Hello, Beautiful Souls! Here is what has been going on in my world over the last month. We have been busy slowing way way down. It all started with a fun trip to Key West for my Shiva’s birthday. Stepping away from my normal routine for a few days is a great way to get some perspective. Within those few days I found clarity in so many ways.
For the last year or so, I have been doing lots of things. All the things! Anything and everything. I get a lot done across a large number of different projects. That’s great. But I felt a familiar pull to start getting a lot done across a much smaller number of projects instead. It was time for a de-loading phase, as Tim Ferriss calls it. I had to clear my attention; not just my time.
I had some hard decisions to make but you may have already noticed one of them. For the next while, the newsletter will be monthly, instead of weekly, and more in depth. I have slowed the pace of articles and podcasts and diaries down to once a month each at the website. This gives me more time during the month to focus on some particular projects like the next book (YAY!). It is one thing to say no to things you do not want to do. It is quite another to say no to things you actually want to do, when there are simply too many of them.
As a bonus, while we were in Key West, we took some time to visit the Hemingway House. We explored the house but the real treat was to simply sit in the garden and allow whatever inspiration might come. It was there that I channeled Earnest Hemingway and learned something really important and quite unexpected. We talked about his many wives and his quest for the kind of love that he could never muster for himself. But far more important was how he had given away such a large piece of himself to get the right words and how there never were enough of those right words. We talked about the polarities he chose to experience in this life. And I asked him what message I should deliver to people here now. He said: “What does not come is not worth buying.”
We so often give away our autonomy or authority, our dreams or our very being, in order to gain some external thing that we decide would mean that now we can love ourselves or now we are worthy. When he says that what does not come is not worth buying, he is saying that if it serves you, it will come to you on its own, and if it does not, it is not worth giving away a piece of yourself to get it. That is an important reminder. I will post the whole channeled discussion later, but I wanted to share that bit right now.
And that brings us to noticing what is right. At the Gym recently, I was 80 rounds in on my 117 Sun Salutations when I took a water break. A woman at least 10 years younger than me walked up and said, “You look like such a BADASS! I’m watching you like HOW does she DO that?!?!” She freaking made my day, because I always figured I looked like a dork. Don’t get me wrong, I am cool with looking like a dork, but this was a real surprise. Here’s the important thing: just moments before that, my sole focus was dogging myself for not getting my right foot up quite high enough on the transition from lunge to plank. That foot needed to be about 1-2 inches higher during that transition. Seriously. I was sweating a hurricane, feeling the spiritual cleansing and doing very well and not even seeing it. All I noticed was what was wrong and needed to be improved. While continual improvement and attention to detail are an important part of the process, there needs to be an equal amount of noticing what is already just right and maybe even excellent, here and now. What a lesson! Next time, every time I break during my workout (or anything else), I will first tell myself what I am doing well, and then note anything I would like to do better, and then close with a little love and appreciate that I showed up for myself today. What a gift that fabulous soul gave me!
