The photo is of my morning Wheatgrass shot. I get into some interesting conversations.  I believe a lot of people feel that things are all or nothing.  We choose a path, then perhaps we get a bit comfortable and get stodgy about it.   Because we are all here to help each other, I feel the mind should remain open and our heart compassionate because none of us are perfect beings.  No matter where we are in our years or schooling, we are always learning if we are moving forward.

In speaking with someone the other day in the healthcare field, I mentioned a herb and the immediate retort was ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about that if it’s not science-based, it doesn’t exist for me. everything must be proven by science.’  I gently explained to this individual that pharmaceuticals originated from the plant kingdom.  Science in fact, did not invent them.  What science has since done, and I disagree with, is synthesized and added chemicals and fillers for profit margins and patents and so, therefore, is mostly all about the money now, the big Pharma Machine.  Go to any doctor or vet, and just watch. All supplements and original medicines came from plants.  Further, the practice of medicine did not originally require a formal degree. When I began my career in telecommunications, there were no degrees in it.  Now there are. As we learn we find a way to formalize things, teach them and a way to make money at it too.  I suggested that rather than judge harshly, we consider that plants are the origin and we had the alternatives,  homeopathy and Chinese modalities far longer than we ever had allopathic medicine.  I suggested a good marriage between Western Medicine and the ‘alternative’ or as I see them, the complementary modalities.  There is absolutely a time and a place for all of it because they can complement and augment each or be used individually depending on the situation and condition.

Holistic Medicine
We hear a lot about holistic medicine.  Holistic medicine treats the entire patient, believing a dysfunction in one area affects the whole person/animal, not just that one area of the body or mind.  I like this approach because it broadens the scope to look at all things related, perhaps the diet, for example, and treats the entire being as a whole. I feel this creates wellness at the core and resilience.  Rather than treating just symptoms, we take a look at what’s happening and find out why and how we may apply treatment for whole healing.

Alternative Medicine

Now, upfront, I find this term riotous!   “Alternative Medicine” refers to alternative medical systems other than allopathic or traditional (conventional) western medicine.  What’s funny about this is the fact that these include traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy,  Herbalism and Floral Essences which have been around ages longer. 

Homeopathy

This controversial 250 yar old alternative medicine has been around since the late 18th century.  A biologist, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann created it on the premise that like cures like.  Using minute quantities of a substance that would, in larger quantities, make a well individual produce the same symptoms, homeopathy provides a wee bit (the poison is in the dose as they say) to effectively rebalance the body.  Like the holistic approach discussed earlier, Dr. Hahnemann believed the body needed to be treated as a whole unit so we work with the constitution of it.  I use homeopathy on my dog as well as the whole family.  While the substances in them can be tiny, the believe this man had was that substances, when diluted, can become far more potent.

Western Medicine

Most of us are very familiar.  The standout here is in emergency work, saving lives in crisis.  (See my Canine Bloat story) The downside is that I don’t believe we need all the shots and pills big pharma is pushing.  All the way around, there needs to be far more focus on Hippocrates’ truth, which is to let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be food.   We are all responsible for our health so if we aren’t eating correctly a pill is not going to be magic.  Sure, it may help lower your cholesterol but at what cost?  So much of pharmaceuticals are toxic.  And recently, I was informed that shots, both human animal and for our pets, contain toxins such as mercury in them!  Yeah, maybe skip that flu shot!

I am 57 and take no pharmaceutical drugs.  We don’t give our fur babies annual shots. And what got me on the path of NOT giving annual shots was actually Hillside Vet, where we took Ting kitty.  Ting had lost her owner and my mother adopted her.  As she lived in an apartment complex, they insisted she be up to date on all shots.  While she had actually been recently vaccinated, she came with no proof.  A vet my mother took her to, gave her the shots, all at once, right between the shoulder blades where all shots used to be administered (and where I remembered them being given as well).  Ting became gravely ill.  And she was getting not one jot better at Hillside on IV fluids, refusing to eat and stuck in a cage costing us quite a pretty penny each day.  I asked to take the cat to my home.  I gave her love, so much love and coaxed her to eat.  She finally recovered but the thing is, during this deluge of illness, the vet noted he was shocked that Ting was administered shots between her shoulder blades, at that neck scruff area and I asked why.  He explained: ‘We give the shots always in the rear leg now.  When we give shots, and the animal gets cancer from them, then there’s not much that can be done.  However, if you give the shots, as we do now, in the rear leg, then you can amputate the leg. And I just heard myself ask why on earth are we giving shots when we know they cause cancer. This is when I began self-education about better more natural healing ways for our pets and discovered  Dr. Martin Golstein The Nature Of Animal Healing which I now use as one of my references. If we know something is bad, we should stop and yet we don’t.  The practice of medicine is called a practice because we are supposed to be learning every day and applying that new knowledge, incorporating it into what we do in efforts to cause no harm.  While I agree there might be an emergency situation where you take something for a few days, etc, I encourage you to look at your lifestyle and that of your pets and determine in a more holistic way what is best.  See my other posts on pet food. Thank you for reading and I appreciate your comments.

