The Big Lessons I learned in 2006

Some of these are things I already knew (and you’ve heard me talk about) but I needed illustrated for me, and some are things that I only fully realized this year. Do with this what you will, but I figured you might be able to benefit from my experiences.

1) There are only two basic emotions and everything goes back to these two. They are fear and love. Both are very powerful and whichever one you focus on will bring you more of the same. This is obvious to anyone who knows about the Universal Law of Attraction that states that whatever you put your energy into will come back to you (usually three-fold). For example, a man who worries that his marriage is suffering and his wife is cheating on him with a mutual friend will eventually CAUSE his marriage to suffer (and may or may not incite his previously-faithful wife to have an affair). In the example I am thinking of, that’s EXACTLY what happened: The wife got tired of being punished for something she hadn’t done, there were obvious problems in the marriage, and so she decided to have that affair. Obviously, I am oversimplifying things here, but the point is that life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone wise (I think it may have been Henry Ford) once said “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Focusing on the fear both corroborates events and circumstances that will justify that fear, and it will bring MORE fear-based events and circumstances into your life. However, focusing on the love will bring more loving people and situations into your life.
As Buddha said, “We are that we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” Let’s make a world full of love!

I have been incredibly blessed to have such wonderful, loving people in my life. I have the best friends in the world. I choose to consistently focus on the love, and it IS a choice: One made daily. It’s not effortless, but like anything, it does get easier with practice.

2) There are no ordinary moments. Live in the now! There is something magical happening in every moment, even if you don’t know immediately what that noteworthy thing is. It’s all fine and dandy to plan for the future (and as someone who is SO goal oriented, I would still say it’s a necessary thing), but this moment is all you really have. And this one. And this one. There are no real promises, and no real guarantees. The only thing you really have, besides your memories (which don’t reflect you you are now, but who you were in the past), is this moment. It’s up to you to make the most of it.

Rushing through life simply causes us to miss the important moments along the way. You’ve probably often heard “It’s the journey that counts: not the destination.” Life is not a destination: it’s a path, and one that frequently meanders and loops around. There are no shortcuts. This has been a tough lesson for me because I am so goal-oriented, and I constantly find myself trying to center myself in the moment instead of planning ahead, but I find that I get more out of life when I DO stop to smell the flowers, and watch the sun set and see the lights twinkling over the city. Life feels richer and fuller when you take the time to enjoy the presents (in the present).

3) There is no such thing as failure (except maybe deciding not to try). If events don’t unfold according to the vision you had planned, it doesn’t mean that you failed: it simply means that circumstances took on a life of their own. It gives you feedback about how to NOT do things next time.

When you create a vision of how you want things to unfold, when you are so attached to a specific outcome, if things don’t go exactly as planned, you just end up disappointed. It’s much better to manifest certain aspects or experiences to your life, while remaining open to HOW those things will be fulfilled. It is much better to say “I want a job with XYZ characteristics that makes me feel LMNOP,” rather than saying I want THIS title at THIS company. You may end up with the title and the company, but still not happy because you are missing aspects of the workplace that you really do need to be happy.

Challenges are opportunities for learning and growth. As Marianne Williamson said, “We will be given every opportunity to learn through joy, and when we deny ourselves that, we will learn through pain. But we will learn.” What you may think of as failure is simply a chance to learn (albeit through pain). But since learning through joy feels so much better, why not focus on that instead?

4) It doesn’t matter what other people say: It only matters what you know to be your own personal truth. I’ve gone through a lot this year that other people cringed to see me have to experience. They care about me and saw me in a situation where I wasn’t happy, but wasn’t willing to do anything to change it, and it frustrated them. I couldn’t handle the constant judgments so I pulled back from a lot of my friends, and only when I HAD changed my situation could I resume contact with them. A lot of them took it personally, and it really had more to do with me and how I was feeling rather than anything about them. I know now how to let people know that it is fine for them to have their opinions but that my life is MY process and I will go through it at my own pace. They can’t rush me, and they can’t protect me from the experiences I need to grow as a person (and there have been many this year, but I have also grown a great deal). Don’t let anyone rush you through your processes (and yes, life IS a process).

