How Do You Want to FEEL?

How do you want to feel?

What will you do to feel the way you want to feel?

I ask myself these questions almost every day as a way of checking in with myself. Three answers always come up- Peace, Joy, and Love. Yeah, it's all rainbows and butterflies, but it's so much more. 

Peace

For me, peace means living with ease, being well rested, quiet, zen, safety, security, care-free, freedom to be myself. It's a quiet feeling, where I can fully relax, breathe, and know that all is well. 

Joy

For me, joy means feeling alive, looking at the world with awe, feeling inspired, excited, happy, motivated, freedom to explore, learn, and grow. It's expansive, big, like I can do anything, running through the fields with arms wide open kind of feeling. 

Love

For me, love feels like belonging, being fully accepted, being seen and heard, gratitude, giving, serving, connection. 

Connection

I keep coming back to connection. What does connection mean to me?

It means being first and foremost connected with myself- in body, mind and spirit. I do this through self-care practices of yoga, meditation, journaling, oracle cards, dance, food, therapy, learning, sleep, being in nature, in solitude.

When I have fulfilled my basic needs and am feeling centered and clear, I can move outside of my own body into my physical surroundings and connect with others- my relationships, my home, my work space, and more nature.

When I feel connected to the people in my life and my surroundings, I can give even more and I ask what can I offer the world? What am I naturally talented at? What do I love doing? How can I combine those and serve my community?

It starts within and moves outwards, expanding infinitely with love. 💖🦋✨🌈☀️🌴🌱💚

How I Handle Exhaustion

Work hard. Play hard. REST hard.

I live my life in extremes. I try to tone it back sometimes but it goes against my nature. I've never used that phrase "work hard play hard" to describe my life but lately I am realizing that is exactly how I live my life. The missing component is the REST. I usually go go go until I get sick. My body forces me to stop. I will travel every other weekend for months, go out dancing til 2am, and do all the things accessible to me as a millennial living in a major metropolis. I will also take many nights in solitude, in silence. Just me and my breath, my heartbeat, my journal, and the slowest yoga I can practice to counteract the fast paced living. This isn't forever (nothing is) but this is my life right now and I'm not going to wait for it to slow down before I rest. I am going to build in, schedule in, the rest time that my body is craving. 

A friend recently asked how I handle the exhaustion. Here was my response:

I'm still figuring it out (which I might always be doing) but I surrender to it. I let go of the need to push harder, whether that's working out more, doing more, reading more. I stop scheduling so many things. I stop making too many plans. I straighten up my room, light a candle, take a shower, and just sit. Just be. My mind wants to be checking facebook or reading psychology articles while I'm sitting (doesn't everyone do that for fun?), but those things aren't truly resting. So I listen to the silence around me. Listen to my favorite music. Be by myself. 

When I'm eating, I see it as idle time and want to be reading, on Facebook or instagram too. Staying distracted. But I take a moment to look at my food, think about all the ingredients in it, where each ingredient came from, who had to plant the seeds, harvest them, transport them on a truck, bring them to the store or restaurant, all for me to have this singular meal. It blows my mind how easily accessible food is for us.

I connect with my physical body through all its senses.

I clean my body and clean my surroundings.

I get out of my head and into my body.

Just be.

Be Still

I sat alone at my dining table that is technically an ikea desk, facing the third floor view of rooftops and treetops, and ate dinner in silence. It sounds like a sad scene but it's one of the most profound moments I've had recently. Initially, there was silence. Then... I started to hear the sounds outside floating in through the open window. The warm spring breeze rustling the young leaves in old trees. The whoosh of the occasional car on the next block, fast wheels on pavement, piercing the air. The distant grumble of the train nearly a mile away. Airplane engines, transporting people with their own lives and agendas, to their destination at O'Hare. Occasional human voices. Chattering of the squirrels. Bird chirps and wing flutters as they played. Suddenly the ticking clock behind me sounded deafeningly loud. I brought my awareness into my body. The feel of the air drifting in the window and past my arms as it filled the room. I could feel my blood pumping. Slow and nearly imperceptible. The light outside had faded so gradually and suddenly that I didn't realize until I looked around and noticed I was sitting in darkness. 

I took another moment to appreciate the stillness and silence. There was no music playing, no tv show on in the background, and it allowed me to notice how much was going on around me.  

The theme of these past couple weeks has been "Be still." I have a tendency to fill all my waking moments with plans to distract myself when things get hard, but I've been consciously choosing to do less. I've been sitting with a lot of uncomfortable feelings coming up around unworthiness, jealousy, and judgement. Working through them has paved a path of gratitude for where I am in life. There are a few big trips coming up in the next month that I am looking forward to, but this awe and gratitude for life is found in the day to day, mundane moments, like eating dinner.

Quit It with the Fix It Energy

This week alone, two friends posted about it and I read it in a book. This “fix it” energy. Trying to fix other people’s problems without an invitation for advice. It’s my go-to action. Or is that a knee jerk re-action? Is anyone else guilty of this? 

I’m learning how to sit back and truly listen without barreling full steam ahead with my toolbox. I noticed it last week when a friend told me about his computer problems and I immediately started troubleshooting it. It took a while before I stopped and it hit me, like a cartoon character running headfirst into a stop sign. Bam! Dramatic fall! Ouch. He didn’t ask for help. He was just telling me about his day. 

It’s even more prevalent and more ambiguous when it comes to emotions. When someone else is sad, I try and fix it, try and find the source of it and make it all better. Is it because of my own inability to sit with my sadness? 

Yesterday, I was on this high-energy buzz of gratitude. The weather was perfect, one of my amazing coworkers gave me a cheer up self-care package full of lush products, I booked plane tickets to go to Seattle to teach yoga at a workshop (SAY WHAT?!?! More about this later!), and amazing things were happening to amazing people in my life from entrepreneurship awards to job offers. 

When I woke up this morning, I felt sad. I’ve been waking up in tears in the middle of every night this week, missing my dog (don’t fix this for me, it’s mine to own). I immediately went on Facebook, hoping for something to spark the feel good rush from yesterday. It didn’t work. The hamster wheel in my mind started turning, racing, as I tried to find the source of my sadness. The gloomy weather? Unanswered text? Not yet Saturday? Missing my dog? This break up? I suddenly stopped myself in this frantic search and realized, what does it matter? Am I just trying to find the source of the emotion so that I can change it? So that I can avoid it? I just let myself be sad, without trying to figure out why, without trying to change it. It’s okay to feel the way I feel. 

I rolled out my mat. The clouds outside literally parted and the sun came out.