Thriving is as Natural As Breathing Itself . . .

Thriving is as natural as breathing itself. By relaxing often and breathing deeply, your natural thriving is enhanced.

Abraham-Hicks

Thriving is as natural as breathing ~ I’m breathing that one in for a minute.

I look at my life and I wonder if it’s true. I look at Hanna and know it must be.  I mean jeez ~ 3 years ago she was this little tiny 6 pound bundle ~ Now she is this beautiful blue eyed, blonde haired 26 lb individual. She thrives ~ it takes no effort on her part (or mine for that matter), she just thrives. She learns every day, she grows (emotionally and physically) every day and minus random temper tantrums she is in good spirits moving through this world.

Me on the other hand ~ thriving takes work ~ it takes remembering ~ it takes work ~ what happen to it just being natural? I think over the years we gather/collect thoughts/beliefs that stand in the way of our thriving. It’s those beliefs and thoughts that make us forget that thriving is natural. I think the real work in this is to REMEMBER that thriving is as natural as breathing.

I think breathing ~ might be part of that remembering lol. Sometimes it takes some effort to remember to breathe. And when I remember it’s amazing how restorative breath can be.

So if thriving is as natural as breathing ~ and relaxing and breathing deeply enhance my natural thriving it would be logical to think that taking more time to relax and breath deeply would lead to more thriving (both emotionally and monetarily) I would imagine.

Soooo. . . let’s assume for a moment this is true ~ that would mean that all this go go go mentality I have so effectively fostered all these years is probably counter productive to my natural thriving.  It still confuses/confounds me ~ how I can achieve more by doing less. This is a pretty big belief I’ve got going on. Although I have seen glimpses of the truth in this thought when I really focus on taking more time to breath and relax, I easily fall back into old habits only to realize what I’ve done months later.

I think this is a topic that deserves some tapping.  I’m gonna go tap tap tap. . . feel free to leave your thoughts. It’s an incredible journey and I love support/feedback.

PS. I’m also thinking about joining Bob Doyle’s Weath Beyond Reason program ~ I would love any feedback from those of you who have taken it.

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Thought It Was All About Dichotomy ~ Now I’m Not So Sure

Last night I was thinking about what it means to me to “live a life in balance”. I started thinking about the times I feel most in balance and when I feel most out of balance. I began to realize just how much the dichotomy of life plays a part in my feeling of balance.

Everything about life is a dichotomy ~ and as an “all or nothing” thinker I tend to swing from one end to the other.

Fat ~ Skinny
Happy ~ Mad
Sacred ~ Mundane
Scheduled ~ Free Flying
Strict ~ Liberal
holding a grudge ~ forgiving easily
Love ~ hate
self love ~ beating myself up

and I could go on and on. It’s this dichotomy and my tendency to live in a state of either or that I believe leaves me in a life out of balance.

It seems like a natural conclusion that living in the middle of the dichotomy would lead me naturally and easily to a life in balance.  Seems obvious ~ but how the hell do you do that??

Or is it really living in the middle that creates balance or is it choosing the “best” end of the dichotomy and living on that end more often than not?

I mean let’s take fat vs. skinny.

Is being medium chunky the key to living a life in balance or is it really about choosing to be skinny (or fat) and moving to BE that all the time?  I guess what I’m asking is it the wavering on decisions, lack of confidence in what I want to BE have and do, that leads to imbalance ~ or is it really about living in the middle?

Hmmm…

I thought I knew what I was talking about when I started this post, now I have no frickin’ idea.  I thought it was going to be all about living in the middle ~ but now I’m not really sure that’s where it’s at at all.

honest vs. Deceitful

Do I really want to live in the middle? Do I wanna lie sometimes? Or be honest with others and just dishonest with myself as a middle ground?

Does that breed balance?

hmm…

I’m thinking that being honest ALL the time is really where I want to be living, but the times I’m living in the other end of the dichotomy is when I feel out of balance.

OHHH ~

Maybe life in balance is really about BEING who you REALLY are.

The times I feel out of balance is when I step away from WHO I REALLY AM.  So maybe it’s not about the dichotomy at all, maybe it’s about turning inward, and being open to realizing who I really am, at my inner core of spirit.

Abraham recommends using your emotions as a guidance system. When you’re getting off track you will know because you will have “negative emotion”. I know this in my head, but I keep thinking “ack, checking in with my feelings isn’t getting any work done” lol. Checking in with my feelings could feel like a waste of time, but I guess it would depend on what the “goal” of life is. If my goal is to live a life in balance, then checking in with my feelings, and trying to redirect myself back to feeling good would be my #1 tool to achieve the goal of balance.

