10 Things to keep you sane during Covid-19

1. Being scared is OK. It means you are human, which I hope you are.
2. People look glamorous on Instagram, baking cakes and planning their next adventure. You can, too.
3. If you don't do glamorous, it's OK, too. 
4. Take it one day at a time. It's the only way to swim through it.
5. Do breathwork (try Mindvalley ). It makes you feel more conscious and less self-conscious. 
6. Talk to God. The view is better from above.
7. Keep a diary. For you, for those you care about.
8. Skype. FaceTime. Whatever. Look at your tribe in the eye.
9. Keeping safe is loving yourself and loving others.
10. This too shall pass. 

7 Things You Shouldn’t Share with Anyone, As Per Hindu Philosophy

For those who’re not aware of the term Hinduism, it’s a religious body of people, primarily in living India. It is deeply immersed in philosophy and spiritualism. Hinduism has taught people to develop an ability to share emotions and feelings with each other—especially love. At the same time, it restricts people from sharing certain other thoughts. It’s not as if these emotions are something that people should be ashamed of. It’s only a way of life that Hinduism hints at which is equally applicable to even those who don’t strictly follow the religion.

1. Don’t impose your spiritual beliefs and knowledge on anyone

Each person’s journey is unique and so is our spiritual education gained in the process. So while it is alright to discuss it with someone, imposing it on anyone else isn’t the best way to go about it.

2. Don’t advertise your ideas before executing them

We love to share our ideas and plans even before we act upon them. It’s a risky thing to do because you don’t know if someone close to you sees that as an opportunity to cease the plan and make it their own. Let the results precede the words.

3. Do not share everything about yourself with strangers

Each of us have a story about our life expereiences. Don’t share each and every detail with everyone. It’s best to reveal a bit and to reserve the rest to yourself.

4. Don’t gossip

Talking about others in an inappropriate manner isn’t the best way to evolve. We should try to circulate positive energy around us rather than partake in thoughtless gossip.

5. Don’t boast about your kindness

If you confer a favour, do not boast. If you feel the need to overstate your kindness then probably it was a selfish act disguised.

6. Don’t broadcast your worries 

It’s true that we look out for help and suggestions when we discuss our problems with anyone. But it’s best that you keep it within your inner circle to avoid anyone misusing the power that you’re granting them.

7. Keep your sexual experiences private

Keep the details about your sexual experiences to yourself. If you’re facing any problems or want to talk about it, do so with your partner. Respect your partner’s privacy as much as you respect your own.

{Source: http://soulsofsilver.com/}

Use this breathing technique to lose weight (and feel elated!)

(image via here)

Looking for a surefire way to lose weight or stay trim in 2015? Don't hold your breath — quite literally.

Over 80 percent of fat loss happens when you exhale, suggests a new study from the University of New South Wales School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences.

Fat cells store a combination of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen called triglyceride. To shed fat, the body unlocks the triglyceride molecules through oxidation — a process that breaks the molecules apart when they come in contact with oxygen through inhalation.

Twenty-nine pounds of inhaled oxygen is needed for the body to oxidize and exhale ten pounds of fat. For every ten pounds of fully oxidized fat molecules lost, 8.4 pounds leave the body through the lungs as carbon dioxide. The remaining fat becomes water, flushed through urine, sweat, and other bodily fluids, notes the study published in the British Medical Journal.

At rest, a 155-pound person releases around 6.7 ounces of carbon dioxide per minute over twelve breaths. In one day, 17,280 breaths accumulate to 0.44 pounds of exhaled carbon. Raising the metabolic rate through exercise increases the carbon loss sevenfold.

"These results show the lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss," say Andrew Brown and Ruben Meerman, authors of the study. "None of this is obvious to people because the carbon dioxide gas we exhale is invisible," Meerman adds.

"The exhaled carbon can only be replaced by eating food or consuming beverages. Keeping the weight off simply requires that you put less back in by eating than you've exhaled by breathing," the authors advise.

