Thrive with Gratitude

Thrive with Gratitude

Thanksgiving might be the best holiday in the history of the planet. It’s a holiday that uniquely matters to our spiritual well-being! It eases the angst of our modern minds, which are often way too focused on negativity and anxieties, and it reminds us to focus on grateful thinking and being. As you may know, it’s not always easy to change our habits of mind. Yet, we can learn to change these, and one of the best reframing changes we can make towards this end is to flip the switch from negativity to gratitude.

I enjoy writing my gratitude list every morning. I notice how my energy changes and how my mind stays focused on the blessings that life bestows upon me. To be grateful is to be spiritual. Spirituality is discovering the abundance of your unlimited beautiful and grateful soul, which makes us evolve and grow as human beings. And it doesn’t matter how we get there…, the end result is us becoming a finer version of ourselves.

Enjoy noticing the things that are going well in your life this Thanksgiving! 
Let’s reclaim together our joyous spiritual selves through an “attitude of gratitude.”

How to Stay Open To Love

How to Stay Open To Love

Let’s have a discussion on how to stay open to love.

The kind of love I have in mind here is Agape love, unconditional love, the broader more expansive love towards ourselves, others and the planet. How can we cultivate that love all of the time?

Everybody has love inside of them. You don’t need to search for it, you need to trust that you have an abundant amount of love to give and receive. We are wired to love and we are wired to respond to love with kindness.

Nobody can survive without love. If you take a look at your exchanges, love is everywhere around you. All day long we are exchanging love, like we are exchanging money. One we see, the other we feel and sense. A hello is love, a smile is love, nice words are love, your presence is love, showing up is love.

Always cultivate an open heart. I was in meditation today and was observing my heart. I know from personal experience that when we experience a conflict, rejection or disappointment, we tend to close our hearts.

We close our hearts because we are sad but also because it hurts to feel the pain and disappointment of rejection. This is exactly why we need to reverse our course, and stay open. By keeping our hearts open, we are letting them heal, and allowing them to receive love from other sources — our pets, friends, parents, neighbors, and all of nature. Let the exchange of love keep flowing.

All our hearts are like giant flowers with petals. What happens to a flower when it is closed? We don’t see its essence, its colors, we can’t smell its fragrance. That is why we need to keep our hearts open and beautiful despite adversity. Our hearts are made to be appreciated. Everyone is worthy of love, everyone is worthy of receiving love. We are loving and lovable.

Cultivate the love you have. Let it grow. Love the small acts of love, they will grow your love.

As you expand your awareness, your love will expand. You will naturally make space for love to flourish inside of you. As you start to embrace your essence which the present moment reveals to you, love will replace what is not love inside of you….

So chirp your hearts out and pay attention to the love that flows all around you.

 

 

Living with Courage

Living with Courage

Listening to the news about natural disasters or phenomena happening everywhere around the globe, I couldn’t stop thinking about what is needed of us, when events of such magnitude threaten our material and physical security?

The earth is always evolving and changing, and the changes are opportunities for us to grow and learn as human beings.

The uncertainty of the events, and of life in general, teaches us that certainty can be found only inside of us. If we have a strong core and a strong sense of who we are, we will face these events with courage and calm.

The truth is that life is all about learning how to live with uncertainty. And becoming more comfortable with not knowing what tomorrow will bring.

That is why we need to develop courage. If we cultivate courage as a human quality and if we recognize the value of becoming courageous, we will fare much better in times of high stress and uncertainty.

If you don’t have courage, you will let your anxiety and fear topple your calm, when what you need the most is calm and self-control.

If you don’t have courage, you will not be able to examine the information given to you, and to make the right decision for yourself and your loved ones. You will let negative thinking, thoughts and feelings of gloom and doom, overtake you and make you lose your ground.

Without courage, you will hastily abandon your property, your pets, your life and embrace the fear of others.

Courage is the quality to stand on your own, to think on your own, to listen to your radar system, and to be plugged into a deeper awareness and intelligence. Courage allows you to say no to the herd mentality, and to always act with dignity and empathy.

