"You can live your life out of circumstance or you can live your life out of vision." - Werner Erhard Millions of people go home at night to nice homes, nice apartments, nice furniture, nice electronics, even nice bodies beside them, and yet deep in their hearts, they say "God I'm bored." Marianne Williamson says "We long for a more genuinely passionate life, and for a deeper purpose for living it." You're either going away from it or you're going toward it...your destiny. The root of almost every problem of stuck-ness is fear. Either fear of getting started, fear of perfectionism, fear of responsibility, fear of not finishing, fear is at the root. So the question for you is… What have you come here to do with your life? What is your calling? Do you have that feeling inside you that says, "if I don't do this I may simply die." And if you do answer the calling, beware (and be aware!)! It's not going to be a day at the beach. Expect disappointment, expect to be challenged, expect to be hurt, expect to be double guessing yourself, it will be a road of trials. But at the end of the road...pure glorious joy and passion. SOOOOO...is THAT worth it?
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This woman is someone who I was drawn to because she died on my birthday in 2010. March 21, 2010. She looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor with her jet black hair and thick eyeliner. Definitely someone you would think would be IN FRONT of the camera, not behind it. (Here is a photo of Elizabeth Taylor, uncanny huh?!) But Margaret Moth was not your usual human being. Everything she did was out of the ordinary. She wore black clothes, head to toe. Her footwear…combat boots. Add thick black eyeliner and jet black hair. She made an impression!! Margaret Moth was quirky but fearless. She was a war zone journalist and camerawoman. She sought out and demanded assignments in conflict zones…who not only only kept the camera rolling while under fire, but zoomed in on the soldier who was shooting at her. Colleagues learned quickly to appreciate all that this CNN camerawoman was. Beyond her rich personality, which included deep optimism and kindness, she brought to her profession top-notch technical abilities, unmatched dedication and an approach to work that inspired others to push themselves. Then in Sarajevo in 1992 she was shot in the face, and barely survived. It shattered her jaw, blew out her teeth and destroyed a portion of her tongue. This made her sound like she was forever drunk she said. She suffered through multiple reconstructive surgeries as well as hepatitis C that she contracted from a blood transfusion. Was she stopped? No, she went back to Sarajevo six months later carrying a camera. She actually joked that perhaps she would find her teeth. She passed away from colon cancer in 2010 at the young age of 59. "Dying of cancer, I would have liked to think I'd have gone out with a bit more flair," she said with a laugh last spring during an interview with a CNN documentary crew that had traveled to Texas, where she was visiting friends. "The important thing is to know that you've lived your life to the fullest," she said before tubing down a river in Austin, Texas. This video is 9 minutes long, but boy is it worth it!! A coaching client said to me this week, “I make a decent salary, I live in a nice house, and my car is only four years old, nevertheless, when I compare what I have to others, particularly those more fortunate than I, I begin to feel unhappy and frustrated. This especially comes up when I see no apparent difference between me and the other person.”
Ahhhh…yes…I can relate, can’t you? I too have gotten sucked into that feeling. At an Al-Anon meeting I attended someone said it was called “COMPARE AND DESPAIR” syndrome! Sums it up quite well! In the age of Facebook we now have Facebook envy. So the question is: Is striving to HAVE MORE in direct opposition with BEING GRATEFUL? My opinion is that it depends on WHERE the striving to have more comes from… Is it a grasping, gotta have it feeling? Is it a fleeing, can’t stand it feeling? Is it a retribution, I’ll show them, come hell or high water feeling? Is it a quick fix, I gotta feel SOMETHING feeling? OR Is it in a heart opening, I have got to show the world my true self feeling? Is it a craving to contribute, to serve in a higher way feeling? Is it in a burning, I’ve got to be free feeling? Is in a passionate, I’ve got to live my true authentic self feeling? YOU SEE WHAT I’M GETTING AT? It all comes down to the SOURCE of the movement. I believe that gratitude can cohabitate with wanting more when it comes from the place of living your true authentic self. When you set your sights on the babe, the boat or the bucks, you rarely get a long lasting TRUE happiness. That is what has happened to our society. The GRASPING to have MORE has sucked the SOUL out of us. However, when you are striving to live your life from your true authentic self…to DO better…to SHARE more…to SERVE joyously…that can certainly coexist with gratitude. When feelings and action are heart centered, nothing can go wrong! And when you are being MORE of who you are...you are most likely a lot more GRATEFUL! One of my coaching clients asked me this week “how do I create enough time in my life so that I can work on my DREAM?” Most people would start to do the math…well there are 24 hours in a day, you work for 8 hours, you sleep for 7 hours…etc. But my theory is that it is NOT a TIME issue but a prioritizing issue.
