Revisiting my Word of the Year

On today's GUTS call our coach asked us about our word of the year. Do we remember what it is? How has our word shaped our year?

Well, I have to admit I had to look it up to see what it was! My word this year is Develop. And as I read my post from January about my intentions for this word this year, I realize that I did pretty darn well! I have developed deeper friendships with some wonderful, truly amazing women in town, I've developed my writing (a little!), I've certainly developed my website and WOW, have I ever developed as a healer!

I started out the year somewhere in the middle of the Healing Touch training, and am finishing the year strong as a Certified SimplyHealed Practitioner - truly changing people lives by helping them clear out all the stuff they've been dragging along.

Some other things have certainly developed this year that I hadn't anticipated back in January. I didn't even know about doTERRA Essential Oils until late May and yet now that is a large part of my life - affecting just about everything I do! I love developing myself as a leader in this exciting company.

So, we have 31 days left of this year. Reggie has challenged us to make them count. How will you make the last 31 days count so you can go into 2012 with appreciation for yourself and a job well done?

Talented

I am grateful that I am talented in the art of clearing emotional garbage for my SimplyHealed clients! It is so rewarding to work with someone and help them clean up the crap they've been dragging around with them, to help them move on to a more positive life!

Compassionate

Today I got to spend a few hours with my Transitions client. I love that I am compassionate and have the freedom of time to spend two hours a week with a senior who lives alone.

I also am grateful that my client is interested in ideas and open to learning new things - our time together is so fulfilling!

Follow Through

I love that I now follow through with things and no longer procrastinate! It feels SO good to just get things done!

Connection

Our new interim minister started this fall and I've been attending just about as many services as I can since he came. I even joined the choir, which means that on the Sundays we sing, I sit through both (almost identical) services!

Well, this morning as I came in the building carrying the 15 tablecloths I washed from the Thanksgiving Fest Event, just about every other person I passed greeted me by name, before I was even able to put my name tag on! Now I know what it feels like to once again be connected to my church community. It has been a long six years without that connection and I'm so grateful to have it in my life again.

I don't know that this post is really within the assignment, but I am grateful for my ability to make these connections. There! I made it fit!

My Business

Today I am super grateful for my business and my ability to attract amazing people to my business. I love getting to know wonderful people through my work.

Abstention

Today is Black Friday - the beginning of the Christmas shopping frenzy. I'm grateful that I don't have to participate. I'm grateful that I shop locally when I do shop and I grateful for living in a place where this wasn't an event!

Endurance

Today was a long, wonderful day full of people, service, fun, food, connecting...

I got to the church at 10:30 to help with set up for our Fest Event, after waiting for what seemed like forever for it to get that late! I was at the church until about noon, came home and make another dish for the potluck, then headed back to the church at 3:00 to start cooking gravy and potatoes. In the kitchen until 5:30, then enjoying wonderful food (love that we have both vegan and gluten-free sections at our potlucks), conversation, games, and a tad bit of clean up before heading home at 9:30.

It was a marathon of a day, but oh so satisfying!

So in light of what this day brought, I am grateful for my endurance. I was pretty much full of energy up to the end. I even volunteered to bring the big stack of dirty tablecloths home to wash - one and a half loads today, the rest tomorrow!

Powerful Intention

Wow! I've really learned how to use my powerful intention in my life. Today after dropping Stephanie off for her early morning flight, I was faced, once again, with heavy rain and extra heavy holiday traffic.

Each time it looked like it was going to slow down I said an affirmation about traffic flowing freely where I needed to go and it just would!

I'm a Good Driver

Today, driving Stephanie up to Portland to catch an early morning flight tomorrow, I'm very grateful that I'm such a good driver. The conditions where pretty terrible - raining cats and dogs with holiday traffic thrown in for good measure!

Even with the less than ideal conditions we made it without any problems.

