It is an interesting observation. When I worked at the homeless shelter, after the first year, I seldom got sick. The first year — well that was a different story. I pretty well had a cold a month. But after that, not a one. It was as if my immune system figured out what it needed to do to protect me from viruses and a sea of people who were constantly sick, and strengthened itself.

Almost two years away from that place… and my immune system has gone to sleep in the comfort of not being subjected every day to viruses and coughs and colds.

Which is why, today’s blog is brief.

It’s all about taking care of yourself. It’s about giving yourself medicine first so you can take care of others.

Some bug has decided to take up residence in my stomach and as long as I stay still and quiet, it doesn’t act out. But… the minute I move around? Well, let’s just say it’s hyperactive!

A good lesson though. I thought about going into the office, thought about all the things I should be doing and my ‘the bug’ said, ‘I’m in control of you! I decide when you move!’

which means, I’m laying low today. I’ve brought my laptop to bed, opened the blinds so I can watch the birdies at the feeder in the backyard and will heed my bodies call for rest.

In the meantime, here’s a wonderful video that will inspire, challenge and get you going today! Live your greatness. Live your dreams. Live on the wild side! Live!

And don’t forget to Play!  Don’t forget to have fun!

As I drive along the avenue that follows the river’s winding course through downtown, I see a man in the bushes. He is packing up his tent. Further along, I spy another man tidying up a make-shift campsite.

Autumn is falling and the leaves are becoming sparser. Those who once were hidden in the foliage are now visible.

I walk along a downtown street on my way back from a meeting. A man is panhandling outside a coffee shop. Years ago, when I started working in the homeless sector, I made a decision to not give money to panhandlers. I ask if I can get him a coffee and a donut. He thanks me. He likes his coffee triple/triple, with extra sugar on the side, please.

I stand at a cross walk, waiting for the light to change. Across the street I see a man drop a napkin on the ground. Perhaps he doesn’t notice. The man behind him picks it up and throws it into the garbage can as he walks past.

A woman is walking across the street when she drops her bag. A man, who looks visibly homeless, stops to help her pick up her things. Everyone else keeps walking by.

I step onto an elevator. A woman races towards it. I press the button to keep the doors open as she steps on and thanks me for holding the elevator for her. As the elevator starts up, I give her a compliment on how pretty her outfit is and how the colour suits her beautifully. She thanks me.  “I really needed to hear that right now,” she says. And smiles as she gets off on her floor. It is not an ‘easy’ floor she’s getting off on. It is a clinic that handles really, really difficult issues for women. I am grateful I took the time to share what I was thinking when I saw her.

I am on the bus I take from the C-train station on my way home. The bus pulls away from the bus-stop just as a man races towards it from the station. The light ahead is green. The driver can’t stop. She honks her horn, waves at the man and points to the other side of the intersection. There is no bus-stop there but that’s okay. She waits for the man to cross and get onto the bus.

I am on the C-train (subway) in the morning, on my way to work. In the seat across from me a man sits reading something on his cellphone. We stop at a station and a pregnant woman gets on. The man immediately jumps up and offers her his seat. I think about complimenting him on his consideration and hesitate. And then I remember the rubber bracelet a friend at Choices gave me on the weekend. It’s message reads, “Pay It Forward”. I slip it off my wrist and offer it to the man. “That was very considerate, giving up your seat,” I tell him. “I’d like to pay your act forward with this bracelet.”  He looks at me surprised. Looks down at the white rubber band bracelet with the blue lettering and takes it from my hand. “Now you get to pay it forward,” I tell him. And he smiles and thanks me and tells me that he will. “I’ll enjoy doing that,” he says.

As I step off the C-train I think about Tony, the man who gave me the bracelet on the weekend. Not only is he committed to paying forward the gifts he received when he went through Choices by sending every staff-member in his company willing to go to Choices, he bought a box of the white rubber bands that read, Pay It Forward, so that he could celebrate acts of kindness whenever he sees them. I am grateful for his generosity, just as I am grateful for the countless acts of generosity I witness on the streets, in elevators, in coffee shops, everywhere, every day.

They are all over the place. Acts of kindness that resonate with heart and human connection. Moments of grace that fill my heart with gratitude, that fill my spirit with hope.

We may be one messed up, crazy world, but we are still a place where miracles happen in every moment, and love and connection embrace us in every act of kindness.

As you go about your day today,  take a moment to act out on an act of kindness. And if you see one being committed, let the person know you caught them in the act. Pay It Forward by giving them the gift of your gratitude.