This gal said “I have work that pays my bills and then I have my dream that I want to develop so that one day I don’t have to do my J-O-B to create an income. However I find at the end of the day (week, month, year) that I have not really gotten anywhere on my dream because I am constantly just trying to keep up with my job and life in general.” Can you relate?! The author Steven Pressfield says “I am keenly aware of the principle of priority which states (a) that you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important and (b) you must do what’s important first.“ So many things that feel urgent demand to get done now. Things like emails, texts, social media, and yes, our J-O-B. These are things that are often thrown into our world by someone else. They are based on someone else’s goals and not our own. But here’s the important piece: Things that are URGENT will ALWAYS GET DONE because they have to! Tim Ferriss in the book “Four Hour Work Week” suggests that you only read and respond to emails once a day and that it will save you hours in a week doing this. Emails still get read, they still get handled, but it is done on your timing not the sender’s! If you prioritize what is IMPORTANT first and get that accomplished BEFORE you do what’s urgent, everything will shift. Working out, writing a few pages on your novel, making appointments for your network marketing dream, handling these first and then doing the URGENT stuff will change your productivity. Here’s how you do it: At the beginning of the day, make a list with everything that you need to get done, and by each item mark it with an “U” or an “I” for urgent and important. Now do the important things first. You may need to go to your job from 8-5 and then when you come home do your important things first. But make sure that before you get swept into doing the laundry, the homework, the cleaning, that you have spent time on your IMPORTANT list. That’s my tip for prioritizing your IMPORTANT list over your URGENT list. Cheers!! Around the New Year I really started to consider deeply the topic of “women who inspire me.” This was an inquiry that occurred after meeting an influential woman in New York City who by most accounts would have moved and inspired a lot of people. Except that that didn’t happen for me. I was a bit mortified by her “self promotion” and theatrical postings on social media and her great stories…about herself. Now granted she IS a huge philanthropist who contributes considerably to her community, and that is something that I truly appreciate. She was a motivated entrepreneur from an early age and as a woman had to break through that inevitable glass ceiling. But I was still not smitten. And I began to wonder “WHY??” What was it that was off-putting to me? And I started to consider “who are the women that I admire and hold as role models to ME?” So on the topic of off-putting let’s look at the top two: 1)Shameless Self Promotion This in itself is a quality that is a double edged sword. I actually admire the fact that a WOMAN has this quality. It is a personality trait that I don’t possess and I would like to…to a certain extent. Being able to “toot one’s own horn” is something that we are told early on, isn’t lady like. “Don’t make a scene,” “it’s not nice to brag,” “don’t boast about your achievements.” All of these ring true to me because this is what I was told throughout my life by parents, teachers, books, and media. And if you take into account the fact that I am an introvert, then…shameless self promotion just isn’t in my vocabulary! BUT WHOA NELLY! The problem with NOT tooting your own horn is that you can’t complain when there’s NO MUSIC! So in the end, the “shameless self promotion” was NOT what was off-putting to me. What was really at the root was the next issue… 2) Over Zealous Cosmetic Procedures/Outrageous Social Media Montages This was the deal killer for me. I am NOT against a woman choosing to have cosmetic surgery, on any level whether it is botox here and filler there or a breast enlargement or even a complete face lift. It is YOUR CHOICE. The question I have is this…what is the root issue of wanting to get the procedure done? That’s it. It is sad for me to think about all the young women who have gotten their