Month: November 2015

I struggle to see as if the light burnt out. I struggle to rise as if weighted down. I struggle to live fully as if hibernation beckons. Daylight dims sooner, temperatures drop colder, and adapting is harder than I recall. I glided along smoothly as the leaves transformed from green to glory. Yet now the fall foliage feels like me, vanishing. The grand gray suddenly illuminates the atmosphere, painting itself across the landscape, and gloom replaces my existence. With that final leaf, I fall and struggle to rise. Autumn silences itself as the colors dim, my energy diminishes, and a new season commences.

As the leaves bloom, brown, and fall, my body balloons with sugar, toxins, and processed foods, bloated, exhausted, and weakened physically and emotionally. Yet within this fall cleanup and changing climate, I resist the cravings that attempt to freeze my efforts. With a tool belt of experience, motivation, and knowledge, I am rising again. With consistent change and awakening from my slumber, I include social support, a phone-a-friend option, and self-accountability. Although I had initially been falling with the changing season, a refresh button is pressed and a renewed spirit returns.

Steady I plan, prep, and prod myself back to normalcy of “clean” food, exercise, and newfound energy. Clarity of mind returns, and momentum builds upon each day’s success. Time is the elixir that sets the pace for longevity with mindfulness at the forefront of action. Although small steps drive me forward, the consistency and perseverance of repeating the process creates the turning point toward cumulative results. My incentive to feel comfortable in my skin, emotionally balanced, invokes instant inspiration to rise from dormancy and rejuvenate my senses.

Strength returns and I welcome the holidays, shortened hours of sun, and air of winter. A new season needs not thwart my health efforts into submission. It serves as an inspired reminder and cleared space, away from the old and preparing for the new. Sometimes transition takes time, beauty needs transformation, and growth requires a change of season. When the inner urge beckons, I recognize the awaiting opportunity to alter and stir my slumber. I awaken to the change of season, embrace the possibilities that beckon and inspire action, and let the winds alter my path to wellness.

Have you embraced the new season, altered your path with new perspective and action steps, and risen from a dreary to driven life? Are you clearing away the leaves of your life that have fallen? Have the piles surrounded or buried you? When is your fall cleanup?

Sometimes as if just holding on, I am barely able to conjure the courage to stay above the mounting heaps of tasks. I start to let life pile up, while incapacitating fear stalls me from taking action to stay atop everyday existence. Paper piles up as plowing through it exhausts my senses, dirty laundry calls my name from a distance as I steer clear from witnessing the piles forming, and the loads of heavy responsibilities pile a mile high awaiting completion. Desperate to attack and alleviate the bundles building themselves before me, I cower in my corner, escaping the pain associated with taking any action.

This pain is the fear of failure. It seems I would rather lie down and surrender within the mess than feel the possibility of failure. Hence, laying in the fetal position, eating sugar-filled comfort, and sleeping through life seem best courses of action to numb the debilitating pain. Yet eventually I stir from this slumber and alleviate this hurtful woe by taking one small action step toward removing the stack standing between a flowing life and me. By clearing my space, opportunity for personal growth, creativity, and possibility connect clarity, flow, and intuition to my heart that pleads for connection and purpose within the present moment.

To change my reality, I take one moment, one small step, one task toward removing the heavy piles holding me back. My energy shifts instantly, transforming the dormant life into one flowing with intention, mindfulness, and motivation. Unknowingly as this energetic change occurs, I move onto solid ground where recently quick sand had me sinking. I find the strength to pick up my shovel to dig through the piles, throwing out the unnecessary, washing the dirt from my protective layer, and removing the heavy weight of responsibility from my shoulders that had been restraining me from successful outcomes.

When I feel as if I am just holding on for dear life, I now recognize debilitating fear that leads this piling process. I may be unaware of the stealth emotion piling up within my existence, yet my immediate response to numb away the piles hoping they will vanish on their own is my telltale sign. Most importantly, I alleviate fear by taking action, feeling the emotion and power of change, and letting one task lead to the next. Piles begin to dissipate and clarity returns within cleared space for a flowing life. A journey of a thousand piles begins with one small step.

Any piles laying around your world? Can taking just one step lead to the next? Liberation lives there, in the action step that clears our environment, alleviates fears, and rejuvenates strength. Take one small step along the journey of a thousand piles.

To sleepwalk through life, living with limited awareness is sometimes the most I can muster. Disconnected from those around me, I putter and feel fragmented; only one cylinder is spinning. Drawn to my bed, to live within another dimension or universe of dreams and circumstances, sleep alleviates the excessive desire for peace, tranquility, and silence. Yet responsibilities beckon, I have not the luxury of slumber for significant lengths of time. Like an automaton, my limbs make the necessary movements to complete tasks, leaving Keats’ rosebuds where ye may. Life happens without my alert consciousness. I continue to talk and walk, sleepwalking through life until I awaken with wonder and stillness to notice the deafening silence I heard not before.

