Autumn Rituals of Replenishment

I sit here, pondering the last few months since my last post. Life, as it always does, ebbs like the incoming tide, and you sometimes get the feeling of 2 steps forward, and two steps backward. But occasionally mother nature lets loose and you feel as if you are being pulled out to sea - and this dear reader is me at the moment. But today (with the help of a glass of red wine), I feel I am finally starting to swim towards the shore again. And with that, I turn back to my reflections with Sarah.

In the month of April, Sarah has encouraged us to turn the attention to our "outer" selves. Which for me means remembering to brush my hair at least twice a day. But this is how we present ourselves to the rest of the world, and to those people who will only meet us for a fleeting moment, yet will cast a "judgement" over us, if only for a few seconds. Now dont get me wrong, I am not the type of peron who feels that they have something to prove to total strangers, however sometimes the "outer" me, does not reflect the "inner" me, for example how I "see" myself.

Sarah encourages us to make time for rituals of replenishment, like the "ritual" of putting on lipstick. I have taken this oppertunity to throw out all my safe, boring underwear, and I have invested in lingere that actually fits me and flatters my shape for my age. And I am amazed of how good I feel on the inside - this simple act has made me feel better about myself, and I find myself walking with a spring in my step.

Sarah also reminds us to not forget the rituals of rejuvenation, finding (or creating) our sacred space where we can put down the troubles of the world if only for an hour. She reminds us that we carry our serenity with us, though I feel having a facial helps me onlock this "peace". I am sure you dear reader, will have no problem identifying what your own key is.

Excavating the real you

The path to self discovery, can be a difficult, and sometimes never ending one. Like an archaelogical dig, Sarah reminds us that we first need to sift through layers of "dirt" (aka our past), to find what enlights our souls. She suggests that we look to our past, and remember those minor details - the ones that changed our way of thinking. Of course major events would have an impact on who we are today, but these may not hold the essence of our true selves.

And be prepared to get your hands dirty. And arm yourself with a pen, and of course your journal to record these diamonds that you are about to remember.

Go back through your life, start with your childhood. Focus in on what made you happy as a child. What were your favourite things, your dreams, your family who have since past. Then move into your teenage years, remember your first job, your first love...........................who did you admire?

Move ahead to your adult years, remember your decorating style in your first home. Do you still have traces of these in your current home?? Do they bring you joy?

When we live our lives authentically, we discover our true place in the world (Sarah - Feb 16th). Life tends to focus on the "shoulds" instead of the "coulds", and we loose our own unique self of self. Today is the day to start embracing these little pockets of joy, and placing them in the limelight, instead of having them burried under years of "dust".

The World Is Too Much With Us

We are constantly bombared with information, which on the surface seems positive hey. But do we really need to absorb all of this extra stuff?

Magazines that tell us we need to have xyz gaget, the big house, the new car, the high power career................... And of course how to look and feel - even how many children we should have. And we "need" to do it all, the perfect partner, perfect mother, perfect work collegue.

Sarah writes "we are chronically exhausted from the getting (the amount of energy spent earning a living), and juggling the demands of home and career." We are paying now for the spending of yesterday.

So as asked earlier - do we really need all this extra stuff in our heads, and cluttering our cupboards?

Why to we ransom off our tomorrow's chasing things we dont need, and thus moving away from our authentic selves and what is really important to us?

Sarah advises - Today, deliberately turn away from the world. Dont read the newspaper, or watch / listen to the news. Instead listen to your inner voice, who is burried under all that external noise. Once we obtain this inner knowledge about ourselves, we will have the ability to change our outer worlds.

Maybe see if you can extend it to the rest of the week.

Creative excursions- The gift of time

Have you ever noticed that irritating pre flight procedure when you are sitting on a plane waiting to take off to some wonderful place. You know, the one where they point to the exits of the plane, and show you how to put on an oxygen mask. We sit there - thinking "duh", some of us actually saying this outloud. And they always say to fit your own mask before you fit the childs.

How often do we take this concept and do it in real life. There is always something or someone more important than us, so our needs get pushed aside, because life is just too busy to find the time you need for you. Yet so much rides on our shoulders, if we were to fall be the wayside, life as we know might fall into chaos. We need to say enough - and make time for us and our well being.

Sarah talks about creative excursions, taking a 2 hr period each week which we dedicate for our spiritual needs. That we prioritise over life's curveballs. Its about learning not to ignore your inner self for decades - and saying now it the time to make amends.

