Strangely, (yes, … surprisingly so …) it has taken a little time to get used to not working so much. We have had to stop ourselves getting busy, perhaps just out of habit. This week, we both felt like we were really beginning to relax into this slower paced schedule. However, what we have noticed is that with all this extra time there is a lot of room to think …. Something that can be a bit uncomfortable …. Questions like ‘What are we actually doing? … going to do?’ come up. It brings up some of those hidden fears about life and one’s place in it all. Stuff that, as Westerners, we are trained not to think about.
And so, we are sitting, we are talking, and just trying to get more comfortable with these feelings. It seems to us that our culture trains us to look to go somewhere, buy something, do something to get that neuro-peptide fix to take that feeling away. The key to us seems to be to do the opposite of what we are trained to do. So, sometimes we are just ‘be-ing’, keeping on, and seeing where we end up.
So, with these thoughts in mind, we told our estate agent this week to take our house of the market – we are staying put for now. We had thought that we would not be able to travel as freely with a house (versus a condo) – but for 3+ months of this year we have been overseas with no more hassle than some significant lawn mowing and weeding to do on our return. We do really like the peace around our home and how much nature is all about us. Andy has been volunteering at both the Whatcom Humane Society (walking, training and playing with dogs) and at the Whatcom Literacy Council teaching a class on basic reading and writing skills. Evan has been focusing more on learning and education. We have also been integrating more of the information we learnt from Caroline Myss at the workshop in Seattle and from her books – tricky stuff like trying to stop our egos! And sometimes they don’t want to be stopped ….
More next week, assuming our egos haven’t mounted a huge counterattack and we are too busy to blog because we are racing around the country in our new convertible BMWs, in Donna Karan leather pants, sipping on lattes ……
…….
“He who asks questions is always learning.” (Chinese Proverb)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Where the road leads ....
This week was a lot of work! In our experience, when you want to make a big change, it can tend to bring up our darker sides, bringing you to a period of growth and development that is not always easy. In some traditions, this is known as a dark night – the period of time where the challenges are in front of you, and it is no longer easy to see the light. It is a time of faith and courage. We both found it hard to connect with our lighter side when confronted with work routines and the troubles that can come with our fast paced culture. It can be easy to take on too much, and to return to the frenetic pace of doing before you have even realized what is going on. By remaining on our path, and keeping the ‘faith’, we have been able to stay true to what we have wanted to do. We have really focused on taking more time, and because of that have been spending more time in our home and in the area we live – finding a fabulous park today we didn’t even know existed after 4 years here – and we found it because of finally following a road that Andy had noticed for years, and wondered where it lead – well today we went to find out and ended up in a beautiful fall walk around a serene and peaceful lake. A road less travelled indeed!
We have been devoting time to really developing our specific goals as a couple. We have both individually been using a model for creating and achieving our own goals, but from our time in Chile it seemed like a good idea to take it to the next level, and start dreaming even bigger and together. The core of the program that we use is presented by life coach Marcia Wieder. So, this week we got down and dirty with our medium and long term goals, and in creating goals to achieve our dreams in different areas, including travel, professional, international, financial and relationship areas. This takes time, as the dreams should be well written to really make us both feel excited and passionate. By the end of the week, we felt we had achieved that, and are ready to move onto the next stage now.
…..
“For the longest time I couldn’t even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch, a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing. Finally, when I had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal, I went and sat in a patch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bite of it, with my fingers, while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian. Happiness inhabited my every molecule. … ‘So this is what you gave up everything for?...For a few stalks of asparagus and an Italian newspaper?’ … yes.”
(Elizabeth Gilbert – Eat Pray Love)
We have been devoting time to really developing our specific goals as a couple. We have both individually been using a model for creating and achieving our own goals, but from our time in Chile it seemed like a good idea to take it to the next level, and start dreaming even bigger and together. The core of the program that we use is presented by life coach Marcia Wieder. So, this week we got down and dirty with our medium and long term goals, and in creating goals to achieve our dreams in different areas, including travel, professional, international, financial and relationship areas. This takes time, as the dreams should be well written to really make us both feel excited and passionate. By the end of the week, we felt we had achieved that, and are ready to move onto the next stage now.
…..
“For the longest time I couldn’t even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch, a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing. Finally, when I had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal, I went and sat in a patch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bite of it, with my fingers, while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian. Happiness inhabited my every molecule. … ‘So this is what you gave up everything for?...For a few stalks of asparagus and an Italian newspaper?’ … yes.”
(Elizabeth Gilbert – Eat Pray Love)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Evolutions .....
While we were in Chile, we filled you in on all the fun and adventures that we were having, but there was a lot going on behind the scenes. As always, we had a great trip, but there was something missing. Many things started seeming like we had “been there and done that”. The universe is a great teacher, and we were presented with many opportunities for reflection and growth – from the cancelling of our volunteer work with the chinchillas, to smaller, more mundane experiences, like hearing tourists talk about what countries they had “done”. We knew it was time for some changes….
We had never intended for our efforts (or indeed this blog) to be about our ‘vacations’. Indeed, in one of our founding books, Your Money or Your Life, the authors express interest and concern about why one would need to ‘vacate’ a life anyway …… There is a lot to be gained from travelling, but for us, it was time to grow some more and move forward again towards bigger dreams.
So, what does this mean? Good question, and that is what we spent much time figuring out in Chile. With this in mind, we reviewed all of our work that had got us this far, and started integrating and developing the next step from our foundations we put in place this year.
Some things we know for sure:
1. We have been fairly successful in ‘exiting stage left’ from the routine days, weeks, months that had seemed to want to drain our life from us.
2. We want as much of our time to be spent making a positive difference in the world – whether that is directly helping others or simply because we are so happy we can always spare the extra smile or kind word that can make a difference.
