MaXIMIze Your Affliction, Your Bliss, Your Passion

I was flying the friendly skies home on Southwest the other day after spending the holiday with my darling daughter, and I read their inflight magazine. On the back cover was the following verbiage in an ad for Affliction Clothing:

"Affliction - the passion that drives us to reach for greatness - we are inspired by those who live fast and are willing to endure pain and suffering to push the limits of what is possible - you embrace the ideology of "never say 'I can't' but 'I am the first who ever has'." Your affliction makes you lead when others choose to follow - you create when others consume - you hear music when others hear noise - your affliction lets you see beyond the chaos as art emerges from within - you will rise, you will fall, but you will greet the challenge - you, innovators, are the fuel - our affliction is to design and create clothing that speaks to you - we share your insanity and will not be ignored - you inspire us - it is our affliction that binds us together - we will change things - every man dies, but not every man truly lives! What is your affliction?"

On the last page of the magazine was an interview with Hugh Jackman, a talented actor of both stage and screen - best known as Wolverine or Van Helsing in the circles I run in. He said that it took him a while to realize it is okay to follow your bliss.

And this is what flowed from my pen after reading those words:

Afflicted with passion - afflicted with bliss - neither of which can be denied - follow them willingly or have them pull you along kicking and screaming - forever haunting you for your denial - live life with no regret, follow your heart, follow your passion - live large for to live small is to live not at all - face your fears, your demons, your things that go bump in the night - live with what is not what if - what will be, not what can be - what/who you really are, not the boxes others put you in (or you put yourself in) - dreams denied turn into nightmares - ghosts that haunt you - dreams realized give you wings - free your soul - find your passion, find your bliss, find your life, free your soul.

Wow!

MaXIMIze - Gratitude, a Place of Thankfulness

One way we can MaXIMIze our lives is by cultivating and maintaining a habit of gratitude or thankfulness, not only for things great and small that happen to us, but also those that happen to others. Someone gets a new job, be thankful for them, be happy for them. This generates good energy and helps us all around!

Now, this Thanksgiving is the first one in my 48 years of life that I am very likely to spend alone, and that's okay. This year has thrown me the curve balls of divorce, empty nesting, children in trouble, and job changes. And I am thankful for them all.

As I was journaling this morning, I wrote down many of the things I am grateful for - a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my belly, a bed to sleep in, hot showers, books to read, music to lose myself in, birds to watch, flowers to brighten my day, candles to brighten my night, caring people lighting my path, being a light on the paths of others, being a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a mother, a grandmother of two and four legged creatures, having enough, being present in the moment, seizing the day, letting go of anger, working through sorrow, letting go of yesterday, not worrying about tomorrow. I'm thankful for all the people, places and things in my life past, present and future - love and laughter and life ever after - even for the pain for the strength I gain - for time together and time alone. Truly so much to be thankful for.

Here's hoping your list is as full and varied as mine - Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Focus On What Is, Not What You Think Is

As I scan the Twitter posts from the folks I follow every morning, I jot down the quotes that call to me that day. Here are the ones from this morning:

I remind myself daily that I'm not seeing things as they are but seeing things as I am. - Fay Hart

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be, you can't see how it is. - Ram Dass

We must be careful what we imagine, fear, or hope for. The echoes of our thought live on in eternity. 
- Robert Fanney

A man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is. - Bhagavad Gita

We all have a tendency at times to read too much into a word, a phrase, a situation when we really should just let it go, let it roll, let it be. We are all just people living in our own bubbles, and we don't always see what goes on in other's bubbles.

We bring the darkness and the light of our own thoughts into that which is our own reality. Note I said "our own reality." The Reality is not necessarily what we think it is or should be. It simply is what it is. And we need to learn to let it go, let it roll, let it be.

Namaste.

MaXIMIze - Honesty and/or Openness

The below came to me in a (not-so) blinding flash of light while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Four, the episode titled "Doomed."

There is a major difference between honesty and openness. Not everyone is a living, breathing book with every page accessible to others. Some are like dairies, locked and hidden, or mysteries with clues to be followed and ferreted out, or puzzles to be pieced together.

Sometimes one just comes into life as a mystery.

Other times one comes into life with the openness of a small child and then trauma - lots of seemingly small traumas that result in the thousand little cuts that bleed trust away day by day or the one major trauma that blows trust to smithereens, the pieces of which are not always findable again, or a combination thereof - causes one to pull into oneself, away from others, away from the risk of being hurt yet again.

As long as the honesty is always there, the openness comes with time, and perhaps even the trust. And time requires patience. Therefore good things truly do come to those who wait.