Walk Into 2018 With a Clean Slate!

Happy New Year!  What I love about a new year is that it is a marker for leaving anything that no longer serves you as you go into a new year, a new time, new beginnings.  If chaos seems to follow you around, check what you may be doing (or not doing) that is encouraging this and allow yourself to change that. Where do your loyalties lie?  Do your current relationships serve you or serve to ruin you?  Do they cause more joy or upset?  Do you feel more or less in balance within them?   If you routinely fall into the victim role, feel like you just cannot get it all together, self-sabotage opportunities or you are around or supporting people who are like this, causing you more stress than peace; Leave all this behind in 2017! The mind likes to create stories and habits but BOTH are adaptable, changeable. You cannot change the way anyone around you thinks feels or acts, but you can control yourself and who you allow to remain in your life.  Each day you breathe air, you have an opportunity for growth, to remove blinders (we all have them) and go and do better.  Some folks are stuck in making things harder than they need to be. They want to blame, argue, delay and create what I call High Queen.  My mother used to say ‘This is just how I am’ No, this is just how you programmed yourself.  Begin taking ownership, stop deliberately going off the rails emotionally, self-control is underrated. Life is far too short to start pointless arguments, deliberately cause chaos, or be with anyone that behaves this way.  IF you are used to living with someone that is High Queen, you may struggle at first embracing the quite. Trust, the brain gets used to all this noise and it can take a bit for quiet to sink in, to feel normal. Counting your blessings rather than stirring up drama is far more healthy. Reward those good to you, rather than complain.  See what happens then.   Life is short. Stress causes disease.  Embrace Joy!

An ordered life brings calm.  Our body is our temple and our mind the seat.  Whatever your religious beliefs, big bang theory etc, you can look around you at all the beauty of this world and all the atrocious acts too and conclude two things:  Firstly  – there is good and evil sparring it out here and Secondly  – this planet and everything within it and upon it didn’t just happen.  There is way too much order, beauty and workmanship in everything and how it fits together, from fish to butterflies, to Jaguars to trees.  Nothing had to be this well orchestrated, this beautiful and yet it is.

Part of honoring ourselves, our temple, our seat, is taking care of ourselves by taking care of things around us in such a way that we create calm rather than calamity for both us, our family members and those within our scope.  But because being OCD can also bring chaos, there is value in things being imperfect.  There is, in fact, perfection in the imperfection, if you will.

Now, as one of my dear friends always says when discussing finding a lover or choosing friends, is that you have got to pick your flavour of crazy because we all are.  And another dear friend used to tell me she was looking for someone who had fewer problems than she had.  These two principles can be applied to all areas of life, really.  It boils down to the respect of one’s self, one’s divinity.  All of us being devine in nature, when we get in touch with that grace, then we begin to recognize that we no longer need the fluff of drama injected into everything that we touch. And when I say drama, I mean negative drama because I stand as a big fan of fun drama!

This doesn’t mean that sometimes negative stuff doesn’t simply happen, but rather, it means we are engaged to actively minimize it on a daily basis and we do this out of honor for ourselves and our fellow companions because  we deserve it, we deserve peace and life is stressful enough without adding negative drama on the top of it all.

That stated, here are ways that I actively work to reduce chaos and create peace.

Two Things Wrong Theory –  For anything in my life, whether it’s a car or house, a usable item like a sofa, electronics etc, I strive for not more than 2 things wrong.  In this way, I maintain a 0-2 defect ratio in all things.  If I hit the third thing on the car or house, then I know I am out of balance and promptly get at least one thing that’s wrong, fixed. Honestly, I am rather anal about my cars and home so things get fixed quickly.  This can be tailored to the individual, perhaps you can adopt five things for example or make other adjustments which suit you.  Make it something that is comfortable for you and your lifestyle as well as tailored to what you care most about. For example, you may care more about your home than your car and want 2 or fewer things wrong with your casa but if your car is dirty, you have 3 door dings but it runs, you’re good with that.

Pick your number. For me, nothing in my life has more than two things wrong with it at any given time.  In this way, I don’t feel snowed under with to do lists that I feel I’ll never crawl out from under.  I minimize the heavy expense of fixing a bunch of things at once too.

