Hello, Sunshine.

So i’ll admit, I jumped into blogging full of endless inspiration and a huge notebook of ideas for what I wanted to write about. Just a few weeks into it and I notice I’ve been getting caught up in mind chatter about it. Feeling like I “should” be a better example of the things I want to write about, like I “should” have more profound things to say, wondering why anyone “should” care about whatever I write about, blah blah blah!

Reminder to mind: be quiet.

Note to self and reader: I’m doing this blog not from the position of an expert  by any stretch of the imagination, but rather as a conscious human being on my path to becoming more conscious. Something I feel that many people share a similar path. I want to make this more personal, so I thought i would begin by sharing what’s up with me in my process of creating this little site. If you, dear reader, enjoy anything you see, or see anything that might improve it, please leave a comment or e-mail me! I want this to be a discussion. I want to receive feedback, and hear others’ experiences with the things I post.

ok, feeling free-er.

expect more in the days to come, free from “shoulds.”

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I think these are important for getting back to perspective about what is and is not normal. I got most of these statistics from here.

• If Barbie were a real woman-She would have to grow to be seven feet tall. She would have a bust that was between 38-40 inches, her waist 18-24 inches, her hips around 33-35 inches. Barbie’s weight would be 110 pounds. If she were a real woman-Barbie would have to walk on all fours due to her proportions. If Ken were a real man-he would be seven-feet, eight-inches tall. An average man would have to add seven inches to his chest and about eight inches to his neck to equal Ken’s measurements.

• Females need seventeen percent body fat in order to menstruate for the first time and twenty-two percent to have regular cycles. Cooke, Kaz. Real Gorgeous: The Truth About Body and Beauty. Norton, 1996.

• The average American woman is 5′4, weighs 144 lbs. and wears between a size 12 and 14. The average American model is 5′11 and weighs 117 lbs.

• Models twenty years ago weighed 8% less than the average woman, today they weigh 23% less

Just a reminder that the media is about everything but reality…

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Beethoven’s Pastoral

Beautiful words have beautiful, clear vibrations. But negative words put out ugly, incoherent vibrations … Language is not something artificial, but rather is something that exists naturally. I believe that language is created by nature. — Dr. Emoto

I don’t have a lot to say about this because the pictures are self-explanatory. These are examples from Dr. Masaro Emoto’s book, The Hidden Messages in Water. He uses high-speed photography to capture images of frozen water crystals. The images show water crystals that has been exposed to different words, phrases, music, and sources. They show the power of our language to transform energy. I recommend the book, am sharing the images below give you a taste.

“Thank You”

“You Make Me Sick”

“I Love You”

For more information, and where I found these images, check out http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/aug1/consciouswater.html.

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I’ll be the first to admit that I am definitely not a master of all things productivity related. Accomplishing tasks, phone calls, school work, organization, house cleaning, etc have always been, err, daunting to say the least. I’ve tried many things to really get a hold of things in my life, and the one strategy that has created real results is using baby steps. The idea is simply that to attempt to complete a huge project all at once is daunting and often inconvenient, while starting small with one action contributing to the project daily is feasible.

For example with the messiest of rooms, I will often decide to put away 20 items and then walk away. Or set a timer for 15 minutes, organize as much as I can in my set space, and then move on. Or choosing one healthy thing that I can add to my diet every day, instead of embarking on a forced “diet” makes healthy eating so enjoyable. Committing to baby steps daily can accomplish large amounts of work in short amounts of time. I find often that once I get started with a small task it’s so easy and fun that I’ll complete the entire project right then.

The idea ties into the notion of reinforcing positive habits through positive thinking. Instead of focusing on an “impossible” project, the focus is on the delight in how much you accomplished in your baby step today. The focus is on the positive action, empowering you to take more positive actions.

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During a middle school summer vacation, my dad gave my sister and I little business-like notebooks and suggested we write ten things we were grateful for from that day. I recall feeling very angsty at such a suggestion, and resenting it though I filled it out daily, probably because my dad offered us small amounts of cash if we did it for a month. I remember at that age how HARD it seemed for me to come up with ten unique things daily that I felt grateful for. It seemed like a cop out to say, “I’m grateful for my dad. I’m grateful for my mom. etc” every single day (I thought the purpose of the exercise was to find unique things daily). Slowly I gave up on it because it seemed too challenging, but it’s a practice I have come back to time and time again. Something that I find to be the most deeply rewarding, and to be a surefire way to get a grip with reality and count my blessings! No matter how upset I might feel over something trivial or significant, writing down ten things I am grateful for is a very powerful practice to bring me back to a higher flow.