Who or what in your life is worth the wait of patience and time?

MaXIMIze - Thoughts Have Legs

Your thoughts have little legs that go out and create what you think about. ~ P. Hayes

I am nearly done re-reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD. - a book I have read several times over the last 15 years.

There were several seeming coincidences this week that made me stop and go "huh" - made me realize once again just how interconnected everyone and everything really is.

The first had to do with humor - a dear friend of mine at dinner one evening was deliberately being lighter and finding the humor in things, apparently because someone told him he needed more humor in his life. The next day, I read a passage in the book about laughter and its healing power, which I'll share here (page 336, if you have the book - Chapter 11):

"In laughter, a woman breathes fully, and when she does, she may begin to feel unsanctioned feelings. And what could these feelings be? Well, they turn out not to be feelings so much as relief and remedies for feelings, often causing the release of stopped-up tears or the reclamation of forgotten memories, or the bursting of chains on the sensual personality."

Now, this passage is referring to what Dr. Estes calls "dirty Goddess stories," however, I have found that finding the unexpected humor in any situation can cause the same reaction. The key is the ability of whatever you find this type of humor in to, as she says in her book, "...loosen what was too tight, to lift gloom, to bring the body into a kind of humor that belongs not to the intellect but to the body itself, to keep those passages clear."

The second seeming coincidence had to do with working through anger, or rage as she calls it, and moving to forgiveness - as some of my readers know, life has dealt me an interesting hand this year - one of those cards being divorce. In working through trying to save my marriage as well as the fallout from the divorce, I let go of the veil of anger through which I dealt with things most of my life. That letting go has allowed - sometimes forced - me to feel all the other emotions there are out there, including pain, sorrow and grief. That letting go led to the most recent coincidence between life and this book.

The first paragraph in the chapter titled "Battle Scars: Membership in the Scar Clan" reads:

"Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better."

I read that particular passage on a day when I was feeling very low, very vulnerable, very sensitive emotionally. I took the inferred advice, made it through the day and cried my river that evening after work - I let the natural rhythm of emotion flow as it should and released the torrent of emotion rightly, which enabled me to see clearly again and keep things in perspective.

To pull back to the quote at the beginning of this passage, I have read this book several times over the years as a way to discover what it is I need to have, do and be to heal rightly, to heal cleanly, to move forward in life instead of ending up in an endless spiral.

Thoughts have power, more than we realize sometimes, and what we focus on is what we bring into our lives. We need to be cognizant of the rhythm and flow of our thoughts, and do the appropriate course correction in order to move forward in life rather than getting caught in the spiral of repeating things over and over and over again.

What is repeating in your life currently? What course correction can you make to continue moving forward, right here, right now?

The smallest of actions can have the greatest effect.

Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Vitalize!

The theme for August in 365 Science of Mind, A Year of Daily Wisdom from Ernest Holmes, is Vitalize.

In order to MaXIMIze life, we have to vitalize it. We need to debride and scrub away that which no longer serves our highest purpose. We need to bring our focus back to the light and shun the dark, for the light is the vitalizing force of life.

A mantra I found recently on Twitter goes like this:

I am enough; I have enough; I do enough and whatever anyone thinks of me is none of my business. ~@anitabondi

To truly vitalize ourselves and our lives, we must shut ourselves away from the negative flotsam and jetsam in life, constantly focusing on what is good and true and positive instead.

We are enough, right here, right now, and no one can take that away - we can only give it away by turning away from the light and letting the negative flotsam and jetsam move over us, blocking out said light.

The good news is that even if we allow ourselves to be temporarily plunged into darkness and despair, we can move aside the curtain of negative flotsam and jetsam and see the light once again - if we choose to do so.

Life is about choice - what do you choose to focus on today - vitalizing your life, or letting the negative flotsam and jetsam curtain close around you?

MaXIMIze - Drawing in the Light

It is all about where you choose to focus your energies. You attract the vibration in which you are dancing. @EkhowBarnes from Twitter

Whatever you worry about, find its contrast. This is what you want to think about. - Marion Ross

Whenever insecurity raises its ugly head, we need to stop and look at what is really in play there. Why did it raise up? What was the trigger? How do we really want to be, feel, react instead of how we did?

Each one of us is worthy of every good thing we want in our lives. What holds us back is ourselves - our assumptions, our insecurities, our lack of belief that we are worthy and deserving of all the riches in the world, our focus on the outer things instead of the inner life.

