“Something I will never do again is carry the burden of a difficult time alone…It doesn’t make you weak to ask for help,” Alexandra Cooper.  Regardless of the context of a difficult time, the lesson is the same: we are capable of getting through tough situations.  As humans we tend to classify what deserves help and attention based on the circumstances.  While I don’t pretend someone facing a bad grade is on the same level as someone facing death, the one truth that remains is that a difficult time is a difficult time no matter what it is.  We don’t get points for how many hard things we can survive or solve on our own—this isn’t a contest of emotional strength. It is a matter of building tools to navigate different situations.  Each situation may require different attention and resources to resolve.  It isn’t about comparing the severity of the difficult time, it’s about learning to navigate them successfully.  Part of that is releasing judgement and being able to recognize scenarios for what they are—look at the situation objectively.  It can be challenging to manage thoughts/feelings during these circumstances, but the truth is there is always a solution. 

I agree with Cooper’s analysis in that it doesn’t make us weak to ask for help.  We need to know that there are people who have faced what we are dealing with no matter what it is and there may be a way to shorten the learning curve and reach out for assistance.  It doesn’t make us weak or incapable to need help navigating something others have done before or something that others do differently.  We each have different experiences and we are meant to use our tools to come together to create a new way of approaching things, a new way to solve things.  Our skill sets are meant to complement each other’s so we aren’t left on our own.  We were never meant to handle anything on our own.  We were meant to build off of each other and to support each other.  As I have spoken about numerous times, we are an expansive species and that means we need to utilize each other’s skill sets and knowledge so we can create new things, so we can develop new things and so we can adapt to the ever changing universe just as much as create that change.

Difficult times change the shape of what we know because it forces us to see what we think we understand in a new perspective.  Those different perspectives give us more opportunity to solve things as well as different and more effective ways to relate to other people.  Problems give us a chance to relate to others because we shift our focus to a common goal.  Our society has shifted to a mentality that we need to be strong all the time and our definition of strong has more to do with power than it does skill.  Survival is about learning how to navigate things together, about how forming community and cooperation makes us stronger.  Asking for help brings us to a solution quicker—and depending on the situation it’s a teacher.  We are not meant to do it all alone—our strengths are someone else’s weakness, and our weakness is someone else’s strength.  It’s a beautiful thing to come together and a nice reminder that not everything has to keep going as it is—we can shift the weight and learn to carry it differently.  That makes it easier for all of us.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths,” Walt Disney.  This is a great statement I just found that follows what we discussed on Sunday regarding being understood and the human desire to understand.  Curiosity serves to show us how vast the universe really is.  Like a giant Mandelbrot set, we understand we are a fractal, a repeating pattern in a much larger scale.  We open all the doors we can seeking to find the pathways to the answers.  We know the more doors we open the deeper the rabbit hole and the curiosity will keep leading us further and further in.  If true, we will never find the end but we will always seek the answers.  That isn’t meant to be negative in any context—it is meant to further explain why we continue to develop new pathways, new ideas, and why we keep digging.  We know there is only so much we can see with the naked eye, but we know how much we feel.  The depths of those feelings are infinite, and logically, we understand that we can make sense of how we feel somehow.

While Disney’s quote refers more to the opening doors of creativity and developing new wonders for people, it also refers to the infinite nature of our role in the universe.  The very cells and patterns that create the human body and make us alive—the things we use to define us as alive—are seen repeated on the grandest scale of the universe.  We are part of a giant living organism, and each of us as a tiny cell in the big picture has a role to play—we each have a function.  We in turn, create other living organisms with unique purposes and the pattern repeats, each of us a potential door to something new.  This is why answering the call of what works for us is so important: we need to be able to fulfill our roles, our part, in the function of the larger organism. 

We are curious because we are always looking for new ways to do things, new ways to fulfill our purpose.  Curiosity is a way to do our job—the universal job, not the 9-5 we think we need to survive in a world that already fulfills our needs.  We’ve created systems that allow us to function outside of the natural realm—for example, we’ve created schools that teach our kids things.  The premise of school itself is actually cool and useful—let’s bring all the kids together to teach them about what has happened so we appreciate the past and learn from mistakes, let’s teach them about how things function today, and let’s guide them toward their purpose.  But what ends up happening is we lose the individuality of our own passions as school no longer supports self-discovery.  School has become a place where most kids become part of the machine to take their place in a system that only serves to benefit the few—and that is NOT part of the natural order.

