Category Archives: stress management

Love Notes for Dancing

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Shake it, friends! What rhythms find you today? How will you sway those hips and sashay those steps out on the street? I wish for us all to let loose a little more, offering our inner and outer music to one another more routinely, normalizing dancing through our activities of daily living. Standing desks are the best for this–what a great invention!

Dancey You. Full of joy. Cardio in work clothes. Let’s go.

  1. When words fail us, may music step up and connect us through rhythmic movement — We can dance rather than talk our way to our togetherness.

2. What’s the ideal rhythm for your gait? Once you find it, you can curate your street walking playlist. Every day is more fun after that!

3. May life bring you dance partners of all kinds, who will teach you new steps and broaden your world in the most musical ways!

4. What are your playlists? Who do you invite to share each? May you have dance partners stashed all over your life!

5. May songs from your formative years visit you when you least expect them, stirring you out of your torpor and moving your bottom deliciously!

6. Ever seen that lady who walks on the treadmill like it’s a fashion runway and her personal theme song plays in her ears? I wanna be her.

7. What is the next activity that you can convert happily into a dance? Who can you pull onto your makeshift dance floor?

8. Have you ever watched those dance improv contests? How can we incorporate dancing into our creative lives? Let’s mooove!

9. OH I just wish for the freest part of your spirit to fly ahead of your body and lead the latter in the funnest choreography!

10. When you feel that familiar fatigue of post-lunch workday lag, may a favorite song pop into your head and overtake your body!

11. May we all have multiple chances to dance freely, joyfully, and shamelessly to our favorite music every day!

12. This one is for Dancey Shane! Thank you for your kitchen boogy videos–they always make our days and inspire our own jams!

I like these lighthearted Love Note days. Sometimes we just need to shake it out and have fun. Happy weekend, friends– More tomorrow!

Love Notes for Lightness

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It’s too easy to get sucked into anger, sadness, despair, and even hopelessness these days. So much conflict, assumption of malice, and utter disconnection, my goodness.
But in our quieter moments, we can find equanimity a bit more easily.
Play, humor, and lightness help us get there.
It’s okay to let ourselves laugh and poke fun. It doesn’t mean we don’t care, it doesn’t diminish the weight of the world’s problems.
It helps us cope.
Lightness liberates creativity and connection, which are key for solving the problems that distress us the most.
Let’s see what light I can call forth tonight, yes?

  1. Assuming NO CONSEQUENCE, whose house would you drunkenly break into to swap bedroom furniture with, and what would you write on the ransom note?

2. On the nearest piece of paper, QUICK: Assign each of your friends a character from the Muppets, Sesame Street, The Simpsons, or South Park. Imagine you all go camping in winter.

3. What if there were a chain smoking, cocaine snorting, sexually deviant squirrel looking in your window every day? What story would it tell its friends about you?

4. I think I will try to cultivate a dance habit. Every day, at least one song. Whatever mood or playlist speaks or calls to me, so long as I move my body accordingly.

5. Rule #6: Don’t take yourself so damn seriously. — The Art of Possibility, B and RS Zander
We have serious work to do but we can be light in our approach.

6. Make sure you can always be made to laugh. It ensures you can still access your humanity. And it’s contagious so you can make people around you feel better. That’s good.

7. What do you call a dear with no eyes? No ideer. What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs? Still no ideer. –As told by my niece. I still laugh.

8. Sometimes we just need some serious absurdity to shake us out of a funk. What is the most preposterous combination of animals you could assemble at a fairy coronation?

9. The next time you walk down the street, try strutting like you’re on a runway. Why not? The world IS your runway. Own it! Let loose your awesome self.

10. When you get stuck, play. Step away from the serious grind and put it down, even for five minutes. It’s like pressing your mental reset. Try it!

11. Who is your comic relief spirit animal? Do you relate more to Tom or Jerry? Road Runner or Wiley Coyote? Mickey or Donald? May your inner cartoon idiot keep you humble and fun!

12. “Dolpins are assholes,” I’m told. I wonder what other cute animals are actually a total menace? Besides humans, that is. We are definitely not as cute as we think

Okay friends, this may be the least coherent, most nonsensical set of jar smiles I have ever written. Must get to bed. I can hardly wait to see what I come up with tomorrow!

Love Notes for Revival

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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.