Love Your Home & Create Peace In It-  Home should be a safe haven, a place where you seek and find comfort, joy and beauty.  You can tell a lot about a person and their psyche by their home.  Conversely, you can mind your brain and heal your nervous system by keeping things tidy.  De-cluttering what is around you orders and calms the brain.  Having things around that give you joy bolster you up with every passing glance just as seeing piles of what needs taking care of can weigh you down.  Even if your home is temporary, it affects you each time you are there.  I’m a big fan of adding even a hint of personality to a temporary space or cubicle and ordering it in such a  way that it provides you clear thinking and peace.  I highly recommend Sacred Space by Denise Linn, it’s one of my reference books on everything from space clearing to meditation. I also have her Feng Shui For The Soul and keep that as a great reference too.

Expect & Buy Quality – To minimize chaos for myself, I strive for things made well.  I don’t mind paying more for this because I generally keep things a long time.  My amplifier is over 2 decades old.  The amp before it was also over 20 years old.  It met its’ demise over a hairball my kitty hawked onto it.  It never stood a chance. One entire channel went toast and in the US, there were no matching parts.  I didn’t think it would ever sound right with mismatched channel components so I shopped for a replacement.    So I buy quality,  take very good care of stuff and my expectation is that they take care of me.

Let Go Of Crap Products –  My Lexus LS600HL is pictured above.  At over 120k MSRP, I thought I had purchased a reliable and solid vehicle and one that would last me decades.  But the thing was a Debbie Downer with a failed water pump, the brake actuator and all four upper control arms going out all at the same time and all at less than 60k miles.  On top of this, the ‘luxury’ of it suffered with poor workmanship.  The leather wrapping the dashboard came totally unglued in a week’s timespan parked not in a garage as was typical, but in the June sunshine. In that same week, the Bezel surrounding the console mysteriously cracked as well. Lexus Corp refused to cover the dash and only partially covered the rest. The thing ate money.  Now, I was completely fine paying all that cash up front, and being overcharged on general maintenance for the rest of my life.  But I got completely pissed off paying months of salary every quarter on things car makers should already know how to do in their sleep!  I’m in a Jaguar now.  I got everything fixed on the misbegotten Lexsucks except the bloody dashboard and sold it to Carmax for 7k higher than the dealership offered to buy it back!  In the most respectful way I can say it right now, Lexus? Sodd directly off! Never again will I purchase a new Lexus or Toyota product.  You will note that I created signs and added letters to the back end around the ‘L’ to spell Awful Lousy and I had fun for a few months discussing the car, parking in prominent places all over town sharing my story.  But at the end of the day, the vehicle was not bringing me the peace I bought it for.  I had named it Zen and it wasn’t happiness anymore when I never knew when the next break would happen.  So, whatever you personally expected or paid for something, let it go if it’s crap.   Just get it out of your life. In this situation, karmically, I repaired the car and to the best of my abilities assured (Per Sewell Lexus in Dallas) that nothing else was, at that moment, wrong with the car.  I turned it over to Carmax still owing repair bills, with a fresh oil change, ready for the new owner who will hopefully avail themselves of the Carmax extended warranty.

Take Care Of Your Stuff – I try to apply the minimum pressure to things such as buttons and dials, keep it clean, polished, lubed, whatever to keep it humming smoothly.  When you buy with care and take pride and care in what you have, it is amazing how long stuff can last.  This is why we have appliances from the 60’s still working in kitchens today.  Also, the recent shift has clearly been to make crap.  I don’t suffer crap very well.  So when we expect quality and choose to no longer put up with junk, that is when companies will be incited to create better merchandise.

A Throw-Away Society Is Ruinous To The Entire Planet – When we create throw away items or when we as consumers buy things that we don’t take care of, causing them to wear out faster, we affect the ecosystem of our planet.   There’s a girl who writes a blog about how her life has been creating zero trash.  https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-16168/i-havent-made-any-trash-in-2-years-heres-what-my-life-is-like.html
I am nowhere close to that level of recycling and green, but the post has inspired me to do better since the day I first read it.  It has made me far more aware of all the things I purchase, whether it is something which can be reused and if not, what else I might buy or use instead that will not trash the planet.

Downcycle By Giving Away (or selling) What You No Longer Use or Need – Recently, a neighbor put out a box to the sidewalk area (code for take it if you want, it’s free) with a nice note stating it was a Dell Monitor and that it worked very well, they had just upgraded and didn’t need any longer.  Well, it just so happened I needed a monitor for my contract job.  I didn’t open the box until I got to my cubicle the following Monday. Let me tell you, I was impressed with the care and level of attention paid to re-wrapping all the cables, cords and whatnots.  The monitor was clean and looked like new.  I wrote a thank you card introducing myself and how much I appreciated that monitor!    I love paying it forward and what a thrill it was to actually get something so fabulous.

