Are your efforts and commitments for the short term or the long of it? One engenders trust and self-honor, the other, advertises that not you or anyone else, can depend upon you. You are neither a person of your word, whether said silently to yourself or to another. When you lose your momentum all potential for success cease. Are you a sprinter or a long distance runner?
How easy is it to run the 50 yard dash, diet for a meal or be super dedicated to your own wellbeing and workout for just one hour? Isn't it easy to be kind and nice to the stranger you met on the subway for the last three stops your lives just intersected ? And isn't it even easier to have a friend for a day rather than a lifetime? Short term attention yields short term results. It is what we do everyday, over and over, in and out, up and down -- no matter what, that helps us live the life we desire. In other words, how dedicated we are to living a life of fullness and meaning with our sustainable and accumulated day-by-days -- is the eventual additive to the Life we do have.
Ever since I heard the poem, "The Dash," I felt the Truth Goose Bumps rise off every dermatome and cracked the heart right off of my soul. Repeat: The Dash, by Linda Ellis. Google it. Read it to your children around the dinner table. Teach with it. Pray with it. Eat with it. Love with it -- and I mean really love with it. What is The Dash really all about? It is that little line between the years of our birth and that of our death. You know, the one where the birth is first: August 8, 2014, but then, can you see it, the little dash here "--"? It is that itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny, tiny little dash that sits holding the potency and latent potential for all who are born and ready to step into this thing we call, Life. If you don't pause and look at that dash -- swoosh, it's over before you know it.
Therefore, how we live, the choices we make, the people we allow into our living etheric field, the pride we take in our life and those in it -- all add up to not only a life well lived, but who and how you will be remembered and for what-and for how long.
Are you the type of person who externalizes all the "wrong-doings" of others? Are you motivated by peace and resolution or conflict and combat? Do you sustain and uphold a positive emotional vibration in your midst or do you live in the blame game? Can you step up and hear another's voice, opinion, in the most respectful of ways and still hold your own center and rational self? Is your purpose of living to leave your mark on each person's heart so when they recall you, after all the birth and death dates are filled in, you are remembered with kindness, respect, honor, love, resolutions, calmness and security? It is how we feel in the presence of others that matters most. That is the memory. We get to nurture that in our personal and professional relationships, again and again.
It takes such deliberate dedication to refining the skills of being ourselves -- so fully, so completely and so habitually that when we do, bit by bit, we become the virtuoso of our own virtuosity.
So what does it take to be In Life for the Long Term, for the length of it? What tools, architectural design for your life and love plans, habits, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, mind-streams, habits, people -- will it take to render our life the one we will feel the most happy and proud with at the end? The kind of Life that not only fuels self generating love and feels thriving, peaceful and free, but one that is filled with ingredients that nurture the fortitude and commitment it takes to feel you can do the longevity thing to be in your life, so fully and completely? A life to not just unconsciously sprint through -- make a promise -- not keep it -- make an apology -- do it again -- send a love letter and watch it rot because there is no holding power in the sprint. Nothing can be cultivated in the sandbox. But nurturing and actively giving rise to the freedom to think, to connect, to ask, to feel safe, to reflect, to be, to grow, to shine, to listen, to be quiet, to answer, to allow all the emotional vibrations of that goodness into your life, not for the hour -- the sprint -- but the long term, is the politics and the art of being an agent of change, for Life. Not the 50-yard dash Life. A practice refined second by second, reinforcing all that you committed to just moments before. It is when the challenges come, who is the last man standing and holding himself high and clear, is the one who keeps sharpening his skills, observing himself from the outside in. This develops a self awareness in all areas of life and is remembered in the hearts of those you touch.
How many of us have ditched wellness plans for that second or third glass of wine and felt the hangover as we allowed it to rob our vitality for the next day and all the people in it. Or blew our income on that hedonistic vacation, or gambled on a new venture? When this happens, we feel less than, and that invites us into a state of mediocrity-the sprint. We let ourselves down. Or what if we decide we will work on our relationships with all our might, but then allow excuses and new conditions to set us away from our path-goal and slip and slide off of it to what feels comfortable -- with self regulation and recalibration so far off -- unaccessible as The Milky Way.
