Lessons from the Monk I Married

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 31: Be Strong—Don't Give Up Searching

2012-01-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

Last but not least, a post by the monk himself. How could I host the event 31 Writers, 31 Lessons on a blog titled Lessons from the Monk I Married and not include him? So here he is—please welcome my husband, former Korean Buddhist monk and current Yogi, Seong Yoon Lee, or simply Yoon:

I clearly remember the day when I heard the sound of a gong while I was in an evening chanting ceremony in a remote temple in Korea. It was not just the sound of a bell, it was the sound of awakening for me.

I thought that if I became a monk someday, I'd come back to this temple. Two years later, I came back and became a monk. Through many years of sincere practice and everyday life in the monastery, I have learned so much. Of course, it had its own challenges, joys, frustrations—the same as mundane life. I know things are always changing, but I never thought I'd come back to mundane life.

But the winds carried me in a different direction. Sometimes we need a different direction for our growth. I faced many struggles, emotions and fear about this change, but I learned something that I want to share with you here.

My master in the temple told me that I had to finish my degree in Buddhism, so I decided to come back to my college and study there. In my free time, I also studied English and Japanese at a foreign language institute nearby.

That's where I met my wife.

I never expected this would happen, but as we got to know each other, I found that we had a deep connection to one another. It was not easy for me and it was also not easy for her to come all the way here—to this point where we are now. I was a Buddhist monk and she was an English teacher. But also, I am just a human who feels different emotions in me. I don't want to tell all the stories here. You can read all about those in her wonderful book, coming soon, called Lessons from the Monk I Married.

Ultimately, I decided I wanted to be with my wife because of the deep connection and love I felt for her. I had to leave the monastery and start all over again. I also had to face my fears in that process:

How can I make money?

How can I pay bills?

What will other people think of me?

I struggled with all of these questions and had to face each one of them.

Shortly after I decided to leave the monastery, I moved in to Kathy's apartment. However, she had plans to meet her family in New York. These plans had been set months before. After she was gone, I was all alone in her apartment. There was nothing but miso and cabbage in the refrigerator, so that's what I ate. Perhaps this was her test for me. Could I survive on my own without the temple and without her help?

Somehow I needed to make money. But what kind of work can an ex-monk do? I didn't know what I had to do. I looked in the local newspaper and found a position posted for a sushi waiter. I had an interview and got the job. They needed people, also I needed money. But I didn't survive very long there. I moved too slowly and messed up on many orders which resulted in yelling sessions from the manager. I had become his servant. In his eyes, I was just a stupid server who was good for nothing but fetching cigarettes for him.

So I quit. I was back to nothing again. But I started to think about my training and all that I had learned. I had been trained in yoga and meditation in the monastery. I knew I had so much to share about this. So I put up some posters around the apartment building, and before long people were coming to practice—both Korean and foreigners alike were coming. By the time Kathy returned from New York, her apartment was full of people practicing yoga.

So it became my career. I became a yoga teacher. I operated two yoga schools in Korea and am now the owner of Yoon's Yoga Bliss near Seattle. I have met so many wonderful people through this yoga adventure. I found a life where I am able to share all that I am. I learned how we become authentic and at the same time universal. Through creative energy and love, we become the embodiment of who we are, and that authenticity also continues to evolve through our own searching.

So don't be afraid of the different winds that come to your life—even the unpleasant winds. Life is an adventure. Sometimes we find treasures and sometimes things fall completely apart. If things aren't working the way you want them to work, maybe the universe wants to offer you something better, but you can't see that right now.

Be strong. Don't give up searching and you will find those treasures that are beautiful and priceless.

Seong Yoon Lee studied Buddhism at Donguk University in Korea. He was trained as a monk in the Chogye order at Songgwang Temple. He met his wife in 1996 and later they married in 2003. He owned and operated two yoga schools in South Korea, one in Seoul and one in a nearby suburb. He has taught yoga to hundreds of students and his yoga school and unique approach to yoga were featured on a major television network in Korea in a documentary about stress. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife and is the owner of Yoon's Yoga Bliss near Seattle.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 30: Spice Your Writing with the Details of Life

2012-01-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

A writer is always writing, even when a writer isn’t writing.

I taught English for a time in Thailand. This was ten years ago, and I did no writing at all then—or so I thought at the time.

Instead, I jotted down notes, at night under mosquito netting, sometimes by flashlight or candlelight, while the mosquito coils gave off their pungent smell. I saved the scraps and notes and carried them across the Pacific Ocean with me back to the U.S. My notes sat packed away for days, weeks, months, years, but eventually I dumped them out on the floor and started sifting through them.

I discovered recipes I’d forgotten I had jotted down, including a Burmese dish I loved made of peanuts, parsley, cilantro, carrots, roasted red peppers, garlic and lime juice. Another recipe I found consisted of bean paste fried into thin, crispy shells, stirred with onions, vinegar, and oil.

Writing is a lot like cooking. Someday, we will stir the ingredients together and create something delicious for others to taste. But today, even if your life doesn’t allow you to create that five-course novel you’re planning, you can still be collecting the most amazing spices and ingredients and even experimenting with them in a poem, or story, or blog. You never know how one little tidbit you set aside today might season tomorrow’s dish. It doesn’t matter if you write fiction or non-fiction—they both need salt and pepper.

When I taught English in a Thai village I learned from the villagers to dip un-ripened mango slices into a mixture of salt, sugar, and red pepper flakes. I learned to season my noodle soup with lime juice and vinegar and basil leaves, red pepper flakes and fish sauce and sugar. Thai food is a marvelous explosion of hot, sour, salty and sweet, all balanced together perfectly in the same dish. So notice the spice of your daily life—a salty conversation, a sour scene, a hot character, a sweet thought. Jot these savory morsels down and someday maybe you can throw them together in perfect balance and create a sumptuous feast for others to enjoy. Below are some "morsels" I jotted down during my trip in Thailand:

Some of my students were Burmese refugees who had left their turbulent country behind and were on their way to other countries. They paused on the border for a brief time—it was just a pit stop. But they were hungry to learn English because that was the language of most of the countries they were headed to. Late at night, they played softly on guitars under the stars. One student was only a teenager when he fled to the Cambodian-Thai border, where he found gems to sell in Thai markets.

“One night some drug addicts pound on my hut and shout at me, demand my money,” he explained. “Then they broke in and stabbed me. I was bleeding and I ran into the jungle. After that, I find some of my people here.”

He fell silent and strummed pensively on his guitar. Then he began to sing.

“What’s this song about?” I asked him.

“I miss my—“ he paused and I assumed he was searching for the word “girlfriend” or “lover” or “fiancée.”

“I miss my nation-state,” he finished.

Another student, on his way to a new life, lay in a hammock dialing through a short-wave radio. Under the nearly full moon, he was trying hard to learn the meaning, from Voice of America, of bugaboo.

“Because he has a bugaboo about getting fired, he’s a workaholic.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, when the Burmese translation of gung-ho was given.

A little later, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech rang out from the radio, and was then translated into Burmese.

“I have a dream!” someone burst out in the night, trying out the phrase on his tongue.

Lynne Walker has worked as a journalist and teacher, among other things. Her book Strange Sky is now available on Kindle on Amazon. She is also working on the book The Mystery of Garabandal, coming soon. You can find Lynne's work, sprinkled with just the right spice of life, over on her blog called Strange Islands. She is also a contributor on the blog Writers Rising.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 29: Anyone Can Learn To Live a Creative Life

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

Before my research on wholeheartedness (and before the 2007 breakdown spiritual awakening), I was completely disconnected from my creativity. My disconnection took the form of judgment, resentment, and fear:

"A-R-T - how nice. I have a J-O-B - I'm doing real work."

"I'm not the creative type."

"Spending time creating is self-indulgent."

Behind all of these emotions was disconnection. I had the creativity scars that many of us have; the ones that come from not being able to draw a still life in middle school and being told that I better stick with writing and reading.

Today, I'm reconnected with my creativity and it's transforming every part of my life. Creativity brings me joy, helps me stay more grateful, calms me down, and inspires me. It helps me keep my perfectionism in check and has become a powerful way to connect with my family.

In The Gifts of Imperfection, I summarize what I learned from the world of Wholehearted living and loving:

1. “I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.

2. The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity.

3. If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing—it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.

I'm so grateful for what I've learned and for all of you who are creating and sharing your work with the world.

Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Brené spent the first five years of her decade-long study focusing on shame and empathy, and is now using that work to explore a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness. She poses the questions:

How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?

Brené is a nationally renowned speaker and has won numerous teaching awards, including the College’s Outstanding Faculty Award. Her groundbreaking work has been featured on PBS, NPR and CNN. Her recent TED Talk on vulnerability struck a nerve with audiences across the globe and has become one of the most shared talks featured on TED.com with more than 2 million views.

Brené is the author of The Gifts of Imperfection (Hazelden, 2010), I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power (Gotham, 2007).

Brené’s current research focuses on authentic leadership and wholeheartedness in families, schools, and organizations.

Brené lives in Houston with her husband, Steve, and their two young children, Ellen and Charlie.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 28: No Form of Success Comes without Rejection

2012-01-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

On a recent interview, a kind young man asked me, “So, what’s it like never to be rejected anymore?” I laughed so hard that I couldn’t answer. Of course, I still get rejected all the time. Being an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author doesn’t mean you get to avoid rejection. It only means that different people reject you.

What I have learned is that no form of success comes without rejection, whether it is the rejection slip from your dream agent or the cute boy who falls in love with your best friend. When I was growing up, I spent some time thinking about what success truly was. I moved from Hong Kong to New York and worked in a Chinatown sweatshop with my family when I was only five years old. For a long time, success meant simply escaping that ruthless, draining life of manual labor. Then when I was lucky enough to study at Harvard, the world opened up to me. Suddenly, I had access to some of the brightest minds in the world. I began to realize that success might mean more than simply escaping. It might mean contributing too. That was when I made the decision to become a writer.

All along my path, I slipped and fell and got up again. When my family and I worked as hard and as fast as we could in the sweatshop, the factory owner cut our wages so that we couldn’t earn any extra money. At school, I was the awkward, badly-dressed Chinese girl and on top of everything, I was a brain too. Few girls wanted to be my friends. The boy I liked didn’t know I was alive. My first teacher didn’t care that I didn’t speak a word of English and gave me a zero on every test. There were times when I felt rejected on every front.

As I became older, I learned English and became better assimilated. I was lucky enough to have a gift for school and achieved some success there, but with every step that I took, I faced new challenges and the possibility of rejection again. Do I hate rejection? Absolutely. If I could, I would incinerate every rejection letter I received. I want to curse and scream and stomp my feet like a three-year-old.

Then I take a deep breath. I tell myself that we all need to follow our own paths, whatever they are. I remember that I am worthwhile, even if I have just been rejected by this person or institution. I bear in mind that the world is big, and I will have another chance. This allows me to go on when I get rejected. I’ve seen that every person who succeeds in some way – whether it’s professionally or privately – has faced rejection many, many times and overcome it.

In fact, rejection lets me know that I’m continuing to challenge myself. If I only did things that came easily, I would stay in the safety of my comfort zone. That’s not enough for a full and satisfying life. So when it comes to rejection, I say: bring it on.

Jean Kwok immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She won early admission to Harvard, where she worked as many as four jobs at a time, and graduated with honors in English and American literature, before going on to earn an MFA in fiction at Columbia.

Her debut novel Girl in Translation (Riverhead, 2010) became a New York Times bestseller. It has been published in 15 countries and chosen as the winner of an American Library Association Alex Award, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, an Orange New Writers title, an Indie Next Pick, a Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award nominee and the winner of Best Cultural Book in Book Bloggers Appreciation Week 2010. It was featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. The novel was a Blue Ribbon Pick for numerous book clubs, including Book of the Month, Doubleday and Literary Guild. Jean lives in the Netherlands with her husband and two sons.

Learn more about Jean here:

www.jeankwok.com

www.facebook.com/pages/Jean-Kwok/213583280524

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 27: Saying No Doesn't Mean Desertion

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

I discovered, as 2011 came to a close, that my life was spiraling out of control and the only person to blame was me. I caused this mess through this undefined desire to feel needed. The busier my life, the more people needed me. Seems obvious? My world became cluttered by time commitments and life went from being joyful to being a burden.

This burst of frenetic activity spiraled out of control after a brutal 2011 where my identity as an educator of at-risk students was ripped away. How to fill the hours now void of a job caused me to say yes to everything. The result? Three jobs, none particularly engaging, along with starring roles as mom and significant other. On a good night, I flopped into a chair exhausted by 10:00pm only to rise again a few hours later. Over and over this pattern repeated. My frantic choices to be needed overwhelmed me while what I really wanted to focus upon in my life became background noise.

Poor decisions led me down a dark path where I no longer could enjoy the waning years of time with my son before he leaves the nest; to love the man in my life and to make a global difference through ending poverty disappeared into the abyss of pleasing everyone else and their priorities. I also lost time to self-nurture through reading, yoga and writing. My passion for writing, the anticipation of my first book, and the writing groups and workshops I ran became a chore. I knew this was not what I wanted.

January 2012 marked a change in mindset and the need for a wake-up and a total housecleaning of the mess I had made. My heart was in the right place, I realized, but the path I sprinted down de-energized me. I needed a new path and with it, some new skills. Biggest among the behaviors requiring change: the ability to say no without fear of being deserted or disliked.

I reviewed everything on my calendar and identified items as either delete, delegate or diminish. Once that step was accomplished, I began reaching out to those whom my decisions impacted with a “soft no”. The process started with me: I had to release the guilt of saying “no” to someone or to another commitment. Learning to give a “soft no” when I needed to decline an activity by showing support and concern, while still expressing that I could not devote the time needed to another project, were well received. My friends appreciated the honesty and didn’t bury me with guilt or forget to invite me to lattes. I also moved from being the “do-er” to a “consultant” as I transitioned out of activities. I help people now when they have questions versus doing the work myself. What a difference this mind shift made.

Simplify and shed. Gone were the volunteer activities where I had lingered for too long and the book clubs with people I saw only once a month. Gone were unrewarding bible studies leaving my spiritual life focused now in one meaningful direction. I’ve learned to do without in many cases. But I’ve also reignited passions that fell by the wayside in my quest to be needed.