Working on Self

I'm grateful for the time I take to work on myself and be a better me. Part of that is doing exercises like this where I delve into what I appreciate about myself. We can all use a little more appreciation in our lives and I believe it is important to give ourselves what we need. That's why I buy myself flowers and chocolates when I want them!

Authenticity

I am grateful for living an authentic life. I'm not perfect, and I don't want to be. Sometimes I slip, but I am always striving for my mission: Living a life of gratitude and authenticity.

I am Happy

I love that I'm a happy person. When I look around and see so many people who just don't get there, I'm especially grateful for my disposition!

Night Owl & Early Bird

Today is the last day of school for a week. I usually stay up pretty late and I'm oh so grateful that I'm not able to sleep in - I truly wake up naturally around 6:30 in the morning most mornings!

I'm actually only able to sleep about six and a half hours a night and I wake up perfectly rested and I'm energized all day! A lot of that has to do with the doTERRA supplements that I take each day, since before I started them, I had to sleep a full eight hours a night, but I can honestly say that I'm grateful to my body for reacting as it does to the supplements!

Deal with it!

I had to tell some workmen that I wasn't happy with the work they had done while I was away last week. They came to fix it, but weren't really able to fix it all that well. I'm grateful I was able to express my disappointment while being kind and not making them feel horrible. I do hate to deal with stuff like this, but I did it!

I always hate paying someone to do something I could have done better!

Letting Go

Today and Steve and Bekka leave for California, I am grateful for my ability to let go. To allow others in my life to go and explore without my need to manage, control, or be there. Wishing Bekka well in her championship competition!

Centeredness

Today I am grateful for my ability to be and remain centered. That is all. That is enough.

Healer

SimplyHealed has been such a gift this past week! Today I get to put into practice what I've been learning with a client I've been seeing for almost two years. I KNOW this healing session will stick and have lasting affects unlike my other work.

Today I am so truly grateful for the gift of healing. I have the ability to heal others (well, truly they heal themselves, but I have the ability to clear the congestion that is preventing them from healing!).

Spirituality

Today was the first day I ever recall being "called to prayer". As I was waking this morning, I had the overwhelming need to pray, and it was very, very specific. I felt completely called to pray for the living prophet of the LDS church to receive word from God that their stance on marriage equality be revised.

Later today, unknown to me earlier that morning, our church service was on marriage equality!

For some reason I feel that my prayer will be answered, I guess that's faith. I don't expect that it will be answered today, but I feel strongly that it will be answered soon.

I am so grateful for my new-found spirituality and my ability to be open and accepting of such diverse beliefs.

Immune System

Today I am ever so grateful for my Immune System and its ability to fight off bugs. I was feeling like I was really getting sick and with some Essential Oils and some SimplyHealed, I completely avoided actually getting sick.

Understanding

Today as my Simply Healed training finishes up, I'm grateful for my ability to understand concepts and put them all together to get the whole picture.

Digestion

Today, after many days in Utah eating food I don't normally eat, I'm ever so grateful for my body's ability to process foods and pull nutrients out of food that seem to be so lacking! I'm also extremely grateful for my healthy immune system that is still holding after so many days on the road.

Openness

Today I am grateful for being open to my new friends and open to hearing what they want to share about their religion. I ended up touring both the St. George Tabernacle and the visitor's center of the Temple today with a few gals from my class.

Appreciation

Today, as I start my Simply Healed training, I am grateful for my ability to fully appreciate others. Sitting in the front row (center), I am grateful for my natural tendency to give speakers positive feedback as they are speaking.

Sense of Adventure

Today, as I venture off to St. George, UT, I am grateful for my sense of adventure. I love that I am willing to set off on my own and go learn new things.

Patience

Today, as I drive kids around, take kids shopping, wait for kids at various venues, go get stuff kids forgot, I am grateful for my infinite patience. I am more patient than most people I know and I feel that is a gift I give others around me.