Namaste.

Random Acts of Kindness

Many years ago Debbie received a gift from a stranger. It was a gift that would fill every moment for the next twenty-three years with life. And then, the gift began to fail. Not because it wasn’t wanted, or desired, or needed but simply because sometimes, time wears heavily on gifts from strangers in our bodies.

For Debbie, that meant the kidney she’d received 23 years ago could no longer sustain her and she would have to go on dialysis until a new match could be found. It was a long journey. Her health was failing, her body weakening, and still she held onto hope. Her eldest son’s kidney didn’t match nor did her husbands. It wasn’t until her youngest son, Kynan reached the age of majority for living donors that they discovered, he wasn’t a match either.

But Kynan was not to be daunted. Even though giving up a kidney meant a radical change to his passion of being a rodeo clown, Kynan decided to become a living donor to a stranger.

And so, just over two and a half weeks ago Kynan and two other living donors created a circle of courage, compassion, and Love so that their loved one could receive a match. Kynan’s donation went to a stranger whose loved one’s living organ went to another stranger who’s loved one was a match for Debbie.

On Sunday evening, my youngest daughter picked up Debbie and Kynan and brought them both for dinner. We sat in a circle on the deck, a fire roaring in the outdoor fireplace, the sky above turning dusk to dark. We laughed and chatted and shared stories and when it got too chilly we moved inside and sat around the dining room table sharing a meal and more stories, many of which focused around our Choices journeys.

I remembered coaching with Debbie. It was her first time volunteering to coach and she was nervous and determined to give her best. Her gentle spirit, her welcoming smile made everyone feel warm and loved, but mid-way through the three month journey through Choices, to Givers 1 and then Givers 2, her health began to fail and she had to step back to take care of herself.

It is one of the foundational beliefs of Choices. We have to take care of ourselves first to be strong enough to take care of others.

For the past two and a half years, Debbie’s life and the life of her family, has been circumscribed by the dialysis machine. Now she’s free.

As I sat around the dining room table and looked at her face and the face of her son glowing in the candlelight I was in awe of the power of Love to inspire and heal. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this young man who had the courage and Love to give of his life to a stranger so his beautiful, gentle-spirited mother could continue to live.

I asked Debbie and Kynan if I could share their story because, well firstly because I love them both and want to celebrate them but also, because I wanted to inspire each of us to think about what we do that makes a difference in the world.

I know Debbie and Kynan through Choices. Kynan has coached many times, and when he’s not coaching in the first 5 day segment of the training, he is always willing to come in as a “Blessing Coach” to help out in Givers 2 on the weekends — on Sunday of the Givers 2 weekend, trainees spend the afternoon creating their Purpose Statement — the thing they do in this world that comes naturally to them because it is, and has always been, written on their heart. Having volunteers in the Purpose Room (as is true of all the Choices rooms) is critical to ensuring each trainee gets the support and guidance they need to create their own unique statement so that when they leave the room, they are empowered to live on purpose.

We each have a purpose in life. We each do things, naturally, that touch others in ways that give meaning to our hearts desire to make a difference.

Looking around the dinner table on Sunday night, I felt the difference each person made in my life — and the world. Sunday was the finish of C.C.’s first coaching experience in ‘the big room’. He still has Givers 1 and G2 to coach in and can’t wait for his next opportunity to coach again in Choices. His daughter, Mikaela, who finished G2 last month, sat beside her friend M.M. who just completed Choices who was glowing from his experience. She too can’t wait to coach. My youngest daughter Liseanne and a friend from Choices, T.G, had volunteered that day as Blessing Coaches in G2, something they do almost every Sunday of the G2 weekend. Liseanne is checking her calendar to see when she can next coach the entire program.

It is their way of giving back. Of making a difference.

We all have an opportunity to give back — not always in such a significant way as Kynan, but each of us can and does make a difference.

What’s your difference-making? What’s written on your heart?

There is a moment in Choices, the life development course I coach in, where each trainee is asked “What do you want more of in your life?”

When asked, you would think most people would reply, fame, fortune, success, or something along those lines. Yet, in having asked that question of many, many people, not just in the Choices room but also in the homeless shelter where I used to work and in other seminars I present, the answer is always deeper, more heart-driven, soul-inspiring than the obvious.

Once, I asked it of a man who was once a boy soldier in his native Africa. He was convinced there could never be any ‘more’ for him. He was convinced that he was measured by his past, and would always be known as a ‘bad man’.