I enlisted help from two amazing women, the double Donna duo, who challenge me every time I open my mouth to say, “I’d help”. They are holding me accountable as I make this life transformation I need. Without them, I surely would slip back into old patterns of “yes, I can”.

The result of my housecleaning? I have more time to write and have rekindled excitement for my first book. My son tolerates me hanging out in his room with him. I relish the singular job that I have and am striving to be exceptional in this role, but am not trying to climb the ladder right now. I don’t feel guilty for saying no. Well, most of the time. Life simplified by a two letter word. NO. And people still like me.

Cheryl Stahle, whose work regularly appears on www.yourbestwritinggroup.com, focuses on memoir writing and coaching people on how to craft their life stories. She frequently guest blogs as well as writes Cheryl’s Chatter about life as a single mom thrust into a mid-life career change while putting the finishing touches on her first book.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 26: Making Mistakes is an Education Everyone Can Learn From

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

In our last lesson, we learned about the importance of being honest. Well, author Amy Ferris is someone who is extremely honest and does not hide from her mistakes. In fact, she believes they are what helped get to where she is today:

“I can't make your mistakes for you.”

I was fifteen, fifteen and a half, maybe, almost sixteen years old, and I was leaving home.

I had dropped out of High School. Jewish Girls from Middle Class families didn't drop out of high school. They had nervous breakdowns, or went on all day shopping sprees at Roosevelt Field, or would cut school and go to the park and make out with various boys, or go to the “one” movie theater and watch a movie over and over and over again, because in those days you could, you could sit in a movie theater, stay all day and you could also smoke cigarettes...

I was at a stage in my life where breathing felt like a chore. I was so miserable and unhappy and I felt so alone in the world. I was running with a bad crowd, and stealing dollars, lots and lots of dollars from my dad’s wallet and mom’s purse and drawers -- here and there, lots of here and there -- and buying hash and marijuana, and coke and lying about that, acting out all sorts of self-loathing behavior. I will spare you with the details, but suffice it to say that there was a time in my life where being bad and feeling bad just blended together into plain old BIG BAD BAD.

And so I quit high school, and decided to tag along to a commune with my friend who I made out with in the back seat of the car where we kissed so long and so hard our lips cracked and bled but I wasn’t his girlfriend and he wasn't my boyfriend.

My dad drove me to the airport so I could fly across the country and live on a commune with a boy who wasn't my boyfriend because he, this boy, "Didn't love me like that."

My dad left me at the gate -- while my knapsack was making it’s way to the plane by way of the conveyor belt - my pheasant skirt dragging on the floor, my hair curly and unruly. He handed me a couple of hundred dollars and said, “Please, our secret,” and I smiled and kissed him and hugged him so tight I could feel his heart breaking, “I can’t make your mistakes for you,” he whispered in my ear, and then he turned and walked away.

And the mistakes piled up one after another, year, after year after year.

There was the pregnancy. The one where I behaved like a needy, desperate young woman, using that pregnancy as a weapon: to try and get the man to love me, to want me. To want me, and the baby.

“Why don't we abort you and keep the baby?” He finally said.

I sat alone in the abortion clinic. Where another man – a middle-aged, short, heavy-set bespectacled man - said, "I will help you. Come with me.” And a half an hour later I was in a room with about ten other girls who had just had abortions and I can tell you right now with complete conviction that none of us felt good about what had just happened, none of us. And I would go so far as to bet none of us ended up with – or stayed with - the guy we had sex with, who got us pregnant.

Because none of us in that room, on that day, quite understood or believed at that stage in our lives how vital, and necessary it was to love the whole of ourselves, to honor our whole self. I was young and lonely and had absolutely no self-worth whatsoever. Self-esteem was so out of reach I would have fallen down if I tried to grab hold of it. I was desperately searching and hoping for love. That mistake – the desperation of wanting to be loved, later in life became a deep mission, the desire to become a woman of unlimited self-esteem. Wouldn’t trade that mistake for the world.

Then there was the boyfriend, the horrible, bad boyfriend. The one who I knew from the get go, from the moment I met him, that he was not right for me. He. Was. Not. Right. For. Me. I knew it, and I didn’t pay attention to my own instincts. The voice that said, “nah, don’t, he’s not good for you, this doesn’t feel right, don’t do this.” I did not pay attention to that voice. Nor did I did pay enough attention to his anger and his mood swings and his need to be right all the time, and his violent streak and the hole that remained punched in the wall, or the way that he humiliated me in public, or the very first time he threatened me, with his big hard hands wrapped around my throat.

His hands wrapped so hard he was choking me, “I could kill you” he said in a hushed scary voice.

I sat in my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic. A few of my personal belongings scattered on the back seat, along with a black and blue mark stretching from my jaw-line to my clavicle, as I replayed the entire five years over and over and over and over again wishing more than anything I had paid attention to that voice – my voice - telling me DON’T, don’t do this. Why didn’t I listen? What didn’t I trust about myself, my own voice, why did I constantly turn down the volume?

That mistake - not paying attention to my own voice, my own life, later in life led me to a deep rooted passion, the desire for all women to speak up, to speak their truth, to be heard. Oh, no, I wouldn’t trade that mistake for anything.

And then there are the mistakes that bring us shame, the ones that make us weep in the dark, the ones that keep us at arms length. The ones that we marry. The ones that we try desperately to hide, the ones that have prescription numbers, the ones that are hidden away in cartons. The ones that we forgot. The ones that are thrown up in our face over and over and over again. The ones that come back to haunt us. The ones that feel so unbearable we think we’ll die. The ones that get you down on your knees. The ones you die with. The ones that make you feel not worthy, or deserving. The ones that keep us invisible.

A different airport.

A different city.

A different time.

My dad and I were sitting together at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Waiting, waiting, waiting at the gate for a plane to arrive from Atlanta, Georgia. We were sitting for hours. We had arrived at the airport very early, and the plane was four hours late. There were delays and headwinds, and storms, and all the god-awful pacing back and forth, back and forth, and checking his watch every five minutes - this was my dad’s all-time favorite past time, worrying, and then – finally – after circling the airport for another hour, the plane landed. Safely. Finally. Finally. And then my father exhaled, this big gigantic huge exhale. The kind of exhale that makes you wonder, how did they hold that in for so long? And then a few minutes later, along with other weary passengers – his carry-on baggage in one hand, and his “camera” hat in the other -- my husband got off the plane, and as he walked toward us, I remember thinking: What if – what if - my father had never said to me, I can’t make your mistakes for you?

All those mistakes, all those god awful, embarrassing, shameful, secretive mistakes that brought me closer to another person, that I swore I would never ever repeat, the ones that seemed to pop up every which where, the ones I couldn’t seem to live without – all those mistakes led me here.

Amy Ferris is an author, screenwriter, playwright and editor. She is co-editor (along with Hollye Dexter) of a new anthology, DANCING AT THE SHAME PROM (Seal Press, Fall 2012). Amy wrote the films, Funny Valentines (Julie Dash, Director), and Mr. Wonderful (Anthony Minghella, Director). Funny Valentines was nominated for numerous awards, including Best screenplay. Amy has contributed to many anthologies, He Said What?, The Drinking Diaries, The Buddha Next Door, and Exit Laughing to name a few. She co-created and co-edited the very first "all women's issue" of Living Buddhism Magazine in 2000. Amy's memoir, Marrying George Clooney: Confessions From A Midlife Crisis (Seal Press) is heading Off-Broadway, opening March 1st at CAP21 Theater Company in New York City (Krista Lyons, Ken Ferris & Amy Ferris co-authored the play).

Amy dropped out of High School, and never looked back. Well, maybe once or twice.

She lives in Pennsylvania with her gorgeous husband Ken, and their two cats, Bella & Lotus.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 25: Above All Else, Be Honest

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Let me start this little essay about honesty by being honest—I’m not really a writer. Yes, I recently co-authored a book about my life, but the truth is that I spent nearly three decades in the advertising business. I’m an advertising sales executive by trade. But I can say that I am a storyteller, in the way that all of us are storytellers. We go through life forming and sharing stories about our adventures and setbacks, as a way to feel like a part of the human experience. And what I’ve learned, through my life and my book, is that the best stories are the ones that are ruthlessly honest.

This would be my advice to anyone who wants to write—above all else, be honest. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing fiction or non-fiction: the events and emotions in your story must ring true, and must come from an honest place inside of you. Before you can create a story that really connects with readers and makes them feel invested in it, you must resolve to share your deepest fears and desires with the world. You must dredge up your most secret disappointments and most private dreams, and you must be prepared to mine them for your writing. That is not an easy thing to do—it’s much easier to stay on the surface and avoid confronting certain unpleasant emotions. But in my experience as a reader and a co-author, what makes a story special are the moments in that story where someone feels a jolt of recognition and says, “Yes! That’s true! That’s happened to me! I have felt like that but I’ve never had the words to describe it.”

I had to make this decision to be honest before I began my book. The story I tell in An Invisible Thread is the story of how, when I was a 36-year-old single woman in Manhattan in 1986, I met a homeless 11-year-old panhandler named Maurice, and took him to lunch at McDonalds. The book describes how we wound up meeting every Monday for the next four years, and hundreds of times after that, and how we’ve been great friends for 25 years—and how that friendship profoundly changed our lives. But the book also tells the story of my difficult childhood, and of my painful divorce from a man I believed was the love of my life. I had to make a decision to tell the full and true story of why our marriage fell apart—and of how the marriage adversely affected my relationship with Maurice. I could have kept some of the more painful moments I endured out of the book, but I believed that for the story to work, it had to be completely honest. I believed that readers would be able to tell if I was holding back or presenting an incomplete version of events.

Believe me, reaching this decision was not easy—I had to consider the feelings of my brother and sisters, and of other living people who played a role in the story. But I concluded there was no reason to write the book if I wasn’t going to tell my true and full story—if I wasn’t going to pour my real sorrows, regrets, joys and emotions into the writing. I resolved that my book would be honest if nothing else, and I hoped that by being honest I would be able to connect with and inspire readers who experienced similar emotions in their lives.

And that is just what’s happened. Since An Invisible Thread came out last November, I’ve received hundreds of letters from readers telling me how they were moved and inspired by the book, and how my story brought them to tears or touched them in the heart. Those letters have been profoundly rewarding for me. They prove that the payoff for writing honestly is a genuine connection with readers, and that, in the end, is the goal of any writer in any genre. And that is why my advice to anyone who wants to write is simple—explore your real emotions, tap into your real fears and dreams, and resolve to be ruthlessly honest with every word you write.

Laura Schroff is the co-author of An Invisible Thread, a memoir about hope and friendship that has been on the New York Times bestseller list for ten straight weeks. She lives in New York City with her feisty poodles Coco and Emma, and she dotes on her many nieces and nephews. Laura invites readers to share their own Invisible Thread stories on her website, www.invisiblethread.com.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 24: Spend Time in the Presence of Animals

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

The squirrel sat on his hind legs and held a piece of bread in his front paws. Cautiously, hurriedly, and determinedly he nibbled at the bread, his eyes darting around constantly, ready to scamper away at the slightest hint of trouble. I stood silently and watched him from the balcony door. I smiled. When he gulped down the last few crumbs, I felt fulfilled, content, a lot like I do when I have just eaten a delicious meal.

It didn’t take long for me to be drawn into the world of the squirrel. I silently observed his movements, and marvelled at his alertness and resolve to procure food even though it meant exposing himself to possible harm. A deep feeling of compassion for the squirrel surged from within my consciousness. All my other thoughts were silenced, for a while. It was like a meditation of sorts.

Animals and birds have the potential to bring out the best in us, and spending time in their presence can put us in touch with a part of ourselves that we often tend to ignore. When I approach them in silence, respectfully not intrusively, as a guest in their world, I find that I am able to communicate with them at the level of feeling. It doesn’t matter what type of animal or bird it is. I have felt the same surge of compassion when I watched swans glide over still waters, when I observed a turtle clumsily swim to the shore, and when I stopped in my tracks and silently watched a pig rummage through mud and dirt!

I’ve seen them in zoos as well, but few zoos are able to re-create the rich natural environments that these animals and birds were meant to thrive in. In most zoos I’ve visited, the energy that emanates from these animals is one of resignation – meek acceptance of their imprisonment. The very act of caging a creature is disrespectful to the life energy that flows within it. By disrespecting the life force in another being, we ultimately disrespect the life force within ourselves. We wonder then, why we are never at peace with ourselves. Loving ourselves has much to do with loving those around us, and that includes birds and animals.

Have you ever wondered why children are so fascinated by animals? Why does every child have a collection of ducks, bears, mice, and dogs in their toy box? When a child walks past a stray dog, the child will invariably point to the dog and say “doggie,” even as the parents will, more often than not, pull the child along and make a comment about how the dog will bite you if you don’t keep walking. Children are born with an instinctive love for animals. Yet, few parents allow their children to express this love. As children grow, they are taught to fear animals as beasts or look upon them merely as pieces of food. In many countries, the only ducks that children get to see are the dead ones hanging in the windows of meat shops.

As I write this piece, I look out the window. A beautiful brown bird with yellow lined eyes is sitting on the ledge chirping with energy and enthusiasm. Have you ever seen a depressed bird?

Each morning, I’m greeted by my pet dog with a joy and fervour that a human cannot possibly match every single day! Sometimes, she’s all over me and ready to play ball first thing in the morning.

On other days, she’s gentler; she puts her head on my knee and nudges me until I hold her head in my hands and stroke the back of her ears. While I’m massaging her head, she closes her eyes in pure bliss, and that bliss rubs off on me as well! I think she knows the energy that I need for the day – active and extroverted or gentle and soothing, and she greets me accordingly.

More often than not, animals reflect back to us the feeling that we put out towards them. When we approach them with fear, we see aggression or a fear response back from them. When we approach them with love, we’re rewarded with more love, sometimes a lot more than our fragile hearts can handle.

