Intentions for 2024

It’s been a ritual the past few years since starting this blog to pick a few words as my intention for the new year and then share in a blog post. So here goes for 2024 …

1) Presence: To me presence means being mindful. It means being here now in this moment. Not off in my head somewhere in the past or future. Here. Just here. Maybe that means I’m engaged in a conversation and wholeheartedly tuning into the other person and listening empathetically. Maybe it’s as simple as engaging all my senses (smell, feel, sight, sound, taste) in an ordinary moment like making my morning cup of coffee. Presence means I’m in tune with my body, mind and emotions, with the energy I’m taking in from the world and the energy I’m giving out. It means I’m consciously flowing through the world with mindful ease rather than unconsciously acting and reacting lost in the world of mind chatter. From presence, everything else can flow.

2) Magic: Since I’ve been a kid, I’ve loved the idea of magic. I grew up on the Redwall series, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and others, eagerly jumping into new worlds. When would I get my Hogwarts letter? When I was young, I played outside and saw fairies and magical creatures in the grass and trees and streams. Maybe I never grew up, but I still love magic and … full confession … young adult fantasy books are my favorite genre. More recently, I’ve expanded my definition of magic to include the divine as well as the wonder and wizardry in the so-called ordinary. After all, just in the human body we are made up of trillions of cells all magically doing numerous tasks at once! How amazing that I’m able to feel these emotions and then translate them into ideas and words and sentences and write them down and share on a blog – if that’s not magic then I don’t know what is!

3) Fill in the blank: an evolving intention for what I need in this month or week or day or moment. While I enjoy having a key word or two to guide me for the year, I also appreciate that intentions can be fluid and adaptable to whatever best supports me in any given moment, be that a day, week, or month or whatever time period feels right. Therefore, I am visualizing my 2024 intentions as a triangle with presence and magic on the bottom two corners and then a fill in the blank intention at the top. This reminds me to check in often and ask myself what intentions do I want to focus on right now? For instance, yesterday I had an inspiring therapeutic massage and am committing to focusing on better postural awareness. This fill in the blank intention(s) means I could have several intentions pop up that inspire me and that I want to dedicate energy towards.

What are your intentions for the new year? Do you have any rituals around new year’s intention setting?

Boundaries

Boundaries are a ubiquitous word for me. They are something I’ve always struggled with as setting boundaries and my people pleasing tendencies are quite at odds. Lately though a combination of work and personal stressors forced me to confront my dislike of boundaries and begin to learn how to set them. Here are a few steps that I took that have helped me in case they inspire you on your own boundary setting journey if that is something like me you want to expand your comfort with.

1) Balance your yes’s and no’s: I read about this idea in an insightful book, “The Tao of Womanhood” by Diane Dreher. The idea is that your “yes’s” and “no’s” should be balanced. Neither yes or no should be disproportionate. Of course, this is averaged out over whatever time period makes the most sense to you. For me, this is a reminder to look within when there is an external opportunity or ask whether that is work related or even a fun, personal activity. It means checking in with myself and balancing the internal and external. That my “yes’s” which of course will include things I may not prefer to do (this might often relate to a work perspective) are balanced by my “no’s”, the boundaries I set to take care of myself, to refill my tank in whatever ways nourish me, so I’m not running on empty at the end of the road with no gas tank in sight. It means I am in touch with both my external boundaries are (that is boundaries I express to other people) as well as my internal boundaries (boundaries that are just for me, such as deciding that I won’t stay up past 10pm).

2) Phone boundaries: Ah smart phones… The items that have arguably single handedly transformed the way we engage with the world in the last 10-15 years (I got my first smart phone at 18 when I went to college 12 years ago now coincidentally also when I joined the social media world). Now different people will have different aspects of their phones that they find particularly hard to put down. Social media is a common one. For me, it’s my work email on my phone which I have been in the habit of compulsively checking at all hours of the day. I work with my family business and have felt like I need to be constantly “on”, which means of course that in that way I’m always saying yes to emails and never saying no… For years, this filtered in weekends, evenings, early morning (first thing upon waking) and vacations. After a recent health crisis sparked by stress, I took a small step towards saying no to my phone and email by setting better boundaries around when I checked it, saying no more to looking at it in the evening after hours for instance. Intentionally not checking work emails on the weekends or if I do check it, it’s intentional because I’m choosing to work whatever period there and not because I’m too anxious to wait until Monday (that’s my goal anyway). I’ve also started leaving my phone off and downstairs at night and not in the bedroom. That way I have to walk past my meditation room (to hopefully meditate for a few minutes!) upon waking before going downstairs to check my phone and email.