Disney understood that curiosity brings out the magic in the world—it makes it front and center.  And while there are natural laws that govern curiosity as well, curiosity allows us to see beyond what we have created as a norm for people to function.  Curiosity allows us to marry our own ideas to the physical reality.  He also understood that curiosity creates a new reality—curiosity not only opens the doors but it creates them. We aren’t meant to be limited and bound by the rules we have created.  We are meant to work in the rules of nature, to understand our role with nature, and we are meant to be ourselves so we can build and expand.  Our very nature is expansive and that, too, is the role of curiosity: to expand our minds and physical reality because he understood that our minds create reality.  What is your mind telling you to create?  What doors do we see? And if we open that door, who else are we opening the door for?  Let ourselves run forward because we never know what example we are setting, and what else we can create for ourselves and others.        

We got Loki’s ashes back yesterday evening and the profoundness will never escape me.  How can an entire life, all the energy, the love, the looks, the weight of an entire being be reduced to a bag of grey ash?  There is so much to life and in the end that is how we all end up.  We want to talk about the ripple effect, that is it at its finest.  Action is profound.  Connection even more so.  Energy is unparalleled.  Energy forms those connections and motivates the actions and interactions we have with others.  It doesn’t matter how big the physical being, their impact can reach out and touch us for ages.  Of course there are people who understand the depth of a relationship with an animal but I am aware that there are some who don’t feel that way—that is fine.  For me, this is a before and after moment.  The reason this has hit so deeply is because 1. It was unexpected on every level and 2. I’ve never experienced the level of connection and understanding with any other creature like I have with that cat.  When I talk about in sync with every one, that animal was almost supernatural in identifying need—right up until the end.  The last night we had together, he pulled himself out of that carrier to come to bed and I picked him up and put him in the bed.  I wrapped around him and held his paw like I always did and he put his entire face in my hand.  I’ve held his face before but this was different.  I knew he knew that was it.  I knew he was in pain and he didn’t come out of that carrier entirely for himself—it was for me.

Cats are notorious for hiding their symptoms and I feel he did that for us too.  He has been around all of this turmoil for a while and every night he came to us and made sure we were calm and centered with him.  He did that for myself, my husband, and my son.  EVERY day when I’d get home, no matter what time it was, no matter where he was in the house, he would come and greet me.  He tried his best to do everything he always did-until he couldn’t.  He didn’t want to let us know he was sick because he was taking care of us.  Animals operate differently.  They act on instinct and they have 0 ego with anything.  For those who aren’t cat people, I just want to assure you that they absolutely form bonds like any other animal and for those they love, they do anything.  Maine Coons are particularly well known to form these bonds with their people and that was my Loki.  I know at the end of the day I gave as much to him as he gave to me.  I always protected him no matter what.  I got up in the middle of the night to syringe feed him, to give him water, I took him to all of the vet appointments, I begged for help to fix him.  In the end it wasn’t enough.  In the end he simply put his head in my hand and went to sleep.      

It’s hard for the brain to reconcile what we know we have felt with something when all we see is a pile of ash.  We know that life was so much more than that.  But all we get back is ash in a box.  Time will heal all of this and the pain will continue to lessen—that is the gift of time.  But this will happen again and again as it is the nature of life.  We are here briefly, some even briefer than others—and no amount of time would ever be enough for those bonds like I’m describing here.  So the lesson really becomes about appreciating what we have while we are here and being fully present.  The fact that we are reduced to ash is somewhat poetic in that the physical is never a real representation of the energy something carries.  What we see is no match for what we feel, and even in death, the echoes of a life lived are still felt far and wide.  The pain gets easier but the absence is always there—so the brain finds ways to carry that energy with us.  My little box holds the ash of a life that I will always remember and appreciate—the first time I held him, when I named him, when he first slept in my bed, when he met my son, when he sat on my lap and I cried a million times, the way he curled up with me at night, the way he gave me his paw, his purr, the actual weight of him (he was big lol), the way he played, how he crossed his paws, how he stared to let you know what he wanted (and somehow you always knew exactly what he was saying), all of that.  It will always be there.  So don’t let the ash confuse the significance of a life we shared: let it hold the weight of the love we felt and the memories.  Let it be as big as it needs to be in our hearts even if it only holds a little space on our shelf.