I have tried to be less judgmental since this experience. Friends use to come to me for advice and now I try to give less advice and talk someone through what they feel is right for them. I’ve become a better listener as a result, which in turn makes me a better friend.

And finally:
5) Total love, understanding and acceptance can only come from within. Look to yourself to fulfill these needs. If you are constantly looking to other people to tell you that you are worthy (and you ARE!), then you will be on an emotional see saw. Some days (when people are lavishing love and compliments upon you) you’ll feel great, but the days where the people in your life are having a rough day, or less expressive about how wonderful you are, you will feel drained and less confident. It’s always best to retain control of your life and your emotional well-being. Don’t hand that control over to someone else. Only YOU can make you happy, and you can do that all by yourself. You don’t need anyone else present to do that for you (and indeed, if you can’t make yourself happy, no one else can truly please you). Come be happy with me! Like approaching life with an attitude of love, it is a decision you make each day. Make that choice, and let’s dance off into the twilight, happy and full of love.

Many blessings for the new year, my friends. Happy holidays! I love you all! <3

The Little Black Dress

In a season when most people are struggling to stave off (or lose) holiday body weight, I am concentrating on losing dead emotional weight. I'm lightening the luggage if you will. I don't need the self-doubt or the fear, so I'll just remove those from my suitcase. I'll also take out limiting beliefs, hurt and anger. Oh how much lighter my bags feel! I had forgotten.

Life is like a grand vacation, destination unknown. It's so much easier to change courses quickly when all you carry is love, light, and joy. They take up hardly any room and I never run out. The biggest challenge is leaving the darker emotions behind me at each stop. Those are souveniers I definitely don't need, nor do I want.

It was too emotionally taxing to carry that old crap around. I'm cleaning out the garage and tossing everything that no longer serves me. That's not to say that I will forever remain perfectly serene (as one friend recently told me I seem), but simply that I will choose to only keep what makes me feel good. I know that this will be a continual process, but I also know that, like anything else, focusing on the positive gets easier with time. I am powerful beyond measure!

No sane woman hangs on to clothing in which they look and feel like crap (especially when they have other clothing options). I am simply tossing the old rags and keeping only that which makes me feel shiny, happy, JOYFUL. Why wear rags when you can wear something that conforms to your body and showcases your best assets?

We have the power to shape our realities. We can make anything we want happen if we really believe. By concentrating on lugging anger and betrayal and pain and fear with us from journey to journey, we lose sight of the happiness and the love. It's like neglecting the little black dress in your closet that makes you look and feel like a million bucks in favor of wearing something scratchy and painful, like a burlap sack. Don't we all deserve to feel like a million dollars? I have a secret: We don't need an LBD to do so. We can simply CHOOSE to be that way. And sure, it takes practice. We might look down after donning the little black dress of love and gratitude and realize that we are once again cloaked in the burlap sack of negativity, but we can continue to choose to put the LBD on and throw out the burlap sack.

I invite you to make this choice with me. Let's choose to feel good. Let's choose to love. Let's choose to be happy. And they are choices; ones which you will have to make daily, but you are capable of making that choice.

As Buddha said, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

Let's make a loving, joyful world full of light.

I love you all!

The Holiday Party Season Commences

There is something about snowfall that brings out the kid in me. I love how the sky turns a violety color at night, with the clouds reflecting back the city lights. I love the peace and quiet that the blanket of white brings with it. It's almost as if time iteslf slows down to accomodate for the icy roads and chilly air. I love it!

I hope the snow sticks, although I know that 36 degrees is far too warm for that to happen. Maybe the temperature will drop drastically tonight and we'll continue to see the little flakes floating gently down. I don't know why it excites me so, but that it does. Mmmm!

