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Who loves you baby? I hope it’s you!
A few years ago, my mindset shifted from a “western view” of thinking and taking care of myself, which included popping a pill for every ache, discomfort or sadness while sitting at a desk doing a job I hated and smoking a ton of cigarettes to keep me from thinking about how terrible I felt inside, to a more loving way of being, which includes listening to my body, doing the work I love, properly nourishing my mind, body and soul and finding the right balance of work, play and rest.
This mind-shift is a big deal.
Where before I took mind altering stimulant drugs to maintain focus, now I pound the pavement, cardio away my cloudy mind and meditate for focus and clarity. Where before I numbed pain with narcotic drugs, I now go straight to the source of the pain, stretching the muscle, scheduling a deep tissue massage every single week to keep my muscles free of trigger points and stiffness, and icing my sore muscles to eliminate swelling. Where before I served my family boxed garbage like hamburger helper, canned corn and a big heaping basket of white bread covered in hydrogenated oil, aka margarine, I now serve my family a heaping plate of raw vegetables every single night, cook gluten free whenever I can, and we eat real butter and eggs from chickens that we know. It didn’t happen overnight, for sure. And it is an ever evolving process, but when you change your mindset, this lifestlye begins to organically form on its own and before you know it, your entire thought process shifts and it becomes second nature.
This is why it is so exciting to be preparing my body for baby. This time around I am thinking differently. I am paying attention to my body. I am taking care of myself. I am eating right, exercising, and keeping my mind and spirit clean with Reiki treatments, meditation and yoga. Last time, I was so young and in a terrible relationship with someone who didn’t treat me very well at all. I was under so much stress, and I worked all day and had to put my baby in daycare. This time around, I am with the man I was put on this planet to love. And I am loved so very much by him. My week consists of working as a massage therapist 3 days a week, having lunch with a friend at least once a week, and spending my Fridays doing yoga, getting massages and keeping my body strong and healthy. I own my own business, so I am able to set my own schedule and the best part of the whole thing is my office is about four blocks from my home and on the way to my kids’ school. Life is pretty darned good. 🙂
All of this sounds like I am bragging about my life…and I am a little. This life didn’t fall in my lap. This life was created by me. I sat at my desk living the same life my mother lived, waiting for the weekends, hating my life, being so bored by what I did that I cried sometimes at my desk, spending most of my day fighting with my husband, over money or jealousies or god only knows what. Sitting in hours of traffic every week just to be hundreds of dollars overdrawn every payday, and never spending time with my kids except for barking at them to clean up or leave me alone. This WAS my way of being. This is the pattern of my childhood and my mother. I repeated this pattern because I didn’t know who I was. I fought with my step kids because that is what I saw her do. But one day I realized that this wasn’t good enough for me. This wasn’t the life I wanted, and I was better than the life I had created for myself. What a revelation that was! I had spent so much time wallowing in victim-ness, hating all the people whose fault it was that I found myself here – in white lady suburban hell – that I didn’t realize the most important part! I put myself here! And I could get myself out!
6 years, a whole lot of Oprah’s Lifeclass and Super Soul Sunday and about a million self help and spirituality books, lectures and podcasts later, and I finally get it. I finally get what it means to be happy. It’s about falling madly in love with yourself. I know that sounds crazy, but it is the KEY to happiness. Finding out who you really are on the deepest level and then doing things that nurture that true you is what it’s all about. When you do this, everything in your life falls into place. Relationship troubles, money problems, weight issues, job drama…it all melts when you fall in love with you.
You no longer find yourself on the crap end of someone else’s bad day, because you don’t allow people to talk to you like that any more. You check your bank account every day, pay your bills first and on time and stop buying garbage you don’t need because you know that happiness comes from somewhere else entirely. You eat delicious, healthy food, and you learn to eat what your body wants and needs to be healthy, because you know that your body is your soul’s vehicle while on this earth, and you feel so good when you treat yourself right! You stop speaking to yourself in a negative, disrespectful way and you start to notice how you really do have pretty hair and your body is kinda sexy, now that you look at it. You start to enjoy your own company and so do others. People love to be around people who love themselves. Not in the ‘screaming, hey look at me, I will make you feel bad about yourself by yelling how great I am’ way, but in the ‘I love myself so much I am going to help you love yourself this much too’ way. People who don’t gossip because they have other, way more interesting things to talk about make long lasting friendships. And all of these things begin to show up in your life when you decide to put you up on the same pedestal you’ve put others for your whole life.