So for example ~ If honest is really WHO I am at a spiritual level, I feel yucky when I know I’m not being honest (with myself or others). It is that yucky feeling that signals me that I’m not being/doing who I really am, and shows me I need to realign myself/actions back to center (center being honest in all action and deeds).

Well this has really moved me in a direction that I wasn’t anticipating, so I’m going to have to chew on this for a bit. I’d love to hear your thoughts ~ do you feel like you’re living a life in balance? What would balance in life look like to you?

I’ll be back ~

Oh Man . . . I’m Rubbing Off On My Toddler

I’ve mentioned in recent posts about my proclivity for self imposed rules. Well I think it’s rubbed off on Hanna.

We started using M&Ms for rewards in potty training.  It seems to work quite well, but here’s where she gets a little OCD about the whole thing.

She will ONLY choose the SAME color M&Ms. (she gets 2 for pee and 4 for poop). So when she pees she has to have 2 of the same color M&Ms. (which is ok ~ we’ve been working on colors with this little game).

When she gets 4 M&Ms she will ONLY accept 4  of the same color. We just went in for a 4 M&M trip (yay for her!!) and she started picking orange M&Ms and realized there was only 2 left, threw them back in the container and went with blue M&Ms of which there were plenty.

YIKES.

Elephant Ears Are Way Bigger Than a 3 Year Old ~ Wordless Wednesday

Hanna behind the Elephant Ears

What I Miss About Not Being a Parent

I love being a parent, and I love my daughter, but there are some things I really miss from the time in my life before I was a parent. Here are the three that spring to mind without even thinking:

1. Silence.

OMG how I miss silence. It seems even after she’s asleep Ryan (who’s now half deaf has the TV  volume up to 45, or the Wii is going at full blast, there just never seems to be silence anywhere anymore.

Which is really crazy considering I live in the middle of nowhere and before I was a parent I used to go looking for noise. hmm. . . If I only knew then, what I know now. lol

2. Not having to give a play by play of my life.

This is a biggie ~ and can someone please tell me when the “what are you doing” phase ends.  This drives me nuts. I move my pinkie ~ “What are you doing”. Whether I’m not doing anything or I’ve been doing the same thing for the last hour, every 33.2 seconds ~ “what are you doing”.  I never really thought I’d ever have to provide an explanation to someone every time I had to go to the bathroom.

Maybe it’s the rebel in me not liking the fact that I now have to report to a 3 year old my every move and thought.  Thought I grew out of that when I was 18 ~ well I guess I just grew back in.

3. Not being able to focus 100% on anything.

Yeah here’s another ~ this is driving me nuts. I can’t seem to spend more than 49 seconds completely focused on anything. This can make writing articles, blog posts, reading a book, finishing the laundry, just about everything really difficult. I guess I’ve gotten better at getting back into the swing of a task after I’ve been interrupted (for the 694th time) but it is still something I truly miss ~ being able to lose myself in an activity for an extended period of time.

It’s Only Water Mom . . .

I admit at times I can be a little bit too “rule focused” and do it the “right” way focused. I also know that it’s hard for others around me (especially my 3 year old) to live with my insane self imposed rules.

To work on this I have decided that when I start getting frustrated by something she is doing I will stop and ask myself

Does this REALLY matter?

and if it doesn’t really matter in the longterm scheme of things, to just let it go.

Today I had the perfect opportunity to practice this new tactic. My internet was down so I took it as a sign and we went outside to swim in the pool. I was actually reading a book while she played ~ my feet hanging over the edge in the water.

Hanna kept pouring water on my feet but was getting it too high so it was actually running down my entire leg getting my pants all wet. I started getting annoyed when she continued to do it after I asked her to just water my feet.

At almost the same exact moment as I asked myself “Does it really matter” she looked at me and said

“It doesn’t really matter mom, it’s just water. Sorry”.

HOLY SH*IT. She is only 3. How’d she get so frickin’ connected? I guess because she is 3.  I told her she was right it was only water, and it really didn’t matter, and we proceeded to get really wet. In fact, it turned out to be pretty fun, we laughed and played, and then when we were done a couple hours later I just changed my pants.

hmm.

Oh yeah, and she learned how to put her face in the water and blow bubbles today. Pretty cool.

Monday Morning Mission

I am a go go go, do it, do it now, do it right kind of person. I have recently begun to see that does not always serve me well. So in the spirit of creating a life in balance I’ve decided to give myself a weekly mission. A little something to think about or BE during the upcoming week. Something that stretches WHO I be, as well as how I think, something that may or may not help me move more into balance in my life.