Expect Quality in Yourself – While I am far from perfect, I do try to eat right, no meat, dairy, lots of raw veggies and I use organic skincare routines and work out.  I invest in and take ownership of my own well being.  In short, I minimize what can go wrong by being aware of where I am at healthwise and managing my resilience.  Some folks eat like they don’t give two f*cks and people, this is going to show up downstream.  It is never selfish to take care of you.  When you come from a position of strength, you are in the best shape to go help others.

Unhook From Drama – Our mind is a computer that literally programs itself to think in such a way that we tend towards.  In other words, if you tend to be happy and positive, your brain will tend to think positively and if you tend to think oh why me, and life sucks, then your brain will condition that way as well.  If you want change, the trick is being patient for the next 30 days which create the new habit and way of being.  I know people who are continuously in one negative drama after another. They do this simply because this is how they have taught themselves that life is for them.  They don’t know and accept for themselves another path, a new way.  Believe me, there is!   Try a daily meditation such as Rolf Gates, Meditations From The Mat or Meditations on Intentions and Being.  IF you are stuck in a co-dependent relationship, I will say that Melody Beattie The Language Of Letting Go and Co-Dependent No More, HEALED ME!!!  Denise Linn’s books came next into my life and pushed me onwards from there!  I had no idea that I was co-creating drama nor did I know what co-dependent behavior was but oh boy was this toxic!  And I got out.  You can too!

Take love, patience and more calm into each day, each week by breathing before you react and finding small ways to create space and quiet. With time it gets easier as your new habits are formed which will add quality and resilience to your life!

Be Blessed. ♥

Hi everyone!  I am excited!  Please join me Saturday for my Bioceutica launch from the comfort of your home.  This is a quick call to introduce you to additional healthy options being introduced at PureTemple.

As most of you know who read me, my goal is helping folks live a vegan plant-based lifestyle,with a focus on raw foods,  to make efforts toward daily detoxing and eschewing chemicals and toxins from their daily lives, from buying organic clothing to being mindful of their home cleaning supplies.

To this end, I represent 3 plant based supplement, skin and body care lines. ONLY 9% of Vitamins on the market are good.  The rest contain motor oil, coal tar, turpentine, petrochemicals and are very unhealthy! Rather than actually helping us out, they cause damage. In a polluted world, daily detoxing, a focus on a raw plant based diet and good supplementation are necessary.

You are invited to attend my Bioceutica launch this Saturday and discover great non toxic skin and body care products, custom supplements and wonderful makeup shades for the ladies. Bioceutica’s cornerstone is their customized supplements, tailored to your body, based upon test results you send in after completing your Privatest.

Suzanne’s Look Better, Feel Better, Live Better Launch
WHEN – Nov 11, 2017 2:00 PM Central Time

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/294971718

Most everything we do can be viewed as a service, whether it is removing a cancer, detailing a car, housekeeping, managing a project, implementing a service, driving a cab or going on location picking up after people’s pets. We can also view all of our personal relationships in the same vein.  Everything we do boils down to what it is we offer and the value being placed, currently, on what we deliver.  We are all put on this earth to learn how to love more fully, grow in grace, be less self-centric and help our fellow beings on this planet.  Therefore, service and being in the service of others, is one of the greatest ways we show love and compassion for others.   It is also the best way to grow spiritually.  We all have our best days and those not so.  To keep yourself on the right path and track, it is a good lesson to periodically ask yourself ‘How expendable am I?’ What perception do others have of me and my work?  When I am gone, what mark will I Ieave?

All of us, in fact, are both unique, inimitable, a true treasure and, sadly, expendable. When we are placed correctly, when we give what is at hand our full attention, it is amazing what can be accomplished.  We bring ourselves, our uniquely creative, super smart, funny, dedicated and determined ( or whatever brand you are known by) soul to the work at hand unlike any other.  What we each do is as unique as our fingerprint.  Life here is short, so the goal should be to live our very best life and share out our best efforts.  There is a great article called Brand You.  Google if you haven’t read it.  We brand ourselves by how we present our souls to the world each day.

Perhaps you are known as the go-to Subject Matter Expert, or the most helpful.  Nobody else can do it exactly the way you do it.  And so it is, with this understanding that we are, in the end, expendable.  Being expendable is what keeps us humble as well as on fire to do our best most days.  If you review yourself honestly and don’t like your brand, you can change it by making new, upgraded daily choices, choices that make you more approachable, nicer, easier to work with as well as choices that affect the product you sell, support or produce.