“Is that who you want to be in the world? Is that what you want more of in your life?” I asked. He was one of twelve students in a self-esteem course I was teaching that is part of a job-readiness training program held at the homeless shelter. 

Upon hearing my question he shook his head, no, no. “I want to be proud. I want to be a good man. But I have done so many bad things…”

We went on to explore what is possible when we let go of limiting beliefs and move into that space where miracles shine in every day moments, creating joy, hope, love and so much more with every breath. At the end of the course, he came up to me and said that he’d never realized how much his thoughts were creating his reality. “I’m going to think better thoughts from now on,” he told me.  I hope he has.

It is something I wish and hope and want for everyone. To think better thoughts. To fill their minds with thoughts of how amazing, powerful, incredible they are.

Our thoughts inform our actions. And when our thoughts tell on us in negative ways, when our thoughts remind us of how small, bad, pathetic, horrible we are as human beings, our actions reflect what we’re thinking. And in acting out from our lesser thoughts, we create a world of limitations within ourselves and all around us.

We are capable of greatness. We are greatness in action.

It is our birthright. 

Yesterday, as the five day training wound to a close, one of the trainees came up to me and told me I was contagious. “When you shared on the first day I didn’t believe anyone could be that happy, that joyful.” They went on to tell me how they’d been watching me throughout the course of the five days to see if it was true. Was I really that happy or was it just an act. “Thank you for helping me trust in others. Thank you for showing me what is possible. I’ve been so focused on not trusting the world, I’d forgotten how to trust.”

When asked, “What do you want more of in your life?” my response is always, joy, passion, Love, peace…. I want to infuse and infect the world around me with a sense of ‘the possible’. I want people to know that life is a journey of wonder, it is a voyage into the unknown of tomorrow through the gateway of today — and when today is filled with what you want more of in your life,  the unknown isn’t scary, it’s exciting, amazing, incredible. It’s WOW!

To live my WOW! everyday, to know no fear and to feel alive and radiant means living in the creation of what I want most in my life, every moment, with every breath. It means measuring each thing I do and say against the question ‘what do I want more of in my life?’ and then asking myself, “Will this create more…. joy…passion… Love…. peace?”

And if the answer is “no”, it means having the courage and conviction to take a different path, to find the thing that will create more of what I want and live it.

We all have a past, we all have done things we’re not proud of, that brought us down, that hurt those we love, that damaged relationships, that tore apart our dreams and left us wandering in the darkness of that place of wondering, is there any ‘more’ for me?

Yes there is. More.

As is often asked at Choices, “If better is possible, is good good enough?”

It doesn’t matter how dark your past or how circuitous the journey you took to get to where you are today, what matters most is that each and every one of us awaken to the beauty and wonder of who we are in this moment right now and state, without hesitation, without fear, without discrediting or disbelieving what we are capable of, the thing I want more of in my life is…….

And then, breathe into it, be it, live it.

And so it is.

Yup.  Gone fishing — for spirits unfolding wings. For hearts unpacking dreams and souls touching the essence of what it means to be human and alive and creatively inspired to live this one wild and passionate love in the rapture of now.

I am off to coach at Choices today for the next 5 days. Off to witness hearts breaking open and Love pouring in. Off to be part of miracles shimmering in the light of every breath and lives taking flight in the possibility of dreams awakening.

This time, it’s with a twist.

C.C., who went through the Choices program 4 years ago will be coaching for his first time. And we’ll both be in the room together. The first time I get to share the experience with him — and I am excited.

It also means…. long days, short nights, fast sleeps — so I’ll not be very present in the blogosphere though I will try to post if I’m not too tired!

See you all next Monday if not before.

Blessings on your journey.  May Love light up your heart and set your world spinning in awe and wonder with every breath.

Fall fast approaches. The sky stays darker into the morning, light holding off shining its brilliance through the chill of the night. The leaves are turning, rust and gold and auburn. The blushing reds and rose of summer fade. Petals fall.

The earth is preparing itself for winter.

C.C. and I were in Saskatoon on the weekend. Preparing our house there for rental as he shifts his focus back to Calgary. We assessed things that need doing and putzed around the house, bemoaning the work crew who have not turned up for two weeks to fix the plaster in the ceiling. I pulled weeds in the garden, swatted at the inevitable wasps of autumn and ignored C.C.’s inevitable admonitions to ‘leave them alone. they won’t hurt you if you don’t swat at them.’