Sai Ganesh Nagpal lives in India. He is a Writer, Musician, Trainer, and English Teacher and enjoys exploring creative expression in different roles. Born in Dubai, U.A.E, Sai began music lessons at the age of four and recorded his first albums of Vedic Chants and Indian devotional music when he was sixteen. He studied Fine Arts at the Maharishi University of Management in the US where he also taught Sanskrit to students from different countries. After graduation, he moved to New Delhi, India, where he has since been a Writer for online educational programs in schools, colleges, and companies. Sai is also a certified Teacher of English as a Foreign Language. You can find him at http://www.sai-waves.blogspot.com.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 23: It Takes Patience to be a Writer and a Mother

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

Patience is a popular lesson here. Author Allan Lokos wrote an entire book on this subject (Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living) and shared his thoughts in Lesson 5. Now, Hemmie Martin, a writer in England, is here to give us her insights on the patience one needs to be not just a writer, but also a mother. Please welcome Hemmie Martin:

Patience is like a spider on a web – it waits patiently for an insect to connect with its sticky threads, and it holds firm in the tussle of the battering winds. An old Ethiopian proverb states, “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” The strength gained from patience cannot be underestimated.

As a mother of two teenage girls, my patience can at times be tested, and sometimes I fail. But when I fail, I’m awash with unhappiness, and vow to be a calm ocean whenever I’m next tested. I have to be a role model of inner calm and serenity when the world offers only thorns.

The same patience is required when submitting to agents or publishers. I would send off my submission packages and wait for an email or the thud of the post on the doormat. Sailing the highs of an agent wishing to see more, to the lows of rejection, required an inner strength that sometimes evaded me.

The buzz of finally being accepted by a publisher still continues to reverberate around my soul, although the anxiety of failing has now rooted itself somewhere inside me. The publisher warns of lulls in sales from time to time, and I know that I’ll require my inner strength and patience to kick in at that point.

Just like a mother, I’m letting my ‘baby’ be seen by the world. Will they perceive her as ugly or will they cherish her as I do?

I have shown my daughters that patience and persistence has aided my move into the publishing world, and that hard work does eventually pay off. They are beautiful and intelligent, and if they can master inner peace, patience and strength, then they are part way to leading a fulfilling and wondrous life.

Hemmie Martin spent most of her professional life as a Community Nurse for people with learning disabilities, a Family Planning Nurse, and a Forensic Nurse working with young offenders. She spent six years living in the south of France, and currently lives in Essex with her husband, two teenage daughters, one house rabbit, and two guinea pigs.

Follow Hemmie on her website, Facebook & Twitter.

Her new novel, The Divine Pumpkin, a drama-fiction, will be published this May 2012. The novel takes us through tragedy and romance and gives us a deep look into the makeup of people and the reasons why they often do what they do.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 22: Trust Your Voice

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

We heard from Leo Babauta about finding your voice in Lesson 14, but once you find it, you need to trust it! This is easier said than done and I know I definitely struggle with this one at times. Judith Van Praag, a fellow Seattle writer, talks about how she finally arrived at the decision to fully trust her own voice, and to follow it:

We're told to follow our heart, yet to use our head. That sounds like prudent advice and applicable in many situations. But too often rationality mums gut feelings and smothers our true self. Does your heart speak to you? Let its voice be heard.

I'm telling myself the above as an 84,000-word manuscript beckons. This work in process, titled Forgiveness, awaits revision, editing, and being sent into the world. Another month or so and I'll be looking for beta readers who'll give me feedback. More critical than your average reader or especially fans (such as a loving spouse or best friend) they'll offer me an honest review. Those who read like writers will comment on theme, premise, characters, plot, structure, style, grammar and voice.

This won't be the first time. During the writing and development of an earlier book, I shared sections with my critique group. I wrote and rewrote, edited, re-envisioned and edited once again. Only after I'd finished the sixth version did I deem the text worthy to be printed as a whole and read by trustworthy beta readers. I cradled each of my babies in a box and sent them off. How would my story be perceived? As a writer and artist I've learned that every single person will see something else in a creation.

We all have our own perspective, each and every one of us has a life experience that's unique and colors our perception. In critiquing one another's work and receiving critique, we have to remember that. What's true for us is not necessarily true for the other. With that in mind we focus on craft, not values.

My five beta readers were brave to take on the hefty load I laid in their laps. Creative Acts of Healing: after a baby dies with its in your face subtitle, isn't poolside literature, although one of them did read most of the book while soaking in her bathtub. While they hadn't suffered a similar loss, Creative Acts of Healing made them remember their own, or others' sorrows. I was and am grateful for their conscientious approach. I understand how difficult it must have been to look at this material in an objective manner, to not let personal feelings take over. In going over her notes one of my readers said there was a certain instant where she didn't believe me (or the narrator, as we writers call the main character, even if we're writing a memoir). Now this is a big deal. You want your readers to trust you.

The phrase my reader objected to was: "She will not want us to become embittered."

"Too Buddha-like," she said, "Impossible."

My reader could not believe that I (the narrator) would be able to say such a thing to my husband while holding our lifeless Ariane Eira in my arms. At that very moment I made the mistake I still regret. I stifled the voice from within and deleted that line.

One of the biggest no-no's in writing fiction after life is to insist on the supposed truth, saying: "But that is how it happened." For what really happened usually doesn't have enough drama, or on the contrary is over the top. In writing non-fiction however, this may accentuate the essence of the experience. That we chose not to become embittered by our loss, has saved my husband and my relationship and in the long run our happiness. Looking at the manuscript of Forgiveness, I vow I will make sure I won't be seduced by another person's beliefs. I will let my heart speak.

How about you?

Judith Van Praag, originally from the Netherlands, makes her home in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and pooch. Her background lies in multicultural theater, but in the 1990's the balance tipped over to studio + literary arts.

In 1999 she published Creative Acts of Healing: after a baby dies. From 2000-2002 she wrote a column about grief for a Dutch Parental magazine and from 2004-2006 she covered Arts & Culture for the International Examiner in Seattle. She remains a regular contributor to the latter.

Judith wrote the storybook for three of Luly Yang's Runway Fashion Shows, and was Ms. Yang's speech writer.

Since the opening of the Seattle Central Library in 2004, she has presented architectural tours of this landmark designed by her countryman Rem Koolhaas.

Momentarily Judith is working on "The Counterfeit", a screenplay based on "Forgiveness", her novel about art, love and redemption in a cold country. Next in line is a memoir about growing up on a nut farm and coming out halfway sane.

You can find her contact information, link to blog and more at DutchessAbroad.com and Google+

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 21: The Power of Attention is Always Available

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

It is such an amazing honor to have a guest blog post by Sharon Salzberg, a person whom I have admired for many years, appear here! In fact, years ago, I went to see Sharon at East/West Bookshop in Seattle. I had just read her book Lovingkindness and was so inspired by her words there. I never expected, years later, that Sharon would not only appear on my blog, but also agree to write a blurb for my new book, Lessons from the Monk I Married! This excerpt is from her newest book called Real Happiness. Here she is to talk about the power of attention, please welcome Sharon Salzberg:

"My experience is what I agree to attend to,” the pioneering psychologist William James wrote at the turn of the twentieth century. “Only those items I notice shape my mind.” At its most basic level, attention—what we allow ourselves to notice—literally determines how we experience and navigate the world. The ability to summon and sustain attention is what allows us to job hunt, juggle, learn math, make pancakes, aim a cue and pocket the eight ball, protect our kids, and perform surgery. It lets us be discerning in our dealings with the world, responsive in our intimate relationships, and honest when we examine our own feelings and motives. Attention determines our degree of intimacy with our ordinary experiences and contours our entire sense of connection to life.

The content and quality of our lives depend on our level of awareness—a fact we are often not aware of. You may have heard the old story, usually attributed to a Native American elder, meant to illuminate the power of attention. A grandfather (occasionally it’s a grandmother) imparting a life lesson to his grandson tells him, “I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene.” The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, “The one I feed.”

But that’s only part of the picture. True, whatever gets our attention flourishes, so if we lavish attention on the negative and inconsequential, they can overwhelm the positive and the meaningful. But if we do the opposite, refusing to deal with or acknowledge what’s difficult and painful, pretending it doesn’t exist, then our world is out of whack. Whatever doesn’t get our attention withers—or retreats below conscious awareness, where it may still affect our lives. In a perverse way, ignoring the painful and the difficult is just another way of feeding the wolf.

Meditation teaches us to open our attention to all of human experience and all parts of ourselves. I’m sure you know the feeling of having your attention fractured by job and family, the enticement of electronic diversions, or the chatter of your mind—that morning’s spat with your mate replaying in your head, a litany of worries about the future or regrets about the past, a nervous endless-loop recitation of the day’s to-do list. Parts of that mental soundtrack may be old tapes that were instilled in childhood and have been playing so long we’ve nearly tuned them out of conscious awareness.

These might be unkind pronouncements about the kind of person we are or preconceptions and assumptions about how the world works (for example: Good girls don’t act like that, men/women can’t be trusted, you’ve got to look out for number one).We may no longer even notice the messages we’re sending ourselves, just the anxiety that lingers in their wake. These habitual responses are often the result of a lifetime’s conditioning—the earliest lessons from our parents and our culture, both explicit teaching and nonverbal cues. This diffusion of attention can be mildly discomfiting, creating a vague sense of being uncentered or never quite there. It can be disheartening, leaving you exhausted from being dragged around by your jumpy, scattered thoughts; it can be downright dangerous (think of what can happen to distracted drivers).

We can be lethally asleep at the wheel in other ways, too, neglecting relationships or failing to notice and act on what’s really important to us. We miss a great deal because our attention is distracted or because we’re so sure that we already know what’s going on that we don’t even look for new, important information. Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them. That allows us to detect harmful habits of mind that were previously invisible to us.

For example, we may sometimes base our actions on unexamined ideas (I don’t deserve love, you just can’t reason with people, I’m not capable of dealing with tough situations) that keep us stuck in unproductive patterns. Once we notice these reflexive responses and how they undermine our ability to pay attention to the present moment, then we can make better, more informed choices. And we can respond to others more compassionately and authentically, in a more creative way.

Sharon Salzberg is cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. She has been a student of meditation since 1971, guiding meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Sharon's latest book is the New York Times Best Seller, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program, published by Workman Publishing. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and is also the author of several other books including The Force of Kindness (2005), Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience (2002), and Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995). For more information about Sharon, please visit: www.SharonSalzberg.com.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 20: Breakups Provide an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Alice Grist, a modern-day spiritual writer in the UK, is here to talk about the blessings of breakups and how they are important for our own growth. Please leave a comment here for a chance to win a free copy of her most recent book, The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living.

Relationships are a minefield of potential open and closed doors. Yet within this minefield there is massive room for learning. Heartache goes hand in hand with the evolution of you as a spiritually enlightened being. So whilst rejection or love-life confusion may sting like hell, in the long term it can be spiritually very good for you.

I feel your pain, honestly I do. How can rejection by the love of your life ever, ever be meaningful? How can that passing fling have been so ‘passing’ instead of the permanent love nest you hoped it would transform into? Why did that gorgeous fellow sweet talk you into bed with magnificent promises only to go cold and factual the following week? Whilst I cannot answer on behalf of these errant ex-partners I can say that the answer does not lie with them.

Before I met my husband I have been known to rant and rave into the ear of a willing girlfriend, for months, or years, about some poor chap who had the gall to reject me, not return a phone call or blatantly dump me. In true female form I would of course blame myself, then him, then myself again. He would be a bastard and I was the innocent love fool. It is hilarious really. What I did not recognize was that the guy does not hold the answers. Not the answers I really needed anyway.

Spiritual lessons come through people, all people, even the really nasty ones. Just because a love affair was ‘not meant to be’ does not mean it was not meant to be whilst it lasted. We attract people to us to help us to grow and learn. So if a relationship did not work out how you expected it to, then instead of wondering what the other person is thinking, try to see what it means for you. Think of yourself and what you can garner from the remnants of that love. Consider what you have learned about your self, about your behavior, about ways of being that you might want to avoid in the future. Indeed consider the good and the bad and be sure to take this on-board for your future love growth.

I believe that some of our more dramatic relationship disasters were planned before coming into this life. They are fantastic ways to promote your growth as a soul. You may have asked a fellow friendly soul to be born as a guy or gal you were going to hook up with, and you may have planned that he or she dumps you out of the blue, or kisses your best friend. The reasons for this may be multiple.

Perhaps you rejected that soul in a previous life and to amend your karma you are asked for the situation to be reversed. Maybe you just needed to feel real heartbreak. Or perhaps you just wanted to fall deeply in love briefly, and then move on to something more significant, perhaps your purpose in this life is to do something else entirely. Maybe that soul will inspire you to great things. Maybe your ex is simply a stepping-stone on your way to a more suited lover in your future. Heartbreak at any age does not mean a lifetime of singledom. It might mean a wiser choice at an older age and a better understanding of who and what you can tolerate in a relationship scenario.

I believe that the more we feel during a lifetime, and the better we react to our own emotions the more progressed as souls we become. So whilst the broken heart may make little sense right now, it is likely that you are stronger as a human as a result and in turn will be a tougher, more knowledgeable soul. The possibilities are huge, and exciting, and every horrid little incident has something to be gleaned from it.

Relationships of all kinds mess you up—on one level. On another level they are an opening into a better understanding of yourself and other people. It depends how you take your medicine. Taking a positive attitude toward relationship disasters enables us to move on and learn the spiritual lessons that all relationships have for us. All human beings are messengers, whatever clothing and guise they come to us in, be it saint or sinner. All people, without exception, carry important life lessons for us. Yes it is difficult to comprehend those life lessons when all you can think about is how much you miss snuggling into a certain person’s neck, or how cute the little wrinkles around their eyes were when they smiled. Facts are facts, if a door has closed, do not stand staring at it for the rest of your life; think about why it closed, what have you learned about yourself and about relationships? What about this situation can make you a better human being and a more successful and well-rounded soul?

If you can, then I recommend that you project unconditional love to the person who hurt you and then walk away, physically, emotionally and mentally. A break up should not mean the end of loving their soul, even if you never want to see them again, so do them and yourself a favor and send a little loving sugar over the energy vibrations to them. It will do no harm. After that you may want to project a little sugar onto yourself. Work at getting happy again and finding a way to assimilate this loss into your lifelong spiritual learning.

Human life was never supposed to be easy, we are here to learn. One huge and fast way to learn about pain and emotion is through our relationship heartaches. Love is a rip-roaring, soul wrenching occurrence that when handled correctly can fast track and deepen your spiritual wisdom.

