Let’s see what we think

Please enjoy this excerpt from the Introduction to The Becoming Journal!

There’s something really wonderful about putting our thoughts on paper where we can see them. Writing slows us down and gives us time to think. Intuition and random thoughts start joining into vivid pictures until all of a sudden, we see new connections, aha’s!, and fresh ideas.

Kind of like turning a sweater inside out so we can finally see the tag that’s been itching us, putting a vague idea that’s been drifting around in our heads down on paper gets it out where we can see it. In the light of day, it may look amazing; it may not. Either way, writing it down gives us power over what happens next.

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Dream your dream

Your dreams are one of the truest parts of you.

To have the energy and passion you need for any dream, it’s got to be first and foremost about what you want to bring into your life. It’s easy to get distracted by what other people think, even people we love and care about, or even by what the headlines say.

We tend to listen too hard to other people’s ideas about what we should and shouldn’t try or what we’re good at or how we should spend our time and lives. We take the headlines too seriously and immediately apply them to ourselves, when they don’t.

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Gratitude: the miracle-magnet

When the sky brightens, and the day is suddenly new…what do you dream of then?

A friend told me this amazing story: attendees at a seminar are shown a video of two people playing catch. They’re told just to focus on counting the number of times each person catches the ball.

In the middle of the clip, a gorilla walks into the frame and waves at the camera. When the clip ends, attendees are asked what they thought of the gorilla. Every single person is positive there was no gorilla, and when they look at the clip again, they swear they’re looking at a different video.

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Let’s misbehave today

Please enjoy this excerpt of
Braving It: The gentle art of living boldly
…coming this month!

It’s always amazing to hear about people who brave their lives naturally, effortlessly. I can’t help but wonder what combination of biology and experiences enables them to be true to themselves, regardless of who they’re with or the situation they’re in. To have the courage of their own truth, to listen and live by their inner voice, often in spite of some of the loudest and most insistent voices shouting around them — this amazes me.

If you don’t know the name Isadora Duncan, it’s worth Googling her. Read More

Famous no’s in history

Beautiful someone, “no” can change the world.
In fact, sometimes it’s the only thing that does.

 

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, 42-year-old Rosa Parks stepped onto a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on the way home from a long day of work. She paid her fare and took a seat. Contrary to many accounts of exactly what happened that day, when a white passenger demanded that she give up her seat because the whites-only section was full, she refused not because she was tired from a long day of work (though she was), but because she was tired of being treated this way. “The only tired I was,” she wrote in her autobiography many years later, “was tired of giving in.”

Her quiet but firm refusal to give up her seat and her subsequent arrest for this simple act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In appealing the arrest, Rosa Parks spoke truth to power and openly challenged the legality of segregation. The boycott lasted 381 days and in the end, this Read More