breasts enlarged simply because that is the image that they think attracts men. Makes me mad. The term ANTI-AGING makes me mad. Cameron Diaz once said that “aging is a privilege that not everyone gets to do it.” SO true. There’s no such thing as anti-aging, mother nature rule #2 or 3! But our society puts youth up on a pillar like getting old and showing it is a general disappointment, a let down to a standard that is as false as Milli Vanilli. So as a role model to my beautiful daughter, Courtney, I want to just age gracefully. Yes I have to put on glasses now to read a menu (come on people…can we just turn up the lights a smidge in the bistro please??!!), yes my knees ache a little more after a run than they used to, yes I have more wrinkles in places that used to be plump, and yes, I undoubtably have a few grey hairs although highlights help disguise this, even to me. I have tried hundreds of face creams, serums, masks, lifting concoctions for this and that. But the deal killer was this…this lovely lady had altered her looks so considerably that it made me sad. Because the facade of her was not NEARLY AS LOVELY after all this work, as her heart. SHE HAD A HUGE AND BEAUTIFUL HEART. So here is my conclusion. I decided to fall in love with her heart. Because ME judging her about her looks and her choices was just as shallow as my belief as to why she did it in the first place. I have no idea about WHO SHE REALLY IS. I just judged her by an hour meeting and her Facebook page. How shallow and sad is that??!! I decided to offer her some unspoken grace and woman to woman sisterhood. Because that’s really what I want to stand for, compassion and acceptance. This whole experience gave me a wonderful idea to start a new blog segment entitled “Brazen Broads.” I will share with you the women who I admire, some you may know and hopefully some you may not. I am SO pumped and inspired by these chicks…just wait, you’re gonna love it! New Year's Resolutions bum me out. Here's what seems to happen to me. I make a resolution and I don't get anywhere close to achieving it and I feel like a failure. Or as I buzz along with my resolution and I end up tweaking it midstream, I still feel like a failure because it wasn't the original goal. Or I set a resolution, I achieve the goal, and I feel like a failure because I then believe that I didn't set the bar high enough! Ugh!!
So instead I wanted to create a way to set my dreams and goals in motion at the beginning of the year in a fun and inspiring way instead of a whip and chains sort of way! Here's what I do. I write a letter to myself on January 1st and I detail everything that I have experienced and accomplished over the last twelve months. Except that it is January 1st, 2016 not 2015. That is right, it is a recap of the year to come. SO FUN!! The idea is to dream past what feels realistic, make it bold and wild! See it, feel it, smell it, all of it! The more detailed, the better. Focus on four areas: livelihood, relationships, how you are taking care of yourself (body, mind and spirit) and a bonus area (whatever makes your heart sing like travel, art, philanthropy, etc.) It is an incredibly freeing exercise that allows you to open up to your dreams in ways that don't feel like a test, but instead inspire. And what I really want you to focus on is the FEELING that you get from those possibilities. For example: "I purchased my first dream car this year, it is a white BMW X5 with tan interior, I love driving it because I feel safe and sexy at the same time and it allows me the freedom to put my bike on the back so that I can go mountain biking whenever I want." Awesome, huh?! So curl up with your favorite tea or a glass of wine this weekend and spend a quiet and reflective hour and let your pen fly. Make it YOUR time. Here's a starter for you... "OMG...what an incredible year I have had, let me tell you what has happened..." Cheers! Happy New Year! How many times in your life has someone asked you "How can I make your life better?" I have heard that question thousands of times. It has been asked to me and I have overheard it said to others, thousands of times. My husband is known for two things...asking people "how can I make your life better" and replying "never better" to