Alice Grist is the author of two books. The High Heeled Guide to Enlightenment, her first book , charts Alice's journey from party girl to sassy spiritual woman. Alice's second book is Prediction Magazine Award Nominated, The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living (July 2011). THHGTSL is a guide to living spiritually through the ups and downs of modern existence. Both books are published by O-Books / Soul Rocks and have attracted much reader and reviewer acclaim. Alice Grist is the Publisher of new John Hunt Publishing Imprint - Soul Rocks Books. Soul Rocks publishes soulful and spiritual books with sass and edge. Alice is the founder and managing editor of Soul-Cafe.net, an online network and magazine for soulful and spiritual living. On Soul-Cafe, Alice regularly interviews and features the spiritual advice and writings of experts and authors. Soul-Cafe provides a safe, happy space for all spiritual seekers. Alice is a frequent contributor to many magazines and online lifestyle sites, often writing about spirituality in her own quirky, accessible and fierce style. She writes a regular column - Alice's World of Woo for Haunted Magazine. She is a frequent guest on many TV and radio shows. Alice can also be found on You Tube posting under Alicebiddie.

Website: http://www.alicegrist.co.uk, Twitter: @AliceGrist, Facebook Page: Alice Grist Soul-cafe, Social Network: http://www.soul-cafe.net

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 19: If You Want to Write Well, Try Eating Well

2012-01-19T00:00:00.001-08:00

I have been a professional writer for the past 25 years. My particular field and expertise resides in a subject called Medical Intuition—the gift of insight pertaining to the physical body.

To date, I have had the pleasure of helping thousands of people—one of them is Louise Hay, founder of Hay House Publishing in California. You never know what will prompt you to be a writer and when you are a writer, you never know who you are going to meet! The cosmic two-by-four, that led me to the writing process, was illness—a serious illness. In 1983, at the age of 39, I had the early warning signs of Multiple Sclerosis which called for a complete over-haul of my diet and lifestyle.

In the process I became completely well and the muse was invoked. I had to write my story and thanks to a chance meeting with Louise Hay, I became a Hay House author in 1999. Writing takes strength, discipline, energy and mental clarity.

My background is almost 30 years in Environmental Medicine, the human being in relationship to the environment: All foods, substances and their effect on the body. I see many people who lack energy, crave starch and sugar and subsequently don’t have mental clarity. If you are a writer and you really want to feel “switched on,” I highly recommend changing the diet—the diet of what you eat and the diet of the mind, your thoughts. Wheat and flour-based products cause fatigue and joint inflammation. Sugar, corn and caffeine will rob your energy, and bring on that edgy feeling.

Feed your brain with organic and pesticide free products, choose lots of green vegetables, and use alternative grains like quinoa, millet and varieties of rice. Within a number of days you’ll feel a boost of energy and the desire to tackle writing projects.

When I am in the middle of a book project, I get up early, walk 2 miles along the ocean, return home and eat a breakfast of protein and vegetables. I write until 1pm, take a quick lunch break with a big green salad topped with salmon, tuna, or hard-boiled egg. Then I write until 5pm when I take a break for a swim in the ocean or pool. Then I continue writing until 10pm. I drink lots of water and my favorite – white peony tea. I rarely have sweets or alcohol as I know I will lose energy. When I write, I am very focused. I feel the pressure of a deadline (mostly self-imposed) and I keep going until the project is complete. I write to help. Years ago I gave up writing fashion, because in my mind it was not inherently helpful. I have found that being a member of the International Women’s Writing Guild has been useful. At 45 dollars per year, it is the best bargain for women writers. I have spoken several times at the Guild’s “Big Apple” conferences in New York City. Being a published author is a privilege. Everyone has a story—write yours!

Caroline Sutherland is the author of The Body Knows. To read more about her go to www.carolinesutherland.com

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 18: Let Go of Being Perfect and JUST WRITE

2012-01-18T00:00:00.001-08:00

I feel like I've been friends with Heather Conroy from Australia all my life, but I've only known her on the net. We've both had dreams that we've met. Perhaps we will one day. I WILL get myself to Australia—too many beautiful places and people to see there! Heather is top on my list! Here she is to talk about the Pareto principle ( In case you are wondering what that is, I didn't know either, but now find it a fascinating concept!):

I’ve always found writing hard. It’s not news that writers face a lot of obstacles. What I found surprising when I really started to write a few years ago is that I am my biggest obstacle. Which is why I am delighted to report that I have tackled and conquered a very self destructive and difficult writing issue in 2011. I did this by drawing on principles pioneered early last century by an Italian economist.

To get over myself and just write I have tried a number of strategies. I’ve tried writing every day to limber up. I’ve tried just showing up and assuming the position with hands on the keyboard in the hope that something will happen. I’ve also set a timer and tried to free-write for 20 minute bursts. This is supposed to trick your brain. Sometimes I’d write on a white computer screen in white font, so I couldn’t see what I was writing (also brain trickery). I admit it was therapeutic and fun to write about my state of mind as I sat frozen and unable to write. In fact, I found it possible to join these snippets together and shape them into something resembling writing. Many of these patch-worked paragraphs now appear on my blog. There was also a lot of sighing, and getting up for a coffee and never coming back. One strategy I tried revealed my biggest obstacle to writing in all its glory. Let me explain.

I don’t remember who, but some kind, well meaning, and helpful person suggested at some point that I write a letter to the wisest person I know to very briefly state my issue. I suspect that the goal of this was clarity, and that they secretly hoped that I would discover that I am the wisest person I know. The only problem was that I felt overwhelmed by too many options and I was stuck before I started the letter.

For instance His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people sprang instantly to mind. I suppose it was something about his understanding of the universal human want to avoid suffering and to be supremely happy that I hooked into. To be honest, I wasn’t happy that the Dalai Lama lacked direct experience with my type of problem. What I needed was an expert. I ran through the skills and abilities that this person must possess to earn my letter (and yes, I’m not making this up). On and on I went through all my options. Figuratively, I drew up a pros and cons list for each potential candidate. A nagging thought as I pondered each one’s merits and then rejected them was that there must be someone wiser, someone more appropriate….And there it is in a nutshell. My issue. The one where I am on a quest for perfection, for daily I deal with a huge amount of information and my quest is to find the very right piece of research to support my claims. This sea of literature is vast and I am but one tiny navigating sailor. The thought that there is always something better ahead is a real breeze stopper and I am left bobbing around, suspended, dwelling in the future, thinking about its completion, where it’s going and watching and waiting and polishing up my sentences. All this runs counter to what needs to be done which is to just work smart with what I have right now. And then ship it.

So it is right about the last week of January 2011 that I stumble on something that gets me sailing again. It is erroneously referred to as the Pareto principle because in its purest form it is a mathematical formula created in 1906 by an Italian economist who used it to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in a country where twenty percent of people own 80 percent of the wealth. Since the 1940s it has changed and morphed into the 80/20 rule and became a universal principle that acknowledges that 20 percent of effort is always responsible for 80 percent of the results.

I translate it to my writing by working out how many hours I expect it will take me to complete a particular project. For example a thesis chapter might take me 100 hours to complete. I then apply the 80/20 rule where 80% of the quality of this chapter is achieved with 20% of the effort. The other 20% of the quality is hard won (think sailing, rough seas, storms, navigating off course) and requires 80% of the effort. So I give myself 20 hours of focused effort and I then ship my chapter off to my supervisor. What surprises me is that it comes back to me swiftly with minimal changes required. I have used 20% of my energy and time to produce something that is good enough. The other 80 hours of time and energy that would take my good enough chapter to perfection I then use to ship off another piece of writing.

What I have learned to do this year is to just quieten the chatter that tells me that what I produce must be perfect. That voice is carried away by the strong winds that fill my sails and move me forward. I have shipped many pieces of writing this year with this guiding principle. I call it Pareto efficiency because efficiency refers to the ability to accomplish a task with a minimum expenditure of time and effort.

As Anne Lamott writes of perfectionism: “ It is a mean, frozen form of idealism…” and I am persevering in my efforts to get over it by leaving a recirculating flow immediately behind my moving boat.

Heather Conroy lives in Perth, Australia with her family. She is about to complete a combined Masters/PhD in Clinical Psychology from Murdoch University. She is a writer over on my other blog called Writers Rising, a collaborative blog I created from writers a few years ago. (Unfortunately, I have neglected that blog a bit, but always feel inspired when I visit. I hope to puff wind back into its sails this year with a batch of new writers and more frequent posts!) I have greatly enjoyed all my interactions with Heather and can't wait to meet her someday!

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 17: Find Love Within

2012-01-17T00:00:00.001-08:00

My co-worker, Maret, has gone through an amazing life transformation. I have been in complete awe of her this past year. She completely embodies a person who is living her truth, but it didn't come easily. Here she is to tell you about it:

I feel like a new woman today, one year after the man who I’d been with for 11 years told me out of the blue that he didn’t love me anymore. I feel like the weight of this first year on my own has lifted and I can focus on my beautiful present and amazing future. I want to release all the pain and anger and just let what happened fade into memory now. I’ve analyzed, brainstormed, reflected and expressed what went wrong and why what happened between my ex and me needed to happen for me to become the woman I am supposed to be. So now I can release all that, let it go and give it to the cosmos and to God and really be present now to enjoy and appreciate all that I have.

I was reminded of this feeling of being a new woman in a dance class at the gym today, because one year ago next week, I went to the same dance class and caught a glimpse of how I would feel and what my life might be like in this new life filled with love and not fear. It’s hard to describe in words, but the feeling I had in that glimpse was so powerful that it kept me going this past year, especially during the very difficult times. I reflect on why I may have felt that way so soon after my ex told me how he truly felt about me, and I realize now that it was empowerment and control over my life and my love that I felt that day after dance class one year ago. I caught a glimpse of how it feels to not be trapped in a love that is one-sided and can’t possibly give you what you truly need and desire, to not be dependent on someone else’s love or feel scared that they might not love you as much as you love them, that they might leave you but you’re too afraid to even talk about these real fears at the risk that they may come true.

It’s empowerment to not depend on a man to make me feel loved. It’s control to no longer believe that I won’t exist without this person’s love or that I cannot be happy or fulfilled in life without this person’s love. I now know with my heart, my big, beautiful, fragile, caring, tender, wide-open heart—or at least I’m learning—that I am worthy of love, of all the LOVE in the world, just for being me, just for being born, just for being my mother’s daughter, just for being one of Mother Nature’s and God’s children. I repeat: I AM WORTHY! I do not have to prove this to anyone or be afraid that this love will be taken away, because this LOVE resides inside me, and always will! God put this love in my heart when I was designed and created. I have just now discovered it and found the awe-inspiring, earth-shaking, powerful, wonderful, life-changing love inside ME! And I now know that through the process of getting my heart broken, I was able to find this love inside me. Sometimes you have to have your heart broken to find out that LOVE—true, beautiful, everlasting love—resides inside you, not outside.

What an incredibly powerful lesson to have learned this year and even more importantly to have realized and expressed, so that now I can truly appreciate the journey I’m on, where I’ve come from and where I am now. Wow! It’s an incredible feeling! Everything seems brighter or crisper or clearer in a way. To really believe or know in my heart that I will always be okay, that I will always survive, no matter what, is so inspiring. And to know that no loss of someone else’s love can take away the love inside me lets me finally rest in the faith I have been seeking this past year. This truly feels like I am discovering and recognizing faith, faith in the love that God designed for me, for each of us, that’s a part of our DNA, a part of our soul. NO ONE can take that from me!

Maret Kane studied and taught English abroad in Ecuador for 4 years where she fell in love with the culture & Spanish language. She now works with immigrants and refugees in a community college. In her free time, Maret enjoys walking on the beach with her boyfriend, Geovanny. She finds inspiration in dancing, whether at the gym in zumba or strengthening her core in pole dancing and hopes to belly dance more and try laughter yoga in 2012. Maret lives with her two rescued Siamese cats north of Seattle near beautiful Lake Washington.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 16: It's Monday and You are Dying

2012-01-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

According to Google, based on my race and gender’s life expectancy, I’m already more than halfway to the end of this road—and more than that if I smoked and didn’t look both ways before crossing the street. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the sort of thing I like to hear on a Monday morning.

Mondays are bad enough as it is. The most I can handle before my first cup of coffee is the weather report and sometimes not even that. More rain? I’m going back to bed. Unfortunately, pretending that I never Googled it doesn’t make it less true. I’ve been dying since the day I was born—and so have you.

So what exactly do you do on a day that takes you one day closer to the end? Do you slam your laptop shut, run out of your cubicle and start going through your bucket list? Do you pick your kids up early from school and have ice cream and pancakes for dinner?

Unless the world unanimously decided that mortgages were passé, electricity was free, and kids didn’t need an education, I’m betting that these are some things we probably wouldn’t do. Monday may take us closer to our final deadline, but it doesn’t change the fact that bills need to be paid tomorrow. It’s Tuesday, people, not the end of the world. We might be dying, but we still have to make dinner.

Still, even if my grocery list seems a tiny bit more urgent than my bucket list today (I’m out of cheese), the fact that this Monday is one day less from the one thousand eight hundred twenty five Mondays ahead of me, demands some amount of action. I’m starting with elevator buttons and caterpillars.

I will admit that I belong to the club of people who believe that pressing the elevator button just one more time will make it go faster. Today, I will allow the elevator and time to run its course. Today, I will not hurry my daughter on our walk to school. I will not tug her hand or herd her past her striped caterpillars. I will stop, crouch next to her and share her stories about caterpillar kings and odd shaped rocks.

It’s Monday and today I will die slowly and well.

Samantha Sotto-Yambao is a writer from the Philippines, where she lives with her family. Her first novel, Before Ever After, a quirky, time-traveling romance, caught the attention of Random House in the United States, where she received a book deal. Her blog chronicles her whirlwind tour of this book in both the Philippines and the United States! For more information about Sam, visit her website at www.samanthasotto.com

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 15: Turn on the Sound of Silence

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Vania Wang has been living in a concrete hut without a toilet on the island archipelago of Vanuatu for about a year. She has mostly lived off cabbage and sweet potatoes and her online access is spotty, so she's learned to soak into the environment around her and really "hear" what it means to be silent. I had a chance to meet with Vania while she was home from the Peace Corps over the holidays. The first thing I noticed is that this dear friend of mine had become peaceful and simple. She was full of gratitude for very basic things—things that most of us take for granted. Here she is to talk about her experiences in Vanuatu, especially her experiences with silence. Please welcome Vania Wang:

Let me preface by saying that I’m a lover of cities. I am fueled by their energy and intellectually drawn towards these buzzing beehives of human community, innovation, and art. Growing up in Seattle and later attending the University of Washington, the sounds of a city were my daily soundscape. While serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I would often orchestrate this soundscape in my dreams, recreating the rumbling hum of wind speeding between skyscrapers, the murmur of people in coffeehouses and libraries, and the roar of busses as they careen down highways.

