Love Notes for Friendship

How did it take twelve days to come up with this one??
I am surrounded by such amazing people everywhere and I marvel at it every day.
Today was particularly amazing–at the gym, at lunch, over text, and in snail mail.
Our relationships save us, my friends. Let us cultivate them with care and attention.

  1. Age Race Profession Country of origin Religion — Friendship can connect us across all of these boundaries and more, if we let it.

2. From ‘On Friendhip’ — Kahlil Gibran When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

3. Relationships evolve. Friends may come and go, and come back again. We can welcome and roll with it all. We’re all human. We all change. It’s all okay.

4. It’s not gifts, words, or meals shared, necessarily. It’s presence, I think. Intentional attunement, attention, and resonance to energy. Friendship.

5. Dear friends: Find them, be them: Kind – Generous – Fun – Open – Curious – Empathic – Supportive – Nonjudgmental – Loyal – Honest – Present – Accountable.

6. I wish you friends like I have! And that is the best wish I can ever bestow, because I have the BEST f*ing friends EVER!

7. May your people always be at your elbow and your fingertips, not only when you need their support in struggle, but when you celebrate everything good!

8. We all need that one friend who will show up for us no matter what. No questions. No judgments. ‘Move a body friends,’ I think Brene Brown calls them. Hell yes.

9. Bee butts. Eileen sends me photos when she sees them because she knows how much I love them. May you have at least one bee butt friend.

10. I knoe you’re my friend because you are honest. I know you are honest because you tell me hard truths. And you do it kindly. Like I said, you’re my friend.

11. This is exciting! We just never know when, where, or how we will meet our next great friend! It could be anywhere, anytime! AnyONE! How AWESOME is that!?

12. I think we all need more collage frames to display all of those silly candid photos of friends being silly and joyful together, just being themselves.

144 of 360 completed, friends! And I think this daily dozen project is going well so far! I’m still having fun, and my process efficiency improves by the day. The notes are stacking up, though. Still contemplating what I will do with them all after the month ends! Ideas are welcome! More tomorrow!

Love Notes for Gratitude

OH but I should wait until Thanksgiving to post this one, right? Oh well, I feel overwhelming gratitude today so I will post this today! The world is better when we express gratitude in real time, no??

What are you grateful for today? How have you already expressed it? How much better is your day, your life, when you do?

With abandon, my friends. Effuse it. Let’s go.

  1. One year I wrote a thank you card a day. It was a centering experience. Maybe I can do it again in the New Year? God knows I have enough CARDS! 😀

2. Thank you for being you, sharing yourself with the rest of us, and not depriving us of the great joy and pleasure of knowing you.

3. Family Friends Teachers Colleagues Good Leaders Kind Strangers — Any human with a kind heart — Thank you all!

4. What is the silliest, most absurd thing that you are really grateful for? I have so many but pretty paper, OMG. Life would just not be as good without it!!

5. Holy COW, so much to be thankful for. And today I feel it especially for all the folks to trust me. What a big privilege and honor.

6. May all of your myriad acts of gratitude be reinforced so you stay motivated to commit them often and with great enthusiasm! More more more please! Thank you!

7. When someone opens up and shares something personal, we need to thank them for it. Because that is an act of bravery and trust, and needs to be acknowledged. Let’s pay attention, k?

8. I think it’s a great idea to always keep on hand paper and pen to write our gratitude down so it is documented and shared. This way it’s amplified and there is more of it in the world.

9. A quarter of this century is almost over! Holy cow! Thank our lucky stars that we are all still here, holding one another up! Let’s keep going, yes?

10. Do you have gratitude rituals? I don’t. But I think practices are more important and easier than rituals… When they are spontaneous and second nature–all the better!

11. I bet you made someone’s life better today and I am grateful for that because it made the world better and that is how we survive the shit show! Thank you!

12. How has gratitude (yours or others’) made your life better today? Wouldn’t it be even better if there were more of it getting tossed around?

Teehee, those came out fast. More where they came from–stay tuned. 🙂

Love Notes for Balance

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. 😉