Knowledge

Today I am grateful for the knowledge I have of Essential Oils and my ability to help others through this wonderful gift!

Awareness

Today I am grateful for being aware of the beauty around me. I went on a hike with some friends and was astounded by the beauty of Autumn.

Commitment

Today I am grateful that I make the commitment to connect with my GUTS sisters every month and dig deeper inside alongside these wonderful women.

GUTS Challenge - Self Gratitude

On our GUTS call this month, we were given the challenge to write something about ourselves that we are grateful for each day of November. Not something external like a roof over my head or anything like that. Something about ourselves we are grateful for.

If you are willing, play along! You'll be glad you did!

How Mission and Network Marketing Can Reshape a Bio

Looking over my blog this morning and I realized that my Bio from just last February is not really who I am anymore. This really surprises me. I mean, yes, I do work continually on improving myself, but this feels like a bigger leap than usual.

There are two things that I feel have made the biggest impact for changing who I am recently. First was to come up with and declare my mission. And the second, I've gotten back into network marketing after a fairly long hiatus. I also believe that I wouldn't have done the later without the former!

By clarifying my mission, I was able to begin relying more on my intuition - my heart's voice. This makes every decision so much easier! I have a compass for everything I choose to do, and it is simple and true to who I am becoming. I usually over-research everything, but since writing my mission, I've been making decisions so readily, and my life is moving in a true direction very rapidly.

When I learned about doTERRA Essential Oils over Memorial Day Weekend, I saw something that had great potential to help people heal, I felt that it was what I need to be involved in and I went for it! It has been the best whirl-wind of excitement ever since. I'm learning that when I align with my values, things are SO much easier!

And as I help my new team develop their businesses, I'm reminded of all the amazing personal growth that comes with truly working a network marketing business (rather than just being signed up). I'm meeting wonderful, loving people I wouldn't have met otherwise, and all our lives are blessed because of it.

So here is a stab at a new Bio - I didn't change it completely, as I haven't completely changed, but I feel this reflects more who I am now:

I value gratitude, authenticity, integrity, intention, love, joy, wisdom, sustainable abundance, acceptance, growth, respect, compassion, serenity, meaningful work, and finding the spiritual in the everyday. Service is my primary love language. I am a quiet extrovert who thrives when around other people and is learning to speak up and ask more questions. I rely on my intuition and my values when making decisions. My roles include mom, healer, friend, and volunteer. I have a passion for helping people heal themselves in all aspects of their lives: physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and financially.

I invite you to examine your bio and see how you've changed. I'd love to hear your feedback!

To Live with Gratitude and Authenticity

What does living a life of gratitude mean to me?
Being present and truly seeing what is around me – the beauty, the grace, the great and the small miracles that surround us all. Using all resources wisely, my energy, the energy of those around me, money, tools, time, materials… Seeing and appreciating the abundance that surrounds us all. Being in awe!

What does living a life of authenticity mean to me?
Being a woman of my word and living a life of integrity and intention. Being true to myself and living with no regrets. Speaking up when I need to with clarity and honesty. And always aligning with all my values.

My values:

• Gratitude
  
• Authenticity
  
• Integrity
  
• Intention
  
• Love
  
• Joy
  
• Wisdom
  
• Sustainable Abundance
  
• Acceptance
  
• Growth
  
• Respect
  
• Compassion
  
• Serenity
  
• Meaningful Work
  
• Spiritual in the Everyday

Writing Our Mission

For the past month or so, our writing group has been working on our values using various tools. Anyone who has really delved into this process knows that it really is quite a process – not something that can be done quickly. We used a combination of thinking about lists of values alone and sharing our thoughts with the group. There have been three or four group meetings spent talking about the meanings of specific words – dictionaries and thesauruses consulted and personal interpretations shared.