the question "how are you doing?" When you are around someone who constantly says certain things consistently, you have the propensity to not really HEAR them. To take them for granted. So I overhear him asking people that question all day long. I tune out for the most part. Until today. Tom has been gone for over a week and I realized that his whirlwind of positive energy has left me in a quiet void. It's nice for the first couple of days. In fact I loved the solitude so much that I rarely even turned on music or the television. But after six or seven days I realized how much I rely on him and especially his positive “wake up, kick ass, repeat” attitude. It occurred to me tonight what an incredible gift that ONE sentence is..."how can I make your life better?" What? Someone wants to be of service to ME? AND, on the other end, be willing to hear the answer...AND be willing to actually DO something of benefit? What if we all lived our lives encompassing that one sentence? Can you imagine the waves of benevolence that would follow? This is my short love story. About a man who has taught me so much in a mere fifteen years. He is reading the book by Paul Williams entitled "Gratitude and Trust." That's the kind of guy he is. I admire him for some remarkable characteristics. Patience. Patience is more than a virtue. It is peace and faith. Caring. To be heard and to have someone CARE about what you say is a gift..."what can I do to make your life better?" Integrity. You can trust that he will do what he says he will do. These are all characteristics that Tom lives every day and because of his ACTIONS, he has made ME a better person. I love this guy. He says about himself that "he is a great place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." Well I do live there, and I love it. Do you believe in miracles? After a historical drought in California, the sky opened up and the rain came down. People have been praying for this for more than three years. The dry earth was calling out for moisture, as were the critters. People were almost losing hope. The rain is coming in buckets and now the fear is that it will soon turn into floods that will overtake the parched land.
I took a friend to a meeting a few weeks ago and afterwards she commented to me that at certain times in her life when she was feeling especially hopeless, she would simply ask for a miracle. This struck me. I had never actually considered doing this. And there been times when I've really really needed a miracle. Like the time when Tom said to me "Denice, this is a God sized problem." And I said "Is this what complete powerlessness feels like?" And so that night as I lay in bed, I asked for a miracle. I know what you're wondering, did you receive the miracle? Well have I? I'm not quite sure. Often times what we perceive as calm and unchanging on the surface, underneath there's a lot being stirred up. I do choose to believe that the universe is conspiring in my favor. I think that as human beings we are constantly trying to "figure things out." We try and make sense of it all. But of course life's mysteries are just that. So I am patient. Not really, but I'm working on it! And even bigger than patience is trust. Because when you are searching and grasping for answers they will run as far away as possible. However when you're quiet and in a good place with yourself and YOUR God, that's when it all comes together. Maybe that's what happened with the rain. Just as soon as we let go of it having to happen, a miracle occurred. Or maybe enough people just asked for a miracle. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard I love that there is a "30 days of gratitude" movement happening right now on Facebook. A very good friend of mine shared with me a few months ago that he had been doing a "gratitude practice" where he was writing down 75 things, every night, that he was grateful for. Think about that. Seventy five individual things. I was intrigued. What I noticed as I wrote out those seventy five entries is that once I got past the usual "Spouse, Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, shelter, food..." list...I had to really drill down into my heart and open up to the beauty in my life. It is an incredible MINDFUL practice.