Qigong master Chunyi Lin is no stranger to the benefits of breathing. "Simple adjustments in your breathing could have an immediate effect on your health," he says in our Spring Forest Qigong course.

Chunyi recommends "Breathing of the Universe" to heal the lungs and clear blockages so they can support your body most effectively.

Take a few minutes, and try it. While it is best to practice this exercise standing, you can also do it while sitting or lying down.

• Begin with both hands facing each other in front of the lower dantian (naval area).
• Keep a space between the body and the hands and between both hands. In this way you can keep the feeling of emptiness.
• With your awareness in your lower dantian, take three deep breaths.
• Then, as you inhale, move your hands open to the sides; exhale as you bring your hands close together. Your hands do not touch each other. Use your hands and body to feel the energy while you use the elbows to guide the action.
• Use your whole body to breathe. While you inhale, visualize the pure universal energy flowing into your body and gathering in the lower dantian.
• While you exhale, imagine any sickness, pain, or extra weight turning into air or smoke and shooting out from every part of the body to the end of the universe.
• Stay relaxed. Gently rest your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Wear a smile.

It's that simple! You can do it for as short as two or three minutes or as long as you would like.

Learn more about the healing energy of Qigong and practice directly with Chunyi Lin during his upcoming seminars in three new cities: Seattle, Miami, and Singapore. Learn more at the link below.

www.LearningStrategies.com/HigherEnergyHealingWithChunyi

www.LearningStrategies.com/Qigong/Home

Don't Die With Your Music Still In You

Hello, Friends,

Read and contemplate: Is that you?

Don't die with your music still in you is the most profound phrase I heard over and over as a child. I knew that we all incarnated in this lifetime with a purpose, with something unique that called to us and excited our soul, and the idea of dying without ever expressing the music I came here to play terrified me. It still does! I've asked myself many times what my purpose is-- why am I here?
As a child, my parents instructed me not to follow the crowd. "Try not to get caught up in what other people tell you to do," they would say. "Just follow your heart, Serena."
Later, when I was a teen, they'd tell me, "When you follow the herd, you're bound to step in shit. Avoid the herd. Think for yourself. Do what you feel is right for you."
I heard this kind of thing all the time, but it wasn't exactly easy to take such advice. Doing what I wanted and doing what was right were often not the same thing. The times in my life when I didn't make the best choices were often times of great struggle that led to enormous personal growth. I try not to judge my past; after all, I wouldn't be who I am without it!
Not dying with your music still in you is not about what you "do with" your life. It is about how you lead your life. Raising children to dance to the beat of their own drum means raising them first to hear, and then to follow, their own inner calling. It means encouraging them to follow their hearts--to listen to their intuition, and nothing else. It also means encouraging them to move forward in their lives, rather than keeping them stuck on a decision they made in the past.
Being yourself allows you to enjoy every step of your journey, without ever having to change for someone else. As I get older, I understand that life really is about the journey. While that once irked me, I now love it!
Slowly, I awakened to my true purpose. I discovered that I'm most in alignment with who I am when I'm communicating; when I am sharing knowledge that inspires me. There are myriad "jobs" that could carry out this life's purpose, but what I came to realize is that my purpose is not what I do. It's how I do it. It doesn't matter the medium I choose; it only matters that I express myself. I am expressing my purpose through this book. I don't know if I will make a career out of being a writer, and it doesn't matter. Because what I've discovered is that, when you are living on purpose, the outcome doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that your mind stays open. To everything.
Having a mind that is attached to nothing means learning to work with situations that aren't turning out as we'd want or expect. It's seeing that everything is in perfect order anyway. It's hard to see something challenging as being in perfect order, but those of us who have gone through tough times know that we'll eventually come to realize that the sun has been shining behind the clouds all along.

 source

How to talk to your daughter about her body

The girls, Summer 2013

As you may well know, I am a mother of three. Of whom, two daughters, one will be entering college this autumn, the other, hopefully, the next. As they grow into their bodies, transforming into the women they were born to be, I am often concerned about the model I am to them, what I say, what I do, how I treat food, others and life. 