In times of volatility and uncertainty, we need to learn to stay present, grounded, and to trust our senses.

And most of all, we need to trust life and to trust ourselves and that requires a lot of courage!

I am inviting you to start examining yourself, setting new intentions, and developing and living with more courage!

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. – Archimedes

The Song of Your Life

The Song of Your Life

I was inspired to write this post tonight by a friend of mine who is afraid to look at herself in the mirror. She told me that her challenge was her lack of self-compassion.
And I thought that it that might be you too right now, as it was me as well many years ago.

Now when I look back at pictures, I find that version of myself sweet and beautiful. Back then I hated every picture taken!

It took me a while to change the code of my being, but it has been such a rewarding process and so worth it. 

We own it to ourselves to bring more self-compassion into our lives because it just makes living so much easier.

You might ask what is up with this idea that we all have in our heads at times, to spend so much energy criticizing and judging ourselves? Is it that we are wired to look for perfection all of the time? Why do we want perfect everything – the ideal hair, the ideal body, the ideal relationship, the ideal car, the ideal career…

Many of us can spend huge amounts of time and energy putting ourselves down for not having it all. For not fitting into the perfection program, for not looking or sounding super successful to the world. 
The irony is that we all know deep in our hearts that this picture is dead wrong, that perfection is always woven into imperfection. 

I have a suggestion for you tonight. Let’s start changing the code of this faulty wiring by writing a new song about ourselves.

Imagine if everyone of us decided to write a song to celebrate our lives, and all of our beautiful creations, including our bodies?

What would your song sound like?
 
Make this your summertime goal.
Find the time and spend a quiet moment writing your song and celebrating yourself. It is healthy for you to remember who you are, to remember where you have been, and who you have become. 

Spend a memorable time in gratitude, and pen a new loving harmony. Love your song and love your life. 
Enjoy everything about you going forward!

The Creativity Well

You and I are creating every second of our lives. And this creativity is the driver of life. We live to experience new things, to enjoy the fruits of our labor, to find ourselves in places we have envisioned, and to marvel at the products of our imagination.

We can always speed up our creative process, and add much needed vibrancy to our creative genius.

I believe that deep and original creativity doesn’t come from thinking but from stillness. Actually if you are thinking too hard you might be hindering the creative process… instead of encouraging it. Try it for yourself but I recommend that you take breaks during the day and that you start creating stillness into your body and mind.

Learning to empty your head is essential for receiving the ideas and inspiration that will turn your creative process in new directions. That will get you started on manifesting something that you can’t think about right now because you need silence and patience to receive it.

So, if you feel stuck, go back to – not knowing – to wandering, to walks in nature. Find the disruption that you need in order to put into motion the creative energies that you seek.
Give yourself the permission to be you, and to be creatively wild.

I believe that if we are not giving rise to our creative ideas, it is because we are playing it safe. We are afraid to be different, afraid of being judged, we are too often safety seekers when we need to push our boundaries to let the creative juices to flow.

Creativity involves risk, it requires authenticity and audacity to follow our inspiration and the call of our spirit.

When we create to be validated by others, you are not creating from your authentic self for the sake of creation. We are putting limits on what creation is, and how it is received by the world.
I also believe that when you are serious about speeding up your creative potential, you need to focus and trim your social calendar. I don’t think that people realize how much they can become drained by social interaction. 

Creativity requires the measured and thoughtful use of your energy. Be smart where and when you give your energy away. Find time for you, make yourself a priority, turn down the TV and replace the cocktail with something nourishing like a walk or meditation. 

Nourish and nurture yourself so your soul can flower with authenticity. Strive and thrive while becoming different from the groups you travel in, and marvel at your uniqueness. 

To be an original, you have to be truthful with yourself. You have to be able to understand and communicate on more and more honest levels. 
You have to own your gifts and share them, so the world around you can feel your unique contributions. 

Jackson Pollock once said that every true artist paints who he is. Each person on earth can create openly and freely to the extent that we allow ourselves to Know Thyself!