the Bend Your Reality Project

photo credit: seanmcgrath

As I was riding the bus this morning, lost in thought, I suddenly remembered a picture I had seen once called Snake Eyes (with Nicolas Cage); it’s the oft-told story of a corrupt cop who has a change of heart once he becomes entangled in a conspiracy to commit murder.

I was reminded that, at the end of the film, Cage’s character’s life into ruin despite the fact that he had chosen to do the right thing.

The correlation I made to my own spiritual journey through life was that, more often than not, when we change even a little bit of ourselves our lives usually will look like a mess to us and to everyone around us.

It’s virtually impossible to keep your reality the same while changing yourself. I have made hundreds of futile attempts to do so. All of them have been in vain. No matter how hard we try, we can’t reach for new possibilities and hold on to what we have for dear life.

So what can we do?

Surrender.

I define surrender as remaining present with your feelings and emotions in the present.  Right where you are now.  It is a process, not a destination.  It’s allowing what going on inside you mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually to okay without the need to judge whether your feelings, thoughts, actions are socially appropriate to others.

Is this easy?  Of course not.  Surrendering to the present isn’t easy at all.  Each and every day I choose to work on it.  I never surrender perfectly (if such a thing is possible).  And that isn’t important anyway.

What is important is allowing yourself to feel what you feel in the moment regardless of whether or not you, or others around you, like it.

Once you are able to be where you are when you are, you open yourself up to becoming more mindful; with mindfulness comes the ability to let go of things that no longer work, and move forwards towards things that are good for you.

Here are a few tips for surrendering to the now:

1). Get out in to nature. Being able to opt-out of your current reality for even a few minutes a day could help you de-stress enough to think more clearly.

2). Have fun. Every once in a while, step off the treadmill that is reality, and have some fun.  See a funny film.  Have a giggle with friends.  Do something you enjoy for at least ten minutes a day.

3). Be with people you love. If you are going to spend eight hours plus a day with people you really have no connection with, it’s important to balance that with time spent with people you do have a connection with.

4). Don’t take reality or yourself so seriously. This is a difficult one to do consistently.  I admit that I have challenges with this.  Sometimes I am just too angry or hurt to laugh.  Or sometimes I find myself buying into the illusion that I am a helpless victim of life, and must accept what little I get and be grateful for it.  Such perceptions can be grim indeed.  But remembering that nothing is permanent in this world keeps me from sinking into a morass of self-pity.

With the suggestions above, I can go with the flow more.  Be open.  And allow the Creative Force and time to work with me and for me.  Instead of against me.  I have the freedom to surrender, knowing that tomorrow brings with it the opportunity for new choices, new possibilities that did not exist before.  That is something that both and inspires and motivates me to keep trudging forward even when things appear bleak or scary.

How about you?

What changes have you resisted?  And what occurred when you allowed yourself to surrender and “go with the flow?” How do your reality change afterward?

Feel free to share your insights.

Peace & Healing, fellow travelers!

Related Posts:

• 5 Creative Things for the New Year
• Embracing Your Shadow Self
• The Passion Test
• the Wacky Magickal Power Of Being Yourself
• 7 Reasons to Start Meditating Now

photo credit: brendan.lally.

I’m always amazed when Halloween comes round.  It seems as if the year has just begun with all its promises and possibility intact.

Yes, I know that the New Year is observed in January.  However, the New Year I am observing is the pagan one.  At this time of the year, I begin looking forward to what new harvests I would like to plant;  at the same time, I begin the liberating, but sometimes uncomfortable, process of uncluttering my life and finishing up old projects.

I always look forward with alot of excitement like a child anticipating all the Christmas gifts s/he will be getting.  So without further ado, here’s my list of the five creative things for the new year.

Sideways, before I give you the list, let me give you my one and only guideline: 1). creative things can be big or small; the only person they have to satisfy is you.

Why 5?  Five seems manageable to me; prevents too much overthinking and hyper-analysing amd free us up to just declare our desires.  And eventually take action towards them.

Okay, moving onward…

My 5  Creative Things List

1). learn to ride a bike.  This has been a subject of shame for me since I was twelve and just couldn’t learn to balance on a bicycle properly.