The post below, sums all that I think I must be doing right, and some I hadn't thought of, in an eloquant way.

Enjoy.

How to talk to your daughter about her body, step one: don’t talk to your daughter about her body, except to teach her how it works.

Don’t say anything if she’s lost weight. Don’t say anything if she’s gained weight.

If you think your daughter’s body looks amazing, don’t say that. Here are some things you can say instead:

“You look so healthy!” is a great one.

Or how about, “you’re looking so strong.”

“I can see how happy you are – you’re glowing.”

Better yet, compliment her on something that has nothing to do with her body.

Don’t comment on other women’s bodies either. Nope. Not a single comment, not a nice one or a mean one.

Teach her about kindness towards others, but also kindness towards yourself.

Don’t you dare talk about how much you hate your body in front of your daughter, or talk about your new diet. In fact, don’t go on a diet in front of your daughter. Buy healthy food. Cook healthy meals. But don’t say “I’m not eating carbs right now.” Your daughter should never think that carbs are evil, because shame over what you eat only leads to shame about yourself.

Encourage your daughter to run because it makes her feel less stressed. Encourage your daughter to climb mountains because there is nowhere better to explore your spirituality than the peak of the universe. Encourage your daughter to surf, or rock climb, or mountain bike because it scares her and that’s a good thing sometimes.

Help your daughter love soccer or rowing or hockey because sports make her a better leader and a more confident woman. Explain that no matter how old you get, you’ll never stop needing good teamwork. Never make her play a sport she isn’t absolutely in love with.

Prove to your daughter that women don’t need men to move their furniture.

Teach your daughter how to cook kale.

Teach your daughter how to bake chocolate cake made with six sticks of butter.

Pass on your own mom’s recipe for Christmas morning coffee cake. Pass on your love of being outside.

Maybe you and your daughter both have thick thighs or wide ribcages. It’s easy to hate these non-size zero body parts. Don’t. Tell your daughter that with her legs she can run a marathon if she wants to, and her ribcage is nothing but a carrying case for strong lungs. She can scream and she can sing and she can lift up the world, if she wants.

Remind your daughter that the best thing she can do with her body is to use it to mobilize her beautiful soul.

This lovely post was originally posted here and I found it through here.

How addictions (even the little ones) interfere in the process of enlightenment

 

Addiction is carried by restlessness and a sense of lacking something or being incomplete. It makes you forgot who you really are, which is the essence of illusion. 

The object of your addiction becomes a fixation of infatuation and fear. Whenever the addiction is threatened, the result is anxiety. Whenever the addiction is indulged, most of the pleasure felt is really just relief from that anxiety the addiction gave rise to.

All of this is further complicated if the addiction involves a chemical component. Eating junk food can become addictive and unhealthy but is not addictive in the way heroin is, for example. Both have the same underlying confusion but require different kinds of help to emerge from it. 

Enlightenment is not far away. It is not somewhere else. It is closer to you than your ego, body, and mind. Essentially, it is you before you were born, you during life, and you after death. Before and after the appearance of the universe, even. 

Addiction is maya, illusion. It obscures this from your view. Taking on a body is itself a kind of addiction or tendency that propels us through multiple births. It is also rooted in confusion. 
Like maya, addiction operates in a cycle. Unchanging cyclic behavior is its own kind of suffering as well. 

Chemical addictions aside, I don’t think you need to “fight" an addiction to overcome it. Bringing your attention thoroughly into the present, into the experience of your actions and how they change over time, and daily practice of meditation to grow out of restlessness will all help tremendously without the need to judge or repress yourself. 

{via here and here}

How To Regret-Proof Your Life

By Ashley Williams

If you're still beating yourself up for, say, letting an old flame go, you might want to cut yourself some slack. A recent study reveals one secret to staying cheerful well into old age: leaving regret in the past. German researchers found that subjects over 65 who were happiest in their lives did not show remorse over opportunities missed as part of a game of chance, while those who were depressed did. We asked psychiatrist James S. Gordon, MD, author of Unstuck, for advice on dispelling the shoulda, coulda, wouldas.