Yesterday, feeling extremely far from any kind of completion, one of the group members and I worked on my personal mission statement. At this point, I had about thirty values noted and couldn’t see narrowing them down to less than about ten! I was doing better with verbs – I quickly (yeah, I think THAT may be a key to this process) eliminated all but eight: appreciate, grow, heal, inspire, love, respect, support, and value.

I decided to transfer values to where I had written the verbs and came up with: authenticity, integrity, joy, wisdom, intention, sustainability, abundance, acceptance, and gratitude (I liked it better as a value than as a verb).

Playing around with these words we came up with several statements and ideas:
To radiate love through authenticity, healing and joy.
Sustainable abundance
Heartened healing
To inspire growth, respect, and sustainability.
To help others heal and find their authentic selves.
Finding gratitude
To live a life of gratitude to be able to be present to the wonder (needing a better word here) of all around me.

Then we came up with this: to live a life of gratitude and authenticity. WOW! This is me, this is what I want to be about. This is what will guide my choices.

Sometimes we make things too complicated. Sometimes there truly is beauty in simplicity.

Writing about Motherhood

Oh dear, I'm already running behind - I'm just not the most regular blogger around...

Our weekly writing group meetings are turning into every other week meetings. What can you expect with six busy moms?

At our last meeting we thought it would be interesting to tackle the ever so tiny topic of motherhood. If you've been reading along, you will already know that we don't have a lot of direction or guidance in our topics.

And if you are playing along at home, I promise I will look for pending comments and approve them!!! (Thanks Starcat for the comments, the posts, and the realization that I needed to do something about my comments!)

My apologies to those who have been trying to comment...

Ha! I just found out that I don't get an email notification when there are pending comments! I set comments to moderation after receiving some spammish comments a while ago and the comments have just been piling up ever since!


So sorry to those of you who have commented - I just approved them all...

Contentment

Contentment seems to be one of those words that people either consider positive or they give it a negative connotation. It reminds me of complacency in that regard. Complacency has a negative connotation for many people and yet, when I look at the definition, contented self-satisfaction, I see it as a very positive place to be. I’d like to think that the same people who see complacency in a negative light also see contentment in that same negative light, since they are so closely related. I, however, am not one of those people.

It’s always nice to go back to the definition of a word to see if it means what we think it means. Today we generally define content, as in contentment, as mentally or emotionally satisfied with things as they are. The original meaning of contentment is having restrained desires. The contented person’s desires are bound by what he or she already has. This closely relates to the noun, content, the idea of the boundaries, the container, or content of contentment.

One of our writing group members suggested watching a TED Talk by Dan Gilbert on happiness. I was really struck by how his research supports the original definition of contentment. Dan talks about how much happier people are with their choices when they think they are stuck with them. According to Dan, we have a psychological immune system that works best when we are stuck. It allows us to become content with how things are and it actually changes our preferences to match what we already have. This is SO cool! As Socrates said, “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” Our psychological immune system keeps us rich.

Also in my inbox this week was: Having the life you want by being present to the life you have (The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo). I really like this idea, that we can have the life we want if only we are present to what we have. You have to notice. You have to be able to step out of yourself and see the greatness in your situation, no matter how bad that situation may seem at the time. There is a smoothness to contentment – an attitude of “things going my way” about it. In order to feel that flow, you have to be open to it, just as a faucet needs to be open for the water to flow.

As with most things, contentment is a balance. It is a balance between making things happen and enjoying what is. After our writing group chose to write about contentment last week, the happiness theme seemed to keep popping up all around me, helping me to really examine what it is about contentment that appeals to me so much. Now, it isn’t surprising for me to encounter a happiness theme in my surroundings, as I’ve done quite a lot to make that so all the time, but it did seem more concentrated since our exercise was decided upon.