So many of us focus on being fulfilled by people and things outside of ourselves that we forget we have to love and accept ourselves before others can do so! What we project out into the world is what we draw back to ourselves from the world.

We need to believe we are good, loving, beautiful people before others will. Each of us has the unending capacity within ourselves for love, and therefore is loveable. Each one of us has a deep inner beauty and therefore is beautiful. Each one of us has an immeasurable well of good within us and therefore can share that good with the world.

We each have our own beautiful, unique and treasured light to share with the world. Some of us, however, choose to hide that light under a bushel of insecurity, of fear, of not feeling like we are enough.

Each one of us is enough, right here, right now.

When you believe, you can achieve - so what is stopping you from believing and achieving right here, right now, today?

MaXIMIze - Bringing Things into the Light

If the shadow is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected, and it can burst forth at any time. ~ C.G. Jung

When I read this quote, I immediately thought of my own insecurity issues and how I need to bring them into the light and face each one of them head on, looking them square in the eyes and letting them know they are not going to control me any longer - I will live up to my potential to the true best of my ability.

What shadows do you need to bring into the light and deal with right here, right now so you can truly live your best life?

What is stopping you from doing so?

What is there to truly be afraid of - what is the worst that could happen, really?

Each one of us is worthy of living our best life right here, right now - especially you!

MaXIMIze - By Resting

A friend recently pointed out that when my life is good or I seem happier my writing drops off. I don't know if that is true for this most recent furlough - although he is right, I am in a better place than I was a few months ago when I started this blog - or if the lack of recent writing is part of the peaks and valleys of life.

Life is about cycles - spring is when everything comes back to life after the deep sleep of winter, just as morning follows night - activity follows rest. A few months ago, my life was a flurry of activity - some yin, some yang - and I wrote a lot to deal with particular parts of the flurries. Now my life is more even keel and the muse has been enjoying a well-earned rest.

As anyone who farms or gardens knows, the ground we plant in needs time in the rotation to lie fallow and gather nutrients to feed the next crop planted there. So too must we honor our own personal cycles of activity and rest, for if we do not allow the time for rest and rejuvenation we will drain our energy to such a level as to invite illness and disease into our lives.

As stated in the book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter Three, Verse One - to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven - so there is a time to be active and a time to rest. So, discover and honor your cycle of rest and activity. However, take care not to rest too long, for there is still plenty of live to be lived!

Namaste

MaXIMIze - Dealing with Feeling Alone

Over the course of the last week, several potential blog topics ran through my mind and my notebook, however the one that stuck out the most was dealing with feeling alone. For me, it is the dawning realization that I have never truly been alone in my life - I lived with my mother until she passed away, I had two children before she left us so I raised them and had a third (who is nearly 20 now and probably going to fly soon) since then, and I've had a variety of relationships and roommates over the years. So, this is the first time I truly have to face being alone without another human soul to turn to at times. And it is scary at times, to know that I am all there is. But am I, really? Or, are you?

Being alone is difficult now that I have to truly face it - I have nowhere, no one to escape to anymore - all I have is me, myself and I. So right now, when the aloneness overwhelms, I walk until I find a water feature - either the one in the creek in the park that is now my backyard, or the one by the historic church near the Amtrak station about a ten-minute walk from my apartment. Then I sit there, close my eyes, and just listen to the sound of the water as it moves over, under, around, and sometimes through the rocks and remember that I am truly enough, right here, right now. And I am reminded that I am never truly alone.

Water cleanses and polishes, sanctifies and blesses. As I listen to the water passing over, under, around, and through the rocks and other impediments to its path, I am reminded that the aloneness I feel is false, for I am never truly alone. I have the blessings of Nature all around me, and my soul is full once again.

The energy that flows through the water and the wind and that is shared in the song of the bird and the leaves is the same energy that flows over, under, around and through each of us, making us all part of the great contiuum that is the life on this great blue ball we call Earth - that we call home.

Namaste.

MaXIMIze - Hope vs. Faith

As I was reading the May 21st entry in 365 Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, it struck me that while hope and faith may be related, they are not the same thing.

When you have hope, you are waiting for something to happen - being passive instead of being active. You sit at the crossroads and wait for direction. With hope, you wish upon the star and wait for fate to happen. Most often, because no action was taken to ensure success, what you hoped for does not come to pass. And then you wonder why, never learning the lessons in order to grow and ensure success in the future.

When you have faith, you may rest at the side of the crossroads for a while to recover before choosing a path and walking firmly upon it. With faith, you have a goal in mind, and put in motion the actions required to gain that goal. Even if that goal is not attained, you will have at least made the effort to do so, and you will have learned what works and what doesn't to better ensure success for future endeavors.