Q: Regret is such a tough emotion to deal with. Where do we start?

A: Admit what you didn't do, what you lost, or what you got that you no longer want. If you pretend you're not truly upset, you'll never get past it.

Q: But doesn't indulging our sadness just make us feel worse about our choices?

A: Not at all. A decision may seem lamentable five years down the road, but it's likely you made it for reasons that were logical at the time. Tell yourself that your choice made sense to who you were then, and remind yourself how different you are now.

Q: Then what?

A: Even though we know better, we often think we're the only ones who've done something regrettable. So find a caring friend and tell her how bad you feel about what happened. You don't need her to fix you -- you don't even need her to say what you did was okay. But you have to recognize that other people have made similar decisions and carried on. Ask your friend if she's had a comparable experience; 99 times out of 100, you'll find she has. Your feelings of regret may not go away entirely, but sharing them should bring some relief.

Q: How can we feel less regret in the future?

A: The next time you have to make a major decision, breathe slowly and deeply before asking yourself, "Does this feel right to me?" Pay attention to your body's response and what you hear in your mind. If you don't immediately feel a strong yes or no, just wait a moment. It's the relaxed, aware mind that is least likely to have regrets and -- when they do occur -- to let them go most easily.

From Huffington Post. Read more here.

Planting, harvesting and your fair share

When there is scarcity, we worry a lot about getting our fair share—what goes to him doesn't go to me. The harvest becomes fraught with danger and competition.

When we worry more about planting, though, sharing the harvest gets a lot less complex.

Plant enough seeds and the scarcity eases. In fact, if you plant enough, you'll never have to think twice about the harvesting.

-Seth Godin

Strategies for Work-Life Balance

 

 

Hello dear friends,

To start the week with our best foot forward, I am sharing here a very interesting article I read on Oprah, about work life and home life.

let us be thankful for having a job to go to and let us pray that those who don't, may find a job to sustain them and their families.

Amen.

(My own comments follow at the end of the article)



You have a work life. You have a home life. And you have, in all probability, forgotten how to keep them separate. Martha Beck discusses the importance of building a barrier between the way you make your living and the way you live.

The time has come to write. I feel this on an almost cellular level. Why? Because I'm sitting in my writing chair, wearing my writing glasses, chewing my writing gum. Now, I could sit in this chair, wear these glasses, and chew this gum while knitting tea cozies, juggling jelly beans, and husking corn (just not at the same time). But I wouldn't. See, I write at home, and I've learned the hard way that unless I strictly divide my writing time from everything else, my work bleeds into my home life. Then I can never relax, because, just like an ax murderer in a horror movie, my work is always lurking.

These days almost all of us work at home to some extent. Maybe you spend evenings brooding over spreadsheets from the office. Maybe you're in the house all day doing the hardest work imaginable: caring for the young, the old, or the ill. Or maybe, like me, you have a job—sort of—but no official physical workplace. All of which is to say that when I talk about "home" versus "work," I mean the activities that replenish your energy versus the ones that drain it. In an age when bleed-through is the new normal, it's more crucial than ever to separate the two. Here are some strategies that help me.

1. Establish a replenishing inner "state of home."

Some people spend years in an office cubicle without ever feeling the energetic involvement of real work; others do brilliant, inspired work without ever leaving their bed. This is because both work and home are first and foremost states of mind. So to begin separating your work life and home life, we'll concentrate on creating a mental "state of home" inside your head.

To do this, focus on memories that feel relaxing, nourishing, replenishing—in a word, homey. Remember baking with your grandmother, or talking with your sister, or snuggling in bed with a loved one (fabulous sex is an excellent way to feel at home, as is cuddling with your beloved collie—just not at the same time).

