STRIVE TO// find the courage to be sensitive, be emotionally vulnerable, connect, create, grow, be comfortable with & embrace solitude, never compromise their integrity, explore,  be true, be kind, practice self-acceptance & self-love, give an honest effort, forgive, be present, be patient, be transparent

The Courage to Stay in one Place

...In the morning I emptied the contents of one drawer into a suitcase and made it halfway through the booking process before I realized I couldn’t just catch the next flight to Tel Aviv.

I tried to do all of my favorite things, distractions. But the cappuccino turned cold before I could concentrate long enough to read the first few lines of anything. ...

I did the same hike twice and then called my dad. From my window, I can see the mountains. The snow collects on the balcony, the patio furniture, the trees, and windowsills. The heater rattles the air vents, but the quiet of the snow still permeates my apartment. Everything is in slow motion and muted colors. I have a home and a job. I can’t just run.

The heater stops. The place is so still. I roll over onto my back, stare at the ceiling. ...I try pushing the thoughts away and then I try just letting them go. But there is still that weight on my chest and I’d rather just get on the next plane to Mexico.

When the first pangs of anxiety hit, my default is always a suitcase and a ticket to anywhere. I have gotten used to the idea that an Italian train and fields of red poppies are the cure for any sort of trouble, but then at a certain point that is no longer true. Because even in travel there are moments where you pause and it all catches up with you, where you stand on the top of Masada and the Dead Sea looks like somebody painted the sky on the desert floor and it’s so damn beautiful and you’re so damn lucky, but you just think of her and that smile and the email you wish you could send. At a certain point, every breathtaking vista just becomes another backdrop for your broken heart.

There is bravery in traveling, but there is bravery in staying home, too. There is bravery in staying still long enough for everything to catch up with you, in trusting that whatever it is, it won’t drag you down. Because it hurts like hell when there’s nowhere to run, when the only place to circle is within the confines of your own addled brain. I lie awake at night trying to figure out ways to escape the barbed wire thoughts closing in. Every memory digs a little deeper into my skin.

I don’t feel like listening to anything but Beethoven. I don’t want the sun to go down. I can’t stop reading travel books and planning trips.

I have a home and a place and responsibility. I chose this for myself; I chose this inability to flee. I have finally decided to sit quietly and let the pain seep in under the doors and through the windows. Rumi says you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. And I’ve broken it open under every sky imaginable, rolling it across the Sinai, dragging it through the Alps, wedging it in the cracks of the Western Wall. But I have never learned to sit still, to stop shoving the fragments into a suitcase.

In the slow motion of my unpacked life, I find that I like to bake, to find that balance between desperately seeking meaning from my life and finding it unexpectedly while waiting for the dough to rise. I am scared that my expectations of love are too unrealistic, scared that I will never find a way to balance my love of adventure with my need for quiet reflection. I find that my natural state is delight, but even while marveling at the perfect hue of a mango, I crumple over the cutting board, pressing my forehead against the cupboard, struggling to swallow my tears.

Sometimes bravery is booking that ticket to Mongolia. Sometimes it’s canceling your flight. Sometimes it’s plunging into a new culture, a new language, a new place. Sometimes it’s a few hours of staring at your ceiling telling yourself you’re not going to give up on you, that you’re going to stay in your old place and learn to make it new. Sometimes your demons push you to stay, sometimes they pull you to go. Sometimes you have to sit still long enough to figure out the way your heart breaks. Sometimes you have to hit the road to remember how to put it back together.

In the slow motion stillness of a Colorado snowstorm, I am finding that there is so much bravery in both.

http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/the-courage-to-stay-in-one-place/?utm_source=mfb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mfb