And as the song says, "there are two paths, but in the long run, there is still time to change the road you're on."

So which do you choose - hope or faith? Passive or active?

It is one thing to be walking the labyrinth and finding your way out of the maze. It is another simply to be walking in circles.This is what happens when one continues to follow the same path and expecting different results.

MaXIMIze by Shepherding Your Being

I ran across this quote on Twitter today (@philo_quotes):

The human being is not the lord of beings but the shepherd of Being. – Martin Heidegger

With all that is going on – thinking I’m moving forward in life only to fall backward again and feeling like I’m stuck in the round about even though I know healing and moving on is truly an iterative process – this quote struck a chord deep inside of me.

How can I be a better shepherd of my part of Being?

Another item I read today – Joey Garcia’s advice column “AskJoey” in the Sacramento News and Review, 3 May 2012 issue – also struck a chord in me. In her column, Joey notes, “Every relationship is a invitation into spiritual evolution.”  She goes on to advise the questioner to dive into the waves of loss or abandonment that may move into her life, for beneath the waves is “…clarity about the amazing person you are.” She further advises the questioner to “…ride the [waves] and practice deeper self-love and compasson.”

And to cap that, on the same page in the print edition, the Meditation of the week is:

Everything that needs to be said, has been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. – Andre Gide

The question following this quote is:

What voice do you ignore?

I would beg the question, what voice do you pay attention to?

To follow on to that thought, what voice should you pay attention to?

In other words, where should your focus be, really? The fear of drowning in the waves of negative thoughts and emotions? Or diving into those waves, going below the surface to see the beauty that lies beneath?

I’ll end this post with a poem that I wrote on the last day of April – which was National Poetry Month, by the way – that encapsulates the journey, the riding of the waves:

Ride the wave of pain
Until it dumps you on the shore
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
Slough through the sand until
The tide pulls you out
To ride the wave once more

You can substitute other negative words for the word “pain” in the first line – fear, grief, anger all come to my mind.

I would also add the idea that at some point, either the waves subside or they toss you so far up on the beach that you can easily scurry away from the sand to the forest and meadows above.

As I stated in an earlier post, a setback is at set-up for a comeback.

Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Resurrect Your Best Self

Wow - when things need to happen, they do. Like realizing you are continuing a habit that has outlived its usefulness. Or realizing that what you thought you ought to be feeling is gone. And for me, both of those things met at the crossroads this week and this intersection has created a reason for me to take a deeper look at myself and my life. Who do I really want to be? What do I really want in my life? Can I deem myself worthy enough to accept not only what others are willing to share with me but also to give to myself what I so freely share with others?

I found this quote appropriate for what I am going through right now:

"If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in." - Anne Lamont

Right now, with these thoughts, what is the truest and biggest risk right now? The possibility I might lose a fear I've grown accustomed to feeling. And we all know, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We also know that we should bring our fears out into the cold (or hot) light of day and really examine them. What do I have to fear in my life right now, right here? Nothing. Everything is new again, the slate is clean and ready to be filled again.

So with that, I can now do the work needed to rejuvenate my life, restore my sense of self and balance, reawaken dreams that have lain dormant, and resurrect my best life!

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! I can sense the petrichor in my life - the healing rain is nigh! What I need and am ready to accept into the plain of my life will begin to fall from the sky like tender drops of rain, and I will drink them up and be full and healed once more!

What a blessing, what a blessing indeed!

MaXIMIze - Even More on Healing

Yes, I'm focusing a lot on healing right now - art imitates life, which can sometimes imitate art.

Like I said when I first started to follow this particular thread, healing takes time. It took time to get to where you are now and it will take time to get where you truly want to be. Healing is a process, an iterative one, which means you heal layer by layer. It also means sometimes you have to peel back many layers to find the original source of the wounding, the pain, the hurt in order to heal.

Additionally, you have to really want to do the work, to truly heal and move forward instead of staying in a continuous "do loop," in order for the process to work. And sometimes that work can be difficult and uncover things that we really never wanted to even think we had within us, let alone drag kicking and screaming into the cold (or hot) light of day. The revealing of some of these things, these issues, these deep and festering wounds, may leave us feeling like a lost naked thing in the open with no cover to protect us. However, just as new skin is sensitive at first and then toughens up, so too shall we learn to face that which has wounded us and left us bloody, maimed, disfigured and alone and take away its power to continue to bloody, maim, disfigure, or make us feel that we are alone anymore. And once we do that, once we take away its power by bringing it into the light and looking it square in the eyes, we will begin to heal and be whole once more.