 Brands are everyplace. If you are a window cleaner, are you cordial and happy in your work or too lazy to scope the job prior to giving a price then arrive all grumpy and blame the customer when there’s an extra window to clean?  Do you show up at the office with the latest home drama all a wreck and out of sorts? Do you clean houses but forget about the high dusting, washing the bed linens or baseboards thinking that will somehow go unnoticed? Are you a doctor using old outdated surgical techniques?  Are you someone who likes to stir the pot, micro-manage every teammates’ move, or control every situation?

When someone thinks of you, what do they envision?  What is your personal brand?   When you think of your personal label, that label is also applied to every business.  What do we know Lexus as?  What begins to disintegrate when the company no longer stands for quality?  What happens when all the leather covered dashboards in their high-end cars peel up, look atrocious and the company nicely confirms with you that there is no recall on that item and it will cost 22k to replace that dashboard?  What happens when other mechanical failures take place?  What begins to change about the story of Lexus?  This is my personal story on Lexus, by the way.  Always garaged, it has been a ‘Lexus Lemon’ with prematurely failing parts; a failed leaky water pump, amplifier, suspension parts along with a really knarly dashboard I have to stare at daily.

What happens when you are known for excellent appliances (and charge accordingly) then become the kind of business that slides on quality, ‘offers’ a 3 year warranty and when there’s a problem, you tell your customer you never received their warranty card?

What happens when you are known for upholstery work but you don’t always pull off a quality job?  Instead, you break a clients chair, get the new fabric all dirty, then refuse to return the chair or clean the upholstery you sullied and instead, laugh at and blame the client?  Yes, another personal example.  Doing this chair correctly the first time would of course been the best outcome.  Tarping and otherwise keeping it safe and clean while in the shop to fix the broken bit would have been preferred option 2.  Spending less than $50.00 on cleaning the chair, some wood glue and appropriately sized screws and less than half a gallon of gas to return it, would have been best option number 3.  I would have gone away happy having resolved the situation to my likeing, having my chair back and fixed with the brand spanking new upholstery all fresh and clean like it was.  I did not begin the exchange irate but I sure ended things with the upholsterer that way and I share my story often.  I am no longer burning with anger.  My goal now is to help others NOT have their furnishings potentially suffer the same sorry fate by taking their business there.

Mediocrity is set at the price point we agree to pay.  Each of us votes with our wallet first and by what we stand for when work is done poorly.  When we lower our expectations, don’t demand quality, allow poor workmanship by not saying anything,  we are complicit in the agreement of accepting less than the best from that company or representative.

What have you done for me lately?  Why should I vote with my dollars on your business?  When our focus stops being trained on delivering quality workmanship and excellent customer care, and instead, becomes all about shirking responsibility and getting the money right now rather than having an eye on the bigger picture,  that is when we begin to fail, spiritually and physically.

Sadly, most of us have our own private, or not so private, arsenal of things done wrong to us out of greed, corruption or lack of education and spiritual balance.  Our actions always have intentions behind them.  Those intentions should always be noble.  When they are not, then restitution is in order.  Sometimes, it is an associate who causes the fault but karmically speaking, if there is wrongdoing and you are empowered to change that, then it is foolishness to think you can simply do nothing about it and everything will be just fine.  Spiritually we are our brother’s keeper so we are beholden to our brothers walking this path, like it or not, with each of us weighed and measured by our intentions and actions.  We are only human, so the goal is restitution where possible and assuring that, predominately, your intentions are coming from a pure place.

Fulfilling your service well means taking ownership for what you produce.  The customer is not always right.  But, it is the smart business that delves into the full scope of what took place, make an honest assessment of their employees, their business and what really happened and graciously make the attempt to go above and beyond to change any negative perception because those perceptions live on and spread like a virus.   When you anger a customer, you truly have no control over their actions, both immediate and future. Whether they throw a fit or leave quietly, neither means that this is over for them, or you.  Your customer most likely works someplace, has friends, family, a good internet connection.  They may be a judge, lawyer, work in advertising and be well connected in the community.

When you work for yourself, please understand that you don’t really.  When you are working at my house, that means you work for me and during that particular moment in time, I am your boss.  We all have a man.  None of us escapes working for the man.  It may be a spouse, contract or independent work, volunteer work, or with a big corporation but there are always people to please, folks with expectations from you that you are either meeting and exceeding or failing at.