2). learn to draw.  I would love to draw anything, and expand beyond the limits of the belief that says I can’t draw and can’t ever learn to draw.

3). learn to play blues guitar.  I love music and the blues is the foundation for practically every form of music in the Western world.

4). learn to skateboard.  This one would allow me to get over my fears of physically being hurt, and allow me to embrace my inner daredevil!  Besides, skate boarding is really cool to me.

5). get my first tattoo.  My idea is to get one of the Tibetan Om symbol.  I’ve always wanted a tattoo, but was afraid to get one  due to finances and pain.  But since I am a certified hypnotherapist, I’ve sorted out that I can simply numb the area with hypnosis.

Now you.  What 5 creative things would you be excited to accomplish?

Feel free to leave your answers in the comments section below.

Until next time, fellow travelers!

Peace & Healing

Related Posts:

• Get Curious About You
• Embracing Your Shadow Self
• The Passion Test
• On Taking the Red Pill
• How Our Stories Create Our Realities

I am a fan of Barbara Sher’s seminal book, Wishcraft .  In it, she discusses all of the creative and fun exercises she uses to help clients find their passions.  I have always found her exercises quite useful when I am lost and in need of clarity and/or direction.

This got me thinking about an exercise I could create that would help me with my clients.  That’s when I felt inspired to read Martha Beck’s book, Finding Your North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live .  In her book, she tells the story of a woman whose husband has left her after several years of horrid marriage.  However, before this truly horrid marriage to this man, she endured a truly horrid childhood.  After the death of her marriage, this woman decided to have the childhood she had always wanted but never got.

The story inspired me to wonder about the shortcomings of my own childhood.  So I came up with the following exercise I call, Throwing Yourself A Childhood.  In this exercise, visualise, picture, imagine or pretend that you are telling a close friend the story of your childhood.  Instead of telling them the limiting childhood story you usually tell, tell them the childhood story you wish you’d had.

For example, if you always wanted a Saint Bernard puppy named Noodles to run through the sprinkler system with on a scalding summer’s day, in these story, Noodles is right there with you. Got it?

Here’s my ideal childhood story.

Step one: define your ideal childhood

I had a great childhood.  I spent it taking piano lessons (which I started at six and stopped at twelve), skateboarding (which I began at seven and continue to do to this day),  riding my bike, and studying Jeet Kune Do (which I also started at six cuz my family thought I needed a physical activity to use up all my pent up hyperactive energy).

I was a born leader with many friends who spent summers in day camps, inventing games that included everyone from the geeks, the freaks, and the so-called in squad.  Everyone liked and respected my freakiness cuz I wore it like a badge of honour.  This inspired them to wave their freak flags high in the sky, too.

When I was twelve I started guitar lessons.  I was enamoured of the guitar when I saw someone playing it in the church I attended and thought, ‘Hey, I can do that.’  I was a natural for guitar; blues, funk, and soul guitar playing more specifically.

At the age of sixteen, I joined my first band as the lead guitarist and had my first boyfriend.  I had a great year of snoggng and paying gigs.

Two years later, I saw a Fender Jaguar guitar in sea green at a guitar store.  I knew I had to have that guitar, and I bought it with the money I had saved up from playing gigs and my after school job.  I still have that guitar today because I took such loving care of it.

Three years later, I decided to go to massage school, and paid my way through by playing out.  I was a popular artist on the local circuit with over a thousand true fans who loyally came to see me play.

Right out of school, I was inspired to go into private practice with all of the clients I had worked on during my internship in school.   I was self-employed at last, and it felt so good.

Currently, (still in childhood mode here; stay with me)  I am still a musician who plays out but I also coach other musicians/songwriters/singers on how to support themselves with their music; I am a holistic healer with a thriving full-time practice; I have an active social life, spending time with people of all types;  I am happily married to a great guy who is himself in the holistic field and we live by the ocean; I also put out my music through my own label and help other artists do the same.  And I am currently writing my first book!

All in all, I would say I have a great life filled with love, peace, fun, and music with people I love.

