakala, swimming with dolphins, sea turtles, incredible fish and even an octopus, viewing waterfalls, exploring caves, seeing mind blowing views, old friendships strengthened and new friendships being born.  
   

There’s something to be said for having different opinions, religious views, life goals, interests and viewpoints on life, than another person, and yet loving and appreciating them for being exactly who they are. Perfect and different. 

  

Thoughts About Life

Today I am in Hawaii! I spent some time sitting by the ocean alone, and started to ask and answer some questions. These are all my beliefs that are accumulated from the teaching of others in combination with my inner talk. They are not “the” answers, but they are good concepts to think about.

What is the purpose of being here on Earth? 

If we experience only greatness and joy, we’ll never have anything to compare it to, making it a concept that we don’t truly understand. In order to understand perfection, we must experience imperfection. The Earth in its current state embodies many dualities, if we can learn the difference between good and bad, positive and negative, then we can feel in our soul what resonates better with us. If we follow the feelings that make our souls feel the best, then we can grow.
This would mean that it doesn’t matter at all what you do for a living, how much money you make, whether or not life is easy or hard for you. All that matters is whether you chose to connect with the soul growing concepts.

Once you understand this idea, how do you incorporate that into your everyday life? 

First of all, become a watcher, pay attention to your body. See how your actions feel to you. When you connect to yourself and are in the present moment, you will be able to feel discomfort from a poor interaction or reaction. You will notice the times when you do something or say something that makes your body feel weird… In your heart, stomach, or gut. 

We are here to grow, and we can only experience life through the stage we currently reside. When you are happy and a challenge presents itself, you will choose to actively work through it and gain better understanding on how to deal with this challenge in the future. If you are not happy, the same experience will cause great frustration, sorrow, disappointment, resentment, or other difficult and negative feelings. 

Everything is perspective. If hundreds of people are watching the same event unfold. There will be hundreds of different experiences. No one person will feel identically to another. Every single perspective is based on where that one person is in their life, right at that moment. How special is that?! Every experience is yours and only yours!

How can I help my friends and family to grow?

First, it’s not your job. They can only be where they are ready to be, but you can provide a living example. If you are positive and happy, and are constantly growing and developing, they will be drawn to you. Their love for you, will make them more open to absorbing what you embody. You will probably begin to notice most people start moving in the direction that you are in. Those who don’t, may just be their to challenge you to learn something from them. Love everyone unconditionally no matter where they are at. 

A (+) Resolution

A couple months ago I listened to a speech about “negative thought.” She said that we have somewhere around 15,000-60,000 thoughts each day, and about 80% of those thoughts are negative. 80 PERCENT!!!! I of course immediately denied that I would fit into this statistic. Then I started paying more attention to what was going on in my head. Every time a negative thought popped in, I took note.

What I came to discover is that, if someone was able to hear my thoughts, they wouldn’t care for me much, and they would be terribly bored. Day after day, I think about specific events that upset me, like a broken record. The most common topic to come into my mind is the feeling of frustration, mostly by the actions of other people, or lack of actions. When I investigated this farther, I realized that these are almost always referring to specific situations that I’m too chicken to approach the person about. So, I get angrier and angrier that they wont change their behavior. The bottom line is that this anger is mine. The reason they won’t change their behavior is most frequently because I never asked them to! – So, I need to either let it go, or deal with it like a mature adult.

The other common negative thoughts are often fleeting, while driving, or waiting in line. Small miscellaneous actions other people have made, that simply annoy me. Sometimes they are shame related (i.e. I’m not good enough, will other people judge me if I do/say this? Etc)

I also find myself the most short-tempered at work, where I have the most stresses and with family, whom I’m most comfortable with.

The reason I’m sharing this is because I’m making it my New Years resolution to knock negativity down to 10% or less. Those who go through life with positive attitudes and aren’t secretly judging, are probably the most enlightened, they see that our thoughts are not who we are, and understand that every person is an important part of the collective. I can grasp these ideas, but will have to reprogram my brain in order to live them fully. Wish me luck!

What’s The Point?

I’m not sure if we will ever really know for a fact, what the point of life is.