pain and time/ the wisdom of insecurity

-the increase in our overall sensitivity makes us peculiarly vulnerable.
-the further the power of consciousness ventures out into experience, the more is the price it must pay for its knowledge.
-if, then, we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, it seems that we must be willing to suffer for our pleasures. Without such willingness there can be no growth in the intensity of consciousness.
-the more we struggle for life (as pleasure) , the more we are actually killing what we love.
-the reason that we want life to mean something, is not merely that we are trying to get away from an immediate experience of pain. nor is it for any such reason that we assume attitudes and roles as habits of perpetual self defense. the real problem does not come from any momentary sensitivity to pain, but from our marvelous powers of memory and foresight- in short from our consciousness of time.
-for an animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. he is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations. with these assured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. without this assurance, he can be extremely miserable in the midst of the immediate physical present.
-this is the typical human problem. the object of dread may not be the immediate future. it may be the problem of 'next months rent' . Or the spoiler of the present may not be a future dread but something out of the past, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt.
- the power of memories and expectations is such that for most humans the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. the present can not be lived happily unless the past is cleared up and the future is bright with promise.
-if my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, i am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that i have been expecting come to pass. for i shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, i must begin to wonder whether i am actually living in the real world.
-the future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner or later, it is going to become the present. thus to plan for the future which is not going to become present is hardly more absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to me, will find me 'absent', looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into its face**
-they fail to live because they are always preparing to live. instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are unable to do so.
-the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. we cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. by remembering the past we can plan for the future. but the ability to plan for pleasure is offset by the ability to dread pain and to fear the unknown. furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and the future gives us a correspondingly dim sense of the present.
-but does the desire for something prove that the thing exists? 
-it would seem that , in man, life is in hopeless conflict with itself. to be happy, we must have what we cannot have. in man, nature has conceived desires which it is impossible to satisfy. consciousness seems to be natures ingenious mode of self torture.
-we must look into this life, this nature, which has become aware within us, and fine out whether it is really in conflict with itself, whether it actually desires the security and the painlessness which its individual forms can never enjoy.

FREE SPIRIT BLEND

 FREE SPIRIT BLEND  

10 drops White Fir 

10 drops Wild Orange 

10 drops Lavender 

5 drops Rosemary 

5 drops Frankincense 

5 drops Grapefruit 

Fill to top with Fractionated Coconut oil

I've had some major changes in my life lately and it's led me down a spiritual journey that I am fully embracing. I am doing some major spiritual work on myself to get my heart and mind in the right place. Looking inward and at my heart, self reflecting on the woman I am and the woman I want to be. I am a free spirit, always have been, always will be. I have never done things the normal way and I have always sort of marched to the sound of my own drum. It's something I have always been proud of. I feel best on the open road, in nature, in adventure, and in the unknown. This blend is to tap into my spirit and embrace it. 

Incorporate White Fir to be connected to nature, Wild Orange for a happy spirit, Lavender to calm, Frank to ground, and Rosemary and Grapefruit for added spice and brightness. So this is my spirit blend

https://www.instagram.com/theessentialoilvine/

everything that happens is a blessing

When you start to play a bigger game and grow - fear can get out of hand, and you can end up sabotaging your own success.

Why does this happen?

Because right before you make major progress, you come up against all the parts of you that want to keep you safe, the same and stuck. 

There is a part of you that wants you to stay the same. And there is another part of you that desires to grow, to become more, to give more and fulfill your God-given potential 

And those two parts of you battle each other. Each day, if we are diligent, we will make small steps of progress towards our potential and leave the comfortable realm of our current circumstances. 

One pattern that can derail your potential in no time is taking the results of your efforts personally. Meaning, if you tried a certain strategy and it didn't work out, it's vital not to decide that you are a bad or worthless person and give up the attempt to try. 

Do not assign your self-worth as a person to the outcomes of your actions. Outcomes are just that - outcomes. And outcomes can change with new action. However, if you decide that an outcome you produced is the result of you being not worthy or not enough or a "bad" person, the chances of you being able to improve your circumstances goes down significantly. 

At the same time, if you decide that you are special, more significant or better than other because of a good outcome that you created, then you put yourself on the path of destruction because you are feeding a false sense of your ego and you will be humbled by life. 

The goal is to not take the outcomes personally, whether good or bad, but rather see everything that happens as a lesson and a blessing.

When you can see everything that happens in your life as a blessing, you are on the fast track to spiritual awakening. 

Perhaps, all of it is Divine. The good. The bad. The in between. All is sent for your growth, your benefit, and your spiritual evolution. 

Repeat after me, "I won't take the outcomes I create personally. I am a worthy person and Soul in the eyes of my Creator, and I allow myself to learn the lessons I am meant to learn. I will not judge what happens as a reflection of my identity as a Soul..."

Ahhhhhhh, doesn't that feel good?

Remember, you are not what happens to you, or the outcomes that you create.