3) Authenticity: My husband shared this definition of authenticity with me and it really resonated. Namely that to be authentic is for to have your thoughts, feelings, words and actions in alignment. This could be a whole blog in and of itself) but I wanted to include it here because it feels very relevant to this topic of boundaries. After all, in order to know what boundaries I need to set for myself, I have to be aware of my thoughts, feelings, words and actions. I have to reflect on them and check in frequently – are they in alignment? If my thoughts and feelings say no, yet my words and actions say yes (do to wanting to please or whatever else it may be) then I’m not being authentic and I’m hurting myself and others ultimately as well. Now of course things can get tricky in determining what my true authentic feelings are in regard to how I want to speak and act. This means going deep and essentially determining what are the authentic wishes of my highest self; what is that voice whispering to me in guidance in any given moment. So for instance, one layer of me might want to eat that second piece of cake and get a stomachache while my higher self, if I listen, will hint that I should make the better choice and not eat it and will feel better. In other words, authenticity also means I’m in alignment with my highest self.

What does boundary setting look like for you? Share in the comments below if you feel inspired.

When Things Become Too Much

As I sit here trying to write this blog, my body feels like it’s all it can do just to sit upright. My hands are shaking, my stomach roils with uncomfortable nausea. You see, stress got the better of me and I tried to push my body, mind, emotions past where they were capable of right now. My body protested and the result is waking up feeling like I have a stomach bug and realizing it’s all from stress and its sidekick anxiety. Its cousins guilt and shame at feeling like a failure don’t really help. Anyway … I guess I’m really writing this blog post as a pep talk to myself on a few things you can try if you’re feeling like things have just become too much.

1) Give yourself permission to slow down and rest. I had to have a hard conversation with myself this morning about why it was okay for me not to mow the lawn today and just try to take it easy a bit on this Sunday. I realize even having this option puts me in a very privileged position. The idea with slowing down and resting (ideally before you crash and burn like I did) is to pace yourself and build self-care into your routine. Even if it is all of five minutes of slow breathing first thing when you wake up and before you go to bed. And if you do push yourself to the point where you need more to recover, don’t feel guilty about it. Your body did the best it could in whatever that stressful situation was. Your body is doing the best it can.

2) See if you can offer yourself a little compassion. If your body has shut down from overwhelm and stress and anxiety, you may (like me) be feeling a bit betrayed by it. I mean, c’mon body, if you didn’t feel so nauseous and exhausted and shaky right now, we could be doing something fun like go for a bike ride, forget about mowing the lawn. The thing is, feeling upset at your body isn’t going to help, it generally just makes things worse. And the stress response (fight, flight or freeze) while extremely protective and powerful in an actual life or death situation is not designed to last for days or weeks. Your body is just trying to protect you and doesn’t know how right now. See if you can offer a little compassion to yourself, to your mind, your body, your whole being or any part of you (even just one little cell) that feels accessible.

3) Your to do list will still be there tomorrow. I’ve been having a hard time slowing down and giving myself the rest and care I need, because part of what has been making me stressed and anxious is the laundry list of tasks and projects on my work to do list. However, the solution isn’t to work yourself to the bone, evenings, weekends without catching a breath. Of course, there may be times when, depending on each person’s capacity, there is some measure of this, but it can be a slippery slope and the key is to know yourself. Know your own personal capacity. Know that it may change from one season of life to another; it may grow or it may shrink. It may even change day to day. The key is that you can only do your best. And your best does not mean pushing past your limits and making yourself ill. It means doing your best today, whatever that looks like. And if some days you feel like superwoman doing your best …. amazing! And if on others your best is lying down and looking at the clouds pass, that’s quite okay too. Either way chances are there will still be more on your to do list the next day, so if you can’t take care of yourself today, then when will you. Easier said than done … I know. This really is my pep talk to myself.

I’ll have it all figured out when I’m (insert desired age)…

I’m turning 30 in a few weeks (maybe I’ll already be 30 by the time you’re reading this blog) and like any “major” age milestones it got me thinking about, well, aging and maturity and the old “hey so if I’m turning 30 shouldn’t I have it (aka life) all figured out?” I had a conversation with my husband that went something like this:

Me: “Oh no, I feel all this pressure to have it all figured out when I’m 30.”