When you are working with a client you represent the company to that individual.  Missteps happen and not everything, not every situation is going to be remedied.  But here is the outline to make most of them right, correct what went sideways, and then hopefully for the very angry customers who cannot be appeased, perhaps they will one day be in a place to acknowledge you did your best, you attempted a fair resolution.

Cordial – Always be polite and nice.  You don’t really know what kind of day someone you are working with has had, so extend grace.  When you get into a shouting match, you have both already lost and nobody will be able to tell who is the bigger fool.  Keep a level head and let the other person steam away.

Fair – Look for the win-win and be honest with your faults, you will get more respect for that.  If a mistake was made, it should be rectified and swiftly.

Honesty – Don’t quote one price and show up later with a new improved quote twice as expensive with excuses as to why.  Believe me, this will become what you are known for.  People will talk and tell others the story.  Also, don’t lie.  Don’t tell someone you will fix something then walk on that promise.  They may never ever call you to remind you about what you committed to but that absolutely does not mean they forgot about it or that you going back on your word doesn’t matter because it does and yes, they will tell the story. what I have found in my polling is that most folks go quiet in front of the business that burned them, preferring to move on with things.  They do, however, still talk about what happened and share that advertisement and sometimes for years or even decades.  Nobody wins really by being dishonest about the truth of things.

Stability – The best service and the best companies provide a product that is constant, bringing stability to what is delivered to each and every customer each and every time. Instability means your brand cannot be trusted.

Ownership – Take ownership of what you do, the product you deliver.  One bad day, one bungled project may be an ‘oops oh well’ to you but to your client and the business you represent, the end result is that you did not shine and that is the story that gets told.

YOU ONLY CONTROL YOU – You may be in temporary work, or feel that your job doesn’t really matter but trust me, to someone it sure does!   At the end of the day, you have great power to make things happen right, but you have zero control over who hears that story. When you take the high road and offer your level best every day, relationships can turn magical.  Inner peace grows.  Home life and clients improve.  Make your story count by doing your best.

Last week, I had an enjoyable existential discussion about one’s life scope and how each of us is here for our unique journey.  Of course, I know this, but my focus was on educating upon boundaries and encouraging a life centered upon balance and health and self care.

Each of us is here for different reasons and it is incumbent upon each of us to find that purpose and live it out.  Some of us will do exactly that, some right out of the womb, others later in life and still others will never ever get to it in their allotted time on this temporal plane.  My mother was one such individual.  She had a life plan, but she never allowed herself to blossom or go beyond personal selfishness and all the pains she endured from an abusive childhood.

I hear excuses all day long about why we cannot rise above it, why we cannot find the job we want, the love we want or the life we want.  Mostly it is all complete BS.  We are filled with stories, we play the victim, or we play the martyr, wearing a mask rather than opening up to the joy of just being who we are.

We fill up our heads with the dross of the day when what is needed is a moment of introspection, of meditation, of Zen.  With introspection, with some quiet, the internal voice inside can better guide us to our purpose and to the better daily choices along our travels.

No matter why you are here, whether it is to help folks leaving to the other side, entertain with song and dance or lighten the load by working on cars, or cleaning house, every single job is of a high value and should be undertaken with the utmost respect.  Each of us matter.  When we apply ourselves to the tasks at hand, we bring what only we can, to that work.  The job may be transient, no matter, do it well.  If you find you cannot do it well, it is karmically correct to leave it so that you are not filling a space inadequately where  someone else would be better suited.  If you are in such a line of work that you either don’t do well or flat don’t enjoy, don’t let fear halt your feet flying out the door.  The universe is expansive and you will land where you need to be.

When you maintain your health, and your personal life balance is in order, everything else takes care of itself.  Balance means different things to everyone of us, but basically, you want to divide your days/weeks/months in such a way that you have time for work, time for friends and family and the pursuit of personal pleasures, whether that be music, art, gardening, movies etc.  And yes, not matter what freaking spiritual path you happen to be on, each of us needs this!  You may not fear death.  Still, you are in a physical body and that body has needs; fill them.  This is one of the primary reasons I went vegan.  You can remove or start out just reducing meat with new recipes you can try out every week.  I really like the Thug Kitchen people and they have a book, Thug Kitchen 101 Fast As F*ck, has yummy quick recipes you can do during the work week.  Their books are hilarious if you are good with some colourful language and vegan based.

