+As (a.k.a. Positive Affirmations)

I am a believer in positive affirmations.  I think they can help us to turn the way we look at something around and to get rid of negative brain chatter.  I don't know when positive affirmations took hold in the world of psychology as a healthy practice, but I know that the Saturday Night Live skit of Stuart Smalley debuted over twenty years ago and was created by comedian Al Franken (I am laughing about this skit even now and about the way my brain works too!)

What's new, at least to me, is that instead of using someone else's positive affirmations, I can write my own.  I recommend writing them somewhere, like in a journal, or on a running list, that we can go back to again and again.  Whenever I feel inspired to write a positive affirmation, I put "+A" in my journal so that I can find any positive affirmations readily when I do a "look back" to see where I have been and how far I've come.

Here are a few of mine:

• My physical body supports me.
• The Spirit* is in me.
• I hope for the best for all people.
• God* wants me to have dreams.

Reflective questions:

1.  Do you have a journal?  Why or why not?

2.  What's one positive affirmation that comes to mind for today?

3.  What does God* want you to know about this (ask directly, God, what do you want me to know?)

* I use the term God as a universal term.  You may decide that Great Spirit, Allah, Higher Power, etc. better suits you today.  It is not for me to decide.

Give God Direction and then Forget About It

I have let myself off the hook by giving *God direction.  It is so freeing, I really should consider doing it more often.  Here are three examples.

When I began providing massage 7 years ago, with my first touch of each client I silently prayed, "God, please give my hands what this person needs."  And then one time I forgot to pray at the start and so I said, "God, know that my intention is that I ask for your help with every massage, even when I forget to ask."  So then when I forget, I know God still has my back (and my client's!)

I do not enjoy public speaking (my hands get clammy, I get underarm stains, I stress about it days before, etc.), but it is a necessity sometimes for the work I am called to do, paid or unpaid. And so I ask God to help me. Whenever I ask God beforehand, I relax more and deliver the message from the heart.  There are times when I am asked to speak without preparation and in order to feel prepared spontaneously I ask God to be in it with me each time I must speak to a group, large or small.  So eventually I asked God to give me the best words for each situation, even if I don't pray specifically beforehand.

Writing this blog sometimes gives me angst because I am putting myself out there.  So I have said, "God, help me to write from the heart in a way that is life giving for the subjects, especially the people I am writing about."  And God knows this is on my heart, so if I forget to pray it before each post, I know God knows this so I can forget about it.

Reflective questions:

1.  What would you like to hand over to God?

2.  What does God* want you to know about this (ask directly, God, what do you want me to know?)

* I use the term God as a universal term.  You may decide that Great Spirit, Allah, Higher Power, etc. better suits you today.  It is not for me to decide.

When Work is Work, Quit! (Is it a Sunrise or a Sunset?)

Reading this title might make you mad, especially if you hate your job and you can't quit.  I get it!  I wanted to quit my job and kept saying "In three more years I should be able to quit."  However, if you do that over and over, like I did for many years, three more years just doesn't come!

But it might not even be your job.  It might be something you have loved doing, but it has become work.  For me, it is my vegetable garden.  Some veggies I start indoors (tomatoes, peppers), some I buy sets (onions), some I direct sow seeds into the garden (pumpkins, beets).  This year is the first year that I had real frustrations.  A pest to the onion family, the allium leafminer wiped out onions, garlic and leeks.  Ground hogs ate all the small, tender yellow squash and zucchini, leaving me with veggie clubs.  It has felt like a chore at times, so I feel called to let my garden go fallow next year.  I am going to quit this garden.

But remember, quitting doesn't need to be forever.  Maybe it is just a much needed break from something we've been doing for awhile.  For my veggie garden, I may decide to start up again the following year, or in a few years, but for now I feel a call to quit, to take a break, to rest.  It will open up space for other things.  So I thank *God for the allium leafminer, sort of!

Reflective questions:

1.  What hobby, job, or even person do you want to quit (even temporarily)?

2.  Why haven't you?

3.  What does God* want you to know about this (ask directly, God, what do you want me to know?)

* I use the term God as a universal term.  You may decide that Great Spirit, Allah, Higher Power, etc. better suits you today.  It is not for me to decide. 

What's Your Heart Language?

Some people know flowers.  Like author Vanessa Diffenbaugh who had a hit first novel in 2011 called Language of Flowers.  She weaved into the novel the meanings of flowers initiated during the Victorian Era.  Who knew that every flower was given a meaning?  And not just common flowers like roses, lillies, carnations and daisies, but obscure ones that people who speak the language of flowers would know.