I don’t believe him. I am not that trusting of their tiny yellow striped bodies or even tinier insect-minds. I think they like to sting. It is their nature.

It’s not, C.C. tells me. If you leave them be they will cohabit harmoniously.

My mind may be bigger than a yellow jacket’s, but regardless of its size, it is not ready to give up believing that swatting them away is my best defence.

That’s the problem with a negative thought. It takes hold and in its presence I grab on to irrational  behaviours that even though I know better, I am incapable of doing better because of the fear blocking my capacity to be present in the moment.

Wasps cause me to know fear. Even though I can only remember ever being stung once in my life, their tiny, irritating presence, give rise to fear far greater than their tiny size warrants. And at this time of year in the prairies, wasps tend to be ever-present.

Dang. My favourite time of year and there they are, cluttering up the garden.

In an effort to understand my fear, and in the hopes of embracing it, I decided to research these pesky critters.

Not a good idea.

Sometimes, knowledge is not my friend. sometimes, knowing what I don’t know is better than learning what I don’t want to know!

Like, the myth that once a wasp stings you it dies. Not so. A wasp can sting repeatedly, one of the reasons it’s so feared.

1% of the population is allergic to a wasps venom, resulting in 50 to 100 deaths in the US a year (though whether that’s bees or wasps is hard to discern — and their venom is different so people can be allergic to one and not the other). That said, 90 people will die in the US from lightning strikes every year and over 15,000 will be killed by fellow human beings.

Forget about lightning strikes, people die from wasp stings. Seriously. they die.

Which, when I stop to think rationally actually does suggest I am better off not swatting my arms and making them angry. I’m actually better to let them be present without causing them angst.

Now that’s a test of my capacity to be present, awake and alive in compassion, truth and beauty to all the wonders, and beings in my world.

There is a story of Gandhi who, while on one of his many hunger strikes was approached by a man whose daughter was killed. The man told Gandhi that he would stop fighting if Gandhi started eating. And Gandhi replied that he would eat only when the father embraced the man who killed his daughter. In his anguish and anger, the father did not want to embrace his enemy, but he did and in that act, the fighting ceased.

Perhaps, the wasp represents those parts of me that are still at war with my inner peace. Perhaps, taming my fear of wasps, stilling my flailing arms to embrace the quiet of a moment and all it holds, is my path to tranquility.

Perhaps, it isn’t learning about wasps that I need, but rather, learning what it takes to be still and quiet in the face of my fear. Perhaps, facing what I don’t want to know about how to be present and calm in the face of what I fear will lead me to what I want more of in my life — peace, tranquility and love.

Wasps serve a purpose in the life-cycle. They have a raison d’être in the garden. They help control aphids. They pollinate my flowers and keep the grass growing.

Perhaps, learning to embrace their presence will calm my fears of the unknown. Perhaps, letting compassion embrace me will keep me present to Love, no matter what is happening in the world around me.

I can be fairly impatient with myself — especially when it comes to ‘knowing’.

My pattern is to assume I ‘should have known better’, or ‘should have known it in the first place’ and then, trip myself up by beating myself up for not — knowing what I tell myself I should have known better.

This is not a self-nurturing or supportive trait and is something I have been learning to breathe into so that it no longer causes distress within me and my world around me.

I was thinking about this not so supportive trait of mine as I get ready to coach this week at Choices starting Wednesday. Last month I was asked to do something I’d never done before — I carried out the task to the best of my ability, even in spite of the inner self-critic wanting to make a fuss over what it saw as major flaws in my delivery.

And… here’s the challenge. What if I’m asked to do it again? What if I’m not?

See the problem? The ‘what if I’m not’ issue is relatively easy to deal with. It’s not about me – it’s what works best in any given moment or circumstance that supports the training, the trainees and the team. If I have issues with not being asked to do something I think I should be, my upset generally stems from that place within me that feels less than — or not good enough. It could even stem from that place of being afraid to ask for what I want! To move through that place of insecurity and fear and into my knowing of “I am enough” is simply — a breath away.

The bigger challenge for me, however, is in the place of ‘second time’. The second time I’m asked to do something, my ego wants to jump in and self-congratulate me and inflate it’s sense of importance and, my inner critic immediately makes a leap for that place of — well then you’d better be perfect. You’ve done it once you are not permitted to make a mistake this time, and you definitely don’t dare ask for guidance. You should know it by now! People will think less of you if you don’t know it all!