All these sounds are indicative of a community constantly in motion. In order to slake the chaos of a large and diverse population that is always changing, barriers are erected to categorize and organize those who dwell there, both in the form of physical structures and micro-communities. And since city-dwellers are in perpetual flux, their walls serve a second purpose of easing the human discomfort towards change and the unknown, where like-minded individuals would find their kin in a micro-community that suits them. Cities are simultaneously chaotic and controlled, large in population but small in the number of people you can know genuinely, and full with eccentric individuals who maintain their uniqueness while also falling into the flow of encompassing trends. I was living within these dichotomies during the first twenty-one years of my life. It was when I joined the Peace Corps that I started reflecting on the differences between city and village life, and the lessons that can be learned from the daily soundscapes of both environments.

It came as a bit of a surprise to others—and on some levels, myself—that I would want to spend two years living in a small village with no electricity and plumbing on the archipelago nation of Vanuatu. All the dichotomies of a city were erased and replaced by a community that is small in population with very little anonymity, doesn’t celebrate individuality and innovation, and is neither chaotic nor controlled. The sounds of a cityscape were suddenly gone and replaced by crowing roosters, soft thud of bare feet on a dirt path, and the rumbling waves of the Pacific. Take away all the churnings, whirrls, beeps, and vrooms, of post-industrial engineering and you get the sound of silence—a silence that isn’t vacuous and empty, but a silence that emphasizes the sounds of life and the deep rumble of the ocean and earth. This silence helped me appreciate aspects of life that are ignored in a technology-driven community, especially an integral part of life that is so often avoided and shunned: death.

In the west, death is often pushed into the background of our lives by medicines and treatments that desperately try to reverse its inevitability. And so death often comes as a crippling shock when it shouldn’t, and the living mourn heavily by clinging to the memories of the past and lamenting the disappearance of a desired future. The ebb from life to death is commonplace in daily rural life in Vanuatu. Poor health care and ignorance about the rudiments of hygiene and health knowledge contribute to frequent deaths in village communities. In many villages, the dead are mourned for five days only, after which their past life and deeds are put to rest into the memories of the living. But within these five days, an unearthly chorus of wails surrounds the dead in a cloak of sorrow, adding a heavy layer to the soundscape of a village. Everyone in the village participates in The Wailing, asked to join the cacophony of sadness with the family of the dead. These are five days when the family will do nothing but mourn, with the rest of the village joining them by supporting the family with food and comfort. But after the five days, the heavy layer of wailing is lifted and life goes on as usual. The death event is no longer acknowledged, and the dead is placed behind the living. Men and women go back to the gardens to work the crops for the weekly market. Smiles once again appear on faces. Life goes on.

The most valuable lesson from listening to and living within the sounds of silence is understanding impermanence at a deeper level. Even though they don’t have the modern conveniences of hot showers, modern medicine, and comprehensive education, ni-Vans intuitively understand life’s impermanence more than many developed communities. They are reminded of the changing nature of their environment every moment by their soundscape. The thud of a fallen papaya from an over-encumbered tree will soon become rotten but will later regrow to bear more tasty fruits. The frantic clucking of a dying chicken will fertilize the ground with which farmers will use to nurture their crops. The wails of family members for the dead will transform into namesakes for newborn children, allowing the memories of the deceased to continue in future generations. The ebb of life is resonant in the village. Every moment, things are rotting and regenerating, dying and birthing.

For those who live in cities, occasionally turn off your daily soundscape and turn on the sound of silence. Wander out to the wilderness to reconnect with the earth. Build and maintain a community of close friends and family, and try to reach out to different niches and micro-communities. Travel. You will find that the sound of silence isn’t foreign to human beings, and that it’s been with us since the beginning of existence. You will find that the sound of silence manifests impermanence. You will find that turning on the sound of silence will allow life’s challenges to become more manageable, because you realize that they certainly can’t last for eternity.

Vania Wang is a Seattle native who graduated from the University of Washington in 2010 with a degree in Microbiology. She now lives in Vanuatu and works as a Community Health Peace Corps Volunteer. She speaks English, Mandarin Chinese and Bislama. She blogs over at Serdendipitous Journeys Through the Wasted Heaven.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 14: Find Your Voice

2012-01-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of Leo Babauta's blog Zen Habits, which was rated as a Top 25 Blog by Time Magazine! I love his simplistic, no-nonsense approach to life. Here he is to talk about finding your voice. Please welcome Leo Babauta:

Creators of any kind must find their voice.

We are writers, musicians, designers, programmers, parents, builders of anything. But we are not truly expressing ourselves, and speaking the truth, until we’ve found our voice: the tone, style, tenor, pitch, personality we use to express ourselves.

Our voice is our essence, writ plain for the world to see.

A reader and fellow writer asked me how I found my voice. And I have no easy answer — I’m not even sure I can say I’ve fully found my voice yet. It’s a quest that doesn’t seem to end — not a Grail quest, really, but a constant retuning as the essence of who I am neverendingly changes.

But I feel I’ve found something that has the texture of truth, even if only a tactile approximation. I’ll share some of my thoughts, but keep in mind I don’t hold the answers firmly at all.

I’m learning, and I hope my learning helps yours. This is written for writers, but the ideas are the same for anyone who creates anything.

Write a lot. This is almost all I need to say, as nothing else matters without the constant practice of writing a lot. Write blog posts and letters, booklets and diatribes, letters to the editor and book reviews, love poems and short stories, novellas and manifestos. The sheer mass of your writing becomes the raw matter from which to chisel your voice.

Experiment boldly. Rip off the greats, and the goods as well. Mimick and make it your own. Try and err.

Learn to hear yourself. My writing voice is really the voice in my head. It’s not how I talk aloud, but how I talk to myself, in the noisy cavern of my skull. I listen to myself talk, inside, and that’s the voice I try to get down in writing.

Getting that voice from your head to the virtual paper — that’s the trick. It’s not easy, but again, do it often, and you’ll get proficient at it. It’s a rewiring of the synapses, so that your head-thoughts shoot down into your fingertips and come out as typing motions, as bits and pixels. Most people don’t do this enough to get good at it, and so there is low fidelity.

Find what feels true. You’ll write a lot, and most of it will be bullshit. You need the bullshit if you want to find the truth. Sort through the bullshit until you learn to recognize the truth, by feel, not by any logical criteria. The truth looks remarkably like bullshit.

Find clarity. Good writing, it’s been said often, is clear thinking. If your thinking is muddled, your writing will be. I’d recommend a self-taught course on logic, but really I’ve found it’s a matter of simplifying. Practice removing extraneous ideas and words until you have only what’s needed to express a simple thought.

Remove the noise. It’s a process of subtraction more than addition. Most people end up with too many words, because they never subtract. The noise gets in the way of your voice, so pare it down, trimming the noise from the bush until you’re left with truth. I subtract in my head, these days, but that’s from years of practice. After you write, edit, and remove the noise.

Most people also have too much noise in their lives to hear their own thinking. Too much is going on around them, and online, and they have no time for solitude. You can’t hear your thoughts, your voice, without solitude. Remove the noise in your life as well.

Use your voice. You don’t embark on a quest for your voice just for the sake of beauty — a noble pursuit, but it’s not enough.

You must use your voice. Use it to express yourself, to help others, to change the world.

I write of simplicity in a world that’s needlessly complicated.

I write of minimalism to stem the tide of consumerism.

I write of contentment because too many feel a lacking.

I write of veganism because my heart breaks at the cruelty of our food system.

I write of unschooling to show kids they need no teacher but themselves.

I write of anarchism in a world increasingly totalitarian, especially in the growing private sector.

This is how I use my voice. How will you use yours?

Leo Babauta is a simplicity blogger & author. He created Zen Habits, a Top 25 blog (according to TIME magazine) with 200,000 subscribers, mnmlist.com, and the best-selling books focus, The Power of Less, and Zen To Done.

Babauta is a former journalist of 18 years, a husband, father of six children, and in 2010 moved from Guam to San Francisco, where he leads a simple life.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 13: Enough is Enough

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

All the way from England, I received a tweet that went something like this: "Oh darn, someone has already written my story." It turns out Fiona also married a monk! Her husband, an English native, took robes for some time and then hung them up after meeting lovely Fiona. I've really enjoyed my on-line exchanges with her. Here she is to talk about what it means to "have enough." Please welcome Fiona Robyn:

For most of my life, I've expected that one day I'll get more clients/write a best-selling novel/win the lottery. This current state of having just-enough-money has always felt temporary.

Towards the end of 2011, I had a thought. I was 37 already. I might not ever be any richer than this.

Around the same time we were helping our Buddhist Sangha out with ten days of continuous chanting, which they do once a year to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday. Everyone had a very different experience of their time chanting. My experience included a lot of worrying. Was Sumaya going to get any rest? Had Kaspa eaten enough? There need to be at least four people chanting at any time - would anyone else come into the shrine room and relieve me so I could go and get a cup of tea?

I noticed these thoughts, and then I noticed what happened next. Somebody usually did turn up when I wanted a cup of tea (sooner or later). Sumaya had gone to have a nap at the back of the room. We were close to the wire, but we had just enough.

It got me thinking about the word 'enough'. Is enough enough?

A word I've come across a lot during the years is 'abundance'. Self-help books encourage us to welcome abundance into our lives. If we think abundant thoughts then abundance will automatically grace us.

The dictionary tells me that abundance is, ‘an extremely plentiful or oversufficient quantity or supply’. In these difficult financial times, is it realistic to expect abundance? Do we really need an 'oversufficient quantity'?

I'm coming to feel pretty fond of the word 'enough'. Enough is saving the washing up water and putting it on the roses. It's appreciating every melting moment of a square of bitter chocolate. It's chanting for an extra half hour, even though you're dying for a cup of tea. It's having a terrible morning and then noticing beautiful red berries on a walk to the post-box. Those red berries!

Enough feels more realistic than endless abundance. Enough is satisfying. Enough is not-always-what-I'd-prefer and just-what-I-need. I'm coming to trust in it.

Maybe the money I make now is as much as I'll ever make. That's OK.

Enough is.... enough.

Fiona Robyn co-founded Writing Our Way Home with her husband Kaspalita, and is passionate about helping people connect to the world through writing. Practice finding your own red berries and join us in our River of Stones Mindful Writing challenge during January. Fiona lives in Malvern in Worcestershire, England with her husband.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 12: Harness Your Thoughts with a Mantra of Gratitude

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

It might just be another one of those internet myths, but I’ve read that our minds are busy with an average of 70,000 thoughts in the course of each day. Even if it’s only 1,000 thoughts, the idea made me wonder what thoughts were occupying my mental real estate.

Most of the thoughts I’m aware of entertaining are above reproach—substantial, even:

Will the law of gravity and the laws governing quantum particles ever be united in a single theory of the universe? (Laypeople’s astrophysics is a hobby of mine.)

Remember to use effective inflection on these particular words in this afternoon’s speech—and allow an extra 10 minutes commuting time.

I’ll take my mother-in-law thrift store shopping Thursday.

But, then there are the myriad inconsequential (okay, trifling) thoughts that overtake my mind:

Is that white spot on the living room rug an innocent clump of lint or a soon-to-be-smelly cream cheese stain?

How would I look with a silver streak in my hair?

I bet pork is really a red meat, despite that clever “other white meat” marketing slogan.

And so on.

Mulling over the muddle in my mind propelled me to search for a mantra I could repeat to slow down racing thoughts, although I wasn’t sure to what purpose. Why shouldn’t my mind fly all over the place whenever I’m not using it to focus on a critical task?

Well, a racing mind didn’t feel very good, that’s why. Something told me I’d be happier, saner, and maybe even smarter, if I applied the brakes to my thoughts. So, I adopted a one-word mantra that I repeated intermittently, mostly when I was meditating. It was so boring I don’t even remember what it was and it didn’t seem to quiet my mind.

However, an essay I’d read by the late spiritual writer Mary L. Kupferle had stuck in my mind for years. Kupferle suggested that no matter what’s going on, no matter whether things are going the way we want or not, we should repeat “Thank you.” Just that. “Thank you.” She promised that unexpected blessings would accrue to anyone who just said, “thank you” throughout the day.

Well, I’ve been using this mantra. And you know what? It works. Oh, does it work! It not only quiets my mind, making room for contemplative and productive thought; it’s also a statement of gratitude. And gratitude attracts blessings like a magnet.

This has been my secret. Even my non-judgmental husband doesn’t know I do this all day long—any time, anywhere. On nature walks, while driving, making the bed, writing my memoir, working out on the treadmill, I think: Thank you, thank you, thank you. (It’s got a nice walking rhythm to it.)

I don’t direct the words at anyone or anything. I just think them. I think them as I’m falling asleep, and especially on those rare occasions I’m having trouble falling asleep. They’re floating through my mind right now.

They’ve brought me a husband and in-laws I still appreciate and adore after 25 years. Potentially fraught situations have gone more smoothly than I had any right to expect, whether finding a parking space when I’m in a hurry; getting the new fridge and furniture through our narrow apartment doors two days before hosting a house party; receiving positive news about my relatives’ or my own health.

And this mantra has brought me unexpected honors. Who would have expected Katherine Jenkins, the author of Lessons from the Monk I Married, and publisher of her unique and valuable blog that I’ve long admired, to invite me to share my secret gratitude mantra with you?

For all these things I say, “thank you, thank you, thank you.” I urge you to try it.

Lynette Benton is the author of Polish and Publish, and a writing instructor and coach. Her memoir-in-progress is titled, My Mother’s Money. Contact her at Relief11@comcast.net.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 11: Life Stories Can Be Changed

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked by a woman who works with people’s money histories what the two most influential experiences were that affected me the most while growing up regarding ‘money’.

Several instances came to mind, but the one that stuck out the most was my memory of the chocolate bunny. I’d told my husband this story several times over the years. It was time to tell this story again and so I related to her the story that had affected my life view in such a profound way. I had carried this story with me since childhood.