Him (he’s a few years old than me so has already hit that 30 milestone): “Your 30s is when you realize you don’t have to have it all figured out.”

Of course, 30 (or 20 or 40 or 70) are all just numbers. And 30 isn’t any more special than say 33 or 29. I think we humans just like to attach extra meaning to these decade markers. That way we have the fun of saying, “Oh 10 years ago I was doing X.” Something like that.

The thing is, probably the most “figured out” we can have in life is the realization that we don’t have to (won’t) ever have it “all” figured out. It’s not possible. Each moment, each day, each year, each decade is wonderfully different. As soon as you figure out (or think you figure out) one thing in your life, something new and maybe scary/stressful, maybe exciting (depending on your frame) will crop up to challenge you to grow in a new way.

I remember talking with an older lady in her 70s in a wheelchair when I was a teenager and asking her when you’re “grown up.” She said why would you ever want to be that? That would mean you stop growing. Even though I supposedly learned this important nugget of wisdom at the tender age of 13, it’s one of those lessons that has trouble sticking I suppose. Which is probably why I’m writing about it. To help cement it into my brain. And heart. Growing can be scary after all; riddled with uncertainty and all that good stuff. But really all of life is riddled with uncertainty. The only true certainty is how you choose to handle it.

It’s like the analogy that living in a mindful, present way is like surfing (or learning how to surf). Life throws all kinds of different ocean conditions at you. Sometimes the water is calm and warm and you can just savor the beautiful day. Other times, it might be stormy with massive waves and you’re struggling to balance and ride those waves. And you might fall off and have to get back on your board again. You might even lose your board altogether and all you can do is try to keep swimming. Knowing that no matter how rough the waters get, hey you’re in the ocean, the magical ocean, full of wonders each day. And even in the worst storm, there’s a magic there, and if you can embrace it, you just might find yourself that calm anchor in the eye of the storm, knowing that while you probably won’t ever have it figured out, that’s ok. You’ll figure it out anew each day. Each wave. 

Dancing with Uncertainty

Craving certainty, wanting to control, to know for sure … well, it is a malady affecting quite possibly most of humanity. The opposite, uncertainty and lack of control, is terribly frightening after all. I’m definitely guilty of this and the threat of uncertainty has been something I’ve often tried to run and hide from, as my anxiety tries to latch on to the scariest uncertainty it can. Sometimes I’ve thought my mind just likes to invent new things to feel anxious about whenever the current “cause” of the anxiety is alleviated. With that in mind, here are a few reflections on holding space for that unsettling uncertainty and perhaps even dancing with it.

1) Go to the extreme of your fear. What uncertainty really comes down to is that our lives on this earth are very small and fragile when you think about it and there is so much we don’t know and can’t control. We don’t even know if our next breath will be our last in this human body we inhabit. This is an example of taking an anxiety or fear of the unknown to its natural extreme. I’ve found this practice can be helpful even if it might seem a little intense. Simply ask yourself what it is you are afraid of? What is causing your particular anxiety? Maybe a friend isn’t responding to a message you sent. Okay so what’s the extreme of that. Maybe something like your friend doesn’t care about you anymore and doesn’t want to be friends. Likely that’s not the case but if you can take it to that extreme and make your peace with it, accept what you can’t control, chances are whatever is actually the situation will be much easier to handle.

2) Try your best without attachment to the results. Much of our discomfort with uncertainty comes from wanting to control the outcome of a situation. However, the outcome is something we really don’t ultimately have control over. All we can do is put forth our very best effort each day, each moment. If we can do that and surrender control of the outcome, chances are we will be a lot more content.

3) Hold space for uncertainty and learn to dance with her. Uncertainty is a fact of life; there’s no avoiding it. If we fight against uncertainty and try to impose our own feeble attempts at control, all we’ll end up doing is making ourselves miserable. If we can practice simply sitting with uncertainty, holding space for her and all the accompanying emotions that come up, with kindness towards ourselves, that is an unbelievable step forwards. With time, we might even be able to stand up and dance with uncertainty, sometimes with a smile and sometimes with tears, but dancing just the same, embracing the wonder of not knowing and seeing where the next step might take you.