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein My life is blessed is so many ways, but I have shed many a tear over a huge challenge that a very close family member is striving to overcome. And I have actually said "why me?" in one breath, but in the next breath "why not me?" I truly believe that God gives you what you can handle, and apparently I can handle it. But it is not in the handling of the challenge where there is growth, it is actually in the acceptance and then appreciation of the challenge where the heart opens. Pushing up against it only causes pain and anger, but acceptance and gratitude is where the heart really wants to reside. So I have shifted my mindset. I now say that I am grateful for this challenging path because I can see SO many gifts that have opened up BECAUSE OF it, not in spite of it. And that's the truth. So back to the list of 75. Because of this practice, it made me aware of the LITTLE THINGS in my life that I am grateful for. I remember driving home with Tom after a movie this summer, in the jeep with the top off. The just mowed alfalfa had filled the warm evening with an aroma that was so intoxicating that it brought tears to my eyes. A wave of childhood memories surged forth from my days of riding. Then a few weeks ago it was so cold in Colorado that the boiler (our house is OLD, 1902!) was having a hard time keeping up to heat the house. I went outside to shovel, which I actually kinda like because it is meditative to me, and I remember my heart being touched by the beautiful crispness of the air and the crackling of the snow under my boots. A flock of geese flew so low over my head that they barely cleared the house and they let out a squawk that echoed in the blue sky. Breath taking. THESE ARE HEART OPENING MOMENTS...if you are aware. It is hard to flip off a person tailgating you after a moment like this. Gratitude and especially a gratitude practice makes you mindful and energetically sends positive and loving emotion out into the world. Energy out...energy back. So this Thanksgiving I am immensely grateful for not only the breadth of my life but also the depth of my life. I accept AND appreciate that life has its ups and downs and that it is in the valley where the gifts often reside. On the list of seventy five, hardly any of the entries were material THINGS, but rather experiences and relationships. Because what I am really grateful for is the the aroma of alfalfa, the crackling snow and the low flying geese. Quite, quite simple. And yes, of course, my family and friends. For a written out gratitude practice go to www.daysofgratitude.com or just start journaling daily seventy five things you're grateful for. -with gratitude, denice Okay so I don't really know if I have OCD, but I do know this...I am a neat freak. I like things in their place, not too many things in their place because more is not better in my book! I like things clean and neat, even if I am leaving the house. Why? God forbid, the robber find my bed unmade or dishes in the sink. Seriously, that has gone through my head. Kinda like, you better be wearing good undies in case you get in a car accident and they have to strip you down. I think I heard this from my Grandmother and it has haunted me for 40 + years, but that's another story.
As I left my house today, I had to let go of control. Major, no maybe minor strides forward in the OCD camp. Because my house is a bloody nightmare on Christmas steroids mess. Tom agreed to some great people that "oh heck yes, WE would love to be a part of the Christmas tour!" And then brought me the three page agreement, and oh by the way, they will be here tomorrow to tour the house so they can start planning. That was in September. I agreed, did I REALLY have a choice, not so much. It will be cool. No biggie. Fast forward to this weekend. November 15th, THREE weeks before the event, and they are wanting to start decorating. Okay, sure you can leave the 6 carloads of garland, Christmas trees, wreaths, more garland...on the porch. Oh, what's that...wait, you want to start decorating now?? I am now in my own home, the home that vaguely feels like my home but is more like a Christmas store in Estes Park than my home. And I am leaving for Vegas tomorrow, luckily and thankfully. But wait...huh? Now I have to take ALL of my stuff, my lovely coffee table books, candles, family pictures, collectable this and that, and put them away so that they won't get mistakenly sold on December 4, 5, or 6th. AND, all of my artwork on the walls has to come down. SOOOOO...this led to what I prefer to call a "teaching moment" between my gracious and giving husband and myself. It roughly went like this: big breath in before I spoke, "honey (hopefully I said honey) YOU HAVE GOT TO PAUSE BEFORE YOU SAY YES TO EVERYTHING, because when you just say HECK YES to anything people ask you, I OFTEN SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES” (or Marianne, our amazing assistant, but this was all about ME clearly, in the moment.) He smiled and said, "I will work on that." PAUSE......So this is where I think, okay, is he just trying to get me to shut up so he can take his nap...or did he really hear me and is going to process this whole thing and really work on it? Because that really IS a great answer, right? "I will work on that," every wife's dream answer just occurred. Now in the past I would have had to go through it all again, to make sure that it wasn't just a blow-off, but seriously, I was just too darn tired. So there you have it. My house is a tchotchke Christmas winter wonderland (that might be an oxymoron, or something like that) with glitter sparkling on every piece of upholstery, bins piled to the ceiling, strangers in my home pounding nails in my walls… AND I am leaving today. I am ironically singing the song from the movies Frozen…”Let it go, let it go! Can't hold it back anymore. Let it go, let it go! Turn away and slam the door!" Yes, those really are the lyrics and yes, Grandmother, I have on nice clean undies. |
denice chenaultlet yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. -Rumi Archives
February 2018
body & wellness
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