Even more importantly, your love flows over to your children, who learn from you how to properly love themselves as well. Your teenagers don’t get caught up in the drama of high school, because you’ve taught them that loving yourself doesn’t include allowing that type of behavior into your space and talking bad about others behind their back is an act of violence toward your self, not the other person. Your animals feel your love flowing out and want to share in it. It is a never ending flow into and out of yourself and it all starts with falling in love with you. Go, now, look in the mirror and say “I love you!” Say “I love you so much and I’m going to find out who you really are and what makes you happy and I’m going to get about the business of doing it! NOW!” Give yourself a hug! Yes! This is amazing.
There are so many ways to find out who you are on a deep level. I am a seeker. I know this about myself because I have studied Jung’s archetypes, which describe all the ways humans go about being human. This is a fascinating place to start. Read about the archetypes and ask yourself which ones speak to you, which ones remind you of yourself and which ones do you hate. There is a lot to be learned about the self here. Another wonderful way is to learn about astrology. Pull up your own birth chart and start to learn about the planets and stars and what meanings humans have attached to them. I am a Virgo with a Cancer moon and an Aquarius rising. I studied this relationship deeply and enjoy watching these energies play out in my life. My stubborn perfectionist at odds with the mystical Aquarius and the ever emotional moon. Whether or not you believe that the stars and planets influence humans on earth, there is much to be learned about the self here, and that is the point of the exercise. Tarot is a fantastic way to find out what you might be hiding even from yourself. Looking at the images on the cards invokes emotions that point to the true nature of what you are feeling or experiencing, even if you aren’t aware of it yet. There are as many ways to explore your true self as there are to explore the spirit. Have fun with it and find the one that really rings your bell!
If you’ve never really explored any of these methods of self examination and self understanding, I promise you, they aren’t what you think they are. They are much, much cooler. Don’t believe what you’ve heard, go find out for yourself! I will tell you with absolute certainty that it is the most worthwhile adventure you will ever embark on. Nothing is the same when you approach life from a place of truth and understanding about your self. So, I ask…who loves you baby? I hope it’s YOU! <3 Namaste. 🙂
This mind-shift is a big deal.
Where before I took mind altering stimulant drugs to maintain focus, now I pound the pavement, cardio away my cloudy mind and meditate for focus and clarity. Where before I numbed pain with narcotic drugs, I now go straight to the source of the pain, stretching the muscle, scheduling a deep tissue massage every single week to keep my muscles free of trigger points and stiffness, and icing my sore muscles to eliminate swelling. Where before I served my family boxed garbage like hamburger helper, canned corn and a big heaping basket of white bread covered in hydrogenated oil, aka margarine, I now serve my family a heaping plate of raw vegetables every single night, cook gluten free whenever I can, and we eat real butter and eggs from chickens that we know. It didn’t happen overnight, for sure. And it is an ever evolving process, but when you change your mindset, this lifestlye begins to organically form on its own and before you know it, your entire thought process shifts and it becomes second nature.
This is why it is so exciting to be preparing my body for baby. This time around I am thinking differently. I am paying attention to my body. I am taking care of myself. I am eating right, exercising, and keeping my mind and spirit clean with Reiki treatments, meditation and yoga. Last time, I was so young and in a terrible relationship with someone who didn’t treat me very well at all. I was under so much stress, and I worked all day and had to put my baby in daycare. This time around, I am with the man I was put on this planet to love. And I am loved so very much by him. My week consists of working as a massage therapist 3 days a week, having lunch with a friend at least once a week, and spending my Fridays doing yoga, getting massages and keeping my body strong and healthy. I own my own business, so I am able to set my own schedule and the best part of the whole thing is my office is about four blocks from my home and on the way to my kids’ school. Life is pretty darned good. 🙂
All of this sounds like I am bragging about my life…and I am a little. This life didn’t fall in my lap. This life was created by me. I sat at my desk living the same life my mother lived, waiting for the weekends, hating my life, being so bored by what I did that I cried sometimes at my desk, spending most of my day fighting with my husband, over money or jealousies or god only knows what. Sitting in hours of traffic every week just to be hundreds of dollars overdrawn every payday, and never spending time with my kids except for barking at them to clean up or leave me alone. This WAS my way of being. This is the pattern of my childhood and my mother. I repeated this pattern because I didn’t know who I was. I fought with my step kids because that is what I saw her do. But one day I realized that this wasn’t good enough for me. This wasn’t the life I wanted, and I was better than the life I had created for myself. What a revelation that was! I had spent so much time wallowing in victim-ness, hating all the people whose fault it was that I found myself here – in white lady suburban hell – that I didn’t realize the most important part! I put myself here! And I could get myself out!