Here’s my best guess:

To be happy

To grow

To express yourself

To feel

To experience

To create

To shine

To challenge

To learn

To balance

To give

To appreciate

To LOVE

Achieving Your Goals

Sometimes in moments of pure joy, I get this overwhelming feeling of motivation to do something greater in life. I enjoy the feeling for as long as it lasts, until I inevitably question myself. How can I do something great, if I can’t even figure out what it is!? Where do I begin? My brain wants answers.

Even when those moments of total motivation aren’t present, I still ponder on how I can make my mark on the World. How I can do something positive to empower the needy? I’m comforted when I take myself back to the present. Doing grand acts of kindness and good for the World is a goal, but in the mean time, every moment provides opportunities to make others feel good.

I started this blog as a small step, to send the good words out to those that want to hear them. I also wrote a short story, that I plan to turn into an illustrated children’s book. I let my emotions guide me on my daily journeys. I believe that following my excitements at every moment will take me to where exactly I am supposed to be at that exact time. I also believe in the power of a positive attitude. A great speaker once said, “it’s not ‘seeing is believing’ it’s ‘believing is seeing.’” If you really focus your energy on what you want, and know in your heart that you will one day achieve that, then every minute until then is there to simply be enjoyed or appreciated for what it teaches you. It is the journey. In the end, this life is nothing but a story, so lets make it a good one!

The Right Moment, Right Now!

You know that feeling of longing or wishing to be somewhere else? I’ve certainly been there before, and felt that way. But, I don’t know if I will ever be able to feel that way again, and here is why…

---

We are, where we are, at every moment, because that is exactly where we are supposed to be. You can trust that every moment is here to teach you something, if you make the choice to learn from it.

---

At times, it can be impossible to stop and think about what life lesson is playing out at that instant. It could take weeks, months or years, until one day the incident comes up in conversation and you realize what it taught you.

I find it so comforting to think, that no matter what is happening, I’m exactly where I am supposed to be at that moment. It makes me stop daydreaming about the possibilities, and instead appreciate and enjoy the present moment.

The Struggle: Passion, Anger and Negative Emotion

Lately I’ve been having an internal tug-of-war between understanding the corruption around us, and exhibiting a positive attitude. When my eyes first started opening to the many issues we face in our society, I felt helpless. Then I started to believe that the more I shared, the more likely we would be able to advance past our primitive ways (collective consciousness). So, I had countless conversations with people who were interested, and people who were not. I began noticing that, although I believed that this would help move us forward, I was plagued with anxiety and a twisted stomach when the conversation ended. This made me question my ego, but my ego kept telling me that I was just excited and passionate about the subject. I started to feel like I was becoming a negative person, and people would have to decide if they had the energy to be around me.

Today was the first day that I started to understand what was going on, and how to move towards a more positive existence. It’s all about gratitude! As much as all of these structural issues upset me, they are what we have. If I put all of my focus on the negative, the negative will keep perpetuating through my life. If I alter my focus to appreciating what we have and believing that there is hope for a better future, the outcome will be more positive. It’s much like Isaac Newton’s Law of Motion.

Recognizing the need for change is important, but sitting around and talking about it won’t move us to a better place. Critical thinking, action and positive motion will guide us to a more efficient, loving, and thoughtful reality.

The Best You

I wrote this back in the beginning of 2015. It’s just a rough list of what I believe to be the “key” to a healthy, happy and long life. It’s something I aspire to live by and need to remind myself of daily.