Our emotional wounds may leave scars, however, our scars do not need to define who we are and what we can become. Honor your scars, for you have earned each and every one of them. Do not, however, ever allow them to define you as anything less than a perfect human being, worthy of everything you truly desire in this lifetime!

And with that, I will leave you with one of my newer theme songs:

Perfect by Pink

MaXIMIze - More on Healing

Today is Easter Sunday, the day that Christ rose from the dead according to the Bible. Three days he lay in the tomb before he rose.

Note that - three days. Even coming back from the dead takes time, so why do we think we can get through or over things quickly?

We can't - period. It takes time to work through all the things that got us to where we are right here, right now. Rome wasn't built in a day, and healing takes time. And the deeper or more repeated the wound, the more healing time you need to be whole.

So, stop, breathe, realize it is okay to feel your pain, it is okay to pull out those experiences into the cold light of day and analyze them. It is okay to work through your issues, taking as much time as you need to heal from them so you can choose another path when you come to the crossroads again, so you can get out of the roundabout your life seems to be trapped in. And most of all, realize it is okay to seek help.

Also, realize that if you don't take the time to work through your issues and heal your wounds now, you are taking the chance that you will be wounding others that come into your life from this point forward.

So be good to yourself and be fair to others in your life. Take the time you need to become healed and whole. You owe that to yourself as much if not more than you do to the others in your life!

MaXIMIze - Help Yourself by Helping Others

Wow! I logged on to write this post and discovered that I had a comment on my last post. I helped someone find their way back to Science of Mind magazine. That made my day, to know that I helped another human being in some small way! What a blessing!

And last night, I was at a dinner held at the Left Coast Crime 2012 writers' conference I attended this weekend, sitting with people I did not know from Adam prior to that evening, and a woman shared with me her experience of helping people and learning about things in her community that she had never known before.

This woman, who I will call Marie for the purpose of this blog (I truly am horrible with names), lives in North Carolina, in a county with a large wooded area. A wooded area where a large constituency of homeless live. Now Marie had a box spring from an old bed set she was trying to get rid of, and an agency in her county that helps the homeless and down at their luck out accepted this old box spring donation from Marie. In doing so, the agency shared with Marie that many people in her county are homeless and live in this large wooded area, many of them sleeping in mere blankets on the ground, and they are thankful for any help given to them. Marie, being middle to affluent in income level, had never even come close to experiencing what these people lived with in a daily basis. And she felt so blessed to have been able to help in some small way and that she now knows about these people in her community.

Our conversation came about when she asked me what I wrote about, and I was telling her about Papacita, my short story inspired by a newspaper story about an older Hispanic man found dead near one of the homeless encampments along our river parkway here, complete with cowboy hat, button down shirt, blue jeans, and brand new boots. Somehow this led to me telling her about a particular homeless man who I had seen many times over the spring and summer of last year, when I was outside at lunch time enjoying the sun. He was quite polite when he asked for money and I turned him down, as I don't carry cash. One day, I noticed how thin he had gotten, and then I did not see him again until I was at a nearby Starbucks a month or so ago. He had made himself persona non grata at that establishment, so he could not enter. However, I was just so glad to see that he had survived the winter that I went back inside and bought him a sandwich and a pastry.

I might add that Marie also said she rescues cats, and she blessed me for helping out my fellow human being in such a personal manner.

Those of you who know me, know that I believe we are all human beings first and all else comes second to that. And you may or may not know, I have been on that razor's edge of being homeless in my life - with three children - so I understand the despair that the homeless and down on their luck feel.

I also know that you can turn your life around, you can pull yourself up to something better. And that is why this blog exists - to help each of us by helping all of us.

MaXIMIze by Healing Thyself

So last week we worked on knowing thyself, and part of knowing thyself is knowing what keeps you from attaining the best life has in store for you. This week, we will work on healing thyself.

First, you have to commit to making self-care a priority. If you have ever flown, you have heard the flight attendant instruct you that in case of an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on before helping others put theirs on. You cannot truly care for others unless you are caring for and taking care of yourself! So give yourself the permission to practice self-care and to grow to live your best life - now!

Second, be patient with yourself. It took time to get where you are currently at, and it will take time to get to where you truly want to be in life. Progress not perfection, and follow the process. Celebrate the small triumphs that will lead to a lifetime of success!

So, let's go back to last week and knowing yourself. You should now know what it is you truly want from life. Visualize this - make a visionscape on posterboard with sayings and articles and pictures and whatever else represents what you truly want out of life. Post this in a prominent spot where you will see it daily.