I love LISTS!! I love to make lists. I love to check things off lists. I love it all. Each night I create a list of things I want to get done the next day. I prioritize the list from most important or most difficult to accomplish and start with the hardest thing first and work my way through the list until it’s done.

That sounds great ~ and in some ways it is. I get a lot done, but many days it is at the expense of balance, at the expense of my daughter, my house, my husband and sometimes even at the expense of our silly chickens. (I get so busy I forget to let them out of the coop to run around).  Sometimes the list becomes so important that other things take a backseat and that is really NOT why I decided to work from home. I work from home so I can spend time with my family, run my own schedule and have the FREEDOM of not having a job. Yeah ~ not so much lately.

This brings me to this week’s mission.

Work from inspiration

Wow that freaks me out a little bit just saying it.  Speaks to my lack of trust in myself. Which is where a lot of my imbalance seems to stem from.

So what does “working from inspiration” look like?

At each transitional moment of the day I will ask: “What do I REALLY want to do next?” and then I will LISTEN!! Not to my crazy head that says ~ “The next thing on the list, of course, dummy”, but to my inspiration, how I’m feeling emotionally and physlically. I will let how I’m feeling guide me to the perfect next thing.

wow ~ ok, so already today this is how it’s made a difference.

1. Decided to fill the pool so we might swim later in the day.

2. As I sat down to start work I realized I really wanted to take a shower instead. (so I did)

3. Hanna started throwing a fit in the kitchen. Instead of brushing her off I felt like sitting on the floor with her, rocking and talking. (she calmed down quite quickly ~ HMMMM)

4. Felt inspired to write this post BEFORE I checked my email ~ that’s unheard of lol.

I still have a list ~ I made it last night, but with all the exciting new things I am working on it’s more of an inspired list that I wrote down so I don’t forget the things I am feeling excited about. It’s a pretty global list so I think it work quite well for a “weekly” list of things I can work on through out the week. Who knows what else will come up from inspiration and I’m totally open to that as well.

Feel free to call me out if you see me slipping back into go go go mode again this week ~ this is liable to be a challenging mission and I can always use all the help I can get to stay on track. Old habits can be so easy to slip back into.

My Personal Potty Training a Spirited Toddler Nightmare ~ Help Needed!!

This whole potty training business is something else.  When she was about 18 months she was very interested in going on the little potty ~ she did it great for quite a while. I was thinking ~ sheesh, finally something’s finally going to be easy with her. Yeah right.

A couple weeks, maybe a month of this potty training at 18 months and she suddenly becomes hysterical at the very mention of the potty. Screaming, shrieking, and all means of generally freaking out. NOOOOOO was the word of that time. OK.  We backed off, didn’t push it, and just put the diapers back on. This went on for the better part of a year.

Then she turned 3. We talked in the weeks leading up to her 3rd birthday about what a big girl she was going to be and how big girls need to go on the potty.  We got her cute big girl panties and she was starting to go on the potty. Then one day I decided it must be kinda confusing to be able to go in your diaper sometimes and not in others ~ so I decided there would only be big girl panties during the day.

This worked quite well actually. I was really excited.   She was staying dry all day ~ we even took a couple long trips to Wichita, the zoo, etc and she stayed dry, letting us know she had to go in time to find a bathroom. She completely skipped the little potty and went right for the big potty. So I was pretty excited I wouldn’t have to work on the transition at a later date. It seemed we had finally gotten our spirited toddler potty trained. Yeah right.

A couple weeks ago we went to Tulsa to visit her grandparents, her aunt and cousin (age 2) were up from Texas as well.  Her little cousin has been working on potty training for a while as well so I thought this would work in my favor. What I hadn’t expected was the complete and utter possessiveness of toys on both girls parts. The mere thought of losing a toy to her cousin while going potty seemed to have brought our potty training to a halt. She completely refused to go on the potty, started going in her panties again and screaming and freaking out at the simplest mention of the potty.

Crap.

We bought some pull ups while in Tulsa and just let it go. I thought it would all be fine when we got home. Yeah right.

We got home and she went to the zoo with my mom the next day. My mom said she told her every time she needed to potty and went on the toilet all day at the zoo. When she got home she refused to go on the toilet, she refused to even talk about going on the toilet. Back to screaming, freaking out again.  What the hell?

Now we’ve been home a couple weeks, I’ve put the old “only big girl panties during the day” rule in effect, and she has looked at me, peed on the floor and then said “I peed”. Yeah, I see. I just don’t get it. She was totally potty trained a few weeks ago!! What is a mom to do? Should I get a book? A video? Listen to Dr. Phil? I just don’t freakin’ know, but what I do know is I’m getting frustrated, and I wonder when this is going to happen. I find myself more and more frustrated because she’s done it in the past ~ so now I know she “can”, and it feels like she’s just choosing not to at this point.

I really never thought this is what parenting was going to be like. Apparently I was one of those “perfect” kids lol. Never screamed, never cried (in fact, my mom took me to the doctor thinking something was wrong with me because I never cried), potty trained early because I wanted to be just like mommy. These are the stories I heard about parenthood growing up ~ this is NOT my experience. I’m trying to just relax, and let it happen, because as far as I know, no one has gone to college in diapers, but come on. Can’t we just do one thing without a huge standoff?

What do you think? Really, I want to know, give me some advice, a kick in the ass, I don’t care, just leave me comments so I know I’m not alone in this increasingly overwhelming potty training nightmare.

Creating a Life in Balance ~Life, Business, Blog Makeover

Have you ever stopped, looked around and realized you weren’t exactly psyched where you’re at? That’s what’s been happening to me over the last few weeks. It’s interesting when you take things out and look at them what you come up with ~ and what you see is driving your actions.

Life

Again I have looked around and noticed my house is a wreck, my kid’s still in her pajamas at 4pm, the dishes are spilling out of the sink and I can’t drag myself away from the computer. Yeah, I work from home, and have to be on the computer for my work, but I don’t think that is what’s driving this latest edition of all or nothing.

I had a complete “freak out” day, one of those rare days where everything I see, do, think brings me to tears. I was feeling lonely and alone, and frustrated that monetarily things hadn’t gone as well this month as they had been going.  I spent the whole day feeling pitiful and worrying.  (well I did manage to get the dishes done too).

I think this latest episode of work work work is based in fear ~ fear of not making “enough” money. Here’s the thing  I seem to have forgotten, when I was more in balance with work, family, household stuff and fun I was making way more money. So apparently my incessant “being at the computer” is not paying off in the ways I imagine it does.

I guess that’s what life is all about, going forward, taking inventory and adjusting. So I’m aware I’m wanting to be more balanced in my work life.

Business

I’ve been finding my business life less and less satisfying.  Doing what I have been doing just isn’t fulfilling anymore ~ finding the perfect keyword, building a site and getting traffic is just not enough anymore. I want to serve, I want to be part of something bigger, part of a community. I’ve been doing this by teaching others, but that isn’t really a role that I’m feeling great about either.

With this realization I had to take some time and figure out what other options there were. I’ve been doing what I’m doing for years now ~ it’s what’s built my business!! This is a tough one, because I’m very prone to just throwing everything out and starting something totally new ~ (that all or nothing thing again lol). I have realized that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I can keep what’s working of the old way as well as adding something new.

Blog

Which brings me to the blog makeover.

This blog has been a neglected element of my online life.  It has never been my primary focus ~ usually something extra that gets some attention when everything else is done. That’s about to change ~ all the feelings I’ve been having about not having a community, being isolated, can change with this blog and the other amazing communities of moms online.

I was looking around yesterday and realized there is an active and vibrant community of moms out there, blogging about their lives, their kids, their solutions ~ all the things I am interested in and talk about. I find it so easy to try to pigeon hole myself into a niche and think that’s the only thing I can talk about on any given blog ~ but with a “mom” blog I realized I can talk about all of it  ~ my life, my successes, my challenges, what I like, what I hate, and in the process meet some great people, have fun, and have time to balance the other elements of my life.

This is a totally different direction than any I’ve taken online before and I’m really looking forward to it! It seemed only right to give my blog a little makeover to celebrate our new relationship.  I don’t know exactly how this is all going to go ~ but I’m excited to find out. Let me know what you think about my new blog makeover ~ and if you’ve had a change in direction I’d love to hear how it worked out for you!

With that being said ~ I told Hanna I’d take her to the pool this afternoon so I better skeedaddle.

Hot Pot Solar Cooker ~ A Cool Crock Pot

If you love crock pot cooking this is gonna be cool for you ~ another kind of slow cooker ~ a SOLAR cooker. The Hot Pot Solar Cooker is like a crock pot powered by the sun. How cool!? It takes about an hour for the cooker to heat up to cooking temperatures and can stay at those temps for up to 6 hours.

What a fun way to start teaching about solar power and ecology ~ or just a great way to keep the kitchen cool in the summer!!

The Hot Pot Solar cooker is pretty affordable, and if you do a lot of camping could be a great way to cook home cooked meals while still giving you time to go off and have fun.

Here’s a great video of the hot pot solar cooker in action.  Looks like the Frijoles are boiling, so I imagine it gets hot enough to really cook your food.

I’d love to hear if any of you already have the hot pot Solar cooker ~ please leave your comments below, I think it sounds like great fun!!