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Sunday Story…Cleaning House
It is that time of year. The time when we start opening windows, cleaning the closets, and generally rebirthing our lives. It is spring. The time of renewal. The time when life starts anew and we can look forward to warmth and sun. Many of us will spend time cleaning our homes, washing the winter’s dirt off and generally getting in touch with the growing side of life. I love a fresh spring breeze blowing through the house, clothes dried on the outside line, and a feeling of renewal surging inside me.
There are some other places that need some sweeping out as well. Let’s start with your insides. Yes, your insides. Your liver, your kidneys, your colon, and all the rest need to be cleaned up and restarted. As we live our bodies accumulate waste and toxins in various places…liver, kidneys, and colon just for starters. A “cleanse” is designed to help flush out excess waste and de-toxify various body organs. Think of it like hitting the re-set button for your body or a spring cleaning for your body. Finding a good quality cleanse program to pull all that accumulated waste out of the organs and pipes will do wonders for your skin, hair, nails, and your mental outlook. You will lose some excess weight, some inches off your belly, and improve the way you feel about yourself. Do not go for the quick fix on this one…you know… the three day take some pills and see what happens cleanse. This will not create the healthy habits we need to sustain a healthy regimen. It takes 21 days to create new habits. It takes 21 days to replace bad habits with good ones. It takes 21 days to get all the sugar, flour and junk out of your system. There is no short cut to optimum health.
Another place to look at a little spring cleaning is your mind. What…a mental cleanse? How do you do that? A friend of mine recently took a red pen to a newspaper to highlight the negative news, a yellow pen for neutral and a blue pen for the good news. 60% of the articles were red and only 15% were green! We are surrounded by negativity in the news media and in television programming. We grab some people and put them in weird situations and then watch them and their relationships fall apart and call it reality TV. I spend a fair amount of time with children and I have yet to have one of them tell me that he or she wanted to be a couch potato when they grow up. A Doctor, a Lawyer, An Astronaut, or the President, yes, but never a couch potato. So what are you going to do to clean up your mind, how to rid it of negativity and mediocrity? Start with a cleanse of mass media…that’s right turn off the TV, stop reading the newspaper, listening to talk radio. Turn it off for 21 days. And in that 21 days replace the TV and it’s negativity with positive messages. Positive messages from books from Stephen Covey, Maxwell Maltz, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Joel; Osteen, Anthony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Eckhardt Tolle, James Arthur Ray just to name a few. You could listen to many of these books on CD (or tape) in your car on the way to wherever you are going. Imagine what it would be like to fill your mind with positive messages throughout the day instead of drivel about things you cannot do one thing about. After all, the only thing you can transform is yourself not me not the economy, not your boss or your spouse. 21 days of no TV. Sit and talk to your loved ones. Better yet, sit and listen, really listen to your loved ones.
Do we dare talk about your soul? How about a little soul cleanse? Another one that is not so easy to look at. How will we scrub some of the debris that we have been carrying around for these years? We have mentioned this before. Inspect the stories you are telling yourself. How are they serving you? Spend 15 minutes a day sitting in silence. Just sitting and breathing. When a thought comes up, recognize it, wave at it even and then say to yourself, “thought”, and go back to breathing. How long? 15 minutes a day for 21 days will have it be a habit. Meditation is listening; listening to your breath, listening to the rocks move, linking your breath to the emptiness that surrounds us. Then add prayer. Prayer is speaking; speaking your intention into the world. Whether you pray to a supreme being or a divine source, or you just speak your intention and express your gratitude. Again in 21 days your daily prayers will become a good habit that feeds your soul.
Body, mind, and soul all working together. A beautiful thing to behold. When our thoughts our deeds and our emotions are all in harmony, all working together we can be assured of a successful life. Our loved ones will be better looking and our children well behaved (well…I might be over the top here). Restore yourself in the spring just like your lawn, your house, and your garden. Spend the time getting right with yourself…clean your body, mind and soul. You will be amazed at the results. And if not…well, you can always go back to doing what you were doing before right?
Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
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Showing posts with label clean up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clean up. Show all posts
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Sunday Story...What's Next
Sunday Story…What’s Next?