So what will it be for you dear reader? Take in a movie, have breakfast in that wonderful cafe you have been admiring, visit an art gallery and drink in all the wonderful colours and imagination of the truely talented? Maybe enroll in that class of how to speak Italian, something that you have always wanted to learn.

Or visit that dress shop - you know, the one that you have been afraid to go in because you fear the price tags. Really look at the designs, appreciate them for the designer's insight, the fabric choice, the colour. Then grab a coffee and a fashion magazine, think about your personal style, what it currently is, and what you would prefer it to be.

Sarah warns us that it will not be an easy task. There will be excuses thrown up in your mind blocking you from this time with yourself. I am broke, the kids have the flu, work is just too busy at the moment............dont give in. Remember creative excursions require an investment in time - not money. None of us are too busy to find two hours per week. Get creative with this too - maybe get up earlier and have that walk along the beach, use your lunch hour twice a week, let your spouse babysit the kids - turn off the TV.

My creative excursion for this week - is to get back to quilting. Look out Patchwork shop - here I come.

Blessing or circumstances

Sarah writes "after accepting our present circumstances, no matter what they are, we must learn to bless them". Pretty hard stuff, when you are faced with misery hey. Anyone who has been through a recent crisis (mine is the flooding in Victoria - see picture above), will tell first hand how difficult it is. Learn to bless misery??? Thats a hard ask.

Sarah quotes:

Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will
curse you..... if you bless a situation, it has no power to hurt you, and
even if it is troublesome for a time, it will gradually fade out, if you
sincerely bless it.

Emmet Fox

It is so easy to focus on our woes, our pain and our losses. Over time these occupy the majority of our thoughts, and they change who we are. We become bitter, lethargic and concoured. This is not our authentic selves.

But it doesnt have to be this way. The harder road is not to be a defeatest, but to be like the mythical phoenix bird, to rise from the ashes re-born and better than before. This takes courage, which if we search our souls, we will find that we have a bounty of.

Sarah asks us to count our blessings, starting today. Acknowledge the daily positives, even during times when the negative seems to take centre stage. She reminds us, writing down our victories focuses our attention on the adundance already within our grasp and makes it real.

So dear reader - how many blessings have you counted today???

Acres of Diamonds

Todays post reflects the story of the persian man, who sold his farm to spend years travelling the world looking for wealth. Eventually homeless and destitute, in despair he ended his own life - his search for wealth had consumed him. However the man who bought his farm, was grateful for every blade of grass on this land, and celebrated his good fortune with his family and friends. He was grateful and content with his life and considered himself a wealthy man, though by society's standards, not materialistically. Woe & behold, one day he discovered a diamond mine on the property.

Now I'm sure you are sick of me reminding you to be grateful for the simple joys in your life. So today dear reader, I want you to focus on the diamonds that you have. What riches have you not acknowledged or discovered yet? If you could be anything in the world - what would it be?

Sarah writes "would you open a store, nuture a family, design a dress, write a screenplay..........?"

I have many talents, but I am sure there was talents that I have not discovered yet, or not conciously acknowledged that I have.

My dream is to live simply by todays standards, raise my own sheep fowl and cattle, grow my own vegetables, and enjoy the process along the way. I am part of the way there. And maybe when I reach my utopia, I might even find my diamond mine.

So what is your dream dear reader - and what are you doing to make this dream a reality??

Beauty - opening our eyes to the beauty that surrounds us

In todays world, we are exposed to various sources that tell us what is beautiful - and what is deemed ugly. Magazines, newspapers, television - god forbid even the internet, all seem to endeavour to put their idea of beauty onto us so we call it our own. Then there is cultural, religious, ethinic, etc influences which further "refine" our sense of beauty, until one day, we forget our authentic selves and go with what others have decided for us.

We forget the marvel that mother nature provides us, instead turning to artifical sources.

Today Sarah encourages us to see our world differently. "Let your eyes drink in the beauty that surrounds you" Today really look at your loved ones faces, and saviour them. Ignore the dirt on your youngest's face and see it as not an "ugly" thing, but as evidence as what fun he /she has had making those mud pies. The smile should be the trigger, yet more often than not, we only see the mess.

Over the past few days, I have embraced the 6 threads of abundant living. These are:

Gratitude, Simplicity, Order, Harmony, Beauty and Joy.

So dear reader - how have you honored your soul?????

