My life as a garden

I have this image of my life as a garden that needs tending.

 Nurturing new activities that are vulnerable is like taking care of a new seedling.  Like learning how to love myself more.  Like learning to trust myself more.  How do I learn to trust myself more?  Well, I need to rely on my telling the truth of what I feel more often.  I need to trust that I will say yes when I want to say yes and say no when I want to say no.  Instead of people-pleasing or putting other people's needs and expectations above my own.  So truth leads to trust and in my experience, trust leads to a sense of safety and belonging.

Tending to my garden.

Deep

Love[d]

The older I get the more I realise (and get evidence of) how similar we all are on the inside.  On the outside we project difference : Different clown suits, different clown faces, difference clown acts, giving out vibes of difference.  And, yes, we are all unique in our expression.

AND...

we are all cut from the same cloth of LOVE with the same basic needs and wants.

We want to love and be loved.

We want to express our unique set of talents and skills through work and play and relationships.  We want connection to each other and something beyond our physical lives; some may call it Love, others God, others ........buts is just language, another clown suit of apparent difference, representing an inner meaning that is the same.

We all want love.

We ARE love.

The ultimate miracle would be to remove all the clown paraphernalia and really see ourselves and each other this way, naked in our longing for love.

Self acceptance

Self-acceptance has been my intention this year.  No small thing for me.  I have ranted , raved and shook my fist at the world, wanting, wanting, wanting things to be different from what they are.  My body.  My face.  My personality.  My circumstances.  My beloveds.  My space.  My world. My God.  But this has created a consequence of anxiety as a constant companion.  And awkwardness.  And dissonance.  And victim "poor me" living. And a pushing away of many, many gifts.  Not an easy place to live.

I wanted this year to be different.

I first heard the very wise advise to practice loving myself 10 years ago but I found it so repulsive and untrue a concept that I was unable to do it.  I have had to take the very windy rambling alternative route to this practice.  So 10 years later, I am gently trying this on for size:

I love and accept myself as I am.

There is a second requirement though.

I love and accept this moment as it is.

Eckhardt Tolle says:

This gets me out of victim and helps me to claim my power and sense of choice in the moment, to be in my body and feel what I want to feel.  It puts me back in the drivers seat of my life.  I am in charge of what my life feels like.  It gets me to my Core Desired Feelings (another time perhaps) and reaches past my ego and my head and into my heart and soul, where authenticity resides.  And joy.  And peace. 

So, 6 months into this experiment of mine, I can see that I am less anxious, more aware, more in my body, more present, less vacated, less victim, less people-pleasing and really getting to do stuff I don't normally "have time" to do.  Its a small miracle.

And when I am not feeling so zen, there's this:

So I have manged to break down what this big fancy concept of surrender means.  It means loving and accepting myself and the moment as it is.  Its a gentle shift from victim to choice.  From head to heart. Its listening and honouring myself "above the noise of other people's opinions" (Brene Brown). 

My daily intention of:

I love and accept myself as I am

I love and accept this moment as it is

I live and create from a place of love, acceptance and wholeheartedness

For my highest good

So be it

And so it is

...is just a daily repetition.  And then when I am hit with self-doubt, or late for a meeting, or fighting with my family, or myself....I simply repeat the first 2 lines until I feel the gentle shift inside me from powerlessness to a loving, expanded sense of power or a gentle softening around the hard edge of self-judgment or a physical sense of peace in my body.  

There are other options....

I find that the first 2 choices only become apparent, though, when I have gone through the process of acceptance.  When I love and accept....only then I can feel what needs to happen next, like remove myself or change it the way I want to change it. From an authentic space.

Exactly.

Write from the heart for the heart

"The intimacy of pen and paper is what I need to open my heart and channel my love for myself and the world.

I make myself available as a channel for inspiration to flow through.  A computer and word document just don't hold the same space for me.

Writing with my hand in my journal is a very yin energy of receptivity, whilst the computer holds a yang energy of action and doing and I tend to pop out of my heart and into my head with one eye on what other people would like to hear or read instead of focusing on what wants to be expressed from the genius heart-space.  My writing takes on an ego flavoured pompousness and preachiness, whilst channeling the genie is all genuine heart-felt personal truth." (taken from my journal)

Journalling has been one of the most valuable emotional -mental healing tools for me.  Any pent-up feelings, whether they be excitement and gratitude or confusion and depression, putting pen to paper provides me with release and relief..... and the happy outcome is a clear head and heart.  From this clean space, I can continue my day from a present moment awareness that stuck emotions would never have allowed.  Unexpressed emotions tend to make me reactive to the days chores and challenges where I use the players in my life as confirmation of my clouded beliefs and the target of my pent-up feelings.  Inappropriate anger or disproportionate reactions to the event are consequences of unreleased feelings.  So when my husband is going on a fishing trip and I haven't journalled my confused inner state, I might not be aware that he is triggering my age-old abandonment issues and I might (as I have many times) be inexplicably angry with him and be grumpy and downtrodden instead of joining in the jolly mood of happy holidays. Writing gets this out on physical paper for my eyes to see and gain perspective.

Julia Cameron taught me the value of what she calls The Morning Pages but I was really resistant to this "silly exercise" initially. And it required courage to write.  There is the risk of someone else reading it and the even bigger risk of really knowing the good, the bad and the ugly in myself.  One messy beautiful story.  But it really does provide a safe space for me to be completely me in that moment, whether I am ranting and raving or completely in the masochistic victim space of "poor me", or whether I am confused about an issue or need to work through my feelings to reach a space of gratitude.  It is all healthy proactive stuff.  It is like putting yourself in the washing machine and coming out sparkling white at the end of a cycle!  The feeling is lighter and brighter like all the washing powders claim.  But no big spend required.  No psychology fee.  Just the simple act of putting pen to paper and letting go of the barriers to lightness of being.

I have been playing with a few images that represent joy to me and the hummingbird comes up again and again...

  Joy!

                                                        Life Coaching and Energy Therapies

Joy!      Life Coaching and Energy Therapies

 Joy!  Life Coaching and Energy Therapies

Donna-Joy Ford

0834580880

d4d@polka.co.za

http//:www.donnajoyford.blogspot.com

The bird needs to be a bit closer to the writing but otherwise I really like these creations.

Hummingbirds significance: With wings that flutter in the pattern of an infinity symbol, hummingbirds are associated with continuity, healing, and persistence. Delicate yet strong, the hummingbird actively seeks out the sweetest nectar representing our desire for the joyous gifts in life.