Category Archives: mindfulness

Love Notes for Revival

Posted on by
Reply

Today I notice people taking charge, exercising their agency to make their own lives better.
We often don’t control our circumstances. We may not even have much influence.
Still, we can almost always choose our response. Fight, flight, advocate, exit, other.

When exit it feasible, ambivalence hovers: stay or go? Which way does the balance of risk/benefit tip?

For any of us challenged with stagnation, burnout, or low energy and fulfillment otherwise, may something among these twelve love notes bring ease and movement.

  1. Rest and recovery are essential and necessary for balance and health. May yours be regular and effective, recharging you to full wattage!

2. Wishing you the time, space, light, and bandwidth to be with your wholeness, to bring back into the fold those parts that may be exiled. It’s worth the effort.

3. Revival looks different for each of us, I think. May your achieve yours in your way, at yor pace, to the extent you need. And may you help others do theirs. We are here to help one another.

4. I hope you never, ever experience burnout. But if you do, I wish you everything and everybody you need for it to be brief and mild. May meaning always outweight stress.

5. What lies asleep within you that now stirs to wakefulness? How will you foster its arousal and engagement, its integration with your expansion?

6. When your energy wanes and your lids and limbs feel laden and heavy, may you inhale the breath of renewed spirt. May it lift you.

7. OH I just wish for you to feel that surge of energy every day that makes you happy to be alive among the rest of us! Let’s see where you get it from today!

8. Things you do for fun, people who bring you joy – Never sacrifice these for more productivity or money. We never think we will, and yet we too often do. Just wanna remind ya.

9. No matter what you’re doing through, may the steady rhythm of self-efficacy and hope beat sonorously from the core of your soul, filling your tank reliably full.

10. What’s your latest fun new hobby? How are you growing some new neural networks i that infinite potential of brain you have? What is possible for you?

11. However your batteries get charged, dear one – That is wht I wish for you every day. So you may run on FULL and expend yourself freely and generously on the rest of us!

12. How do you energize? I hope you have multiple, indepdendent ways – like your back-up generators in all different parts of the house!

I think I need to mind my metaphors better, and stop mixing them!
Happy weekend, dear readers. Hope we all get to relax and revive at least a little.

Love Notes for Balance

Posted on by
2

Tonight’s post inspired by Ginny Clarke @ginny_clarke on Instagram:
“True power moves from stillness. Real productivity flows from presence.
When you’re always in motion, you cannot hear your intuition. When you’re constantly busy, you cannot receive inspiration.
Your soul didn’t come here to be a productivity machine.
Find the stillness within the storm.”

Balance is a dynamic state, I have said for a long time. I have learned four iterative lessons from five months of slackboard balance practice:
1. Activate the core
2. Relax
3. Feel it more than think it
4. Consistency, even if infrequent, yields results over time.
And of course, good music makes everything easier and more fun.

Head over to my Instagram page @chenger91 and check out the slackboard story highlight reels. I record every session, though I don’t necessarily post. I learn a lot from watching myself and seeing progress from a different perspective. Standing on one foot on a two inch strap, shifting weight and moving in the sagittal plane while maintaining center of gravity in the midline coronally–FUN to train! And I’m getting better, which is gratifying.

Wishing all the dynamic balance that allows us to stay strong and soft, rooted and flexible, stable and mobile, all in a great cosmic integration, within ourselves and among one another.

The next twelve love notes below; which ones resonate with you?

  1. Light and dark, masculine and feminine, hard and soft, left and right. We each and all possess both. It is up to us to find the beneficial blend.

2. Persist until you yield. Go until you rest. Repeat. Find the rhythm that works. And in the process, may you find meaning and connection always.

3. Today may you feel a better integration of the disparate parts of yourself – the parts that are apparently in conflict. They are all part of your whole. They each have a place.

4. Sometimes we swing too far to one side or the other. It’s normal. No big deal. We can learn to manage the momentum and velocity better each time.