The gratitude journal

Life has a habit of going so fast we forget to smell the roses and enjoy the little, but important things in life. And when we are in stressful situations, tired, or apathetic with our lives, these soul lifting moments are rarely seen. It is easy to wake up one morning and question why there is no joy in our lives.

But there is joy, it is all around. It flows and presents itself in many, sometimes unseen ways every single day of our lives. But as like any habit, it has to be learned to recognise it - and pay homage to it.

Sarah explains this is why keeping a gratitude journal is such an important step of changing our life for the better, and helping us tap into our authentic selves. She writes "I have a beautiful blank book and each night before I go to bed, I write down 5 things that I can be grateful about for that day".

So your task dear reader, is to go and get yourself a gratitude journal. Start tonight to recognise those things that you have, or have experienced that day which you can be grateful for.

Gratitude is the hearts memory, and like most memories, they lift us and make us smile.

There is no scarcity

Money - how many times have you found yourself saying "When I win lotto, I will............ (insert personal life-long dream)". It just never seems to be able to cover all the bills and our meet our authentic yearning needs. So many of us live hand to mouth, pay cheque to pay cheque. Like a mouse on a wheel - running but not feeling as if we are getting anywhere.

And it affects you physically as well as emotionally. Sarah writes, money worries mock you. They steal the joy of living because they follow you around all day like a dark menacing shadow, and at night they rob you of much need sleep. You cease to live and merely exsist.

But it doesnt need to be this way. You can take back the power in your life, and away from the bank balance. You can control money, instead of it controlling you. Money will ebb and flow through our lives, sometimes there will be abundance, sometimes it will be more like a drought. The simpler we make our lives, the more abundant we become. The more frugal we become with our resources, the more we can cover those items which not only feed our bellies, but our souls. And when we work smarter, not harder, we get a precious gift - time. Time which we can spend with our loved ones, which when you think about it, is much more important than those expensive pair of shoes, or the large house with the extra bedrooms for those visitors that might stay once in a blue moon.

There is no scarcity, except in our souls.

Is it recession or depression?

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an
uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit- Helen Keller

As Harry Trueman once said - its a recession when your neighbour looses his job, and depression when you loose your own. And today, many of us are faced with financial challenges, some our own doing, and some which life has decided to throw at us. Sarah points out, that it is very easy to surrender to an emotional depression when a financial one occurs. Its easy to be pessimistic about tomorrow when today seems so bleak.

Drought, fire, flood, unemployment...................... these are just a few of my challenges. I am sure you dear reader will have a personal list of your own. But what if we were to say - stop being pessimists, and change our thinking to becoming optimists??

Sarah writes, optimism is a habit (like happiness) that can be learned. She encourages us to start today with a little experiment - smile at everyone you meet. Expect something good to happen today not matter what happened yesterday. Realise that the past holds you captive if you continue to cling onto the woes that life has dealt you.

And take ownership of your life - and of those past choices that have left you feeling financially vunerable. Living authentically is a process of working out what matters to us, and what is just a waste of our time and energy. For example, during our financial "crisis", I have learnt to pare down to the essentials. Yes I do miss the convienence of buying the whiz bang birthday cake for my youngest recent birday - but I have discovered how much more enjoyable it is to make your own. Especially when you have a little helper willing and able to lick the bowl clean for you (helps with cleaning up LOL).

And funny enough, I feel much lighter, since I have de-cluttered my kitchen of the 101 herbs & spices that I used to tell myself that we needed, now its what ever I can grow and dry which I use in my cooking extrodiaires. And yes, I feel I am much more productive. And in the process, I have re-set my personal values, and found new joys and pleasures which I never knew exsisted.

So dear reader - today think about what past decissions you need to acknowledge, pay homage to them, then place them in the past where they belong. And if the ramifications of those choices are still affecting your day to day living, then work out a plan. Re-set your own personal values, pare down your clutter, your shopping lists, etc. Consider donating to charity any item that is wasting your energy for someone more needy (and yes dear reader there is always someone worse off than you), or having a go on EBay.

Oh - and dont forget to recognise something today to be grateful for............

How happy are you now?

Do you know how happy you are right now?? As Sarah writes, most women know what makes their parents, partners, children, etc happy, but when it comes to their own awareness of what brings them joy, we often come up short.

And how easy it is to say the cliche stuff like "my children make me happy" or "my dog / cat make me happy". Yes I am sure that like me, my kids and animals (eg the external) do bring me happiness, but when I ask myself what internal activities makes me smile, well this question is one a cannot answer.