This weekend I celebrated not only Thanksgiving but Christmas as well (at least, the first of many. I fully subscribe to the Twelve Days of Christmas feeling!) On Thursday we went to Jake's for dinner and I was able to successfully avoid the traditional meal of which I am not so fond. Bring on the french onion soup and caesar salad! On Friday, Cheryl and I decided to do the thing, you know, where you get up at 5 am and hit the stores for good deals. I bought a ton of Christmas presents (I only need 3 more). We refueled with high-fat fried food at Red Robin and then saw Happy Feet (which was adorable) and did some MORE shopping. Around 9 pm, I headed home to make all the pies for the next day's family Christmas, which we celebrated a month early this year since my cousin is shipping out with the Navy next week. I feel like I need another 4 day weekend to recover from this one.

This season both energizes and calms me. I love the twinkling lights glittering through the snow (when there IS snow). I love the smell of pine trees and apple cider and gingerbread cookies. I love baking and entertaining friends and dressing up, but in the cold weather, I am also more likely to want to go to sleep early and drink hot cocoa at home instead of traipsing around to party after party.

I've been listening to Christmas music non stop since Thursday. Do you think I'll tire of it before the day actually GETS here?

I've Got (Gum)Balls

I've figured out (some of) what makes Heroes so captivating: Although it is a television drama, the themes running through the show are so relatable to "normal" life. I think that's ultimately what makes great fiction. You have to stretch the truth and the powers of believability, but still have ideas and issues that the audience connects to. Mind reading, radioactivity, the ability to fly...these push our ability to suspend disbelief, but the desire to do good for the world, the quest for truth and knowledge, love and loss are all themes to which we can all relate.

Part of my obsession with Heroes also stems from the fact that, I'm sorry to say, I've been disappointed in Lost lately.

On a whole other note, people have been telling me for 15 years now that I should write an advice column, and I've finally heeded their urgings. Here's a little tidbit to the guy who asked me why women love shopping and makeup so much:

Part of it is the gatherer instinct that came to us from cave person days (which you men were off slaying beasts for dinner, we gathered the prettiest berries and plumpest nuts that we could find). Part of it is a desire to reinvent ourselves from day to day, and different clothing styles and changing our hair or makeup helps us to do so. One day, I can rock the biker look with black leather pants and a clingy black t-shirt, smoky black makeup and a Greek Fisherman's cap, and then next day I can look demure in white knee socks, a gray pleated skirt and a white button down shirt. I get to play up different facets of my personality, depending on how I feel. Guys tend to be so much more boring. "Ooh...Time to get dressed for work. I'll put on pants, a shirt and a tie: striped today though, so I'm REALLY changing it up!"

Here's the secret that you can use to turn her shopping habit to your advantage: Let her run with it. Encourage it even. Not only will she think she's got the most undertanding man ever, but she'll bring out the different facets of her personality, and you'll get to experience the thrill of dating 12 different women while still staying true.

Questions about Heroes

Okay, I don't want this blog to devolve into a reacap of my favorite tv show, but there's something about the themes running through Heroes that just makes me think.

Last night's episode dealt more with the Heroes' emerging talents and special skills. From what I can tell so far, for each person, these weren't skills that they were born with, but something that appeared without warning or reason. The radioactive man lost two days of consciousness and then had all these talents, as well as two parallel cuts on his neck. The cop who can read minds was able to do so BEFORE he lost his two days, but he too has parallel cuts on his neck.

The question then becomes: Are these Heroes being injected with something to make their DNA mutate, thereby causing skills and talents to emerge? Or are these skills simply something that lay dormant inside them until "the world needs them?"

And is the cheerleader's dad good or evil? Does he really in fact love his indestructible Claire? He seems to genuinely care about her...but he also takes the Heroes and "studies" them. Who knows what that really means.