I received a comment after last weeks story (go to http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/ to read it) about what to do next? Basically it went like this…you’re right I have some stuff I have been dragging around that isn’t serving me. But what am I supposed to do about it. It isn’t like I can donate it to Goodwill or just flush it down the toilet! You know what my answer was right? Yes, I went there…I guess you will have to read the next Sunday Story! And here we are.
SO…What’s Next with MY Stuff
Looking around…at My Stuff, I see a number of things that I really need to lose, shift, change or transform. And I see some stuff I really like, stuff I want to keep, stuff that is serving me. Let’s face it, My Stuff is comfortable. I like MY Stuff, after all it is mine! But if you want to get rid of some of your MY Stuff here is a way in 3 easy steps!
Step One: Take a look. Get some perspective and do some introspection. Get really, really honest with yourself. Here is an interesting little exercise…write down 10 things about yourself that you don’t think anyone knows and that you don’t really want people to know. Now, take a look at the list. The things are not important. What is important is WHY you don’t want anyone to know about them. Is it shame, guilt, fear of judgment? Where are those feelings coming from? What is the root of those feelings? That is where your MY Stuff is coming from. When you were 4 years old and you got your hand slapped for some infraction and you created “rule” that has informed your life choices since then. Does that rule really serve you? Really? For instance…When I was about 14 I wrote a poem about death and dying, about water and drowning and how it might feel to be dead. You would have thought I had just written the Communist Manifesto. Counseling, conversations with parents, teachers, etc. all ensued. I decided that telling people what I really felt was not such a good idea. And even deeper than that, I decided that being creative, especially in writing was a really bad idea. This served me in ways over the years. In some ways it served to keep me safe in places where it would have been dangerous to express myself. But the cost was the stifling of creativity that injured my soul every time I did it. SO…not really serving me.
Step Two: Figure out how to re-frame your story. Give people the benefit of the doubt, they are most often doing what they think is right and in your best interest. Create a new story around the event. You can’t change the “what’s so” but you can change the “what’s it mean”. So I was 14 and I wrote something that was provocative (hard to believe, I know) and threatening and scary and yes, I really did wonder what it might be like to drown and be dead. My parents were worried (and rightfully so). They reacted in a way that made sense to them. They did not do it to stifle me, or to create a schism in my psyche. So instead of saying to me that writing and being self expressed is not safe, my story now, is that when I write I elicit strong and powerful reactions in people. My writing is emotional and meaningful and creates a visceral response in my readers. See how much more powerful that story is than the other one. The one that has me running and hiding from my talent? This story empowers me and honors the talent and purpose I am here to fulfill.
Step Three: Give your old story a send off with gratitude and blessings. It served you and kept you over these last few years. Forgive anyone who needs to be forgiven around the event. Love the young you that made the “rules” in the face of incomplete and immature knowledge.
Start doing the thing(s) that your previous rules would not let you do. Take baby steps, be gentle with yourself as you rediscover a part of yourself that has been buried and protected for all this time. A large part of what you are reading these days is a result of this process. 5 years ago this effort would have been impossible. I would not have allowed myself the freedom to expose my thoughts and emotions in this way. By changing my story, by letting go of MY Stuff, I found my voice, my muse that propels me, and I healed that hole in my soul that needs to write and be self expressed.
Are you willing to let go of your stuff in 3 easy steps? There is the blueprint to start re-building the authentic and transparent self the world is waiting for. Pretty simple isn’t it? Here is the small print (no, my attorney didn’t write it!)---this is not an easy process, you will be scraping layers of gunk and debris away from parts of you, parts you have hidden for some time. This may leave you raw and irritated. The people around you might not understand why you are doing this. Side Effects may include soul retrieval, self love, return of playful joy and a childish giggle.
On the other hand…you can keep it the way it is (not!) Look folks; the world is changing, shifting, evolving. We need to find our purpose, the purpose we were put her to do and then live into that purpose. Your job is to live into that purpose. And it is going to be very difficult to do that if you are dragging all those old stories and beliefs around behind you. You get to decide who and what you are. You CAN change the past by changing the story you are telling about it. And you can live into the future the same way. Create your life by creating the stories you tell about it!
Subscribe to my blog at http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/ . For personal focus coaching, goal setting, physical, nutritional, and emotional transformation, and storytelling contact me at jmariotti@gbis.com.
Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
I received a comment after last weeks story (go to http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/ to read it) about what to do next? Basically it went like this…you’re right I have some stuff I have been dragging around that isn’t serving me. But what am I supposed to do about it. It isn’t like I can donate it to Goodwill or just flush it down the toilet! You know what my answer was right? Yes, I went there…I guess you will have to read the next Sunday Story! And here we are.
SO…What’s Next with MY Stuff
Looking around…at My Stuff, I see a number of things that I really need to lose, shift, change or transform. And I see some stuff I really like, stuff I want to keep, stuff that is serving me. Let’s face it, My Stuff is comfortable. I like MY Stuff, after all it is mine! But if you want to get rid of some of your MY Stuff here is a way in 3 easy steps!
Step One: Take a look. Get some perspective and do some introspection. Get really, really honest with yourself. Here is an interesting little exercise…write down 10 things about yourself that you don’t think anyone knows and that you don’t really want people to know. Now, take a look at the list. The things are not important. What is important is WHY you don’t want anyone to know about them. Is it shame, guilt, fear of judgment? Where are those feelings coming from? What is the root of those feelings? That is where your MY Stuff is coming from. When you were 4 years old and you got your hand slapped for some infraction and you created “rule” that has informed your life choices since then. Does that rule really serve you? Really? For instance…When I was about 14 I wrote a poem about death and dying, about water and drowning and how it might feel to be dead. You would have thought I had just written the Communist Manifesto. Counseling, conversations with parents, teachers, etc. all ensued. I decided that telling people what I really felt was not such a good idea. And even deeper than that, I decided that being creative, especially in writing was a really bad idea. This served me in ways over the years. In some ways it served to keep me safe in places where it would have been dangerous to express myself. But the cost was the stifling of creativity that injured my soul every time I did it. SO…not really serving me.
Step Two: Figure out how to re-frame your story. Give people the benefit of the doubt, they are most often doing what they think is right and in your best interest. Create a new story around the event. You can’t change the “what’s so” but you can change the “what’s it mean”. So I was 14 and I wrote something that was provocative (hard to believe, I know) and threatening and scary and yes, I really did wonder what it might be like to drown and be dead. My parents were worried (and rightfully so). They reacted in a way that made sense to them. They did not do it to stifle me, or to create a schism in my psyche. So instead of saying to me that writing and being self expressed is not safe, my story now, is that when I write I elicit strong and powerful reactions in people. My writing is emotional and meaningful and creates a visceral response in my readers. See how much more powerful that story is than the other one. The one that has me running and hiding from my talent? This story empowers me and honors the talent and purpose I am here to fulfill.
Step Three: Give your old story a send off with gratitude and blessings. It served you and kept you over these last few years. Forgive anyone who needs to be forgiven around the event. Love the young you that made the “rules” in the face of incomplete and immature knowledge.
Start doing the thing(s) that your previous rules would not let you do. Take baby steps, be gentle with yourself as you rediscover a part of yourself that has been buried and protected for all this time. A large part of what you are reading these days is a result of this process. 5 years ago this effort would have been impossible. I would not have allowed myself the freedom to expose my thoughts and emotions in this way. By changing my story, by letting go of MY Stuff, I found my voice, my muse that propels me, and I healed that hole in my soul that needs to write and be self expressed.
Are you willing to let go of your stuff in 3 easy steps? There is the blueprint to start re-building the authentic and transparent self the world is waiting for. Pretty simple isn’t it? Here is the small print (no, my attorney didn’t write it!)---this is not an easy process, you will be scraping layers of gunk and debris away from parts of you, parts you have hidden for some time. This may leave you raw and irritated. The people around you might not understand why you are doing this. Side Effects may include soul retrieval, self love, return of playful joy and a childish giggle.
On the other hand…you can keep it the way it is (not!) Look folks; the world is changing, shifting, evolving. We need to find our purpose, the purpose we were put her to do and then live into that purpose. Your job is to live into that purpose. And it is going to be very difficult to do that if you are dragging all those old stories and beliefs around behind you. You get to decide who and what you are. You CAN change the past by changing the story you are telling about it. And you can live into the future the same way. Create your life by creating the stories you tell about it!
Subscribe to my blog at http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/ . For personal focus coaching, goal setting, physical, nutritional, and emotional transformation, and storytelling contact me at jmariotti@gbis.com.
Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
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