Eat

• Whole foods
• Avoid excessive dairy
• Avoid processed food
• Eat less meat
• Lots of dark leafy greens
• Colorful veggies
• Sugar only from nature

Drink

• lots of water
• It is important that the water is clean from pollutants and fluoride
• Spring water is the best because of the minerals
• When you don’t have enough water your body will age more rapidly
• Helps with fatigue and brain function

Breathe

• Meditate
• Focus on your breath
• Oxygen helps your organs function
• Take deep breaths as often as you can, when the air is fresh

Exercise

• The body needs movement, it helps your blood to flow
• Good for circulation

Sleep

• Our bodies need rest, 8 hours is ideal for a nights sleep
• Dreaming is a key into the inner workings of our minds

Be Present

• living in the past and future can create stress or anxiety
• Once you realize that there is only ever right now, then stressing has very little importance and relevance in your life

Be Grateful

• The more grateful you are, the more happy you will be.
• Appreciate the people or beings that bring you joy (let them know)
• Be happy with what you have

Don’t Stress

• Stress has been proven to destroy both mind and body
• Meditation/yoga can help release stress
• Figure out what helps you when you feel stressed

Love

• Worship love, it is such a special thing that we are capable of feeling
• Love all living things as much as you can

Find Balance

• Too much of anything is bad
• Find ways to balance every aspect of your life
• Don’t hyper-extend yourself

Be Yourself

• Be silly if you want to be silly
• Express yourself in what you do
• Don’t work jobs you hate
• Do what you love
• Don’t worry about what others might think of you if your expressing your
  true self. Those who matter will love you for it

Learn

• We will never run out of things to learn
• Embrace the fact that we know only a speck of what is available to us
• Be a student of life

Live

• Follow your passions and excitements
• Do what makes you happy
• Spend time with the people who matter

A couple things that I learned in the past 8 months are;

• Make time for nature
• Logout of cyberspace and into reality – When your head is down, no matter how many people you are talking to, you’re not existing in the moment. Look up, live life.
• Build community with friends and family

Why I Love To Travel

When we are first born into existence, EVERYTHING is new. We look at every moment of every day as an opportunity to absorb information and develop ourselves as members of society. As the years pass, we start to cultivate beliefs, and with those beliefs we begin to create boxes and parameters to live by. Once we start living in these boxes, it becomes difficult to believe anything that doesn’t align with our original set of core beliefs. Some of those beliefs are simple, like, “a rock is hard” and some are much more complicated, like, “I am a woman, and women should wear makeup in order to look pretty.” We create these rules, and we chose to live by them. In doing so, we close ourselves off to the endless possibilities that life has to offer. Stepping outside of our routine, comfort zone and state, presents us with an opportunity to see that worlds of people have grown up with different sets of rules, and different understandings of life. When we realize that everything we know, is written in pencil and can be erased and reworked, we start to realize our potential as humans in this amazing world, that is our Earth.

             

Traveling opens our eyes and builds the resume of our soul. Once, I visited a tarot card reader/psychic medium, and I asked her to tell me about my past lives. She started to tell me story after story of many lives I had once belonged to. They were all just snippets and pieces of a full lifetime. I was so excited, interested and amazed at all the things I had possibly done. Then I looked back on the life I was living now, and started to think about it as if it were one of the stories she had shared. I realized that, my story would have given me a similar excitement. I’m from a wonderful family that has given me an enormous amount of love, encouragement and support. I found a career that allows me to be an artist for a living, and not starve! I’m so very grateful for this life and am eager to keep learning and unlearning and relearning everything, over and over again.

  

The Path

So much admiration goes out to the 3 year old that says with certainty, “I am going to be a doctor.” Then spends the following however many years studying and training to do just that. I used to be envious of this confidence and understanding of life purpose. Now-a-days I subscribe to a different belief (which comforts the person in me who has always lacked conviction).

I believe that the path is the point. It’s not the end goal, but instead, every moment, every choice and the emotions that are happening right now.

This isn’t to say that goals aren’t good to have, or that our history didn’t help shape the person we are today. This just means that this very moment right now, is who you are and what life is all about. The person you were, and the person you’ll be, do not exist. The only person in existence right NOW is you. The you who is reading my blog. By the way, thank you for reading my blog, it means a lot to me!

If we can practice living in the moment, then we’ll learn that we always have choices. If you suddenly have the desire to go for a walk, draw, sing, dance, swim, hike, run, cook, bike, or whatever tickles your fancy, what’s stopping you? I know we have obligations, but lets not forget the responsibility we have for ourselves, our sanity and our peace of mind. Take a moment to do one thing, right now, which makes you truly happy! Be in that moment, enjoy it.