Okay folks, you read it here first — I don’t know it all!

Yup. It’s true. I don’t know it all. I do know a lot about what I’ve studied and learned and spent time experiencing and researching and feeling and doing.

And I don’t know it all.

Which means, I am a work in progress. I don’t have to do anything perfectly. I just have to do it to the best of my ability in any given moment. In that place of acceptance, I can give my inner critic a break. I can let my inner critic breathe out — and thus leave room for me to breathe into the truth that is always present — Doing it perfectly is not the objective. Turning up, being present, and then doing whatever I’m doing with all my heart, to the best of my ability is what it’s all about.

Let’s face it. It’s taken me years, and years, and maybe even a few more years, to get to this place where I acknowledge — I don’t have to know it all. I don’t have to have all the answers, and I definitely don’t have to do it all perfectly — all I have to do is Turn Up. Pay Attention. Speak my truth and stay unattached to the outcome.

And in that place know with all my heart the truth of who I am in this world today — I am enough.

And in my ‘enoughness’, it is enough that I live as a wild and radiant woman, learning and expanding and transforming and evolving through each moment, shining a light for all to see that they are worth all the wonder and joy this big, bright, beautiful world has to offer. And that’s a lot!

Whereever you go, go with all your heart. Confucious

When the pain of what we are living becomes greater than our fear of changing, we let go. When our fear of drowning swamps our fear of holding onto nothing, we start to swim. And when the pain of believing we are worthless becomes too great to bear, we surrender, and fall, in Love.

Like a ping pong ball being forced down into a glass of water, pain rises, over-flowing the container, rushing over our fear, setting us free to feel our spirit calling us to awaken, to gather up our wounded heart and swim away from the place that would have us believe, ‘this is all there is’.

There is so much more.

To living. Loving. Being. Experiencing.

There is life. There is Love.

When I was embroiled in that relationship that was killing me, I believed the pain of my existence with him was all there was, all I was worth, all I deserved.

And then, the police walked in and set me free and I discovered, I was wrong. That pain-riddled existence was not all there was. There was a world of wonder, of joy, of beauty on the other side of my fear that ‘this is all there is’.

On that day in May, 2003, I could not have known what was about to unfold. All I knew was that I had told the Universe I could not take the pain of my existence any longer. And the Universe delivered. For months at the end of that relationship, I kept repeating, “I can’t take this anymore.” I kept telling myself I was at the end of my rope. I let my fingers slip along the rope, but I couldn’t let go. I was hanging on by a thread, I wanted to let go, but my fear of falling was greater than the pain of my existence.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”

Sometimes, all we have to hang on to is a thread. And that thread is all that holds us back from letting go.

In my mind, at the moment of holding onto that relationship, letting go meant ceasing to exist. It wasn’t that I thought of ‘death’ as an out. It was that I simply did not want to exist. To be.

I thought if I could just let go, ‘it’ would all be over. The pain. The sorrow. The fear. The suffering. It would all be gone.

And then, I surrendered and let go and the Universe caught me and I fell, in Love.

And that was my awakening.

The Universe was always there, holding me up, supporting me, Loving me. It wasn’t the cause of my pain. Holding myself in that painful place was what was hurting me. The Universe wasn’t to blame for where I was at. ‘The bad man’ wasn’t to blame for where I was at even – though he was responsible for everything he was doing,  I was responsible for what I did about it in my life. I was holding on to that relationship and that was the source of my pain. And I kept telling myself I couldn’t let go because I was too afraid to chance what would happen if I let go. It was a vicious circle. I wanted to believe in the disbelief of that relationship. I wanted to believe it was all true. it wasn’t. True. The relationship was a lie and in my holding onto it, I was living a lie because I could never make it true, no matter how hard I tried. It was all part of the Lie. The lie that I am not enough, never good enough, not worthy.

Because abuse hurts. And holding onto an abuser hurts.

Letting go of the pain and fear means letting go of everything that hurts me.

In surrendering, I awoke to the wonder of being enough. Just the way I am. In that very moment of awakening — Bruised and battered. Beaten down and abused — I was enough. For that moment, it was enough, that I continued to breathe. Silently. Quietly. In place. Breathe in. Breathe out. It was enough that I breathed as I began to awaken and expand into the Truth of my being. I am enough.

I am.

Enough.

In being enough, it is enough that I live this one wild and precious life fearlessly in love with all I am and the world around me.

That is enough for me.