Care for the body that holds your spirit.  You are charged to do this, to honor and care for your temple.  The body is both a joy and a burden in this life.  Cherish it for what it is.  Without the body, you would have no touch, no feeling.  You would no longer enjoy or use oh so many things!  Imagine yourself right now, just spirit with no physical form.  You could fly through all materials as if they weren’t there, not feeling them.  Wheeeee!  You could fly through bodies, through water, through the clouds.  You wouldn’t need a house to protect you from the elements.  Materialism would hold no interest to you.  What would you need money or a tchotchke for?  Why would you want a Porsche?  Life as a spirit is very cheap and easy.  But we are not yet ready for all that.  No, our time here is to learn how to more fully love and that begins with ourselves and our body mind and spiritual care; our temple care.  Each of us is only here for as long as we need to be.  Once our purpose is fulfilled, we beam up.  For some of us, that is 100+ on this planet and for others a whole lot shorter.  Part of this is going to be in the karma of how you care for yourself.  I plan to age as gracefully as I can.  My vegan and organic lifestyle is a great part of that, as is my firm change from 12+ hour days to one of balance.

Each of us is only here for as long as we need to be.  Once our purpose is fulfilled, we beam up.  For some of us, that is 100+ on this planet and for others a whole lot shorter.  Part of this is going to be in the karma of how you care for yourself.  I plan to age as gracefully as I can.  My vegan and organic lifestyle is a great part of that, as is my firm change from 12+ hour days to one of balance.

Ageing – a neighbor just this morning was discussing ageing and how women, in particular, have such a struggle locating work after 50.  This is not the first time I heard this.  Having lost my PM job at age 55 in 2016, this was about all I was hearing.  But it is a lie we fill ourselves up with.  Again, the universe is infinite and so is possibility.   Folks, we do not have to go gentle into this good night of losing our earthly mojo.  Yes, we will all age, but we can do so with grace, with compassion and with mobility and strength.

I love writing about health and after decades of alternative health coaching with family and around the office, I took formal training last year, went vegan and began this blog.  I review products and post links to things I love that I believe will help others but the blog here, going into 2 years, has not earned me a living…yet.  With the layoffs at Sprint, I had a window of time to get the blog going and complete my schooling but once that was done and I sat here earning $575.00 a month from my pension with 2 mortgages and a good 5 years away from my planned retirement, I began to think about working again, like…for a corporation or some such.

One thing about being as old as I am, I know people.  It was folks I had worked with in the past that came to me with offers.   This is so humbling and amazing to me!  But, the point is I did not ever have to go searching for work.  Work came to me.  I had some offers with less pay than I was used to making and some that were a lot higher.  I landed in the role I wanted, one that was quite a bit different than what I did in the past and yet similar, with more money and working from my home office.  I’ll be 56 in November so don’t please, whatever your age, let age be something you worry about.  Provided you take care of yourself, you will enable yourself to live a higher quality life and one that can be free from heart disease, diabetes, chronic aches and pains, lack of mobility and keep a full set of teeth.  How do you currently take care of your car?  I believe this to be a great indicator of how one cares for the body.  It’s a great metaphor.  If you take a look at your vehicle and say uh oh, go clean it up, get the oil changed and make new plans that include better self-care.

I cannot recommend yoga enough for connecting the mind, the spirit and body.  This book, My Body Is A Temple by Christina Sell, is a brilliant companion to your practice! One of my long time favorites is Baron Baptiste 40 Days to Personal Revolution, which is a combination of poses as well as a structured spiritual path. I go through many books and typically pass them on to save space.  This is a book I keep always.   The breathwork you learn with yoga will both expand and heal the lungs as well as teach you how to breathe under duress. Yoga teaches us to both live in the moment and to accept that the moment will change.  If you are feeling discomfort, this will change, as will all of our joys.  Yoga is expansive and healing. I have seen it straighten crooked spines and reduce inflammation. It is a miracle.   All life and love is change but what we label as bad is not always so, it is simply a necessary transition.  When we accept our responsibility to honor our temple, honor our body, we take on the burden of learning the best ways of eating, of living, of lifestyle that enables the best quality of life.  Be open to change, change is good.

EMBRACING SPACE.
Part of what attracted me to Mid-Century Modern design (See my other blog mcmhomeanddecor.com/) is the simplicity and openness of the architecture, the wedding of outdoor and indoor spaces, thus creating a delightful blur between us and the rest of nature with window walls and sliding glass doors that invite us to explore beyond the four walls.  While you can still fill it all up, this type of architecture begs for simplicity and looks its’ very best sparse. Sparing in both landscape and furnishings works to showcase the design and create expansiveness. Most MCM homes were not large sprawls but under 2500 sq feet. Mine is 2105 and I had to significantly pare down and squeeze into it.  2 years in, I have given up a leather lounge set and other furnishings too substantial, too heavy and large to fit comfortably.  Our home looks fairly spacious and I am continuing to reduce things.