Now you.  I’ll wait.

Okay.  If you did the exercise,  you will have a good idea about the things you missed out on.

Step two: ask yourself if you still feel/think you have missed out on these activities? If the answer is yes, then now is the time to go out and get the things you felt you were denied during childhood.  If not, then you don’t need this exercise at all.  Go play with your dog or cat or kids.  Or whatever.

Step three:  prioritise the things from Step 1 ( missed it alot) to 10 (don’t miss at all).  The item # 1 is first on your wish list. Followed by your 2, 3,  4, and 5, etc.  Ask yourself, what if I never did this at all, would I miss it?

Step four: get that thing into your life immediately. Because your spirit is telling you this what you desire.  And what you desire is what you need.  Let go of the illusion  you can’t do something ( even if you want to study opera singing, you can still do so for your own pleasure).  Just do it.

Step five: remember that the only person you need to please with these activities and things is you.  No one else.  As a matter of fact, the only person you could do this exercise with is you or a supportive friend (if you have one).  If there is a chance a person might criticise your desires, feel free to keep this exercise and its discoveries a secret.

Step six:  get out there and throw yourself that childhood.

What are you waiting for?  More time to pass to feel badly about your childhood?

P.S.  I have started driving lessons, guitar lessons, and singing lessons as of this writing!  Whoo hoo!

Peace & Healing, Fellow Travelers!

Related Posts:

• 5 Creative Things for the New Year
• The Passion Test
• On Taking the Red Pill
• the Wacky Magickal Power Of Being Yourself
• Get Curious About You

photo credit: Per Ola Wiberg ~ Powi

The short answer?

No.  I am definitely not who I thought I was.

Is anyone, fellow travelers?

I feel a story coming on.

When I was in secondary school, I saw myself as a skinny, unattractive loner without any friends.  A geek, the resident brain trust.  I was certain no one liked me; let alone knew me.

Fast forward a few years to a fateful lunch with a new friend who recounted her secondary school years (high school, fellow travelers).  In her memories, she was beautiful and popular.

It made me look back on my own painful adolescence with a new eyes.  And you know what I found?

Far from being the miserable loner who everyone ignored and didn’t even acknowledge, I was on a first name basis with all of the so-called popular kids.  Point of fact, I went to school with the same lot of kids all through secondary school.  We were a close knit group of talented kids.

Who did I think I was?

An unattractive and invisible loner.

Sounds very romantic, doesn’t it?  Me lying around in dark rooms cursing life.  Too miserable to be alive.

Hmmm.  I just noticed miserable and miser have the same root word.

What does that say about me?  Or anyone else for that matter?

Nothing.  Is either of the stories I have told myself anymore true than the other?

Again, not really.

Hell, if I am going to tell tall tales about myself.  Why not choose to cast myself in a heroic yet empowered light.  Instead of the alternative of choosing to cast myself in an unflattering and disempowered light?

I chose the second option for many years.  Until recently.  If I felt I had received any real benefit from that belief about myself, I would have kept it.  But more and more, it felt like I was being dragged under the depths of life by this belief.

photo credit: paul (dex) busy @ work

I say all of this to say: the power to choose the story you tell yourself is in your hands.

It is not in the hands of your family, friends, coworkers, or anyone else who happens to be connected to you by virtue of bloodline, emotional connection, shared space and oxygen supply.

What is it worth to see (or feel) that you are powerful, fellow travelers?

To know that you are powerful is scary.  Because it also means that you are responsible for yourself and your own life.  The good parts, the bad parts, the indifferent parts.  The parts that didn’t get finished.

Being responsible means if something isn’t to your liking and you have the power to change it, you do.  It is not about blame.  (another time, another post, I promise).

Oh, hell.  Looks like I’ve gone all cheerleader-y today.

Well, that’s cool.  So tell me, who do you think you are?  And is the story a true story or not?

Til we meet again, fellow travelers!

Peace & Healing All

Related Posts:

• 5 Creative Things for the New Year
• Get Curious About You
• Embracing Your Shadow Self
• Celebrating Your Childhood Now
• the Gift of Anger