Now, as you visualize, you may hear what we call Monkey Chatter - that negative voice that beats you down when you try to move up and on in the world. Don't just ignore that chatter - turn it to positive phrases. Counter each negative with a positive - action, proaction rather than action, reaction. Release the patterns of the past and create new patterns for the future.

Stop and say to yourself the following:

"I am enough, right here, right now."

Say this as often as you need to in order for this belief to become embedded in your subconscious - where the Monkey Chatter starts.

As you work through the healing process and move along the path to your best life, gather to yourself touchstones - items that bolster you and bring the positive energy you need into your life right here, right now. Some of my touchstones are books, stuffed animals, carved rocks, music, sayings, and people. Yes, people. Surround yourself with people who are supportive of you and the growth you are going through. Let go of those who bring you down or seek to keep you status quo.

You want to move towards the Light and add your own light to it, not become enveloped in Darkness.

Some other tools I use to move back toward the Light and leave the Darkness behind are yoga, meditation, and journaling. Journaling first thing in the morning clears out the flotsam and jetsom from my brain and sets the tone for the day. If negativity comes crashing in, I journal some more and leave the negativity on the page instead of in my heart and mind. By doing this, I can focus on putting positive energy out into the world, and thereby reap positive energy in return.

What you focus upon is what you bring to being. Focus on the positive and on your best life, and you will enjoy the fruit of that focus!

Here are a couple of resources to help you along your path:

Power to Change - Thrive Publishing

Science of Mind - Ernest Holmes

MaXIMIze - Know Thyself

MaxiMIze your life by knowing yourself. By being the best you that you can be, you will be able to bring your best to any situation and any relationship life offers you. It is when you don' t take the time to know yourself, especially after a life change - loss of or gain of job, relationship, security, health, wealth, etc., that you can bring needless suffering and sorrow to yourself and others.

Some of the things you should know about yourself are:

- how you react to various actions and situations

- why you react the way you do

- where you are willing and able to change the way you act and react in order to take the best that life has to offer you

- where your strengths lie

- where your weaknesses lie

- how you set and achieve goals

- what you truly expect out of life, both in abstract and in concrete terms

- what you truly are willing to give to life and to others, again both in abstract and concrete terms

- what truly matters to you, again both abstract and concrete

If you need help, guidance, thoughts on how to start to know yourself, there are plenty of tools available. The shelves at your local bookstore abound with self-help books. Ones that have helped me include:

Self Matters, Dr. Phil McGraw

Take Time for Your Life, Cheryl Richardson

The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron

So, go forth and learn about yourself this week!

MaXIMIze - History

MaXIMIze Blog Postings

I've decided to move these entries into their own blog so they don't get lost in the noise of all else I blog about.

So, here are the previous entries for the MaXIMIze theme:

2 Jan 12 – MaXIMIze for 2012

I enjoy those daily calendars very much, and this year I have one called the MENSA Puzzle Calendar. The entry for today, 2 January 2012, stated that 2012 equals MMXII in Roman numerals. It then asked the reader to think of a common eight-letter word containing those letters. The word is MaXIMIze - a good theme for this year!

So I hereby dub the year 2012 as the year to MaXIMIze your self and MaXIMIze your life!

Rather than making New Year's resolutions, I prefer to develop goals and objectives to work towards for. This year, I will be working towards goals that bring more of what I want to see in my life to me - love, laughter, happiness, joy. I will also be working towards goals which help myself others become and/or continue to be/grow as healthy, happy, responsible human beings.

So, let's start with some food for thought, shall we?

What DO you want to see more of in your life?

Set out at least three things you want to maximize this year - describe how these things will manifest in your life - look, feel, taste, smell, sound. And remember, feel is both physical and emotional.

Now, think about what you can do to bring these things - the maximizing of these things - to fruition.

Set smaller goals (sometimes called objectives in "work" speak) - monthly, weekly, daily. Write them down and keep them where you can see them and reflect on them constantly. I use a white board for this purpose.

Most important of all - follow through! Don't beat yourself up because you missed a goal for a specific time (day, week, etc.). Reset yourself instead - analyze why you missed the goal and figure out how to attain that goal (if the goal is truly something you want to maximize!).

Some of the things I want to see more of in my life in concrete form are:

Writing Daily Pages (from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way)

Going on an Artist Date - enjoying and nurturing my inner child, seeing the world through those eyes instead of these old "adult" eyes all the time (again from Julia Cameron)

Exercise - I enjoy riding my bike, hiking, bird walks, and so many other things.