I received a lot of messages about changing energy and choosing energy—being deliberate with it.  I started to look at some of my patterns and understood that I put out a ton of energy to the world and instead of learning to function with it in a reciprocal, I consume in order to make up for the tired.  I never learned to properly receive energy from others.  When we continue to spew energy, we struggle to keep up.  Life is about doing, not doing productively.  For me, I have interest in a lot of things and instead of planning focused time to address them, I kind of throw darts and see what tickles my fancy in the moment.  Part of that is the creative brain—when a thought comes to me I feel the need to follow that train to make sure it’s fully expressed and I like to be in the flow of inspiration—I’ve learned to follow the thought so I don’t lose it.  But the other part of that is lack of belief in myself.  I’m afraid to follow through or be disappointed in what I’m doing so I don’t pin point my focus—I’m scattered.  And when we have scattered focus, we have scattered energy.

As I was sitting with that realization and working on some creative endeavors, my son happened to put on Bluey—I will say again that I actually love this show.  It’s not overly saccharine and it absolutely hits home in these little 7-8 minute episodes—it’s beautiful.  So the episode he was watching was about relaxing and what it means to relax.  The family went on a vacation and all Chili wanted to do was go to the beach and read and she made herself so anxious in the process of getting there that when she got there she couldn’t decide what to do: read, focus on the water, go back with her family.  It put her brain in overdrive and she ended up going back to the hotel room where Bandit asked her what was wrong.  She stated she didn’t know how to relax.  Within a few minutes of truly gathering presence she was able to find herself and let go.  As soon as she did, the kids wanted to go to the beach just as she had wanted to originally.  There are certain things in life we simply have to let be.

So when it comes to managing energy the only thing we really can do is become connected with the moment.  That way we are deliberate with our energy and our choices.  We aren’t wasting energy, we are directing it.  The more we direct our energy, the more we are able to develop it and become a light for ourselves and others.  Relaxing isn’t just about flow, it’s about how we manage our entire being.  We talk about relaxing as a luxury when we really need to look at it as a necessity.  Relaxing is how we allow the flow of energy to come through us as well as guide us.  That’s when we learn to guide it and create intention with it.  There are constantly signs from the universe and it will never cease to amaze me that these lessons can come from a kids show.  There is a different understanding of life around the world and I think these are the lessons we need to teach our children.  These are the lessons we need for ourselves.  Presence, clarity, calmness.  The art of allowing.  The choice is always ours.

“With gratitude optimism is sustainable,” Michael J. Fox.  Sometimes we need a reminder that things can look pretty crappy on the outside and still be ok.  Not everyone is meant to deal with the same scenarios we are and we aren’t meant to deal with everything someone else is—we are uniquely equipped to handle our lives even if we think we can’t.  There are stories we don’t want to handle, things we don’t want to experience, some things we don’t even want to witness—but if we are handed that card, then it is ours to play.  We have choices no matter how challenging, difficult, ugly, impossible, uncomfortable a situation may seem, but as we hold that card, it is for us to manage.  I’m not going to be trite and say it all happens for a reason because there are things that happen that just don’t make sense.  I’m also not going to say it all feels good or that it is easy to deal with because we understand the big picture will make sense.  No, sometimes things happen in life that suck—and we can’t change it.  The only thing we can manage in those situations is our outlook.  We can handle our responses.  We can handle the challenges. 

When we are grateful, we see options.  And look, I know that in the thick of things going down, it isn’t easy to be grateful.  Crisis of any kind is raw and causes pain (or any other emotion).  As we are cut and have to staunch the bleeding, when we are hurt or dealing with an initial impact, we need to stop that blood first.  When we focus on what’s going right and what resources we have available, it’s easier to see those options and choices.  When we are grateful we embrace our ability to fly through the storm rather than relying on the branch to hold us.  With everything my family and I have experienced this summer, I will not pretend that it doesn’t hurt, that loss isn’t hard, that things happen that we don’t understand.  All of those things are real and they can break people down.  But when we are grateful for the lesson we add a tool to our repertoire.  We learn to integrate and accept the hurt as part of the lesson and add another tool to our belt.  The pain (or whatever we feel) still exists, what happened still happened, but it doesn’t run our decisions. 