Maybe its because I really dont know myself as much as what I thought. Maybe its because life has dictated what I should feel happiness over, and what I should not. As Sarah points out, what is missing from many of our days is a true sense that we are enjoying the lives we are living. It is difficult to experience moments of happiness if we are not aware of what we genuinely love. We must learn to savor small authentic moments that bring us contentment.

So today, lie in the hammock, with a nice glass of red wine (or whatever is your decadent beveridge), and think about those simple pleasures that are unique to your soul - the ones that make you smile, even if the rest of the world doesnt understand them.

Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst

How many times do we focus on what we dont have - instead of what we have. If you are like me dear reader, and suffer from the glass is half empty syndrome, probably too many times to recall. And with all these negative thoughts, breed more negative feelings - and the cycle just gets out of control. Until one day, you find it hard to see any good in your world.

So today get out your gratitude journal and write about something you are grateful for. Try and pick just one thing, no matter how small, no matter insignificant others may find it. Because just as negative breeds negative, positive invites positives. And one day soon, you just might change your way of seeing the world, in a new abundant way just briming with wonderful adventures.

Today - I am grateful for my children, who upon my return from work, ran up to me and gave me a joyful "hi mum".

So what is yours......................................................????????

This isnt a dress rehersal

How many times have you said to yourself - I will do xyz when I achieve abc???? Now dont get me wrong, its great to have a reward to strive towards when you in the thick of change and need a carrot to dangle in front of your nose to stop you from throwing in the towel and giving up. Like for example I have promised myself a horse when I have achieved my post grad.

But............. when your promises put your life on hold and stop you living your authentic life.......................humm.

Sarah writes, unfortunately many of us live our lives as if it was a dress rehersal, we keep the good china only for the day when company comes, we dont take the time to dress ourselves up or put on a little makeup, etc, because somehow our everyday lives arent special enough. Sarah advises, none of us can be expected to perform every minute of our lives. But a lot of us might tap into the power, excitement and glory of Real Life more frequently if we cast ourselves as the leading ladies / men in our own lives.

So today, try to change your mindset - live like the goddess you are today. Treat everyday as if it was a gift, and not a given right.

Because tomorrow dear reader, may never come.

Simple Abundance - the inner journey

How many times has you consolled your hurt feelings by going shopping and buying materialistic things. Things that you really dont want and really cant afford? I have a whole house load of emotional stuff - items that were purchased to make me feel better when really it was my emotional need that was being swept aside. These items represent "gonna do" tasks, such as the fleece jumper that I was going to make my then 2 year old, or the melon baller that I was going to use to make fancy desserts out of rockmelon (I dont even like rockmelon). How about the size 10 jeans that I was going wear once I dropped all my weight. Its all there in the shed, reminding me of how I have "failed" in one way or another.

As Sarah writes - When we cannot access our inner resources, we come to the flawed conclusion that happiness and fulfillment come only from external events. That because I cannot fit into my size 10 jeans (in the present), that I will only be happy when I can (maybe in the future).

Sarah talks about the six threads of abundant living, gratitude, simplicity,order,harmony, beauty and joy. These, she lists as the key to an authentic life - and I have to agree with her.

I am sure that I will not have peace in my heart if I could fit into those size 10 jeans, as there is more to me than "fixing" my weight issue. And I am sure that I can be happy being a size 14.

What I am saying dear reader - is think of ways to incorparate these six threads into your daily lives.

My offering to the universe today was to create order and simplicity into that previous dark hole called my kitchen larder - it was a hard, dirty job (yes I did shed a tear when I finally threw out the packet soup with expired 4 years ago and has been transported through 3 house changes), but I did it.

The right questions

"You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough" - Joe E Lewis

Sarah writes - the answers to your questions will come, but only after you know which ones are worth asking. Which ones are more life changing, and which ones can lead you on your path to authentic living?

I feel I ask the weak questions - like what are we having for dinner? I wimp at the bigger more confronting ones like - why am I letting others run my life? Probably because they are so much harder to answer, and require much more courage than what I think I have. But as Sarah points out, learning this skill may take some time, and she reminds us of the new years bountiful blessings, of 365 days, 52 promising weeks, 12 transforming months and 4 splendid seasons.

So - my task for today is to focus on one major question, and believe in myself that I have the ability to change my world to secure my positive answer.