Yoga and/or meditation - I know I feel better and more at peace when I practice yoga, so why don' t I have more of it in my life?

These are the things I will be working on (as well as some others) during the course of this MaXIMIzing year! What will you be working on?

8 Jan 12 – MaXIMIze by Minimizing

You can MaXIMIze your life by minimizing the baggage you carry through it - both physically and otherwise. Sometimes though, you need to work through the otherwise to be able to minimize the physical baggage.

Whether you have an issue with collecting things - perhaps not to the extent of ending up on that show about hoarders, but enough that your obsession with owning things shuts out other things in life - or collecting not-so physical things like credit card debt, most of these habits can be traced back to things you experienced early in life.

And yes, doing the work to recognize and deal with the issues that led to these habits is not easy - you will find I rarely say anything is truly easy - however, your life will be much enriched by relieving yourself of excess baggage, no matter the source.

I may or may not get back to this subject during the course of this MaXIMIzing year, so I will give you some resources that have helped me over the years:

Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced "decision") - three books gleaned from a newsletter she used to publish.

FlyLady.net - a friend at work turned me on to this site over ten years ago now - one little gleaning I remember is that you can spend 15 minutes doing anything. I've used that for housework, exercise, writing, anything I want to accomplish but sometimes feel is too big to tackle.

Patricia V. Davis - a more recent find and author of Harlot's Sauce and The Diva Doctrine.

Learning yoga - the holistic teaching of yoga, not just a gym class (although I did take this as the PE requirement in college - the teacher, however, taught it holistically).

Developing your support network - garnering mentors, joining groups that do things you enjoy or who help you grow (My Girlfriends' Garden in Auburn and Roseville do this for me!), etc.

These are just some of the things that have worked for me over the years to get from where I was ten years ago or so to now - and I'm still growing and shedding unneeded baggage as I go!

16 Jan 12 – MaXIMIze your Dream

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his "I Have a Dream" speech, today's blog is about MaXIMIzing your dream - whatever it may be.

If we can conceive it, we can achieve it. Or put another way, nothing is impossible, just improbable (one of my mother's favorite sayings). You cannot win if you do not play.

So, in order for you to achieve your dreams, whatever they may be, do not be afraid to seek advice - whether it is from friends and relations, a counselor or therapist, or in the form of self-help books and blogs and other information available through a variety of venues.

I may have noted in an earlier blog that one of my goals is to work through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way - well, my good intentions have come to naught as yet, beyond reading the first chapter in the book again. Now, do I beat myself up for not being "on track" and "with the program"? No - I just pick up and begin again. We are not perfect, we are human beings - and it is okay to fall from time to time. This is not failure. Failure is not getting back up and moving again.

I have worked through other books over the years, and I will share a few of them here with you:

Self Matters, Dr. Phil McGraw (yes, he has a last name)

Take Time for Your Life, Cheryl Richardson (the copy I have is from 1999, and when I was in the book store yesterday I saw the most recent iteration on the shelf)

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Steven Covey (another timeless classic)

Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill (originally published in, I believe, 1937 - again, timeless)

Now, I have found pearls of wisdom in all sorts of places - novels I have read, subject-specific (mainly writing) books and articles, etc. - that are applicable over a wide variety of scenarios and subjects - not just the specific one that article or book was written for.

Move ahead with your dreams, even as you are seeking advice and counsel - remember you cannot win if you do not play. Motion begets motion; stagnation begets stagnation. Therefore, by continuing to learn, grow, and stretch your wings, you will be fulfilling your dreams, whatever they may be!

22 Jan 12 – MaXIMIzing Life

MaXIMIze life by living by your values and virtues. For me, that means honesty, respect, dignity and honor. If you are not treating yourself and others with those four items to start with - and there are others, such as love, loyalty, fidelity...you get the drift - then you are not living life to its MaXIMum potential.

In fact you are shortchanging yourself and others and causing much more pain in the world than there truly needs to be. And believe you me, there is more than enough pain in the world to go around and definitely not enough love.

There is a saying that goes oh, what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive. And once you get tangled up in such a web of lies, disrespect, dishonor, faithlessness and such, it is very hard to untangle yourself from it and you get drawn deeper and deeper more often than not.

So, do yourself and everyone your life touches a favor and MaXIMIze the virtues mentioned above.

An honest life is not always a peaceful life, however it is truly a kinder life to give to those around you and to yourself.

29 Jan 12 – MaXIMIze Karma

With all that is going on in life right now, MaXIMIzing karma - the good kind - is much on my mind.