The creative spirit wants to unite craft with its maker, laying words to paper, paint to canvass, and invention to blueprint. An everlasting flow of love wants to feel the bloom of passion, the joy of ecstatic excitement, and the invisible, energetic wave of affection. My natural, human instinct for relationships, lost in a sea of ephemeral mist, awaits and wants vulnerable connection between souls to inspire my heart to open. I engage in the world surrounding me only by conscious choice, a splattering of interactions I choose by active participation. My merging with the world requires alertness that sleepwalking deprives and shrinks into a cocoon of hidden abandonment.

Yet sleepwalking happens inconspicuously. The lights dim and the fog spreads, blanketing my spirit for rest. I lay hibernating until the warmth of change awakens me. I rest within, my limbs moving with the day unaware of the potential consciousness. Cognitive abilities strengthen appearances of normalcy to the external world while my emotional, dormant heart remains numb eliminating the light beyond its surface. Physical energy revs when necessary while the inability to feel emotional connection, a catharsis that engages the spirit, seems lost in a cavern of emptiness. Periodically I awaken in this dream to notice the disparity within my life, yet hunker down to salvage energy, return to peace within, and drown in the calm dream of safety, ease, and familiarity.

Sleepwalking through life limits our potential for a life with meaning. Awakening from the dreamlike state requires conscious connection between our hearts and the peripheral world. We must jar our souls, no longer hit the snooze button, but awaken when the alarm sounds. Awareness compels us to demand change for ourselves. To allow the human spirit to creatively blossom, love unconditionally, and connect with others on a deep, heartfelt level, engages the soul for a full and meaningful life. Sleeping through life eliminates risk, yet enforces lack of purpose and living fully. Slumber as the forefront of our existence fulfills responsibilities, but reduces inspiration that feeds the spirit. Eventually our light goes out and asleep we remain. To see the light, we must energetically motivate ourselves to arise, stretch to engage with our Source, and enter the realm of insight with creative and emotional expression. Opportunity, possibility, and inspiration live at this open window. Peek out, jump through, and engage life with purpose. Awaken!

Consumption is my go-to reaction to alleviate pain promptly. Eating, shopping, and talking, top the charts for numbing my discomfort. Whether I chomp on pretzels, purchase clothes online, or entertain the gift of gab, each act as refrains, helpful distractions from pain. Today I reached day’s end suddenly aware of the ache that existed during its duration. I leaned into the discomfort, surrendering to it as the sun set; it bowled me over into the fetal position. Crouched upon my bedroom floor, I recognized and reviewed the no-good, very bad day, and the weakness in me that neglected awareness sooner. Like a reel-to-reel, I relive the past day, as if observing it for the first time.

With subpar awareness, my fingers befriend Ben and Jerry, type the credit card number for purchase, click the Submit Order Button, and dial a friend’s phone number. Numbing discomfort by sugar cookies, sweet red grapes, and the taste of a tootsie roll banishes my distress for the short moments while the sugar rolls down my throat. Although I savor the taste, my immediate pain returns in short order searching for additional relief; alternative numbing agents do not deny my request. Finding the perfect, comfortable jeans and top alleviate my pain, as does a conversation with a friend. A spoonful of sugar is the medicine that goes down, churning out endorphins in mass quantities, that is, until a different feeling replaces the last morsel of food, spending, or word. Shame retaliates with feelings of not being strong enough to keep the pain at bay.

Consciousness arises, aware that self-destructive behavior overtook my senses, and negative consequences result for payment. My body desired equilibrium, escaping pain through modes that transfer pain to manageable acceptance. Throughout the day my arms flailed in the direction of the pantry, outstretched for foolish, unhealthy choices, an online clothing sale met my euphoric senses, and sharing in a friend’s drama removed my aches long enough for surviving awakened hours.

Unfortunately, desensitized moments of escape hardly constitute mindful, awakened moments. Instead, negative, numbing agents acted on my behalf as survivable mechanisms. Within this darkness, these old habits reduce discomfort, feel especially strong, comfortable, and friendly sorts aiding and abetting in mass consumption, band aiding, and icing a bruised body part. Aches suddenly pale in comparison and their strength accentuates the weakness in me. Yet are they so strong and I so weak? Altering our senses to awaken in the pain long before destructive behavior infiltrates and devours mindfulness is possible.

The pause between breaths enables me to feel the discomfort and make a new choice. Should the arm outstretched with a cookie in hand have clued me into my destructive descent? Might the clicking of the keyboard of my credit card number have jarred my awareness of alleviating pain? As I dialed a friend to escape my woes, did an animated bubble of my psyche appear in the ether stating, “Pain is the reason for this conversation. Feel it, breathe it, you are escaping your present reality.” Bringing awareness to the senses requires a pause long enough to analyze our actions to alter them. Without mindfulness, we cycle our way to the madness of escape, numbing the pain while our actions tear at our self-respect, our self-love, and eventual outcome.