If you don't have many homey memories, your mental state of home may feel tepid at first. Persist! Remember the most comforting times and places you can: the branches of the tall tree where bullies couldn't reach you, Uncle Joe's bomb shelter, the warmest corner of the prison yard. (Ideally, you're looking for a sense of joyful replenishment, but happy relaxation is nearly as good, pleasant neutrality will do, familiar boredom is better than nothing, and defensible concealment—well, you get the idea.)

Once you come up with three memories that qualify, hold in mind the feelings they bring, while silently repeating, "Home. Home. Home."

2. Establish a productive inner "state of work."

If you're lucky, you do the kind of work that sparks your creativity and makes you want to meet its challenges. For me that work is writing: Although I find it hellishly hard, it's the first thing I turn to when I need to express myself or understand the world. I love its very difficulty.

Most of my clients, however, are work Nazis. They think they should force themselves to do things they loathe. If this is your mental "state of work," it's also the way you'll feel about your job, and it will follow you home—likely in the form of depression or rage. You absolutely must create a mental work state more like what psychologists call flow, the total absorption that comes from doing something that interests you at the upper edge of your ability level.

Even if your current job feels more like imprisonment than flow, you can still create a productive mental work state. Start by remembering any kind of effort that absorbed you enough to make time disappear. If after racking your brain nothing comes to mind, periods of interested problem solving will do nearly as well, and moments of productive effort will suffice in a pinch. Tedious repetition is as low as you want to go here (if your job is so awful that it doesn't yield even an hour of tolerable slog, it's time to hire a life coach). Now focus on the three best work activities you can remember, smoosh them together in your head, and silently repeat, "Work. Work. Work."

3. Use your mental states to create physical spaces.

The next step in keeping your work and home lives healthy and pristine is creating physical environments that support each side. Let's start with your homespace. Find the spot in your current domicile that best matches the feeling of your mental home state—a room, a corner, the box your refrigerator came in. Bring into this space any objects or beings that make it feel even homier. These may include your kids, your parakeet, your softest quilt, and your dog-eared copy of Fifty Shades of Grey (just not at the same time).

Next, use the same strategy to create a workspace, whether you're a full-time parent or a merchant marine. Find a space that—no pun intended—works for you, and bring in the people and things that make you feel productive: a fresh notebook, a team of coworkers, a mule. I myself am motivated by high-quality tools (anything from a fancy-schmancy computer to a hammer), absolute solitude, and of course my writing chair, writing glasses, and writing gum—the combination makes me itch to work. Whatever places, people, and things support your internal work state, gather them!

4. Separate your homespace from your workspace.

Once you've assembled a bunch of homey things in your homiest possible place, and a bunch of worky things in your workiest possible place, separate them like a Puritan chaperone dividing teenagers. Even if your office is 90 miles away from your house, some worky things will inevitably infiltrate your home—your job is to keep them out of your designated homespace. If you work in your house or apartment, you'll need to be extra vigilant. When you're not working, put all work-related things out of sight. Cover them with a sheet, if necessary.

By the same token, don't bring a lot of homey things into your workspace. Doing so will distract and confuse you. There's a reason service dogs mustn't be petted or played with when they're wearing their work vests: They need to be clear that they're on the job. But when the vests come off, service-dog owners must play with their animals in order to keep them from becoming exhausted and depressed. You're the same way: Having clear boundaries will help you work enthusiastically, then truly rest.

5. Actually use your homespace and workspace.

Only one thing now remains: time in the saddle. The more time you spend doing only homey things in your homespace and only worky things in your workspace, the more you'll develop the state-dependent memory that will trigger the associations you want in either place. When you enter your homespace, you'll automatically relax, effortlessly dropping effort and negative office juju. (If the urge to think or talk about work arises, note it, then picture it evaporating like steam.) And when it's time to work, the genuine R&R you've enjoyed will help everything you do feel more like flow.