I was in Grade One or Two. Seven miles from our farm was the Co-op store and the small school I attended (3 grades in one room with one teacher) was across the road from it. Nothing but grain fields surrounded the store. This was a small country store where the local farm folk would come for groceries, household items and gasoline. Easter was coming and one day I saw in the store high on the shelf a large chocolate bunny wrapped in beautiful colored foil; pastel pinks, blues, greens and gold. I wanted this bunny and had been learning in school about numbers and money. I knew if I saved I could have this bunny and I was proud that I could calculate and save to buy it. It was a big undertaking and I told my older sister about my plan. I told her I had saved 13 cents plus 9 cents to make the total. I remember the price was $1.39. She questioned me on my math, but I was certain of the price and, since she hadn’t seen the bunny or the price, gave in to my calculations. I asked if she would go with me that week to the store so I could purchase the bunny.

Today was the day. We headed out at lunch time across the country gravel road to the store. It was cold and windy – as early Spring on the prairies can be. The store was quiet thankfully, and my sister said she’d wait in the candy area at the front. Down the aisle I went for the precious bunny that awaited me. No one had bought it! I gently took the bunny from the shelf, walked to the front and placed it on the counter. I took my carefully counted money and laid it on the counter. The nice young man behind the counter counted the coins and said to me in a kind voice, “Oh, I don’t think you have enough”. I froze. “How could this be?“ I said to myself in disbelief. I was embarrassed and humiliated to my very core. I quietly left the store without the chocolate bunny. How could I make such a mistake? I had been so certain! For shame! And shame it was. My belief at that moment was: “I can’t have what I want. I’m not good with money. You see - this is proof”! And so I created a belief driven by shame and lived out this belief in many ways over the years.

How could I change a belief that had become so much a part of me? My money coach told me that the way to change it was to name it as ‘story’ rather than ‘truth.’ I was to change it from the belief that “I’ll never have what I want,” by relabeling it as ‘story’. For several months when I found myself in thoughts of deprivation, I was to say to myself, “The story I tell myself is ‘I’ll never have what I want’”. After several months it would gradually shift from ‘truth’ to ‘story’. And when it became a story, I could then change it. I couldn’t change the story of a lifetime by simply willing it away. If it were that easy I’d have changed it years ago. It was time to let go of the old story. I was grateful for the insight that I’d be able to change the story; change it to a new and different one – a story that would support the ‘me’ I had deserved all along.

Kathleen O'Grady is a clothing designer who loves beautiful textiles. She received her training in clothing and surface design at Capilano Community College and Vancouver Community College, as well as the University of Washington. Kathleen lived in Greece for a year and then in Japan for two years during the 80’s where she was influenced by indigo-dyed textiles. Her line of clothing - grady bleu® is inspired by the rich history and tradition of indigo blue. Indigo blue is a natural dye that dates back centuries. In recent years, she has traveled in Southeast Asia, India and Africa seeking out naturally dyed textiles. Fabrics dyed with indigo are an important element of her line. You can find her at gradybleu.com.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 10: Free Yourself by Releasing Blame

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

From time to time we might find ourselves blaming circumstance, people, even inanimate objects for our various misfortunes. Bursts of impatience and annoyance when things aren’t “going right” erupt like mini thunderstorms that thrash away and then pass quickly. Just like getting caught in one of those rainstorms, we're drenched and rather miserable afterwards. Then we might wonder why we release the lightning bolts that trigger unhappiness in ourselves and those around us in the first pace?

It’s the rather ridiculous behavior that we all know. What’s the first thing most of us do when we trip on an uneven sidewalk? Look back at the sidewalk, right? It’s so ingrained, so automatic--a flash of anger at the cupboard door when we bump our head. Sound familiar?

Why do mishaps have to be someone’s fault? What if we used the practice of equanimity and open awareness and just experienced what was going on before jumping to blame? The absurdity of flashing anger at the table on which we just banged our shin would be clear. We would be kinder to ourselves through not allowing annoyance to arise within. The table certainly doesn’t care one way or the other, it’s our decision whether to feel turmoil or calm while dealing with the pain.

It’s so easy to start blaming when it’s another person involved instead of a table. Sure, people do things all the time that most of us would agree are annoying and even hurtful. But jumping to that place of blame, of judging and looking at the supposed cause of discomfort, physical or emotional, does nothing for us except add to our suffering and unhappiness. There might be an appropriate time later to assess a situation, a relationship, calmly viewing what has transpired, but I’ve found that releasing blame is a freeing practice. Blame is often nonsense anyway and it fuels the side of myself that is not the person I want to be. Releasing blame feels fresh, as if unburdened from some bitterness. Letting someone off the hook rather than letting the sour feelings of blame stew inside is truly a gift to self.

Susanna Weiss is the Executive Director of the Community Meditation Center. She has practiced meditation since 2000, studying with Stephen Batchelor, Thich Nhat Hanh, Allan Lokos, Andrew Olendzki, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, and Sharon Salzberg. An ordained Interfaith minister, Susanna performs many wedding ceremonies throughout the year. She studied at The New Seminary and is a graduate of One Spirit Interfaith Seminary. A former dancer, Susanna designs individualized physical programs for clients. She and her staff specialize in working with issues that need a creative approach.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 9: Honor Your Motherline

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Kristen is a kindred spirit who blogs over at the spirit that moves me. Here she is to talk about the lessons we can learn from our "motherline":

“Finding our female roots, reclaiming our feminine souls, requires paying attention to our real mothers’ lives and experience; listening to our mothers’ stories, and our grandmothers’ stories, is the beginning of understanding our own. When we hear these stories, we tap into the wisdom of our Motherline.” – Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

I never grow tired of the familiar words spoken to me repeatedly by my mother from the time I was a little girl:

“You are special. You are one of a kind. Never forget who you are.”

When I heard them again just the other day, they warmed me from the inside out. Mom has always been proud of these qualities in me – almost as though I am fulfilling something that has long been inside of her.

Like every year at this time, I made my way home to the East Coast for the holidays. Trips home are laden with meaning, emotion, nostalgia and memories. But alongside the comfort of home is the reality of the passing of time. Particularly poignant is the change I see in my mother, which is something I face over and over each time I return.

This woman who birthed me, raised me, and loved me with all she had, continues to age while I am away. The change is visible in the lines on her face, the limp in her walk, the fact that her memory isn’t quite what it used to be. Whether I like it or not, she is growing older. Now, more than ever, there is an urgency to connect to my mother’s stories while I still can.

In recent months, I’m realizing that my mother’s life and the women of her ancestral line are an important source of my own feminine wisdom and truth. Their bodies the vessel, carrying within them pieces from their history, passed on to next generation – to me, and maybe one day, to a daughter of my own.

Unearthing the experiences of my Motherline is something I took on as a holiday project a few weeks back. I am now in the process of interviewing my mother and her remaining sisters. I am also digging up eulogies, obituaries, and old family photos.

As my Mom and I pour over old photographs of my grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, long-forgotten stories have begun to emerge, as well as some familiar themes.

Having a free-spirited nature is something that many of the women in my family have shared – a quality that both brought them to life, and became a source of struggle within the confines of traditional female roles. As a result, some of the women in my family never married, some had unexpressed passions for art, some had unfulfilled career dreams, or longed to travel the world but instead remained home to take care of their families.

Although I had the freedom to make different choices in relation to many of these things, I identify with their struggle – to nurture my independent spirit without guilt, to focus on my career or my art, to be either an independent woman or a mother, to choose one role over another – or if it’s possible to really choose as many of these roles that call to me without guilt, self-doubt, or regret.

Piecing together my ancestral past is helping me find answers to questions that have long resided within me. As I unlock the stories that have always been part of my history, I’m realizing that the experiences and wisdom of the women in my family can continue for any generation who is willing to listen. These experiences bring us together, and help us to realize we are never alone.

“My greatest pride is my four children. My greatest regret was never following my calling as an artist.”

My mother’s words strike a chord in me, and even though our lives seem worlds apart, we share a common struggle – to make real and honour the artist within.

Kristen is a writer, adventurer, and life-long learner, continually discovering new ways of understanding and being in the world around her. Her blog, the spirit that moves me, tracks her journey of discovering the sacred through her favourite passions in life – art, dreams, meditation, the sacred feminine, and everything in between. She is the proud aunt of many nieces and nephews and lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 8: Everyone is Fighting a Hard Battle (Be Kind!)

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is a special story. Kate was one of my first blog followers, way back when. I didn't know much about her, but she would always leave lovely comments here. Somehow I intuitively felt that we would meet someday. I love her blog (Sunflower Existence) and realized right away that this person is highly creative. A budding actress in NYC, she landed the part of Dorothy in the national touring production of The Wizard of Oz. When her tour came to Washington State, she got the monk and I comp tickets to see her! We actually went out to dinner and coffee after the show! She was the first blog friend (besides my friends and family members) I got to meet in 3D! Here she is to share her insights about living in New York City:

When I was 18, I moved from a cozy suburb in Texas to the heart of New York City for college.

I was so excited for the change, anticipating a busy and exhilarating new life. And I got that. The subway system, the crowds, the constant noise and glow… and I was truly glad to be a “city girl,” far away from my little farm town.

There is a common idea among Americans that New Yorkers are rude. I was certain that I could bust this myth. “New Yorkers aren’t rude, they’re probably just busy and smart,” I thought to myself, happily studying the subway map and learning all the local coffee places.

However, I was not anticipating something: loneliness. It was hard to make friends at a campus where most kids could go home to Long Island over the weekend or out drinking at dive bars, so most of my time was spent walking the streets of the financial district by myself and people watching. I began to observe the lack of doors being opened for others, no apologies made when someone bumped another person. I observed subway fights and people yelling at cars and pedestrians. I saw a man on the 7 train get his computer stolen by a kid who looked no older than 14. I saw multiple people crying on the subway. Later, when I got a job at an exotic pet adoption center, I was yelled at almost daily by angry customers demanding I take their pet hamster or refund their used aquarium (I can’t do either.) Needless to say, I was getting bogged down by the city I was so determined to love.

I can’t say there was any epiphany moment for me. What I can say is that I tried my best to keep my head high. I got a job playing Dorothy on the national tour of the Wizard of Oz (I am studying acting) and left the city for a year. In that year away from New York, I came to miss and appreciate it. And slowly I came to realize why everyone believes New Yorkers are rude: they aren’t rude. They just have to live their whole lives publicly.

In a suburb, you can vent all your frustration on your personal time in your car or your house. In New York, we rarely get that kind of privacy, so any emotions that people have are exaggerated by the fact that everyone can see how we are. So, when tourists come and wonder why a New Yorker won’t apologize when they bump into them, it’s not from rudeness: it’s from trying to give you privacy. It’s a unique kind of respect they’re showing, a result of living in a crowd.

Living in New York is hard. Even if you are wealthy, (and most New Yorkers, like myself, are not) you still must deal with the harshness and poverty daily. I am still learning to be more accepting. I get frustrated with the crowds and the expenses just like everyone else, but I am learning to deal with it. And I must keep my head high still, and remember that everyone else is having a hard time too. So we must be forgiving.

I love New York. Of course it’s difficult. But I know that I’m never alone, because everyone else is living the hard life too. So, I suppose the lesson is “be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a hard battle.” Forgive those who seem rude; I’m certain they aren’t trying to be.

And try to come visit New York, too. I promise it’s a wonderful place.

Kate Bristol is a 21 year old native Texan living in New York City. A working actress since the age of 11, she has been a voice actor in many English-dubbed anime cartoons such as Dragonball Z and was last seen as Dorothy in the national touring production of The Wizard of Oz. She graduates from Pace University in the spring of 2012, where she has been a school blogger and writing tutor. Kate hopes to write a really cool dystopian novel one day, though she isn't sure what it's about yet.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 7: Get Uncomfortable

2012-01-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

I found Christopher's popular blog Lessons from the Cockpit on Networked Blogs long ago. His title was so close to mine and I also found that even though our circumstances are different, we tend to blog on similar topics. I find his blog to be full of great lessons and insight and I highly recommend it. Christopher appeared here once before as part of my 365 lessons. He wrote Lesson 121: Find Your Mantra. Here he is again, please welcome Christopher Laney:

Fitness has been part of my life for a long time. I’ve worked out enough to have a little insight into building muscle. One absolute truth is, muscle doesn’t grow unless you apply resistance. And to apply resistance means making that muscle “uncomfortable.”

When I think about this in broader terms, I realize it applies to any accomplishment in life. I can’t think of any goal worth achieving that is performed without effort, or more specifically, without being “uncomfortable” in some manner. Yet, we seem to have become a nation that seeks comfort. We chase it instead of our dreams. We seek the path of least resistance instead of the path to enlightenment.

And it’s making us soft... mentally, physically, and spiritually.

For many of us, our days are filled with numerous activities that get us nowhere. We do them because they make us feel comfortable. They suck us in. Who hasn’t misplaced an hour or two getting lost in the internet or a few television shows? But we don’t seek out these activities because we truly desire them. No, we bury ourselves in them because we are avoiding something. Some may say we are avoiding our dreams, or success, but frankly, what we are really avoiding is the hard work, time, and effort that it takes to be:

-Great

-Fulfilled

-Content

What are you avoiding because you’ve been confusing comfort with happiness?

Do something today that makes you uncomfortable.

Christopher Laney is a writer/pilot/fitness instructor who seeks to wring the most out of life and loves sharing what he’s learned with others. He’s owned and grown two separate multi-million dollar businesses and is an in-demand speaker. Author of the blog, Lessons from the Cockpit: Everyday Wisdom from the Flying Life, Christopher also writes for magazines and recently completed a novel about discovering life’s hidden clues that show us who we are meant to be.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 6: Embrace the Present Moment

2012-01-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Besides patience, it also so important to embrace the present moment, whatever it may hold for us. This is easier said than done. Maria Atwood is someone who is practicing this. I discovered Maria on Twitter and was so inspired by her daily statuses of positivity. Every single day, that's what she is putting out in the world. What you put out there is what returns to you. I've never seen a picture of Maria until now, as she has been anoymously posting these statuses of postivetly under the alias Positively Zen, so it's so nice to "see" her and hear her story. Please welcome Maria Atwood:

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life. - and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” -Eckhart Tolle

Let’s face it; life will always have its ups and downs, no matter what. What goes up must come down; you can’t have one without the other. It’s not too much of a challenge to feel happy and calm when things are going well, but what about when they’re not? How do you accept the present moment when it’s filled with challenges?