And was Claire born with these talents, or did they emerge only recently? Is Syler the one who's giving these people special skills, or is he simply killing them? And WHY is he killing them (if it is indeed him that is doing the killing. All we know is that the murderer wears a wrist watch and stays in the shadows so we never fully see his face. I used to think that Claire's dad was Syler, but I don't think so now.

And back to the whole talent thing. Mohinder's mother told him that he had had a sister who died when he was just 2 years old, and that his sister had been special, although she didn't elaborate on what she meant by special. Does that mean that she doesn't think that Mohinder is special? Or that Chandra (Mohinder's father) didn't think so? And since the bulk of Chandra's research dealt with genetics and the evolution of special talents, does that mean that Mohinder, although brilliant, was not special in the way that Chandra wanted him to be?

By the way, Mohinder is hot. Just had to throw that in there, even though he DOES need a bit of a trim in the back (he's creeping up on mullet territory).

And this takes me back to some of the questions I posed in my last blog: Do special people always know they are special? Did Martin Luther King Jr know that he would sacrifice his life for a cause, but that he would be immortal because of it?
And Jesus, too, for that matter, although I am not delving into religious territory.

Do the people who are meant for something greater KNOW this, or do they simply find themselves among circumstances that contribute to their status as heroes? And since we create our realities, if we wanted to manifest conditions in which we could have the chance to shine, we certainly could, right? So it must first begin with a desire to DO something, and then be followed up with ACTION?

Have any of you ever had the sense that you were meant for something greater?

Mink and Worm

Such a dirty name for such a delectable drink. Coconut milk, fresh-squeezed lime, lime zest and a little seltzer. Mmmm.

I was watching the show Heroes last night (had missed it on Monday and taped it...yes, I am old school and don't have DVR). I must say that the show simultaneously fascinates me and scares the shit out of me. I'm not going to go into all the details of it if you aren't familiar with the premise, but it's this idea that there are some people with "mutant" DNA who have special abilities (think X Men, but they don't look any different from the rest of us). It seems that it is just recently that these special "heroes" have realized their extraordinary abilities and now have to decide what to do with them.

It made me start thinking about quantum mechanics and the idea that we shape our realities...that the universe is nothing more than energy vibrating at various frequencies, and we control the frequency of our vibration, thus drawing things (events, people) of similar vibration to us. If we are co-creators of our realities, then what's to stop us from believing that we are more powerful than humans are "supposed" to be? Is it just this belief in ourselves and our abilities that then allows these abilities to manifest? Anyone who has seen Criss Angel, the badass version of illusionist/magician David Blaine, knows that there are some things he can do that are "impossible." Only, if he can do these things, they are clearly NOT impossible. Is it just his strong concentration and belief in his ability to, say, walk on water while people swim around him and below him that allows him to accomplish this "magical illusion?" Or it is something far simpler, like clear, pencil thin stilts on the soles of his shoes that no one in the water or filming frombelow actually notices? He can't fly, mind you: He has to take the steps to walk, and he's clearly concentrating very hard. I wonder what would happen if something broke his concentration?

But I digress. At what point did Criss (or David, for that matter) start realizing they had extraordinary capabilities? And should they feel obligated to be some sort of "hero" and "save the cheerleader, save the world?" The credits are quick to point out that the stunts these men do are "illusions" and conducted by a professional and thus should not be attempted at home. But Criss pulls a Tesla (if you've seen the movie, "The Prestige" you know what I am talking about) and lights up an ordinary lightbulb (unscrewed from a hardware store lamp fixture) simply by holding it in his hand. Then, he levitates the light bulb and makes it spin around and has a bystander run his hand in the air all round the bulb. Remarkable. And again, I wonder if there are just some people who have extraordinary abilities but aren't yet aware?

Talk to most "intuitives," or psychics, and they will say that they have had their abilities ever since they can remember and learning to control them was the big lesson. Does that mean that the rest of us are simply out of luck? Or can we too reshape the fabric of our realities and manifest some "super powers?"