To sprint through life is allowing yourself to sub-miss to a default that does not serve your dash. It's saying I can do this for this short amount of time and not the longstanding gift of perseverance. This is another way we weave mediocrity into our lives. And when we do, our cells know we are playing small and not being our highest, most developed and refined self.
Mediocrity is the currency we pay for repetitive habits that create more of what we say we want less of. Diligence, commitment, integrity and self honor are screaming for exercise. Take it out to the track and revel in the miles it can go!
Now we are invited to play in the Olympics of Life. Who is in?
Six decades upon this wonderful planet, play-net, I see we get to exercise the roles, behaviors, emotions and the choices we make to plug'n play with the feelings they engender. Try one on. Then another until you find yourself and see what fits. Your authentic Olympian fitting.
So in order to create order out of the chaos, this organized chaos of life, I have some tips that intervene on my behalf to help me step into the high flying disc of a vibration that matches my core desired emotion. They clear the palate, so to speak, and help direct my life with purposeful purpose.
1. Pause. Soften. Listen. Receive. (It is the big Universal Inhale -- ah. )
2. Life Is Now. Not yesterday, or the last minute. It is the present moment. Now. Be Here Now. Thank you Ram Dass.
3. Rituals Rock! RPM as Deepak Chopra says, "Rise. Pee. Meditate." Yes. I love the early morning hours-awakening, talking with my husband about what has been on my mind, oil pulling (and internal conversing or quieting), cup of coffee out on the deck in the summer, then morning yoga and pranayama, focused breathing.
4. Move. As a veteran yogini for over 30 years and teacher, I have a 10-minute rule. Get on your mat for ten minutes and do something. I like to go to the track and do yoga for those ten minutes. Then time to run, skip and hop and move like a child. and challenge myself to different neurological games with my body.
5. The Brain. It is all about the Brain. Everything we do is about answering the needs of the brain. The brain loves diversity whether color, physical surroundings, new sounds, more sounds, it loves when we trick the senses, or move on all planes of possibility, try a new restaurant, visit a new town, talk with a new person, read a book out-loud, romance a new outfit, recall an old friend. The brain loves new anything. And water it. Four ounces of water every half hour.
6. Open Mind = Open Heart. When we live in a place of curiosity and wonderment, we question all states of reality, even when we do not see another's point of view at first. Effort to understand and ask questions as if you were journalist writing a $1,000,000.00 piece.
7. Stoke Yourself In The Vibrations of Emotions You Wish To Build Your Life Upon. This means whatever money, a good job, an incredible relationship feels like, open up to that emotion and feel what it feels like to what money means to you. For instance, money can mean freedom, power, responsibility, etc. So tap into feeling what freedom feels like, or power. Once done, you will attract more of exactly the feeling you vibe out.
8. No News Is Good News. Live in the vibration of using your time to explore the feeling, again, the feeling of what no news feels like. In preparing for each of my home births and wishing to feel relaxed and calm as a mother, the news of this rape or that Central Park attack did not serve my need to feel calm and present. In fact, it was my mother who would call me up and warn me of snowstorms, this news coverage, yet did not change my life. Keeping your energy smooth makes us reliable and thus refines our essence to be inservice to others.
9. Our Life is a Cycle And In Sync With The Cosmos. Let's Align. There is a rhythm to the pulsations of life: Day and Night; Up and Down; Moon and Sun: Ebb and Flow; Black and White; In and Out. Yes and No. Forgetfulness and Remembrance. We can never remember if we did not forget. Realign to Align and Align to Realign.
10. Mindset: Positively charged mindsets yield positively charged lives. Think good things and good things come. If a feeling feels bad, then open your mind to allow more light in, so that you can see that the elephant's tail was really a thickly spun rope.
BONUS: Practice. Practice. Practice. Every moment helps us to become the Gold Medal Olympic winner. Each person place or thing invites us to become the virtuoso. Each note played is a piece of the Opus of your life. Your dash is melodic and feels so consonant to those who listen.
It is the parable of the Tortoise and the Hare. Go Easy. Go Slow. Feel. Taste your life. It is the only dash you can shift. Shift yours.
I wish you a long and happy, luck-filled dash with other dashes being dashed inside of yours. Blessings.
DISCLAIMER: This is by no means a complete list. It is a beginning to awaken to your optimal blueprint of you.