We want to know
know what?
know everything of course
the secrets of existence
why we are here
who are we?
who am I?
who are you?
We want to know
what will happen next
will we succeed or fail
will we live or die
will we live after we die?
will we go to heaven or hell?
is there a heaven or hell?
we think we can grasp
at certainties
by reading and writing
and philosophizing
and actioning
we think we can hide
from uncertainty
run from it
lock it away
when really
you can’t hide from uncertainty
no less than you can cut off your own shadow
unless you’re Peter pan?
when they talk
of faith and trust
it’s not an eschewing of uncertainty
it’s a dancing with it
opening the doors to it
welcoming it in
and saying
I don’t know
and that’s ok
I trust that that’s ok
would you like to dance?

Allow

One word. Allow. I recently completed a 30-day dream online course led by a good friend, and this is the word that has manifested as a core theme of learning that I’d like to carry as an intention word into the new year that’s approaching. Here are a few ways I am intending to apply this intention and I thought I’d share in case it resonates with anyone else 🙂

1) Allow whatever arises without judgment and let it flow through. Something that I can be guilty of is resenting difficult emotions and experiences that come up. It’s magnified if I had a certain expectation that was not met. Instead of just allowing this change and new experience, I am prone to fight against it, kicking and screaming inside my head at the unmet wish. Naturally, this makes everything even more challenging. A better approach would be to simply allow this new experience without judgment and preconceived expectations and let the energy flow to those unmet expectations.

2) Allow and hold space for discomfort and a whole range of feelings. Nobody really likes discomfort whether it is a physical discomfort or emotional one or both. When discomfort comes up, I often have the inclination to either distract and run from it or lock it away and compartmentalize. What happens in either situation is the energy of that discomfort gets stuck and later has a tendency to rear its head again or materialize in some way I didn’t expect (and not for the better). What I want to work on doing better is simply allowing and holding space for that discomfort. And moreover, allowing space for all emotions and sensations. This often means holding space for some flavor of discomfort alongside a more “comfortable” emotion or sensation.

3) Allow the energy to discharge. When I was first thinking about this idea, I thought about it in relation to unintentionally picking up and absorbing energy and emotions from others. This could be anywhere from feeling sad if a loved one is sad to getting upset after hearing about an awful happening on the news. While these reactions may be normal and are a sign of empathy, what isn’t healthy is if that reaction and energy gets stuck in our bodies. We need to consciously allow the whatever we may pick up as we go about our days and lives, to discharge and flow out. This of course applies to any emotions that we create from our own inner landscape as well (perhaps related to the first point on failed expectations or anything else). Otherwise, they get stuck and can pop up in all kinds of unsuspecting emotional, mental or physical ways.  

A couple poems that I feel beautifully encapsulate this idea of allowing are Rumi’s “The Guesthouse” and Dana Faulds’s “Allow”; both are shared below.

The Guest House​

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.​

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.​

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.​

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.​

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

Allow

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado.  Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel.  Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground.  The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

-Danna Faulds

1 thought on “Allow

  1. Ellen Weatherford December 20, 2022 — 7:24 am

    Kalindi,
    Once again, your words are meaningful and timely. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and wisdom. Can you share the information about the online dream course? I look forward to your next post.

Comments are closed.

Have you loved much and have you loved well?

When you think of the word success, what comes to mind? Did you achieve your career goals? Your fitness goals? Relationship goals? How do you define those goals? When you are near death and look back on your life, what will you count as success and will it be the same as what you thought it needed to be when you were 20, 30, 40, 50, 60?

The things we worry about now will they matter on our death bed? This may sound morbid, and I’ve touched on these topics before in the past, but it’s been something that has been on my mind again lately which has brought me to this ramble hah.

A family friend and spiritual mentor once said that the question we should ask ourselves on our deathbed is, “Have I loved much and have I loved well”? Said a different way this means how many hearts have you touched, including your own? Of course, this isn’t a competition … it is about quality not quantity. As Mother Theresa once said, “We cannot do great things in this world. We can only do small things with great love.”

The daily worries and anxieties that may plague us along with whatever goals and successes we may strive for are all pretty small in the big scheme if they are not filtered through the lenses of the heart, of love. Of asking ourselves daily how can I best love today? How can I love myself so that I can shine that light, that burning candle of love, on the world, on everyone I encounter from friends and families to strangers in line at the grocery story to wild creatures to the earth. Words aren’t even required. Just an open heart.