3. We are convinced there are many ways to live, and that there is no one right way for us or anyone else, and that we always have choices to make that can move us forward, sideline us, or move us backwards
4. We want an alternative to the usual frenetic pace most people in our culture seem to live their life. It is often much more of a culture shock for us coming back into the US than it is leaving. Arriving back in Bellingham from Chile, we stopped to pick up groceries at our local supermarket, and couldn’t believe how stressed, unhappy and at times, mean, people seemed to be shopping for groceries. And also we don’t want to forget that this is shocking to us once we are integrated back into this culture.
5. We still love and want to travel, but maybe with different or clearer objectives – to either travel solely for fun to those special places we have always dreamed of going to, or to travel with a specific volunteer project in mind.
So, in Chile we agreed on some pretty significant changes that we would make to our lives when we returned to allow us more space, more time, and more freedom to become:
Phase One
We initially focused on settling in at home, and observing our lives, with time at home, simplifying and contemplating, to make space to fully understand what we wanted next. With this achieved by such things as cutting back on work (and spending!), cutting back on other commitments, and shifting our priorities around, we have now moved onto the next phase.
Phase Two
Now we are working on developing our long term planning, furthering old dreams and creating new ones, setting projects, and reaching out to others, including making more of a difference in our local community.
Hot on the heels of all this change, we went to Seattle last weekend to a “You Can Change Your Life” conference, which was something we had enrolled in before we had gone to Chile. Led by Louise Hay, a hero for both of us, we listened to major players in the field of life coaching, spiritual development and healing. What a great opportunity to support our changes. And as luck (grace) would have it, quite by chance(?) we happened to be one of the lucky few of the thousands there who stumbled across Louise Hay hanging out quietly in the foyer ….. yes, we got to meet her , have her sign our dog-eared copy of her book, receive a little gift from her and give her a hug! Talk about inspirational!! For those of you that don’t know about Louise Hay, she is a metaphysical lecturer, teacher and best selling author, and is a pioneer in the realm of mind-body health. You can learn more about her at www.louisehay.com
So, one of our commitment is to develop how we are using our blog. We plan to do weekly postings about our life, the changes and dreams we are creating, and how we are doing this. For those of you wanting more information, we recommend that you start with the books that have been one of our major sources of inspiration. These are listed in our profile.
Stay tuned – we have lots going on and lots to tell!
…….
“Every moment of life is a new beginning point as we move from the old. This moment is a new point of beginning for me right here and right now. All is well in my world.” (Louise Hay)
We had never intended for our efforts (or indeed this blog) to be about our ‘vacations’. Indeed, in one of our founding books, Your Money or Your Life, the authors express interest and concern about why one would need to ‘vacate’ a life anyway …… There is a lot to be gained from travelling, but for us, it was time to grow some more and move forward again towards bigger dreams.
So, what does this mean? Good question, and that is what we spent much time figuring out in Chile. With this in mind, we reviewed all of our work that had got us this far, and started integrating and developing the next step from our foundations we put in place this year.
Some things we know for sure:
1. We have been fairly successful in ‘exiting stage left’ from the routine days, weeks, months that had seemed to want to drain our life from us.
2. We want as much of our time to be spent making a positive difference in the world – whether that is directly helping others or simply because we are so happy we can always spare the extra smile or kind word that can make a difference.
3. We are convinced there are many ways to live, and that there is no one right way for us or anyone else, and that we always have choices to make that can move us forward, sideline us, or move us backwards
4. We want an alternative to the usual frenetic pace most people in our culture seem to live their life. It is often much more of a culture shock for us coming back into the US than it is leaving. Arriving back in Bellingham from Chile, we stopped to pick up groceries at our local supermarket, and couldn’t believe how stressed, unhappy and at times, mean, people seemed to be shopping for groceries. And also we don’t want to forget that this is shocking to us once we are integrated back into this culture.
5. We still love and want to travel, but maybe with different or clearer objectives – to either travel solely for fun to those special places we have always dreamed of going to, or to travel with a specific volunteer project in mind.
So, in Chile we agreed on some pretty significant changes that we would make to our lives when we returned to allow us more space, more time, and more freedom to become:
Phase One
We initially focused on settling in at home, and observing our lives, with time at home, simplifying and contemplating, to make space to fully understand what we wanted next. With this achieved by such things as cutting back on work (and spending!), cutting back on other commitments, and shifting our priorities around, we have now moved onto the next phase.
Phase Two
Now we are working on developing our long term planning, furthering old dreams and creating new ones, setting projects, and reaching out to others, including making more of a difference in our local community.
Hot on the heels of all this change, we went to Seattle last weekend to a “You Can Change Your Life” conference, which was something we had enrolled in before we had gone to Chile. Led by Louise Hay, a hero for both of us, we listened to major players in the field of life coaching, spiritual development and healing. What a great opportunity to support our changes. And as luck (grace) would have it, quite by chance(?) we happened to be one of the lucky few of the thousands there who stumbled across Louise Hay hanging out quietly in the foyer ….. yes, we got to meet her , have her sign our dog-eared copy of her book, receive a little gift from her and give her a hug! Talk about inspirational!! For those of you that don’t know about Louise Hay, she is a metaphysical lecturer, teacher and best selling author, and is a pioneer in the realm of mind-body health. You can learn more about her at www.louisehay.com
So, one of our commitment is to develop how we are using our blog. We plan to do weekly postings about our life, the changes and dreams we are creating, and how we are doing this. For those of you wanting more information, we recommend that you start with the books that have been one of our major sources of inspiration. These are listed in our profile.
Stay tuned – we have lots going on and lots to tell!
…….
“Every moment of life is a new beginning point as we move from the old. This moment is a new point of beginning for me right here and right now. All is well in my world.” (Louise Hay)
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