Last week over the course of 4 days the following happened: My car broke down in the middle of some busy holiday traffic. My husband’s hard drive on his laptop died and he lost a lot of his work. Then on a particularly cold night, we were relaxing with the heater on when all of a sudden we smelled smoke. The motor in our central heating unit had just conked out. Not the greatest week!

I’m not going to lie; those events were frustrating and for a moment I felt like I didn’t want to deal with any of it. However, I pulled my thoughts together and changed my focus. I thought, as frustrating as these things are, I don’t have to let them ruin my day. I had to change my perception of the situation. I chose to view the challenges as lessons which were providing me with another opportunity to work on being present and practice accepting what is.

As a result of our trying week, we rearranged plans, we needed to buy a new hard drive and thankfully, all I needed was a new battery. I have to say that I enjoyed walking to a local restaurant and having something to eat with my husband that night despite having to wait 45 minutes for the auto parts store to test our battery. The 4-mile walk to the store to pick up the new battery was good exercise and the company was enjoyable. We both made the best of what we had to work with at that moment.

Someone who implements embracing the present moment no matter what is my Grandmother. Her life changed dramatically when admitted to the hospital a year ago due to shortness of breath. A few hours after being admitted her heart stopped. When they brought her back she was unable to breathe on her own. Thanks to the use of a ventilator she’s able to breathe now.

My Grandmother went from being incredibly independent to spending 98% of her time in a hospital room - not an easy thing for anyone to deal with and accept. It would be easy for her to feel depressed, especially since she’s been there for a year, and at this time it’s unclear if she’ll ever be able to return home. What touches me is that she still exudes genuine joy. She always has a smile on her face and kind words to say to everyone. My Grandmother knows that she may never leave the hospital, but she still greets each new day with open arms, gratitude and a love of life.

"Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything... And you’ll be at peace wherever you are." - Bodhidharma

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past wishing that things were different, avoiding and worrying and not realizing that by doing those things, I was the one missing out. This moment, no matter how you choose to perceive it, is your life. Enjoy it and make the most of it!

Maria Atwood is passionate about positivity, embracing the present moment and the teachings of Buddhism. You can follow her on Twitter @PositivelyZen.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 5: Patience is the Path to Peace

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

How fortunate I am to have met Allan early in my book writing process. I had the opportunity to speak to him over the telephone and he was gentle, thoughtful, helpful and patient with me—someone he didn't even know. Even though I've never met Allan in person, I feel like I know him through all the delightful online interactions I've had with him. He seems to embody this patience he writes about. Patience is not one of my better traits, so it is so nice to have Allan's words close by. I was also fortunate to have Allan write a blurb for my new book and to receive an advance copy of his new book Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living, which I am reading slowly and patiently, savoring every moment. It's the perfect gift and it comes out TODAY, so be sure to pick up a copy. I've been so nervous in anticipation of my own book release and it's been wonderful to have a book like this close to me to remind me to take things step by step. You can find out more about Allan at Patiencebook.com. And here he is to share some of his wisdom with you. Please welcome Allan Lokos:

This is a particularly special day for me. It is the publication day of my new book, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living. I’d like to share a couple of thoughts with you about patience, what Andrew Olendzki, the Senior Scholar at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies calls, “perhaps the most overlooked of all spiritual qualities.”

Whether or not you have a particular spiritual practice, you deserve the joy and ease of peaceful living. Whatever your chosen path, it will be challenged by the constantly rising and receding tides of human experience; the vicissitudes, disruptions, and anomalies that are woven into the fabric of life along with its joys, beauty, and delights. That is just the way things are.

We need to integrate our developing insights into our everyday activities. There are practices that can specifically support the assimilation of patience into our relationships and daily endeavors. Generosity, for instance, is viewed as having a direct correlation to patience because it is seen as an antidote to greed and clinging, which cause so much of our suffering.

When aspiring students came to the Buddha he taught them about generosity first before teaching them meditation. Living a moral life begins with a heart open and responsive to the needs of others. We can reframe our approach to generosity from “All right, I know I have to contribute, how little can I get away with giving?” to “Now I have an opportunity to be generous. I want to give as much as I can.” That shift in thinking can be so significant. It is no longer about me and my needs. The heart and mind become spacious and less constricted. You are encouraging a generous spirit within and allowing compassion to flourish more easily. Taking time to consider and respond to the needs of others is a joyful and effective way to develop patience.

One of the “Perfection” practices as taught by the Buddha is “relinquishing,” or “letting go.” It is a multifaceted practice that can be particularly challenging when we apply it to relinquishing opinions that we hold on to adamantly. Your budding practice of patience can be seriously tested when someone is challenging your views. You dig in and hold on no matter what evidence the other person presents. You offer the ancient indefensible position, “I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with facts,” yet, oddly enough, the disagreement continues. When we don’t cling so firmly to our opinions, we can be open to the views of others. It doesn’t mean we will necessarily agree, but we honor the voice, the mind, and the heart of those around us. That is usually appreciated and others might be more willing to listen openly to your views. There’s no guaranteeing it will happen that way, but that is not the point. Your intention is what is important. You cannot control the results, only your actions. You honor yourself by acting with dignity and composure. You are also developing a depth of patience.

Sometimes we have been holding on to anger or bitterness related to a particular person for a very long time. We might think, What he or she did was absolutely unforgivable. Consider the possibility that perhaps nothing is unforgivable. For now, just consider being open to the possibility that maybe there is a way to find forgiveness even for what we have believed for so long to be unforgivable. Explore this mindfully. To forgive does not mean to condone. To forgive does not mean to forget. Sometimes to forget would be unwise, but to forgive is wise. When we offer forgiveness to another we offer freedom to ourselves, freedom from the unpleasant sensations of anger and bitterness.

It will come as no surprise that often the most difficult person to forgive can be oneself. Yet with patience and gentle determination, it can be done. Here is that familiar cycle: it can take a depth of patience to forgive, but forgiveness can help us develop a depth of patience.

ALLAN LOKOS is the founder and guiding teacher of The Community Meditation Center in New York City. He is the author of Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living and Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living. His writing has appeared in Tricycle magazine (for which he also led a month-long online retreat), The Huffington Post, Beliefnet, Back Stage newspaper, and the anthology, Audacious Creativity. Among the many places he has taught are Columbia University Teachers College, Marymount College, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Rubin Museum, New York Insight Meditation Center, The New York Open Center, Tibet House USA, and Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Allan has practiced meditation since the mid-nineties and studied with such renowned teachers as Sharon Salzberg, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joseph Goldstein, Andrew Olendzki, Stephen Batchelor, Larry Rosenberg, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He has also attended a number of weeklong teachings with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 4: We Are More Alike Than We Think

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

How did I connect with Becky? Well that's one of the stories that makes you realize that time and space simply don't exist. If we are meant to connect, WE WILL. Long ago I did a post called Lesson 124: Stress is Caused by You, back when I was writing 365 Lessons in 2010. Becky commented on that post and I'm always interested in the people who comment here. It turns out, she is a practitoner of ISHA yoga and Google Alerts let her know, all the way over in India, that someone had posted a video on their blog about ISHA. We started chatting and the rest is history. Becky also wrote a guest post on this blog as part of my 365 lessons called Lesson 127: We are All Connected (But Who am I?). She has spent a great deal of time in India where she got married to a native of that country. Who is better to speak on our commonalities than someone who has lived abroad and had this direct experience? Here she is to share her insights. Please welcome Becky Band Jain:

Most of us know the familiar tale that we came out of Africa, but do we really understand what this means? This means that all of our so-called differences are superficial, and we are more alike than not. I recently watched the above National Geographic show on The Human Family Tree, and was amused to see it was based in my diverse neighborhood of New York: Astoria. I moved here after spending nearly five years in India, where my husband is from. The show traces the common ancestry of those participating in the genetic experiment, and explains the different migration patterns of groups as they left Africa.

Throughout my own life journey I have had plenty of migrations and have spent lots of time exploring questions of culture and belonging. I am constantly struck by the irony that despite being surrounded by crowds, it's very easy to drown in a sense of separation. Without knowing many people in a new place, I have searched for a community in which I can belong.

On the surface, we are all unique. Yet rather than cherish our individuality, we constantly strive to fit in to our perception of what is socially desirable. We need the validation of others. Rarely do we relish our innate qualities.

Dig a little deeper though, and there is not too much that distinguishes us from each other. From the cellular or genetic level, to the more metaphysical level of thoughts and emotions, we are all humans.

Why is this so hard to see sometimes?

We are all equally capable of recognizing the humanity in others, and of showing them empathy and compassion. So what is holding us back? Why can we not become more evolved beings?

Seeing the progression of human migrations in the video, I was reminded how humans have evolved as integral parts of a larger group and as inseparable from the environment. Now, however, we find ourselves removed from the whole in many ways and living lives devoid of meaning and purpose.

Thanks to a tweet I came across about the idea of information overload, i.e. "data smog" leading to depression, I found a book called Spontaneous Happiness by Dr Weil, and was struck by his main idea that modern lifestyles are the leading cause of depression. It may not be his unique idea, nor anything new, but it helps to remind ourselves how foreign our lives are to the way we have evolved over thousands of years.

He says, "Our lives in the developed world have largely gone from hard and generally content to easy and often depressed."

Humans have been using tools for many millenia, and they have no doubt allowed us to advance to our current level of comfortable lifestyles. Yet if we are already experiencing a lack, of community, contentment or otherwise, we need to be careful. If we rely solely on technology to fill the gaps in our life, it may only end up widening them.

We need to continue to connect with one another, finding a balance between online and offline realms. But we also need to cultivate a desire to keep evolving as an entire species, solving our common problems in the spirit of collaboration, and not leaving out those without access to new tools whose traditional wisdom should also be preserved. Above all, we need to develop an all-encompassing sense of self, one which transcends the superficial distinctions we have created.

Becky Band Jain is a nonprofit communications specialist and blogs at www.BeckyBlab.com on everything from technology to psychology and culture. She spent the last five years living in India and she’s now based in New York. She’s a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner and is passionate about the possibilities of new technologies to facilitate social change. Connect with her on Twitter at @bexband.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 3: There Is Power In Wishing

2012-01-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

I am so excited to have Noelle Oxenhandler appear on this blog. Have you read any of her amazing books? On my 40th birthday, my co-worker, who also happens to be Noelle's good friend, gave me The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul. I absolutely loved this book and completely believe in the power of wishing and setting intentions. You best buy that one soon because the book starts at the beginning of a new year and I think that's the best time to read it! It may even help you to form your own life wishes!

And now, please welcome Noelle Oxenhandler:

At a major turning-point in my life, I decided to launch a year’s experiment in making three wishes come true: the wish for a house, the wish for a new love, and the wish for spiritual healing. A skeptic by nature, I did not find the process easy. But I persisted--and in doing so, I learned so much! As, one by one, my wishes really did come true, I had to acknowledge that there is indeed a very real power in wishing. And sometimes this power is scary….

When we make a wish, we open ourselves to the unknown. This is why many people are afraid to wish: they’d rather stay with the safe predictability of the known, however confining, than take the risk of actively wishing for something new. They’d rather complain about things as they are than usher in a different reality. A committed act of wishing always brings about a change—and that’s unsettling. But it’s also exciting and it is truly creative. Something always happens when we actually dare to articulate a wish and set about working to make it come true. That “something” may turn out to be different from what we imagined--but it always brings some form of valuable information with it, information that might not have come to us in any other way. For instance, one woman I know had been convinced for years that she had made a mistake in becoming a lawyer because she was truly meant to be an artist. When at last she dared to articulate her wish, she gave herself a six month’s leave to enroll in art school. And then she discovered that--lo and behold--she really couldn’t stand the chaos and uncertainty of the artist’s life! Though she was disappointed, she was also liberated from years of clinging to an unrealistic dream. As a wise young friend of mine said, “We don’t always get exactly, literally, the thing we wished for. But then we learn to wish better.” And as the great German poet Goethe wrote, “Destiny grants our wishes—but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.” If we didn’t find the courage to launch a wish in the first place, how could we discover this beyond--?

NOELLE OXENHANDLER is the author of three non-fiction books: The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul; The Eros of Parenthood; and A Grief Out of Season. Her essays have appeared in many national and literary magazines, including: The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, VOGUE, “O” The Oprah Magazine, and TRICYCLE. She lives in northern California, where she teaches Creative Writing at Sonoma State University. She can be reached at NoelleOxenhandler.com

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lessons 2: Now Is Always The Best Time For A New Beginning

2012-01-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

I've been blog friends with Christa from Christa in New York for some time now. She writes daily blog posts that I find so inspirational. She's also a yoga teacher who is in the process of making her dreams become her full-time life and is not afraid to try NEW things! Here she is to talk about that and about beginnings! Please Welcome Christa Avampato:

Welcome to January – a global celebration of beginning also known as New Year’s Resolutions. A few years ago, I started to make one giant resolution and then publicly write about my progress every day. In 2009, I wrote about my quest for more hope and learned the lesson that the more earnestly we look for hope, the more likely we are to find it. In 2010, I bundled up all of that hope and used it as a down payment to live an extraordinary life. In the process, I found that the best way to live an extraordinary life is to find the extraordinary in very ordinary moments like the warmth of the sun on my face while walking my dog in Central Park. As 2011 approached, I started to panic. I couldn’t think of a resolution that would live up to the previous two.

Friendship to the rescue! In the Fall of 2010, my friend, Amanda, asked me to write a guest post for her blog on the topic of maintaining a Zen feeling while living in New York City. My post turned into a call to action encouraging New Yorkers to relish being beginners and embracing everything that goes along with it – experimenting, innovating, iterating, and yes, that infamous F-word, Failure.

I wondered aloud if more of a collective beginner’s mindset could restore Zen in a city known for its frenetic pace. In that post, I found my mega New Year’s Resolution for 2011 – to become an expert beginner. I’ve dwelled in the land of perfectionism most of my life; I chase mastery in everything I do. 2011 was a chance for me to let it all go.

On January 1, 2011, I began a journey of my own into the world of being a beginner. At first, it was terrifying. Having the courage to live in the mind of a beginner every day was a huge shift for me. However, I committed to it publicly, in writing. There was no turning back so on I went.