LET IT GO.
A few years ago, my husband and I agreed to let go of anything we either didn’t really love or didn’t use at least annually.  Being fully mindful of what is used and what continues to sit year after year is eye opening.  Sure, the thing may be nice or be a lovely gift but if you are not actively using it or it is not a delight to the eye, such as a piece of art, then let it go to a new home where it can live out the life intended for it and thereby create space for something you truly want or need in its place.

THINGS DON’T ALWAYS STORE WELL.
I have a neighbor who collects stuff.  He wants it all for free.  He will admit it weighs him down, he has boxes and boxes of stuff and has even built a new garage and rented a storage unit to contain it all.  Things don’t always store well.  Fabric, rubber,  materials get dry rot. Hoses, seals and belts dry out, wiring can get ruined as well.   I had an opportunity to buy someone’s 1 year used high-end washer dryer set but they had been in storage for a few years.  I just pictured the potential hot mess I was buying and said no.  Things are made to be used and few things remain pristine and perfect for long periods unused.  Buy and hold onto what you need and let the rest go.

LAND OF PLENTY.
We tend to think in terms of great deals and opportunities that come only once, sales and getting stocked up.  The truth is that the universe is infinite.  When we act with right action, with good intentions, the universe conspires to provide us what we need and want in our lives.  There is no need for jealousy or clawing at what we want, it will happen when it’s time, when we are ready, as we plan in faith.

MY STORY.
I will share just two.  Story 1) I spent 3 years searching for a Mid-Century Modern house, they are suddenly all the rage and I completely get why, however, it made finding mine a bit of a living hell.  I had notebooks filled with zip codes, prices, addresses and comments. It was a second job for me, finding out Middy.  I looked so long and hard that the same houses came back on the market.  You know you’ve been looking a while when that happens.  As it turns out, a home I lost the first time around, came back 1.5 years later when the couple that bought it realised they would never ever move back to Dallas and sold it to me.  I lucked into a pocket listing where this house had not yet gone officially back on the market, back on MLS, but the current owner called my realtor who said ‘I have your buyer’.  Planning, patience, preparedness and a little kismet!  Sometimes I wanted to give up, perhaps it was not meant to be.  A year into the search, some friends asked me how long I was going to pursue it but my realtor said looking this length of time was not unheard of and to stay the course.  So I did.

Story 2) I was laid off at work and had several deaths in the family.  Coming out of a time famine where I worked exceedingly long hours most of the time at no additional compensation, which had left me losing out on a lot of personal time with family, I created a wishlist of what I wanted next.  My focus was on what I wanted not what I did not want.  I believe you have to think in terms of positives, of affirmations and make it so.  My wishlist was 1) Not to work so hard to earn.  I wanted to apply myself, but not to the point of health affecting overwork. So my goal was hourly employment if possible or a contract that limited my exposure. 2) I wanted to work from home because I get a tax write off with my office and have been working from home for 20 years.  I wanted to maintain this environment if possible. 3) I wanted to better or at least maintain my current salary.
I meditated on my wishlist but was also open to the possibility that I would not get everything I wanted as I was re-inventing my work self.  In the end and amazingly, an ex-coworker set me up in an amazing opportunity that provided me exactly everything on my wishlist.  I was laid off a full year.  During this time, I did not actively pursue employment.  Instead, I focused on myself, my health and wholeness.  I spent the entire year studying with Hippocrates Health Institute, which has nothing to do with Project Management or Telecommunications, but everything to do with my life and creating balance and longevity, both key to both my happiness and my future employer.  I worked at being a leaf upon the wind, letting my inner voice guide me to the right decisions as I ended up with several offers.
CREATING ROOM.
When we stop, breath, listen to what brings us closer to peace or farther away from it, we get clear on what makes us happiest.  Life is not meant to be a drudge but overall, a joy.  Work should be, while at times we all get a bad day, something that brings you fulfilment.  Someone job searching posted on LinkedIn all her struggles to locate work.  She was making a full-time job of it and for months on end.  I could hear the stress in the spaces between her words.  My comment back was a suggestion she perhaps just stop.  Just stop.  Just relax.  What brings you peace?  Would you like to learn a new language or take a psychology course or go on a working trip abroad or any such something you normally would not do in a typical time famine between work and home requirements?  Go, do those things and let the answers and the opportunities come to you.  When we are not bruising our shins on too much dross in our lives, even grand, luxurious, nice dross, we find the space we need to co-create change in our lives.  Stuff weighs down our mind.  Everything we own is catalogued there, something to track and care for.  Too much stuff can be overstimulating to the eye and nervous system.  Less to dust is not a bad thing.  Find your own comfort level with stuff, with space and here’s to co-creating your best life!

A book to help you get there: It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh