Weekly messages to help you start over in life
Yes, meditation can help you achieve inner calmness and peace, no matter what you’re experiencing. Here are 5 other ways meditation can improve your life. Click on the video above to learn more by meditation coach, Rucha Tadwalkar.
You can learn more Rucha at her website,Shanti Path. Yes, she does private coaching and also has a coolmeditation kit you can pick up to kick off your practice.
Having trouble opening your heart to love again?
Watch this 2 minute video for 5 visualization exercises to help you open your heart to love and relationships.
I mention this video by my friend, Wendy Irene, on how to cleanse your heart chakra.
A flicker of hope
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu
When I was going through a breakup and divorce, my life was filled with darkness. The end of an eight year marriage, the pressures by our families to stay together and the pending divorce proceedings were overwhelming and soul-crushing.
A blogging friend of mine had been unemployed for a little more than a year. When she left her last job, she didn’t realize that the tanking economy would take her through a roller coaster period of unemployment. The mental and emotional pressures continued to build up month after month.
Another friend from college was diagnosed with breast cancer when she had just turned 34 years of age. With her father’s recent passing and her diagnosis, making it through each day was a struggle.
How do you persevere when your future looks bleak? How do you move forward when you feel like you can’t?
How do you cultivate hope at your life’s absolute lowest points?
When the path seems uncertain and the future dark, cultivate these ten states of mind and beliefs to persist in the darkness:
1. A belief in a better tomorrow. A conviction that what’s happening doesn’t have to always endure. Another day can bring new circumstances, new opportunities and new solutions to improve the situation you find yourself in.
You can’t fall back much farther when you’ve hit the depths of despair.
It can and it usually always does get better.
2. Keep going even when you’re uncertain about the future. One of the scariest feelings you confront is having an indeterminate sense about your future.
How do you ride your bike along an unknown path? How do you forge ahead when you can’t see where you’re going?
Even when you’re uncertain of the path and can’t see in the dark, keep moving forward knowing that you will have more clarity with each step.
You don’t have to know exactly what the future brings, but know that you have more control in what can happen than what occurred in the past.
Trust your intuition and double down on hope knowing that you’ll see glimmers of light and direction soon.
3. Don’t allow roadblocks to halt your journey. As you move forward, you will stumble upon more bumps in the road: obstacles, setbacks and delays.
You can allow these roadblocks to get in the way or you can be determined to move past them and accelerate.
Think of roadblocks as pebbles in your path that can be cleared instead of unmovable boulders that paralyze you.
There is a solution to every obstacle you face. Often, it just takes creativity and persistence to prevail.
4.Life lessons are teachers. Being hopeful means using the problems and challenges which confront you in a positive way.
Each difficulty and obstruction can reveal something to help improve your life.
What is the wisdom that’s contained in the obstacle confronting you?
There is always a lesson there. Your job is to simply find it.
Don’t ask, “why me” or “why did this happen”. Instead, ask: what can I learn from this today?
5.Pain transforms. If you’re going through a throbbing life event that is tearing at your heart and soul, be aware of the tenderness and hurt.
Once again, there are many lessons and insights your life’s most painful events can teach you.
Once you can acknowledge the pain, allow hope to alter the pain into a gift that can be used for the next steps in your life.
If you can view your pain as a gift of steadfastness and strength, you’ll be better prepared for all the current and future hitches you’ll confront in your life.
6.Keep hope thriving. It’s easy to want to give up or throw your hands in desperation. Especially when your pain is protracted or the difficulty is too excruciating to handle.
Even in the darkest of hours, allow hope to lead. Progress ahead. Know that persistence will have its reward. Be open to the idea that circumstances will improve.
Your day will come if you can make it through the unknown and demanding stretches. Those who persist, usually prevail.
Focus on all the positive possibilities.
Just because the current situation worsened doesn’t mean you have no control over the final outcome. Know that you can take action to change the outcome.
Hope demands that you surge onward and keep believing in a better tomorrow even in the most agonizing circumstances.
7. Keep taking small steps forward. Having hope doesn’t mean you simply sit back with an intention of a better tomorrow.
Hope is cultivated through action.
To improve your tomorrow, you must take small steps toward improving the situation today.
Brainstorm ideas with friends and families. Explore options. Seek help and advice. Set the problem aside for some time and come back to it later. Seek inspiration from mentors.
8. Allow for inner growth and development. You may not be able to control what’s happening outside of you, but trying circumstances will help strengthen your inner resolve.
Challenges will help you rely on your ability to persist and develop characteristics in yourself you never know you had.
External circumstances help chip away at the rougher edges of your personality and help you connect with your true self.
When life shakes you up, allow for your truth to be heard, your inner core to be strengthened and for character building.
There is no better time to acknowledge the skeletons in the closet and come to terms with them.
Allow adversity to strength you.
9. Hope is letting go. You can’t control every situation and circumstance.
Hope also means you have to let go and allow circumstances to work out on their own, after you’ve done your part.
It’s releasing expectations of a specific result or demand.
The serenity prayer reminds us that wisdom is knowing the difference between accepting the things that we cannot change and the courage to change the things we can.
Hope is anticipating the best when you have no control over what transpires next.
10.Hope wins. Hope is realizing that many have prevailed with hope.
Hope taught me that with each passing day, my life can transform from sorrow to joy, from pain to wisdom and from loss to clarity.
I could wake up again and see a brighter day – divorce was certainly not the end of the world.
My blogger buddy found work in a more desirable city, closer to her family and with more pay.
My friend from college became cancer-free, changed her perspective on life and is now filled with gratitude for all the small things life has to offer.
Even when circumstances don’t unfold in your favor, the lessons you’ll learn and your inner resolve will create a stronger and more fearless you.
Even when trying circumstances persist and challenge you, rely on hope to make it through the rough days.
Let hope be the lantern you carry to shine the light on the path to a better tomorrow.
* Photo credit @killerturnip
Has hope gotten you through some rough patches in your life? When do you cling onto hope and when do you throw in the towel? Anything I missed on living a life filled with hope? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
A view of the rainforest outside my window
A big hello to my 4 readers, 3 twitter followers, 2 brothers and myself:)
Just wanted to let you all know that I’m thrilled about having my first guest post on my friend, Tim Brownson’s blog, A Daring Adventure. Tim is the funniest blogger I know on the blogosphere so I’m glad I had an opportunity to post on his blog. Tim’s also an excellent life coach! Before you jump off that 30th story building, call 407-334-4692.
I enjoyed writing the blog post and am enjoying all the comments and thoughts about the subject – how to get out of bed in the morning to meditate. Seriously – getting out of bed in the morning is the hardest part of a meditation practice. I offer some great tips about how to do it including my favorite way – #6 Have some monks spend the night in your bedroom to kick off your early morning practice.
If you need some helping waking up to start your practice, please visit today’s guest post here: A Daring Adventure guest post.
For the rest of you who have no interest in meditation and came to this website looking for how to live a virtuous life, sorry! But do enjoy some photos from my current Costa Rican adventure.
Yes, this is what I imagined paradise would look like.
A street scene of nearby San Vito in Southern Costa Rica (near the Panama border)
The church in San Vito is in the central area of town.
Are they hiring at the local San Vito bakery?
Is the train delayed? Or are you resisting getting on?
You’d like to start a TV show – 29 minute meals – in competition with Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meals! Or pitch American Fiddle to Hollywood – a spin-off of American Idol for fiddlers.
Or start that new insect stamp-collecting hobby where you collect stamps with insects from around the world and then go into the Amazon to dig up those very insects to match the stamp.
Or start that new ‘career’ in your ‘family’s ‘trash-collection’ business in Jersey.
You get the idea – you have big dreams. Ambitions. Goals to achieve in life.
What are you delaying today?
There are new ventures and projects that you want to start in your life. In fact, you may have already started them but are having trouble pressing forward after kicking it off the ground.
When I delayed doing something in my life, like kicking off this blog for example, I found many obstacles and challenges that delayed my blogging.
♦ I had a full time job so of course I didn’t have time to blog.
♦ Web and graphic designers cost money so I had better save up some capital before launching my blog.
♦ Who’s going to read my blog anyways except my writing coach, blog coach and therapist? (Kidding folks, at least about 2 of those 3 people). Maybe I should kick of my blog after I made some blogging buddies.
♦ I couldn’t actually start blogging until I had a theme, logo, tagline and full time office staff to answer my media calls.
♦ Why should I associate myself with a group of people who probably spend lots of hours locked up in dark rooms with their laptops commenting on other blogs and checking their Google analytics? Maybe there was more fame and money in getting into the tabloid business and working for Rupert Murdoch?
♦ Who cares what I have to say when everything that I want to say had already been said by Tim Brownson at www.adaringadventure.com with more wit, humor and intelligence and Sandra Pawula at www.alwasywellwithin.com with more clarity and wisdom.♦
♦ I should only blog after I publish a book then I can blog about how to write a book!
♦ What if I started succeeding and had an international following of readers, and couldn’t get through airport security checks due to the throngs of fans and paparazzi? Should I find out how much it would cost to hire personal bodyguards?
As deranged as it sounds, these were some real reasons I didn’t start blogging.
How about yourself – what are you delaying? What are you putting off? What are you making excuses for?
What did your dog eat today?
What did your mother-in-law serve you for dinner last night that made you feel like you were poisoned and you couldn’t wake up at 3:30 a.m today to start training for that triathlon?
Resistance speaks in the language of delay.
As you can see, most of the excuses I had for delaying the kick-off for my blog was not really a legitimate reason.
For example, if I was mobbed by the paparazzi as a celebrity blogger, I could always have certain friends of mine fill in as security guards. (A couple of them have had to leave jobs with the Secret Service but that’s a whole other story. They’re heart’s in the right place, man!!)
If only 3 people were going to read my blog, I can almost bet my blogging coach and writing coach would each know one other person who they could cajole to read my blog (maybe their wife or Ruffo, their dog!)
I soon realized (not really – it was a huge delay before I realized this) that the excuses I was making for myself were not so much different delay tactics but a form of resistance to embracing my blogging journey!
I was scared, nervous, doubtful and embarrassed even. Of what? Having my words seen publicly? Having my thoughts displayed to strangers? Bearing my soul to outright criminals who are hoping I accidentally post my credit card numbers on this blog!!!
Be aware of delays to kick down the door of resistance.
What the hell am I talking about?
You know. Stop hiding under the bed covers.
Stop the delays!
Stop resisting yourself!
Stop the madness!
Stop reading this blog. (I beg you – please read this blog)
Stop saying you can’t or you won’t.
Stop saying you will or you shall.
Stop saying you don’t have time or you’ll do it later.
Face the resistance. Acknowledge the resistance. Confront the real reasons you’re not doing what you need to be doing.
Then kick down that door of resistance.
(Disclaimer: I mean don’t kick down any doors or break any part of your apartment…this is just a figure of speech folks.) Thanks Janet for inspiring this post!
* Photo by Carlos A. Zambrano
Is Costa Rica paradise on earth?
I didn’t know much about Costa Rica before coming down here to visit my friends in this lush Central American country. Now that I’ve made it down to Costa Rica, I’d say that Costa Rica is paradise on earth!
What’s the deal with Costa Rica?
Costa Rica is everything that I had heard about and more than everything that I had imagined it to be. Lush greenery fills the Costa Rican landscape like a permanent stunning backdrop. The proximity to the Equator and plentiful rain has created a vibrant natural environment shared by a myriad of greenery, vegetation, and animals. Even San Jose, the capital and big city, is filled with lush greenery all around it.
I was born and raised in the tropical Equator-near peninsula of Malaysia which is not nearly as lush or green as it is here Costa Rica. The Costa Ricans care deeply about the environment and protecting the natural habitats for their wildlife and tropical rainforests.
I’m staying in the Southern tip of Costa Rica near the Panama border near a region called Biolley on a friend’s farm. The farm is occupied by many goats, cows, horses, sheep, dogs and people. I’m enjoying spending some time down here improving my Spanish, helping out on the farm, doing some writing and embracing the beautiful Costa Rican landscape. The cabin I’m staying in feels like the penthouse suite overlooking the natural rainforests and waterfalls below. Photos can’t really do the landscape justice but here’s my attempt to show you what the view outside my window looks like.
Gushing waterfalls
Vibrant greenery and blue skies
A paradise in the rainforest (or where I'm spending a couple of months:) )
Valentina and baby Marigold
Nature inspires reflection.
*I’m spending May and June 2012 in my friend Jennifer and Bruce’s Finca de Lilo. The closest national park is La Amistad National Park. Jennifer regularly blogs about her coffee farm at Biolley Buzz.