6. Watch the Zen master in you emerge.

If you don't find this exercise helpful, you're certainly free to keep day-trading while nursing your twins, or stacking paperwork on every surface in your home, including the oven racks. But I think if you experiment with the methods I've described, you'll come to appreciate them. One definition of Zen is simply "doing one thing at a time"—which goes a long way toward explaining why Zen masters look so calm and live so long. I want you to love going to work, and to love being home. Just not at the same time.

Article by Martha Beck and illustration from here.

 

May I add that it helps alot being present, living in the present moment.

If you work, you work. It is no use to think of the chores you left behind. focus on the task on hand.

For me it is also essential to spend some time with objects and actions not related to business, even not related to home and family.

Do something for yourself every day:

Wake up 15 min earlier thatn usual and

read a prayer or psalm,

have a lazy breakfast ,

or make a mood board using the latest magazines,

your kind of thing that nurishes your personal needs.

Most of all,

enjoy Life and

Be Thankful to God

for another beautiful morning that you are blessed to see.

 

Finding your quiet spot

.



That little dot. That little quiet spot that you sometimes reach and most often long for. Do you have one? I am travelling along with my spots all of my life. I tune into myself and find some comfort and warmth. I listen when I am quiet. I stop and breath and am all quiet inside.

I have fancied myself and painter. I believe it'd be liberating. The big strokes of royal blue, the paint dripping. But i have always worked with words. I must honour them cause they are earning me who I am.

I'd love to travel. Travel more. Be a journalist. A dispatch journalist reporting from some important city in an important country where all the buzz happens.

i think I am in the right place.

i have spent 15 years of my life doing what I should do. By doing what I should do, I discovered what I like to do. And that is writing. and taking pictures. And talking psychology. And reading. And all this needs to come out this year, I can feel the rush of the things piling all these years and being ready now to get a life outside of me. It is my need to be free.

Funny how you find yourself by getting away from it and how you get to accomplish what you are by welcoming yourself into a life you never thought that fit you.

So, I am not a farm girl. Nor a crafty girl. Nor a bekeress. Mush as I love other lady bloggers, like soulemama and anna-maria and cherry, it's settled, for the time being, I'm not any one of them.

I am here. Plain and clear. I have run my distance and now I look at my own quiet little spot.

.

If I have one piece of advice to give, it'll be
Listen to yourself.

Guest Post: "5 Ways To Start Your Day Off Happily"

Hello, dear friends,

For this week's guest post, I am glad to welcome Jason who writes about ways to kickstart your day on the happy side.

*
Remember, if you want to guest post for The Happy Turtle
 you are welcome to e-mail your suggestion at
 happyturtledeco (at) gmail (dot) com

*

Enjoy!

Words to live by: J.K.Rowling

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

What helps me? Answering Jennifer Louden's questions

One of my favorite people, writer and  Comfort Queen Jennifer Louden, wrote this article, that I find stimulating for each and everyone of us.

I believe we can all ask ourselves the same questions, and find different answers coming out, or very similar ones, at that. Believe me when I say that my answers, when they are put to paper, very often surprise me when they compare to what I expected myself to answer.

Jennifer's questions follow (go here to read her answers)

What helps me in my business?

What helps me in my business isn’t any different than what helps me in my life. I’m sure the same is true for you. Like:

:: who do you grow with? my husband and our family. I believe that if you are inclined to married life, choosing/picking/ following, whatever leads you to sharing your life with the person who is your life companion is key to finding your life's purpose, to chase your deamons or making peace with them.

* what do you excel for? Being a good example for my kids is motivating me to be a better person. I can see patterns in my behavior from my experience as a child, that I put aside, and reach for ways to be closer to my children, being more open, more supportive, more present for them.

:: who do you allow to support you even when it’s messy – really messy. Realtives have traditionally been a safety net for Greek families. Not all are blessed with loving relatives, but C's family is blessed with some loving, caring relatives. I admire my mil' sfamily for their close knit ties, and I want my children to grow to be tight together like a fist. 