Love in all its shapes and sizes, in all its eddies and swirls, is the beating heart of the universe. Our own hearts’ interactions with that Heart are a divine dance, a divine love song, a poetic embrace, a drum circle of hearts.

“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (theologian and French Jesuit priest)

2 thoughts on “Have you loved much and have you loved well?

  1. Great reminder dear Kalindi. We are blessed each day that we are given to seek ways to transfer our love and passion to others, whatever it may be. Always looking at the positive things of life, and when challenged, accepted with grace and faith.
    Thanks for your incredible message. You are a special and loving person. Hugs, Your Friend Fernando

    1. Aww thanks so much Fernando! Big hug!

Comments are closed.

Life and Death

I thought I’d try something a little different on this blog and share one of my recent poems. Perhaps more poems will be shared in the future.

I walk the spiral path
Stepping over
Narled roots
And grassy patches
Hand in hand
with
Life
and Death

They are my friends
My guides
My teachers

Fraternal twins
Dual sides
of the same
eternal wisdom

I smile and greet them
as old friends
friends I have shared walks with before
and will share walks with again

My friend death gets such a bad reputation
But who is death but the usher into life anew
And life the usher into death returned
Each meaningless without the other

So I smile and weep and laugh
Hand in hand
with my old friends
Life and Death
I walk and run and trip and fall
and sometimes collapse on the ground
and don’t want to get up
And there my friends wait patiently
Knowing they can only present lessons
on my walk
not force me to embrace and learn them
that it’s my choice
but they’ll never leave my side
whether I wish to acknowledge them or not

6 thoughts on “Life and Death

  1. Krishna Kanta (Catherine Schweig) August 10, 2022 — 10:39 am

    Dear Kalindi,
    I love the concept in your poem, of life and death being as close as dear friends and teachers. It was a beautiful read! 😊 I especially like the last line which gave me goosebumps (in a good way): “…whether I wish to acknowledge them or not.” Yes! That line really got me. Thank you for sharing your poetry with us! 🙏
    And, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to submit your poem (or another one, if you wish) to my poetry project, where I publish spiritual poems by women every week. If you are interested, here’s the link to the submissions page: https://womenspiritualpoetry.blogspot.com/p/submissions.html
    I look forward to sharing your poetry with my readers!
    Warmly,
    Krishna Kanta
    💗

    1. Thank you so much! I just emailed you 🙂

  2. Such a beautiful poem, Kalindi! Thank you 🙏

    1. Thank you so much!

  3. A beautiful heartfelt gentle brave and moving poem thank you so much Kalindi I would be glad to share it on my Facebook page for morning prayers which I read every morning peace and blessings Lou

    1. Thank you so much would be honored for you to share!

Comments are closed.

Love is a Verb

When you think of the word love what comes to mind? Perhaps that earthshattering feeling of falling head over heels in love? That romantic, butterflies in your stomach, kind of feeling. In other words, thinking of love as a feeling or state of being. And, sure, that is an aspect of love of course. Where we might go astray in our thinking, however, is if we fully equate love with just that “lovey” feeling. This means that we are thinking of love in a passive way – either you feel it or you don’t – so if you’re stressed, anxious or just generally having a bad day and not feeling much in the way of that love state whether with a romantic partner, friend, child, parent, or anyone, you may not change your actions to try to get back into a “love state,” but rather you may even get shorter tempered and unintentionally lean into irritation and anxiety spiraling you further from the loving energy that suddenly feels elusive. Worse still, you may blame the other person or other people for the lack of your feeling “love”. The reality though is that love is not just a noun, it is a verb too, an action verb. You have to make an effort to love and to love well. In fact, one could make the point that there is no higher goal in life than to practice and grow in active loving with everyone … our circle of loved ones, strangers as well as oneself. Here are a few ways you can practice loving as an active verb.

1) Love is thinking of others. Love, true love, is pure and from the heart, with no selfish aspects. The practice of unselfish love, of unconditional love, is thinking of others and offering acts of service, of love, to them without wanting or expecting anything in return. You simply do it because your heart flows to other hearts and you practice giving something of your heart, your love, as an offering. Of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t have any boundaries and there will be different ways you show and act on your love to different people with family and a spouse at the center of your heart circle and expanding out to friends, acquaintances and strangers. Extending out beyond human strangers to all living beings – animals, plants, mother earth herself – thinking how your actions might affect these “others” who are not really others but fellow travelers and companions in life, connected heart to heart, soul to soul, life to life.