I know birds.  At some point I went gangbusters into developing perennial gardens to attract a variety of birds.  Eventually I had become quite good at learning to identify backyard birds and even some of their songs.  And because of these experiences I had an attraction to anything and everything about birds. That's why I was attracted to a celophane-wrapped-you-must-buy-it-first-to-know-what-it-really-is box with bird pictures all over it.  It said the box included a book and cards.  It's called Bird Signs by GG Carbone.  The title wasn't telling to me what it was about, but it said "come on, take a chance on me!" I am so glad that I did!  What I liked about the book is that it helped me learn more about the habitats and behaviors of a variety of birds. Eventually I found the cards that came with it were terrific for meditation because each card had one type of bird and one word on it.  It's because the author, and many others, have attached meanings to so many different kinds of birds.

And so it happened that I learned the "meanings" of birds. Now, when a bird catches my attention, especially when I have somehing on my heart, but even when I actively don't, I pay attention to its meaning.   Like when a house wren came in through a vent into the house or a woodpecker banged incessantly on my chimney dome, I thought of its meaning, or when a vulture stood with wings widespread over roadkill right smack in the middle of my suburban street, I gave pause,  And it is always what I need to "hear."

To me, this is another way that *God may choose to speak to us.  He simply takes what delights us, what makes our hearts sing and uses it as a way to reach us.

Reflective questions:

1.  What makes your heart sing?

2.  Do any of these interests include a variety within a subject (insects, precious metals or minerals, etc.) which already have meanings attached to each one?  If not, is it something you feel a calling towards, to attach meanings to each type in order to create a heart language?

3.  What does God* want you to know about this (ask directly, God, what do you want me to know?)

* I use the term God as a universal term.  You may decide that Great Spirit, Allah, Higher Power, etc. better suits you for today.  It is not for me to decide.

Abundance - Break it Down!!!

Living in abundance requires taking risks.  They don't need to be big risks either.  In fact, starting off small is ideal and whether small or large risks, they require luxurious thinking.  Luxurious thinking includes thoughts like "I am worth it" and "why not me?," and "I know I should do it" and they lead to luxury purchases (small luxury, small risk; bigger luxury, bigger risk),     For me, an example of a small luxury is a spur of the moment purchase at a chocalatier shop.  Why?  Because I am worth it!

What makes it a luxury you might ask?  It's a luxury if it's better than the every day item and it makes you feel exhilerated.  For example, I feel intoxicated when I taste something dipped in high quality dark chocolate sprinkled with sea salt, like pretzles topped with caramel.  I bought 14 ounces on Sunday for less than $10.00, shared them on the way home, and had even more to eat and share when I got home.  Side note:  sharing the luxury can make the experience even better.

But sometimes it is harder for me to pull the trigger when the expense is a little higher and I have already made other purchases.  Being on vacation and already spending on airfare or accomodations is one example; an emergency car repair is another example.  When this happens, often we have already invested significant disposable income or maybe we didn't budget enough.  How do we think luxuriously then?  In this case luxurious thinking requires me to trick Nagging Nelly who lives in a corner of my brain.  Nagging Nelly is the one that tells me, "there's always next time," "what makes you special," "there might be a catastrophe and then where will you be?"  Trust me, the list goes on and on.  It is at these times that I have to break the abundance down, turning it into a smaller increment, so that I can trick Nagging Nelly into believing that it's not an unreasonable amount because God* is teaching me to live abundantly, to enjoy His creations, to experience everything that is in my line of sight while I am on this tremendous earth!

For example, if paddle boarding is a luxury that says to me, "do it, think abundantly, you are worth it," but Nagging Nelly says "it seems extravagant", then I may need to break the expenses down.  If there are 4 people interested in participating, even if I must treat the group or go without, then 4 is the dividing number. So if 4 people paddle boarded for 4 hours then I don't need to think of it as spending $100 but I can think of it in a smaller increment:  $25 per person for the activity, or if that seems to be too much, then 16 hours of fun for $6.25 per hour per person.  That seems totally worth it AND it is because it doesn't even factor the amount of time that feeling of exhileration stayed with me and the others.

At the end of the day, I do need to have the money.  This is not about throwing caution to the wind if there is a serious debt problem.  There I would recommend hunkering down, getting expert advice, and celebrating milestones with a mini luxury such as a decadent treat like one chocoalate covered strawberry.

Reflective questions:

1.  Think about some small luxuries which seem extravagant, but when you pulled the trigger, created euphoria for you and maybe even others.  How does it feel thinking about them now?

2.  How do you know when luxurious spending is God-directed and when it isn't? 

3.  What does God* want you to know about this (ask directly, God what do you want me to know?)

* I use the term God as a universal term.  You may decide that Great Spirit, Allah, Higher Power, etc. better suits you for today.  It is not for me to decide.