So, why does this practice make you happier, peaceful, and more abundant? Well, quite simply because what you focus on expands. The more you can relish and appreciate exactly what is present in your life at this moment, the more you will get! For example:

Today I am grateful for…

• feeling strong and invigorated during & after yoga class
• the fun and joy Harry Potter has brought to my life these past few days
• becoming healthier every day
• warm cool summer weather
• solving “difficult” math problems with ease and joy
• the creative flow that blogging has brought to my life, creating such joy and delight and balance
• all of the abundance in my life
• outflowing some tears, and reaching a closer level of friendship with someone close to me
• the health and joy that my family is experiencing in each of their lives right now
• having the freedom to relax this summer and really figure out what I want to be doing
• everything and all things in my life that I have not clearly articulated in this list - I am grateful for it all!

What are you grateful for today?

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Journal Excerpt February 6, 2007

Since I have been in middle school I have been fixated on various body parts of mine, convinced that one part of me is hideous, awful, etc etc, and after a while I move on to something different. There was my forehead, the hair on my arms, the slight jiggle on my thighs, sweating, my breasts, my butt, my eyebrows, body hair (?), my feet, the way my skin looked when I would smile in pictures, the “circles” under my eyes, my teeth, my waist, my nose, etc. With each of these things I feel like I wake up suddenly one morning to discover that I have “insert insecurity of the moment”, and then I feel self-conscious about it everywhere I go. And I wonder, has it always been this way, or is my mental focus on it creating it? By thinking about it, am I only going to make it worse? It’s hilarious when I really let it all out.

I had a revelation a few months ago when I was dwelling on the flaws in my nose, feeling oddly depressed and powerless. It also happened that a few days before I had completely bombed a math exam, making me feel incredibly stressed and unsure about my college future. Yet in my mind, the only thing wrong in my whole world was my nose. Even in my state of mild depression I could see that something didn’t click with this scenario. I sat there contemplating and finally the light bulb went off where I thought,

“Hey, maybe it isn’t my BODY that’s the problem at all. Maybe it’s my FEAR about the future I’m stressing about here.”

And with that, I could recognize this previously unconscious pattern that I had of projecting worries onto my body. My experience made me wonder if perhaps so much of the pressure women feel to be attractive is mixed in with projecting our pressure to be “perfect” in other areas of our life, in those areas that we feel like we don’t measure up, we instead focus on improving or worrying about our physical appearance.

For me, I just had to get real and start feeling my actual emotions as opposed to the yapping negative voice chattering away in my mind. When I got in touch with ME I could see that my nose was not the issue, and in fact I just felt fear. That’s normal, we all have it. Once I could recognize the fear, I could be with it, comfort it, live with it, allow it to go. I could get back to peace and caring for myself, as opposed to raging war on some “flaw.”

Though it happens much less now, I’m quite weary when I wake up one morning and my mind goes, “Oh my GOSH Laura, has your hairline always been like that?” I can kind of chuckle to it and be like, “My hairline is fine, but let’s see what’s really going on here…”

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I remember receiving an e-mail a few years ago titled “The World As 100 People.” It really stuck with me, and I sought out the project recently to share it here, because it’s very insightful information. It puts things in perspective. Reminds me just how big the world is, and how many people exist in cultures very different from mine. And, it’s a reminder how so many people don’t have access to food, clean water, and shelter. It makes me ask how I might be able to change that.

If the World were 100 PEOPLE:

50 would be female
50 would be male

20 would be children
There would be 80 adults,
14 of whom would be 65 and older

There would be:
61 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere

There would be:
31 Christians
21 Muslims
14 Hindus
6 Buddhists
12 people who believe in other religions
16 people who not be aligned with a religion

17 would speak Chinese
8 would speak Hindustani
8 would speak English
7 would speak Spanish
4 would speak Arabic
4 would speak Russian
52 would speak other languages

82 would be able to read and write; 18 would not

1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

75 people would have some supply of food and a place to
shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 would not

1 would be dying of starvation
17 would be undernourished
15 would be overweight

83 would have access to safe drinking water
17 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

I referenced these statistics from http://www.100people.org. It’s a great website with videos and statistics!

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Journal Excerpt: June 28th 2006 — I just got off the phone with Ryan and we were talking about how we start our days. I realized that I have been completely unconscious with how I am conducting my time, and of course I feel bored and inefficient because I am not structuring myself one bit. So I decided to do what he does and make a few goals for the day. Maybe even the night before. But it struck me—what the hell do I want to do with my day? What do I actually want to accomplish? Here I am just sitting around in my underwear reading message boards, daydreaming, and eating mangoes. No wonder my wildest dreams aren’t being fulfilled.