* more of letting that messy support in. Asking for help has been for me an exercise to humility. I am a shy person, and this is often mistaken for pride or distance. I need my time to feel comfortable in the presence of people. I have been through the letting too much out after keeping too much in. Finding this balance has been a challenging and yet rewarding part of my life. 

:: Pleasing myself first and then asking “How can this serve the people I love to inspire?” This is very hard for me but I’m clear it’s the only way I will have the energy to continue to create. Serve yourself first.(Jen's words). That was one of Jennifer's lessons that I found hard to follow, yet in a way freed me

via

* who guides you beyond your limits? Oh, it will have to be life. I have shifted from a place of seclusion, what seemed like a destiny to academia, to retail sales which is the exact opposite, in terms of  introvert-extrovert.

via

:: do you allow yourself to be a learner? name where and when. That's tough, isn't it, saying "I don't know how to do it', when you are pressured to save face in business at all costs. And yet, I find saying "I don't know" a relief and a beginning, beggining a healthier relationship with a customer, dealing with coworkers, even dealing with my own kids. I have read alot, I ahve tried some more. Most of all, I remain a learner in front of God. I have learned to say, "Show me the way, cause you are the way, the light and the life."

via

* how do you grow in awareness? Learning to take a break. Stop and think about what I'm doing. I have always loved having penpals from different places of the globe, and that hasn't changed since I was a teenager. It evolved into blogging, and I am thankful for that. Opening up to the best possibilities, opening up to beauty makes me aware of the beauty I am capable of. 

:: who do you want to create with? have you asked? Hard one. Funny as it is, I can see women getting together to knit and craft in the States or the UK, and here simply isn't done. Unless one is my mil' s age, when women used to get together with their cross-stitching for morning coffee, it just isn't part of the culture anymore. There are places in Athens that younger women get together and sew. They are young, have lived abroad, and kind of link their two experiences together. Our company does workshops and we only recently hosted one. So yes, baby steps...

But right now, I am encouraged to create by my children. They way they approach making things as a natural part of their lives. They don't research that much or collect patterns. They pick their tools and go for it. And if they are not Ok with the result, they do again. I think this is a quality one loses through formal education, work and control in general. So, i love creating with my kids around, because they take me out of my "should" corner and into their "can" place.

* Blog posts like this on knowing what you want (you cannot please yourself if you don’t know what you want.) More of that, in a next post.

:: Owning my gifts. (be brave: own yours.) Ha! Such puritans, we learn to hide our gifts instead of using them to their full potential. The concept of our talents being God's gifts to me is relatively new to me and I discovered it through blogging friends. I am encouraging my kids to go for what they like. Acknowledging that my talents are God given is one sure path to happiness.

* how do you stay on your own side especially when despair and fear come a calling?

Prayer. How can I stress this highly enough. To remain on your side, to remain connected to your true self, you must be connected to your power source. God is the ultimate power source that works for each one and all of us. Because He is Love, He knows how to adapt His attention to our needs, let us swim and throw a life boat in when we need it most. 

Ultimate self-care is key to being present for others, too. So yes, I now take that catnap, stop to hug my cats, eat black eyed beans wven when no one else wants them, and hve a banana for breakfast when it feels right. Stay tuned to the Source.

:: where does love hold you to your best self and where does self-hatred bend you to improve? Being accepted by yourself for all your weaknesses and dark corners, your lies and secrets is a big first step. Know thyself for who you are. Get cleaning and arranging your soul without blame. Loving after thyself like you do a little baby. Important. Self-hatred has kicked in more than once in my life, but, apart from some venting, it only did me harm. So do what you have to do with love.

* what are you devoted to? This is the essence, really, where do our loyalties rest, where does it all come to. I believe for me it all rests in my love for Greece, the spirit of freedom and independence it stands for in the entire world, the unsubmissiveness, the raw edge. SO I'd say, all in all for me, life is about being free to live your life. I am devoted to Freedom.

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I learn so much about myself with the help of Jennifer's questions. 

I encourage you to visit Jennifer Louden  and bet you to be inspired to a more loving, inspired, kind life.