In Oprah’s weekly Spirit Newletter, which I often just delete without reading came “5 Things Happy People Do” written by Gabrielle LeBlanc. In this article Gabrielle’s findings can be summarized as follows – happy people:

find and fulfill their sense of purpose in life
design their life to bring joy
keep life fresh to avoid the “if only” resentment
put close friends first
and are open to being happy

I don’t think happiness and contentment are interchangeable, but I do think that Gabrielle is speaking more on contentment than on happiness. When I combine what Gabrielle is saying with what Dan is saying, I totally get it! To be content with my life, I need to find and fulfill my sense of purpose, design my life to bring me joy, keep it fresh and interesting, hang with my buds, be open to being happy, and then what I have I will be truly satisfied with!

Writing on Contentment

As we were talking about our Bucket Lists this week, two words came up as words that mean such different things to different people: serenity and contentment. We thought it would be fun and interesting to write about contentment.

We decided to watch a TED talk on contentment before tackling our writing exercise. I'm really looking forward to this one, much more so than the Bucket List (which I really thought I wanted to do, but found much more challenging than I expected).

I'm interested to learn what you think of contentment. Does this word have a positive or negative connotation to you?

Writing Your Bucket List

Our writing assignment this week is to write our bucket list. You can make is as long or short as you wish. What do YOU want to do???

Writing Your Bio

I'm just starting a women's writing group and want to share our writing exercises here each week so that anyone can play along at home.

Today was our first meeting and we watched Brene' Brown's inspiring TED talk on vulnerability and agreed to each write a 100 word autobiography to share with each other.

Here is mine:

I am a humanist who values joy, connection, growth, respect, comfort, honesty, and authenticity. Service is my primary love language. I am a quiet extrovert who thrives when around other people, but is often shy and usually chooses to come off aloof rather than pry. I usually think too much and over-plan things. I am a procrastinating perfectionist in many of my pursuits. My roles include mom, healer, friend, and volunteer. I am usually concerned about doing the right thing and am trying hard to be more compassionate in my life, but often find my judgments getting in my way.

If anyone would like to share theirs in the comments, I'd love to read them.

Raw Nut Spread

This is just because I keep needing to look this up, and want it in a convenient spot. It is very yummy spread on collards with lots of very thinly sliced veggies and some avocado rolled inside.

1C raw cashews soaked in filtered water, keep some of the water
juice of one lemon
1-2 cloves garlic chopped
shredded ginger
olive oil
chopped green onion
Himalayan salt
TJs everyday seasoning

Blend it all until smooth.

Develop

Now is when so many around the world are making their New Year's Resolutions. A few years ago I read about a better way. This is the blog post that inspired me to choose a word for the year, and I have done just that each year and it is amazing how much more powerful this is.

This year my word is "Develop". I never know at the beginning of the year just how much of an impact my word will have, but I always have an idea of where I want to start with it. This year, I want to develop deeper friendships and perhaps completely new friendships, realizing that I'm not feeling like I fit in with most of the people I've known here in Corvallis. I also want desperately to develop my website for my new healing business as well as develop the business itself and develop my skills as a healer.

I also am already taking steps to develop myself as a writer, and am looking forward to sharing some of that here as I go.

Do you have a word for the year? I'd love for you to share your word and maybe a bit about what it means to you in the comments.

Pushing, Controlling, Guiding, Trusting

I’m the sort to try to force things – to just KNOW what is best and work really hard to make everything come out that way so much of the time, by pushing and controlling. I tend to get all tied up in what is happening and how it should be handled and I get stressed when it isn’t going the way I think it should go.

Well, this morning I was watching one of those sappy Christmas movies called “The Good Witch’s Gift” and had an epiphany. As I was watching this good witch weave her magic, I realized that it is so much more powerful to guide and trust. The way this charming character would practice her magic is, she would listen to her intuition (I’ve gotten very good at that!) then give people tiny little suggestions, usually in the form of a compliment. Then she would let them take it from there – trusting even the people no one else trusts. This, along with a strong, unwavering belief that everything will work out for the best. There was such a powerful peacefulness and pure joy in seeing people follow through on their best intentions that were so gently nudged.