This concept whether it be described as karma or the rule of three or the Golden Rule, is prevalent in many of the belief systems around the world. What you put out in the world is what you get back - sometimes in spades. Personally, I prefer to get good things coming to me in my life, not bad, so over the past several months I have taken a hard look at myself and what I am doing in my life and what that is bringing into my life.

Now that is not to say that once you truly change your mindset and your ways that all of what you have put in out in the world previously will suddenly not continue on its path back to you. Just as the ripples caused by a stone dropped in a body of water continue to move towards shore long after the stone has settled on the bottom, the actions you put out in the world ripple through until they return to you. And if you continually put the same actions out into the world, those are the actions you will continually get back.

We change the world by changing ourselves. So what would you like to have come back to you today?

4 Mar 12 – MaXIMIzing – Getting Back Up

Yep, I fell off the blogging wagon there for a while - at least on the theme of MaXIMIzing for 2012 (and beyond).

Life happens, and my life struck in spades - January was a yin/yang month and February was all about recovery time. However, falling isn't failing; not getting back up is.

So, this is me getting back up!

Let's review my thoughts on MaXIMIzing your life thus far, shall we?

In my January 2nd post, I challenged you to set out at least three things you want to MaXIMIze this year. I then suggested you set smaller goals to help you achieve those things - monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Then I said you have to follow through in order to gain those things you want to MaXIMIze.

In my January 8th post, I challenged you to minimize the baggage you carry, both physical and otherwise. I showed you how you could do anything for fifteen minutes per day. I suggested using yoga and/or mediation to help lessen the otherwise baggage, as well as journaling and having a strong support group.

In my January 16th post, I encouraged you to follow your dreams. If we can conceive it, we can achieve it. I encouraged you to seek advice when need be along the path. This is also where I introduced the concept that falling isn't failing; not getting back up is. You cannot win if you do not play.

In my January 22nd post, I suggested you live your life by your values and your virtues. I shared that my strong ones are honesty, dignity, respect and honor.

In my January 29th post, I touched on the concept of Karma - something that is found in all major belief systems in the world, whether it be the Golden Rule, the Rule of Three, or some other description. I reminded us all that even though we work to change, the things we put out in the world in the past will continue to ripple through our future, until the ripples dissipate, as they will over time. Then, if we have truly done the work, the new things we are putting out in the world will replace those ripples with new ones.

My February and early March posts were focused on one of the things I do want to MaXIMIze this year - my writing! So, while I fell down on the posting to help you along your path to MaXIMIze your life this year, I was still traveling down my path towards that same goal!

For the last few weeks (perhaps even the last two months), I have seen the following saying on RUOFS (a fiberglass steer who hangs out on the sidewalk near Ruland's Used Office Furnishing on 16th Street in Sacramento):

A setback is a set-up for a comeback.

So, here is my hand held out to you, if you have fallen and need a lift to get up...now get back to MaXIMIzing your life!!!

11 Mar 12 – MaXIMIze – Choice

Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken has been on my mind a lot lately, due to a myriad of life changes that have come and are still coming my way this year.

Since it is in the public domain, here is the poem in its entirety:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Standing at the crossroads can be a terrifying feeling at times, however, we all stand there at one point in time or another, and sometimes many times depending on where our lives take us.

What some of us never get to though is described in the third stanza of this poem, which is being able to truly continue on our journey instead of ending up in a repeating cycle. And this boils down to making choices - sometimes difficult ones - in order to truly move forward in life instead of spending it in the roundabout.

Instead of rushing willy nilly into what life throws our way, we need to stop, breathe, and listen to that small, still voice each of us has inside of us. We need to fully process what has gone on before rather than locking it in a box, throwing away the key, and hoping it never finds its way back home.

Putting what has gone before in a box temporarily, to take the time to stop, breathe, and listen, is one thing. However, you need to remember to open the box, take out what has gone before, and really examine it in the cold light of day in order to process it and move forward instead of repeating the same patterns over and over and over again.

I know this can be a scary thing - moving from the known to the unknown can be terrifying at times, even if the unknown you are moving toward is a good thing. However, this is how we grow as human beings - by moving forward. Some of us never grow, but instead remain like trees stunted by lack of water or lack of sun. Unlike those trees, who are rooted in place and cannot move to better conditions by their own volition, we do have the freedom to move on to better things.

So what is your choice today? Will you be a stunted tree, never reaching the sun, or will you take the time to stop, breathe, listen to the small, still voice inside of you and release the patterns of the past so you can move on to a bright and wonderful future?