Befriending your fear—acknowledging its existence and listening to what it has to say—is far more effective in calming your nervous system and allowing you to move forward with confidence than when you resist it, pretend it doesn’t exist, or push through it. Those strategies only fuel fear and amplify it. Ignoring your fear only succeeds in keeping you stuck where you are.
Surrendering to the magic of what wants to be
Making peace with judgment
The choice is yours
The longing for enjoyment
During a recent morning meditation, there was a moment in which I experienced a deep longing for enjoyment. I don’t believe the longing was because my life is lacking in enjoyment. I think the longing was my soul’s way of nudging me to recognize the pleasure I do experience. Something I can’t know simply by thinking about it. The only way I can truly know whether something brings me pleasure is to focus on how it feels in my body. Because therein lies the truth.
Removing the mask
In one way or another, for one reason or another, we all do it. We hide. And the way many of us hide is by being busy.
It’s easy to hide behind the guise of busyness. It’s socially acceptable and in many ways it’s expected. Busy is the yardstick by which our culture measures our value and we in turn use to measure our own worth.
Pushing the edge
The pace of life + cultural conditioning makes it easy to forget ourselves. That's why we need reminders and nudges to wake us up and help us connect with our souls and the truth of who we are. When you are actively pushing against this edge, evolving into a newer, more expansive version of you, you need support. A lot of support.
Let yourself be changed
On April 30, my husband and I marked our five year “Bendiversary”—the day we moved from California and became Oregon residents. The years feel like they have passed in a flash. Some days it doesn’t feel like much at all has changed in those five years. But when I stop and reflect, I can see that so much has changed—namely, me.
In your own time
This is my least favorite time of year, the transition from winter to spring. (Or “sprinter,” as I call it.) Just because the calendar says it’s spring, doesn’t make it so. I didn’t wake up the morning after the vernal equinox to find the landscape transformed—the trees fully leafed and buds all abloom.
Transition and transformation don’t work like that—in nature or in life.