I wrote that entry over a year ago at a point where I had literally nothing to do, and I had the freedom to really do whatever. (Trust me, this can be unbelievably uncomfortable) I am now in at a place where I have quite a few things to do, in fact multiple cross-referenced lists encompassing short-term, long-term, side projects, life goals, and immediate things that I need to do. Yet somehow, it’s very easy to forget about these lists and to become distracted with myspace, facebook, e-mail, phone calls, family, on and on. Or a video of a self-taught choreographer teaching Britney routines on Youtube, and to attempt them standing over your laptop in your kitchen at one in the morning. Whatever the reason, it is easy for the day to slip away.

It is so easy to splatter our attention, to get bombarded with “things” that devour our attention and time, and how do we become truly efficient effective human beings in spite of the distractions that will always exist. If I had the solution to that, I would absolutely fill you in (or write a book and make millions, because I know many who would like to know this). For now it’s an area I am consciously striving to become better than ever in (and I have a long way to go). I often have thoughts that it seems “hard” to be productive, but I believe practice makes perfect, action breeds positive reactions, and I just need to figure out what works for me.

What I have learned that works, as I was inspired to try after the noted conversation above with my friend Ryan, is to write down my goals for the day the night before or first thing in the morning. If we go into the day, a situation, or even an activity with a set intention of how it’s going to go, I guarantee there will be a far more structured outcome than if entered blindly. Writing it down can be simple. It might be just one thing you must absolutely have happen. Or perhaps there are 75. I include many categories, including exercise, making juice, and journaling — all on my to-do list for the next day and just as important as remembering appointments and completing assignments. I also include goals and intentions for how I will feel, how certain situations will turn out, and what I will achieve. It’s effective, and very empowering as it puts you back in the drivers seat for your day.

So if you feel inclined, start small…

• Write down your goals and intentions for tomorrow.

More thoughts on productivity to follow.

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Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If i want transformation, but can’t even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I’m aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. — Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

I never had much of a concept of prayer as a kid, being raised in an agnostic household. I knew it was what people did at church and in the movies, and so I assumed it was how you asked God for what you wanted most. The first time I can remember praying I was in 5th grade. I knelt down at my windowsill and clasped my hands together, being mindful to properly assume the position. Then, I apologized for not praying sooner in my life. I asked God for what I wanted most, “God can you please make me stop growing? Can you please make me shrink so that I’m not so tall, and I can be like my friends.” Yes, that is what I wanted most. Night after night I knelt by my window and made my request.

A few days later, my family went swimming at the pool next door. We were there practically every day. I swam closer to the deep end and went to touch down right about the 5′ mark and my head went under. This was my spot, and I was sure that I could stand there before. Everything I thought I knew about possibility and spirituality flashed before my eyes, I jumped up and down and called to my mom sitting in a chair by the pool, “Mom! Mom! I could stand here - now I can’t - oh my gosh - I’m shrinking! Mom I’m shrinking!!”

She looked back at me and smiled, “No dear, there is probably just more water in the pool today.”

I stopped kneeling by my window after that. I was understandably disappointed. However, that moment, that one pure moment where I was so sure that something in this world was powerful enough to make me shrink…. well that sold me on the power of prayer forever.

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I’ll be the first one to admit that I rarely read novels. Prior to Eat Pray Love the last novel I read was probably in early high school. If I’m not reading texts for school, I prefer to read books about nutrition, heath, body image, manifesting, ect. Something about the title of Eat… caught my intuitive eye, and I slowly started to read it. “Slow reading” quickly turned into more of a loving obsessive affair where I poured over the pages, earmarked my favorites, stayed up with it until past 2am, and fell thoroughly in love with the author and her story. I decided about a quarter of the way through it that I also needed to tell everyone I know about it because everyone needs to read it! I guess other people feel the same way about it too, because it DID rock the New York Times Bestseller list. I hate to admit it, because I like to think I’m not corny like this, but when I finished the last page I slowly closed the book and gave it a hug, just holding it to my chest and saying “thank you” for entering my life. (Okay, i guess I am incredibly corny like that. But who cares!)

Eat Pray Love is the true story of the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, leaving her unhappy marriage and figuring out what she wants to do for the first time in her life, seeking pleasure, spirituality, and a connection to herself while she leaves her chaotic NY life to travel alone.

What I can say in my experience of reading this book, is it ignited a deep desire in me to ask myself what would make me feel good, to feel connected to the world, to be happy.  It made seeking pleasure and joy a main priority in my day. It also reminded me of the beauty and power of prayer (more on this later).

 I worry if I write too much, I will somehow do a disservice to this amazing book, so I will leave this review short and sweet and just give a whole hearted 100% recommendation. (I would even recommend buying it - something I’m definitely not into - but I want to have this book for a long time, to write in it, etc.)

If you click the image of the book above, it’ll take you to Amazon where you can read other review etc.

 Rating: 10/10

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