Optimism and gratitude are high energy and it does take a lot to maintain that state.  So when we choose to look at the positive in the negative, we create a broader vision we can use it long term.  As I said on Sunday, we seek to understand and learn and utilize our skills as a means to guide our lives and form connections with people/places/things while we are here.  When we experience things we don’t understand, we seek to make it fit in the puzzle, so looking at those pieces with gratitude makes it easier to find the fit.  If you ask how we can be grateful for those things, I say this: even those parts (pieces) that feel crappy/painful/raw/sharp-edged/scary/unclear are part of the big picture.  We need those pieces to make the story we are experiencing.  And just because it doesn’t look like it fits at first, it may be part of someone else’s story that needs to cross with ours, or it may be a piece that brings us into contact with the person who has a piece we are looking for—or the person we are to provide a piece for.  It’s all part of the grand scheme.  And above all, as we are grateful and fill our lives with optimism, we see optimism as a power.  Gratitude creates the source, and it is sustainable.

“You can give without loving but you can’t love without giving,” Amy Carmichael. In the context of last year in particular, I understand where I need to change my relationship habits.  I am a perfectionist, yes, but when it comes to relationships I’m not as much a perfectionist as people think.  Do I like things a certain way, yes.  But I also allow for people to have things the way they like them and I do not interfere with that.  Their homes, their interests, their quirks are all theirs.  That isn’t something I ever use against them and I never ask them to change that.  When their habits and patterns start hurting other people, that’s a different story.  It took me this long to understand that most people don’t have that level of understanding about others.  That’s part of why we tease each other or outright despise each other.  But I had to start asking if this belief of mine was actually conditional to have a relationship with me.  I started to expect people to have the same open acceptance of me.  I expected them to have the same understanding of my habits and beliefs that I had for them.  Like if a friend kept a messy house I literally said nothing but if they came into my house and started putting things away I’d bristle and get angry.

Because of the ups and downs in my relationships this year, I really had to start looking at that habit and that belief. I still don’t feel like accepting people as they are in their own environment is a bad thing—it is their space and we all have the right to have our space.  But we can’t make people adapt to us if they don’t understand that concept of acceptance.  I had to learn again this lesson about compromise in relationships and I had to learn about perception.  People will misunderstand even the most well-intentioned things if it triggers something in them—especially if it triggers their insecurity.  My ability to be open and allow people to be who they are triggers a lot of people.  They see how I live my life and because I struggle with ADD and anxiety, I need to keep things a certain way or my brain goes to chaos.  They assume it’s perfectionism or that I’m trying to be better than them—I’m trying to keep my mind sane.  My love for others is complete no matter what I give.  The relationship needs to be reciprocal.

There has been a lot of growing over the last few months—time apart, loss, limbo with work/home/health.  All of it has led to the realization that sometimes things don’t work out because they aren’t meant to.  We can try to hold it all together but that doesn’t mean it’s meant to be together.  I said it the other day—sometimes we are trying to hold smoke together.  We are trained to have this certain vision, this belief about the way things should be and we often forget what we want it to feel like, what feels right.  We operate based on acceptance from others rather than learning to accept ourselves.  Once we accept who we are, the rest can fall into place.  We aren’t here to meet other’s expectations, we need to live up to our own expectations and that is how we develop that acceptance.  The more we accept ourselves the more we have tolerance and acceptance for others.  We can learn to love and give of ourselves without wasting our energy because we are giving from the core of who we are.  We know how to replenish ourselves and we operate from there.  Our gift is infinite and the more we give, the more we love.      