5. Extremes are rarely sustainable. Nature tends toward mutually beneficial balance in the long term. But storms still happen, and can alter the landscpe. Hang on. We can ride it.

6. Most things take practice for proficiency. We are born with a sense of symmetry but not necessarily balance. The latter can be trained. But we must engage.

7. May that which feels imbalanced for you find its way to a stable center, at least for a little while. May it let you rest and gain a new perspective, such that deviations from center diminish.

8. When did we learn to take turns? Such a brilliant concept. Fairness. Recipirocity. Mutual respect and accountability. Offer. Receive. And back again.

9. Do you prefer to stand on your right or left foot? How would training the opposite benefit you in ways you may not expect? Now I’m not just talking about slackboards.

10. Even the scorched forrest grows back more lush than before. It just takes time. So we can practice patience. And advocate consistently. From all sides. Just maybe leave the matches at home.

11. May the forces that push and pull you out of balance, both intrinsic and extrinsic, find you increasingly stable and resilient to their disruptive influences. May your roots ground you.

12. *sigh* So many moving parts in thls life! :O Is it not amazing that we can move through it all with any sense of balance and stability? So pat yourself on the back–you’re doing great!

Oooo, fascinating. I had no idea so much political inuendo would emerge in this set! Is it obvious? Not sure I’ve ever written anything like that before… Maybe I will try my hand at allegory one day. 😉

Love Notes for Work

Posted on by
Reply

Listening to the end of Coming Up Short, Robert Reich’s memoir. Daughter and I saved it to listen on the road trip to college at the end of August. We finished all but the last two hours, which I could not bring myself to continue alone until now, nine weeks later. Highly recommend! His stories are rich and heartfelt, and I respect his principles and values. He is forthright and honest in his unflinching conviction and passion for lifting the middle/working class and making government work for all, not just the rich, an ideal to which he has dedicated his professional life. Reich describes his emotions at retirement, including gratitude and ambivalence. I wonder how I will feel when I stop seeing patients for a living, though I imagine I will always think of myself as a doctor.

So I hope I can come up with twelve excellent love notes for work!

Two days into thirty, I notice how redundant these love notes feel to write and reread all at once. As readers can you see these post titles as a list? Does it occur to you to read the first couple each day this month and save the rest for later? Would it work to dip in and out of this blog throughout this month and beyond, depending on what love note you need/want on a given day? Would you come here to pluck a love note for a friend or loved one? At the same time it feels a little awkward to write them this way, I wonder if these thirty days could be a closer approximation of my love notes pocketbook than I initially imagined? Hmmm, we shall see! 😀

Let us continue:

  1. OK so, my friend, what do you love about your work? How does it fulfill youo and bring you joy? I hope you can count multiple ways!

2. Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose. May you feel these enough or even in spades daily. Now go forth and badass this day.

3. You work. Whether or not you make money is a different story. You spend time and energy doing, and that matters. You. Matter. onward.

4. May the meaning and personal fulfillment in your work far outweigh its stress over the long term! And if not, may you cope healthily.

5. Even if your work is solitary, may you always know without a doubt the positive impact it has on those it touches. And may you(r) support network live at your fingertips.

6. Our culture too often equates work or career with identity. If that works for you, yay! If not, good on you! You contain multitudes. Your job is only one aspect of you.

7. What inspires motivates gratifies you at work today? This week? Ever? May it recur on your consciousness regularly!

8. Whatever B.S. you must cope with at your job (because let’s be honest we all do), may it take a backseat to your mission and purpose. You’ got work to do.

9. However you describe your job — maker, helper, builder or anything else, may you feel meaning and intrinsic joy in it every day!

10. Hey, maybe take a break from work today and *dance*!? 😀 Who knows how life could be better if we all did this daily? Go on, twirl a little.

11. May your next work day bring you the meaning you most need, and interactions with our fellow humans that lift you in the best ways!

12. May you always see, feel, and internalize the value of your work to humanity. You do good, and that matters. Onward! You matter.

Thanks for coming with me on this love note trip with me! Please tell me how it’s going? 🙂