6 years, a whole lot of Oprah’s Lifeclass and Super Soul Sunday and about a million self help and spirituality books, lectures and podcasts later, and I finally get it. I finally get what it means to be happy. It’s about falling madly in love with yourself. I know that sounds crazy, but it is the KEY to happiness. Finding out who you really are on the deepest level and then doing things that nurture that true you is what it’s all about. When you do this, everything in your life falls into place. Relationship troubles, money problems, weight issues, job drama…it all melts when you fall in love with you.
You no longer find yourself on the crap end of someone else’s bad day, because you don’t allow people to talk to you like that any more. You check your bank account every day, pay your bills first and on time and stop buying garbage you don’t need because you know that happiness comes from somewhere else entirely. You eat delicious, healthy food, and you learn to eat what your body wants and needs to be healthy, because you know that your body is your soul’s vehicle while on this earth, and you feel so good when you treat yourself right! You stop speaking to yourself in a negative, disrespectful way and you start to notice how you really do have pretty hair and your body is kinda sexy, now that you look at it. You start to enjoy your own company and so do others. People love to be around people who love themselves. Not in the ‘screaming, hey look at me, I will make you feel bad about yourself by yelling how great I am’ way, but in the ‘I love myself so much I am going to help you love yourself this much too’ way. People who don’t gossip because they have other, way more interesting things to talk about make long lasting friendships. And all of these things begin to show up in your life when you decide to put you up on the same pedestal you’ve put others for your whole life.
Even more importantly, your love flows over to your children, who learn from you how to properly love themselves as well. Your teenagers don’t get caught up in the drama of high school, because you’ve taught them that loving yourself doesn’t include allowing that type of behavior into your space and talking bad about others behind their back is an act of violence toward your self, not the other person. Your animals feel your love flowing out and want to share in it. It is a never ending flow into and out of yourself and it all starts with falling in love with you. Go, now, look in the mirror and say “I love you!” Say “I love you so much and I’m going to find out who you really are and what makes you happy and I’m going to get about the business of doing it! NOW!” Give yourself a hug! Yes! This is amazing.
There are so many ways to find out who you are on a deep level. I am a seeker. I know this about myself because I have studied Jung’s archetypes, which describe all the ways humans go about being human. This is a fascinating place to start. Read about the archetypes and ask yourself which ones speak to you, which ones remind you of yourself and which ones do you hate. There is a lot to be learned about the self here. Another wonderful way is to learn about astrology. Pull up your own birth chart and start to learn about the planets and stars and what meanings humans have attached to them. I am a Virgo with a Cancer moon and an Aquarius rising. I studied this relationship deeply and enjoy watching these energies play out in my life. My stubborn perfectionist at odds with the mystical Aquarius and the ever emotional moon. Whether or not you believe that the stars and planets influence humans on earth, there is much to be learned about the self here, and that is the point of the exercise. Tarot is a fantastic way to find out what you might be hiding even from yourself. Looking at the images on the cards invokes emotions that point to the true nature of what you are feeling or experiencing, even if you aren’t aware of it yet. There are as many ways to explore your true self as there are to explore the spirit. Have fun with it and find the one that really rings your bell!
If you’ve never really explored any of these methods of self examination and self understanding, I promise you, they aren’t what you think they are. They are much, much cooler. Don’t believe what you’ve heard, go find out for yourself! I will tell you with absolute certainty that it is the most worthwhile adventure you will ever embark on. Nothing is the same when you approach life from a place of truth and understanding about your self. So, I ask…who loves you baby? I hope it’s YOU! <3 Namaste. 🙂