Today I am grateful for music.  They’ve said that music is the language of the soul—I’ve heard many things described as the language of the soul—but music stands out.  One of my favorite teachers from high school said that the highest form of expression is song.  Music speaks in melody, harmony, tones, vibration, and poetry.  Poetry is it’s own type of song.  Music resonates with its sound, it reaches something inside of us in a way we can’t explain.  It triggers things—emotion, memory, and movement.  It draws people in.  Since ancient times music has been used as a way to commune with ancestors across time and space, a way to connect each other, a symbol of life events/milestones, as a way to connect with nature and spirit.  I feel gratitude for this today as it helps navigate and guide me through some complicated residual things in my life.  In a stage of clearing, we need to release and music helps us achieve catharsis in so many ways.  It stimulates joy and healing even if the trigger was sadness.  There is no higher expression than song because it speaks for our soul when words alone won’t do.       

Today I am grateful for words.  I can’t leave the words out of this—I thrive in my words.  The more I work with words the more I understand the complicated relationship we develop with expression as we get older.  As children we have such limited means of expressing what we need that determining how those needs is actually pretty easy—as infants we need basic needs met so that cry has to do with hunger or discomfort or pain, as toddlers we may have bumped our knee or we get frustrated if we can’t get what we want.  As young children (prior to entering school—and maybe those first few years of school) we still feel pretty confident about expressing what we want because we haven’t learned the masking skills of speaking in codes, hoping someone will figure out what we need—we are still able to state what we need.  The older we get the more we hide our needs and our true selves and I found that it became increasingly difficult to verbally express what I felt/wanted/needed.  But I could write about it.  Even if I couldn’t say it verbally, I could write it.  I love the artistry of words—the stringing them together, the way we can describe things—the way we can make something jump out at us visually using words-words sink directly into the mind and create a show entirely in our minds.  There is power in words—power over our minds, our souls, our emotions, power over others—words have meaning we assign socially, personally as well as what we feel viscerally with them.  That’s part of the magic of words—they mean as much as what we assign to them.  While their power lies in the meaning we give them, the way we feel with the tone/undertone etc. is all from vibration and energy in delivery.  People are cautious with yelling and aggression, they are empowered with speeches given with hope and love.  There are many things words stir in people.  Love or hate, they create connection, and I appreciate this expression.

Today I am grateful for non-verbal connection.  I’ve been missing my cat a lot this week.  Monday will be three weeks without him and I am still reeling from the course of events that took him from me.  I bring up the cat because I realize what I’ve been missing is the connection I had with him.  The way he simply understood me.  I still feel the weight of his absence, not just because of how recent it has been, but because of how he was everywhere for/with me.  Cats are fairly creatures of habit and we definitely had our routine—every day from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed.  He was always near me whether I was working, cooking, watching TV, reading, writing, sleeping, showering.  He knew how much I needed him—and I think he needed me too.  I understood his language and he understood mine and I miss that feeling of being understood that deeply.  I feel the change in our last cat as he is alone—he waits for me differently, he sits with me differently, he cries differently. We all feel the loss and we haven’t had to say a word about it.  From what I had to what I have, I am grateful for that level of love and understanding.  That connection is a gift, and even if it isn’t song, or words, it is an energy and a gift to be able to feel that.

Today I am grateful for emotion.  I struggle with emotional regulation with a variety of reasons and contributing factors.  But I’ve come to understand that emotion is an indicator of life, an indicator that we are alive.  We feel things to gauge where we are in the universe, what our standing is with other people, to tell us which way to go.  The gut-brain connection is incredibly powerful and as we learn to interpret what it tells us, we navigate the signs based on how we feel about things.  Emotion is a powerful tool designed to point us in the right direction.  Uncontrolled emotion makes it difficult to function and relate to others as much as overly controlled emotion.  But how we feel is a form of proprioception in the world and tells us what we need to do next.  Allow the connection to what we feel and learn to follow those emotions as guideposts.  Follow the triggers and learn what we can control and what we can’t.  Make sense of how we feel and what steps the emotions reveal to us.    

Today I am grateful for all of the things that make us understood.  As I was writing about the things above, I realize that they all come down to connection and being understood.  Understanding is one of the greatest quests of humanity—we seek answers to all of the mysteries of the world: what is in the greatest depths, the highest highs, what is beyond our planet, how does the body work, the function of everything in the universe from the microscopic to the macroscopic, why do we feel, how does the brain work, etc.  We seek to understand the world and we seek to be understood because it is when the mind is able to make sense of things that we feel we are able to work with it.  We feel we are able to master some facet of it.  Understanding is power, and when we grasp concepts both seen and unseen, we feel secure in ourselves.  Understanding also means survival.  There are infinite complexities in this universe and we seek to know all because we want to be known as much as we want to know.  When we understand, when the deepest parts of us are understood, we feel safe—and safety is a different level of power.  For all of the things we seek to control, big and small, we ensure our survival.       

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Sometimes what you’re trying to hold onto is exactly what you need to let go of,” Ironwill Project.  There are things in life we love, sometimes more than ourselves.  We think nothing is wrong with that, because how can love be wrong?  Those things/people infiltrate us and become a part of who we are—and this is where it gets tricky.  Sometimes we forget that those things we have integrated into who we are, are not ours and that the things that we are trying to make others integrate aren’t theirs either.  Trying to force each other to hold on to things that don’t belong is like trying to hold smoke together.  It’s futile and as helpless as watching sand flow through our hands.  We can’t build a foundation on what will not stay together, on what can’t support the weight of the structure we are building.  In order to find what is strong enough, we have to let go of the ideas, beliefs, thoughts, things that we think we need.  The thing we are trying to protect may not belong with us in the next phase.

As humans we like the idea of permanence and solidity—we like to know what comes next.  This, too, is another primal instinct because we need to know if danger lurks around the corner.  I think we are kind of funny as a species because as we have evolved and found more and more ways to be safe, we seek ways to make ourselves afraid—thrill rides, jumping from planes (or anything else), watching scary movies, doing things that can harm our bodies (smoking and other bad habits, etc.).  So for a species that needs continuity and security, we do a lot to find ways to NOT feel safe.  We allow ourselves to interpret things in a way so our emotions are front and center.  There was a time when there was literally no time for emotion because we had to survive.  I will admit that when I’ve been in crisis, I have appreciated the clarity that comes with it.  All the other bullshit I’ve held onto, the drama, the fear, the anxiety all seems to slip away and the immediate scenario and what steps to take become crystal clear.  That isn’t to say I want to live in crisis—not by a long shot—but I don’t need to seek things that hurt me in order to appreciate my security.  All of this is to say that we hold onto things that don’t necessarily serve us and we need to alter our perspective—we need to understand that life isn’t permanent, the choices we make are meant to evolve, yes, even the good ones.

When we allow ourselves to be stuck in the pattern of keeping things as they are, it’s like trying to pause time—and we all know that doesn’t work.  We all have our reasons for holding onto things whether it’s security in knowing the familiar or even fear of what happens when we let go.  But we are all meant to come to the conclusion that holding onto things isn’t necessarily effective or what we should seek to do.  I prided myself on maintaining tradition for a long time—I liked that it made my parents feel good, that they were nostalgic for how it was and they found comfort in it.  I’d feel stuck in the middle because I know my siblings didn’t always enjoy that, but the truth is, I also found comfort in keeping things how they used to be.  I did that with my job, with my family, with my husband—and suddenly realized that when we hold onto how things were we aren’t allowing for things to grow.  It doesn’t take long for what gave us comfort to become the thing that stifles us.  Release becomes easier the more we know ourselves because we understand where we are at now, where we move forward rather than trying to hold onto how things were.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a thing, a habit, a place, or even a person, we understand that it doesn’t fit with where we are any longer.  We know we need to let go—and we can do that with gratitude for what it was, and gratitude that we get to move forward with something new that will support us on our next step and be an even better fit.  We let go of the smoke, and we relax into who we are in this moment. 

“You will never get what you want until you’re grateful for what you have,” Ironwill project.  This is a tough one for some people to swallow.  The distractions and consumerism and even selfishness of this world tells us that we always need more, that we always need to be going for the next thing.  It doesn’t teach us to be content with what we have let alone grateful for it.  We are brought up to compare and to see where we lack.  I don’t ignore the primal purpose of that which is that we need to survive and if we aren’t aware of where we need to improve, then we will fall behind.  But what we need to start emphasizing is that we don’t all need the same things to survive.  I know that we know this on some level, but most people allow themselves to fall into the habit of comparing and we competition and we think we need the most instead of what is the most of who we are. 

I’ve worn a thousand different skins in my life, believing that each one was the “real” me, that the next one would feel better, that the next one was right.  I’m not saying that I’m any different than any other person who went through phases of trying to find themselves.  But my home, my entire life, is indicative of all the ways that I tried to be something other than who I am.  I’ve held onto the success and the pain.  I’ve clung to the ways I lived, the ways other people wanted me to live, the ways I allowed others to tell me who I was…and I have the pieces of all those stories.  The thing is I got really good at telling stories—better at telling them than living them, and I realized that it’s easier to tell a story than it is to live it.  Wearing the skin of who we are and learning to be comfortable in it takes far more grit than we give people credit for.  I continue to stand by the importance of standing in our truth, but even I admit that I’ve been relatively flippant about it over the years—it truly is easier said than done at times.

As I look around me, trying to piece together exactly who I am, trying to clear the clutter, trying to understand what works and what doesn’t, I do see where gratitude comes in—and that is something that I practice every week.  I focus on one day of it in particular because I can quiet my mind and really share it.  But gratitude is something we need to practice every day.  There are things we need to be grateful for simply because we have the opportunity.  There are moments we need to slow down and be grateful for who we are, grateful to understand who we are, grateful to breathe, that our bodies function.  When we start there, we build momentum because we create an energy of attraction not only to the life we want, but to the source of that life.  When we are connected to that source it’s easier to understand and bring in what we want—and when we are connected enough we better understand what it is that we want rather than what other people want or what our culture of comparison tells us we should want.   Gratitude is so much more than saying thank you—it is a state of being that opens doors to who we are and what we are meant to do. 

I came across a post from Radhi Devlukia that discussed what it means to receive and what we do with our time when we are waiting for something to manifest for us.  She said a friend of hers told her, “Sometimes we need to slow down and get clear on the vision, we have to slow down enough to receive.  We prepare ourselves for the prayer.”  Manifesting isn’t about begging and receiving on hope.  It’s about feeling our way to who we are (like we spoke about yesterday in regards to killing doubt) so we know clearly what we need and what we need to do.  It isn’t a wishing well with the hope that things appear out of nowhere simply because we want them.  This is about being clear on the want and what we can do with it and then preparing for it in the physical. When we pray we are asking for clarity and understanding what we need to do to receive it.  As we talked about a couple weeks ago, receive is a verb—we need to be actively ready to do what we have to in order to acquire and act on our gifts. 

So when we pray that too is receiving—it’s receiving a message of what is aligned with who we are, what our purpose is, and what we are meant to do with it.  It’s also a way of receiving the instruction for what we need to do to fulfill that purpose, how we can help the world with our innate gifts.  It is literally a preparation for what we have to do and how we are meant to live our lives.  We can get all the answers if we are quiet enough to hear them and diligent enough to listen.  That means we have to slow down and quiet our voices, we have to slow down to allow the message to catch up, we have to slow down to integrate the next steps we are given, we have to slow down to see the big picture, the reality of what is, and mostly, we have to slow down enough to receive/catch the package.  Be ready, be alert, be attentive because the truth is, what is meant for us will not pass us—but they never said that we wouldn’t pass IT if we keep moving before we allow it to arrive.  There are times we are waiting for the package to arrive, but if we leave the house before it gets there, it just sits.  And then there’s the chance of it getting stolen or damaged while waiting for us.

The other advantage of slowing down is that big picture I just mentioned.  Time gives us perspective and experience allows for foresight when faced with a similar situation to what has happened.  So when we use our time to find our answers, rather use our time to allow the answers to come, we learn.  We understand on a different level and we see new things that we wouldn’t have if we were rushing about trying to make things happen.  Manifesting isn’t making things happening, it’s creating space to allow for whatever it may be to arrive.  And when we are in tune with our purpose and we act based on that information, we are set to receive exactly what we are meant to do right on time.  If things feel too hectic, too much, too chaotic—that’s the state of the world now because certain powers out there benefit from confusion.  So when we take the time to slow down and really connect with who we are and what we are meant to do, then those answers come and we open the gateway to receiving exactly what we are meant to, exactly what we want because it makes sense with who we are.  If prayer makes you uncomfortable, prepare through the pause, through connection, through meditation, whatever works—prepare through whatever silences the mind enough to hear the truth.  And the doorway will open.