You are an Infinite Soul in a temporary human body who has been sent to learn lessons, grow and become more by giving back and improving the lives of others. 

So be it. Amen. 

Choose to see the lesson. Choose to let go of the shame, guilt, and fear and know that in this moment - you are loved. 

//Mastin Kipp

Are You Coachable?

"real change is more often spurred by desperation than inspiration."
im looking for people who could teach me how to live a life worth living

A proverb says that only stupid men learn from experience. Wise men learn from other people’s experience.

humility. Humility teaches that there are things we need to do that we cannot do on our own. The most important things we need to learn require fundamental changes in our behavior and outlook. Humility requires a change of heart rather than a change of mind. 

willingness to surrender control. We implicitly insist that we will only give up control once we have seen results. In fact we only get results if we are willing to give up control. Unwillingness to surrender control is the single biggest reason for the lamentable fact that most authentic change is precipitated by a crisis.

authentic change is a journey into the unknown, and a journey into the unknown is by definition a journey into uncertainty. Insisting on certainty is just another bogus constraint we impose to stay off the hook.

faith. The problem with life is that it must be lived forward and only understood backwards. Usually things get worse before they get better. Only hindsight is 20/20, and that is why we so often hear someone exclaim, “If I knew then what I know now I would’ve changed years ago.”

August Turak

Open heart/ Open mind

thanks to our good old pal the unconscious mind. In short, our unconscious mind is comforted by habit. That's why habits are so hard to break, even if they're "bad." None of us will deny that humans love looking for patterns, making patterns, following patterns and so on. Our ego minds want so badly to be right, such that when we experience the world, we often wear blinders to experiences that might prove us wrong. And this is not a bad thing, really. Our egos are just trying to keep us safe. But this way of believing certainly can put a damper on our lives — in love, work and otherwise.

Our brains are wired to see patterns that prove ourselves correct. It's evolutionary, something hard-wired in each of us. If a person approaches anything/anyone through a negative lens, believing everyone is out to get them, he/she will find evidence to support that, while his/her brain passes over evidence of the opposite.

By entering life from a jaded or negative space, one's experience is more likely to meet that expectation (or lack thereof).  If we approach life expecting a person to be boring or superficial or angry, then we will see the other person through a filter, looking for evidence to of these qualities. We create our own reality this way. 

So how can we change this paradigm?

The answer's simple, but not necessarily easy. Enter the experience with an open mind and heart. Try to clear your mind of expectations and beliefs about what something is or is not before you try it. No, I'm not encouraging a Pollyanic, naive approach. But you can begin the process of looking towards life with a fundamental belief in place that will anchor you: you already have everything you need inside of yourself. This will allow you to remain as neutral as possible. At the same time, it will also allow other people to show up freely as himself or herself, without the filtering effect of your judgments and assumptions.

That said, if you find your judgements bubbling up, simply to notice what your mind wants to label "bad." The beauty of being aware in this way is that you can take your power back, and no longer have to navigate dating from a negative space.

Look at this way: the world is so much larger and more spacious than the worlds each of us inhabits each day. Appreciate that space, and realize how freeing it is. There are beautiful, open, conscious individuals everywhere.

Mind.body.green

equanimity

equanimity
mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.

// this is my word for age 31//

…and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom // Anais Nin

Net Worth and Self Worth

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? ...Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

Marianne Williamson

Our net worth is going to be linked up with our feelings of self worth, not with our inherant worth. When we try and make a change in our behavior from a perspective of beating ourselves up and hating ourself, the change doesnt stick. But when we change our behavior out of love and compassion then it will stick. If you value yourself you ramp up the value that you can offer to the world. If you connect your financial awareness with self care and if you take care of your finances as an honor and privelage and look at it as a place of gratitude you will choose whether or not to buy something out of self love. Choosing to have a lack of financial awareness is only a way to keep yourself small out of fear. So if you want to heal your relationship with money, learn your own value.

Kate Northrup

My Silver Lining

Regret, remorse, hold on, oh no I've got to go

There's no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on

And you've just gotta keep on keeping on

Gotta keep on going, looking straight out on the road

Can't worry 'bout what's behind you or what's coming for you further up the road

I try not to hold on to what is gone, I try to do right what is wrong

I won't take the easy road

Having no idea who or what or where I am

Something good comes with the bad

There's hope, there's a silver lining

Show me my silver lining

//First Aid Kit