2) Love is loving yourself too. If you do not love yourself unconditionally, you cannot love others unconditionally. This means offering love to even the parts of you you may not like much, the parts you may be embarrassed or ashamed of and wish to hide perhaps. Offer love to those parts even as you strive to grow to do better to heal the broken parts. My partner has a beautiful way of describing the necessity of self-love: Love yourself so much that your love explodes out to everyone around you. That is, if you don’t love yourself fully, completely, any love that you offer to others will be incomplete since you would be drawing from an empty or partially empty well. A great affirmation for this is “I love myself so much it explodes onto everyone!” Try repeating that to yourself a few times each day as you practice actively loving yourself and others.

3) Love is a practice that requires dedication. If you want to get fit, you wouldn’t just wait until the days you are feeling strong to work out, you would come up with a routine and stick to it, knowing that it takes persistence and dedication and working out even on days you’d rather stay in bed. This of course applies to pretty much everything including meditation. The point is to practice especially when your mind is all over the place not just when you’re calm and feeling motivated. Or writing a book. Eating healthy. You name it. Love is the same. You have to consciously choose to love well each day, each moment, in your words and actions. Practice loving even when you are in a bad mood and are feeling stressed. Practice loving even when you don’t feel particularly “loving”! Even when you may feel you are “faking it until you make it.” For example, if you don’t feel like smiling and smile anyway,  you are sending positive endorphins to your brain and you actually feel a little more like smiling. It’s the same thing with love. Practice loving until it becomes second nature at all times, even and especially in times of stress, practice until your heart bursts with love, and feeling and action become merged. For most of us this is a lifelong practice and we will experience glimpses and times where feeling and action are aligned and others when we need to practice the action of loving even when we don’t “feel it” knowing the feeling will come again.

“Love is first and foremost exemplified by action – by practice – not solely by feeling.” [Whose quote? Anonymous?]

“Practice love until you remember that you are love.” Swami Jai Premananda

Balancing self-acceptance with a growth mentality

Life is all about balance in many areas. One of those that I’ve been reflecting on lately is finding the balance between self-acceptance and a growth mentality. That’s how to balance accepting ourselves where we are today while also striving to learn, grow and improve ourselves.

1) The first thing to realize is that while they may appear to be on different ends of the spectrum, self-acceptance and a growth mentality are not actually mutually exclusive. Self-acceptance to me means having a fundamental sense of “okayness” or self-assurance that you are okay just as you are right now – your whole, beautiful perfectly imperfect self. Having certain areas that you want to grow or improve in doesn’t change that fact. Where this topic is concerned, you can in fact have your cake (self-acceptance) and eat it too (growth).

2) The next thing to do is to add in a nice, heaping scoop of love and compassion, or more accurately self-love and self-compassion. In this topic it may be easier to step outside of yourself and use a loved one as an example (since we may have an easier time loving and accepting others than ourselves). With a dear friend or family member, you love them for who they are today, right? And say they do something that bothers you (let’s take a basic example of someone who is chronically late), you may talk with them and hope that that is something they will try to work on but you love them anyway. In this example with punctuality, time issues are simply a habit of the person, it’s not who they are at their core. Our core or essence is a beautiful soul, always worthy of love, compassion and acceptance. That magical light-filled spark is who we really are trappings of perceiving strengths and weaknesses aside. Our purpose as beings on the lesson-filled playground of life is to grow and learn, just as little children on the playground learn and grow through their games.

3) The way I look at it (and it’s definitely still a journey with me as self-assurance is something that I’ve struggled with and why it’s one of my intention words of the year), is that self-acceptance, self-love and self-assurance (take your pick of what words resonate) are part of your unchanging, beautiful core to hold close within your heart center. From there, with that core in place, you can expand outward both within yourself to look at areas you would like to work on for development and from outside of yourself if you receive say feedback on a certain area that makes you look at something to improve. Regardless, your core of fundamental self-assurance/acceptance stays strong and therefore looking at areas to improve becomes an exciting growth opportunity not something that shatters a fragile self-esteem. Part  of the definition of a growth mentality means looking at opportunities to grow and learn and become better versions of ourselves as an exciting process all the while still being okay with where we are today.

What do you think? Share in the comments below if you’d like.

“No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” Brene Brown

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