I tried my hand at a whole host of new activities and responsibilities – from one-time events like a fiction writing class to life-changing decisions like getting my therapeutic yoga certification and founding a nonprofit, Compass Yoga, dedicated to providing yoga and wellness programming to people with mental and physical health challenges. With a good deal of trepidation, I began to publicly pitch my teaching, writing, and public speaking skills to new clients, partners, agents, and conferences. I learned how to be a confident dog owner, which took a lot more courage, patience, and efforts than I ever imagined it would take. And at the end of the year, I booked my first trip to India and committed to a school for my next level of yoga teacher training.

Through the experiences of 2011, I developed a great love of beginning. I learned to revel in new starts and blank pages, no matter what day of the calendar year they happened. In this way, every day became January 1st for me. We can always begin – exactly where we are. It takes a lot of courage to start, but over time our confidence muscle builds like any other muscle. Practice makes a good beginner and now is the best time to start!

Christa Avampato is a yoga teacher who learns from her students every day, a product developer who loves the possibilities of new technology, and a writer who believes that hope and creativity are the most powerful duo on Earth. She travels with a purpose and regularly practices the high art of people-watching in New York City, where she makes her home with her rescue pup, Phin. Follow her online at http://www.christainnewyork.com and http://www.twitter.com/christanyc to learn about her big 2012 beginning—making the leap to work on Compass Yoga full-time. Learn more about Compass Yoga at http://www.compassyoga.com.

31 Writers, 31 Lessons-Lesson 1: All Of 2012 Is Inside You-Right Now!

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

I am so excited that Penney Peirce has agreed to participate in this AMAZING event for 2012. I first heard of Penney's work when my husband, the former monk, was lying in bed one night reading the book Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration by none other than Penney Peirce! He only had wonderful things to say about it and I couldn't put it down when he passed it on to me. I knew from my own experience that the things Penney described about our own personal vibrations were definitely true. On a whim, I sent an e-mail out to Penney and she responded so quickly that I believed our frequencies must have connected! It was meant to be. So here she is to ring in the new year. Her words here are very powerful to me and I absolutely love her poem! Please welcome Penney Peirce:

Here we are at long last! January 2012—the beginning of an infamous year that’s been anticipated, with both hope and dread, for centuries. 2012 has been loaded with so many meanings: it’s a magical year of transformation, a devastating year of catastrophe, the end of time, or the beginning of timelessness. Will we ascend? Will we precipitate annihilation? Will we awaken voluntarily to our true spiritual nature or live on unconsciously until we hit a wall at the dead end of the street? Can one year possibly do all this?

I know from experience that a journey begins with one step and the first steps are symbolic of the rest of the journey. Do we enter 2012 with eyes open, shiny, and softly receptive, or with eyes narrowed and averted, expecting the worst? The attitude we hold, the state we start with this month may well flavor the rest of the year. Do we give our power away to possibly distorted prophecies seen and interpreted by people caught up in various forms of ego? Or do we stay in our own “home frequency”—the ever-reliable, stable vibration of our soul in our body?

I’ve been learning that time truly is changing. It seems like it’s speeding up but really, the past and future are being swallowed by a vastly increasing ball of reality that we call the present moment. What is real about 2012 is what we choose to put our attention on right now. Get ahead of the emergence process, project beyond the surprising, arising edge of the new, and we will experience snags and illusion.

What we need is right here with us. Inside us, actually. 2012 is inside you—your unique experience of 2012—the 2012 your soul desires. 2012 may be a year of heightened consciousness, a turning point, but let me remind us all that any moment, when fully engaged with and merged with, contains the entirety of the collective consciousness, the vastness of the experience of love, and the provision of everything we could ever need. Every single moment, no matter the year.

AHHH, SO.

in this moment in this body in this big big life seen by my wide open eyes

rests a love

so everywhere so fueling so receptive

it can reveal every memory of every moment of every life being lived

all past and future lives are being lived now

in me

this love shivers and shakes and vibrates me like a harpstring

can't stop the excited hummmmmmmmmm

it's anticipation

it's relief

it's the dream of soaring

becoming real

I can soar and surf the lifewaves, cascading

into pastel spring buds and blooms, smell of tender greens hardening in new sun, golden summer grain ripening, hot dusty dirtscent wafting slowly slowly slowly up, scream of rebel reds of autumn, wind off the sea clearing stagnancy, compacting, mildewed leaves transforming, fungus mushrooming, crunch of crusty snow, plop of one wet snowflake melting on my eyelid!

here is freedom

given without conditions

here is permission

for the ecstatic wild ride and the invention of Frankenstein and mermaids and hummingbirds and thunderheads and jellyfish and Irish wolfhounds and fingerprints and electrons and geraniums and silk and heart-shaped rocks

and time itself

here now inside the swoop, the love again

I come to rest in the love again and remember to know it

it absorbs my adventure with an appreciative nod

I forget myself and pool like puddling silly putty

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh,

so!

Penney Peirce is an articulate and accurate clairvoyant empath, visionary, author, and a popular lecturer. She is the author of 5 books, including Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration and The Intuitive Way: The Definitive Guide to Increasing Your Awareness. Penney is a trainer specializing in intuition development, inner energy dynamics, and expanded perception, working throughout the US, Japan, South Africa, and Europe since 1977. She coaches business executives, psychologists, scientists, and those on a spiritual path about the hidden dynamics of what makes for true success. She lives near San Francisco. Find Penney at penneypeirce.com.

poem and blogpiece copyright by Penney Peirce 2012

Week 48-Lesson 48: Endings are Also New Beginnings

2011-12-27T19:02:00.001-08:00

This is my last post for 2011 and the end of blogging weekly for an entire year. As you will recall, in 2010, I wrote 365 blog posts, one for each day of the year. That was quite a feat! You can find all those posts here in the archives. I blogged on every topic imaginable. I blogged when I was happy, sick, tired, elated, depressed, confused—somehow I was able to find meaning and lessons each day. And I learned a lot. The biggest thing I learned is that you can do almost anything if you put your mind to it.

While blogging daily in 2010, I simultaneously taught ESL at a community college and wrote a book! It was a busy year! I completed the book in 2011 and Lessons from the Monk I Married, a memoir about my 14-year journey with my husband, a former Korean Buddhist monk, will be officially out in bookstores across North America on April 3, 2012. And, it's available now on Amazon and other on-line locations for preorder. It's worth it to preorder because the price in significantly discounted pre-publication. There's my pitch ^_^!

So what's next for 2012? Monthly posts? Nope, I don't think so. I think there will be some big, POSITIVE changes here on this blog. A new beginning, if you will. I don't really know what will happen and that's the exciting part! I know I will go on book tour in April and I'll be sure to post events/dates here. I will also most likely appear on radio/TV and online at different places. I'll keep you posted on that too. If you'd like to follow my trail, please join my fanpage on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Now for the exciting part (drum roll please!!). Instead of writing lessons in January 2012—the beginning of a very auspicious year—I'm turning the lessons over to 31 WRITERS! That's right! Every single day in the month of January, a different writer will take the helm here and share with you a new lesson or insight for 2012.

There are some amazing writers lined up for this (Brene Brown, Sharon Salzberg, Allan Lokos, Penney Peirce, and bloggers/writers from all over the globe!), so don't miss a single day here in January. It's sure to be enlightening.

As far as resolutions go, I believe in them. One of my resolutions in 2010 was to write a blog post every single day for a year. I did it and learned so much in the process. Don't make resolutions lightly. Real resolutions need great RESOLVE or determination. So don't make them if you can't keep them. Here are mine for 2012:

1. Practice yoga at least twice a week at Yoon's Yoga Bliss

2. Meditate everyday

3. Be kind and have an attitude of gratitude

4. Share positivity and love

That's about it! Goodbye friends. Another year of blogging has come to an end. For every ending there is always a beginning. Wishing you all great things in 2012! Be sure to visit here in January to read lessons from many amazing writers!

Week 47-Lesson 47: A Book Trailer is Worth a Thousand Words

2011-12-22T17:49:00.000-08:00

I debated and decided this: A book trailer is worth a thousand words. Especially in this day and age. However, if you read my last post about this subject, I wasn't about to go out and spend $50,000 to get one made. No way. I did mine myself and that is pretty amazing considering I had no idea what I was doing. I did mine on my Mac using iMovie. Fortunately Macs are pretty user friendly and even if you aren't a computer genius, you can figure it out.

Another thing that helped speed this process along is that I'm sick in bed. Perfect for making iMovies and much better than reading trashy magazines or staring at the tube. (Actually, that would mean staring at a blank screen since I don't have television.) I rarely get sick and I credit that to yoga, meditation, regular exercise and a decent diet, but every now and then the cold bug creeps up on me and sneaks into my body when I'm not looking.

Luckily, I think this cold is on it's way out and I felt well enough today to work on this project. Since "a picture is worth a thousand words," perhaps a book trailer is too. I put a lot of time into this project, but I did not tell the entire story in the video--you'll have to buy the book for that. It's a little over two minutes and it just gives you a taste of what the book is about. I hope you will share this trailer with everyone you know and be sure to "like" it, leave a comment on You Tube and here, Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else. I hope that my story can touch as many people as possible. If you have enjoyed reading this blog, then please share this book trailer! Thanks friends!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lJCI_f1tLM&feature=share

Week 46-Lesson 46: Slow Down and Let the Holidays Happen

2011-12-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

The holidays can be hectic.....or not. I feel it in the air when I drive through the city. People gripping their steering wheels tightly, more honks than usual, more cars on the road. I can almost subliminally hear their thoughts: "I've got to get a few more presents" or "We still don't have tree!" or "I haven't done my Christmas cards yet."

When you feel pressure or heaviness during the holidays, it's time to step away from the crowded shopping malls, busy streets and parking lots and find a little peace.

Peace? Silence? Who has time for those things?

If you are asking these questions, then peace and silence is EXACTLY what you need. Time to s-l-o-w down. Time to stop and breathe and let the holidays or this busy time just happen, whatever you celebrate or don't celebrate.

This year, I somehow got sucked up into the holidays. I usually don't do decorations or do anything special in my house, but we (the former monk and I) decided to get a tree, throw a string of lights around a window, hang a plastic wreath on the door and stick a jingle bell over the front door handle. It looks festive. We have our Christmas corner which sort of complements the other corner which contains a statue of the Buddha and a white orchid. It's a little of everything around here.

One of the reasons we decided to decorate this year is because family and friends will be coming to visit/stay. We thought it would be nice to do a little something. Last night, a very good friend, who is in the Peace Corps and is home after living for almost a year in a hut in Vanuatu without running water or hot water for that matter, came to stay with us. I took her down to Richmond Beach near my house to see the Christmas ships on Puget Sound. There was a children's choir and they sang traditional Christmas songs as well as songs in other languages/traditions.

Their voices warmed my heart. There were several big bonfires near the beach where everyone gathered 'round to get warm and drink hot beverages together. It was peaceful, friendly and cheery. We didn't need much, just the warmth of a fire and the sound of a children's voices in song.

I don't really need much to feel happy and peaceful. I have more than I need. As long as the essentials are covered, the rest is really extra. So why not just step away from the chaos and craziness for once and really sink into the joy that this time of year can offer?

Tomorrow, I am really stepping away. I'm heading off to a 3-day silent meditation course before friends/family come to visit. I so look forward to the silence during this busy season. Even though it seems like I have so much to do, I am ready to be silent and let the season unfold on its own. Peace to you all my friends and I hope you are enjoying your holiday season, however you choose to enjoy it.

Week 45-Lesson 45: Let Go Of What No Longer Serves You

2011-12-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

Three more posts left until I reach the end of another year of lessons! In 2010, many of you followed me on my journey of 365 lessons. I never knew what would pop up from day to day. Now I'm at the end of 48 lessons for 2011, one for each week. People have asked, "What are you going to do next? Monthly lessons?"

I'm not exactly sure yet.

I think my blog is going to take a few twists, turns and changes as I change. But I have some great ideas that will play out here. Be sure to tune in to this blog the entire month of January 2012. Some of you already know what will take place, but please don't tell just yet. All I can say is that it will definitely be INSPIRING!

I feel, more than I've felt for any other year, that 2012 will be a time of important change. We will be faced with leaving behind or reevaluating the "old" or the things, people, institutions, situations, personas and activities that are no longer serving us and our purpose in life. It may be a time when we feel like things are falling apart. That no matter how hard we try to hold it all together, it just won't work anymore. This is a good thing, in my opinion.

I hope that it will be a time of "coming together." All of us are living out our own separate lives in our own separate little worlds, but are we really that separate? The internet or "age of technology" has proven that we are more connected than we think we are. Through the use of internet and status updates on sites like Facebook and other outlets, our joys often become others joys and our sorrows are others sorrows too. How different are we really? The internet has proven that we are all connected, but maybe we don't need the internet to bring us to this realization.

I feel there will definitely be a move "away" from the internet or at least there will be more time carved out that will be "internet free." I, for one, plan to carve out a lot of "inner" time and make sure that is balanced with "internet" time.

Balance is key for 2012, more than any other year. Especially balance between the inner and outer aspects of ourselves. The river of change is moving swiftly now, I feel. You either move with it and with the flow or you fearfully cling to the bank of the river. The later will only leave you feeling beaten and exhausted. It's time to let go of what no longer serves you, no matter how difficult that seems or how that may appear to anyone on the "so called" outside. In that flow, you are also moving with others and with every living being on the planet. In the flow, everyone is moving towards a common good. I believe this because I have seen it.

Every action must serve a higher purpose and be accompanied by love, but the actions you choose to play out must come from within you, not from anything/one outside you. This might seem like a tall order, but I'm going to try and live by this one. I trust that when my actions are there to serve myself and others and I am in the flow of life and tuning-in to the rhythm of life, I can't go wrong. Even when things "appear" to be falling apart.

I still have doubts and fears and I'm not perfect, but I've been training myself to hear the faint and subtle impulses of this universe. More and more, I am listening to those impulses, trusting them and living by them.

Week 44-Lesson 44: Live from the Answer

2011-11-27T22:36:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. I posted this last year on November 24th and decided it deserves a repost. Enjoy!

There's a subtle yet powerful difference between working toward a result and thinking and feeling from it. When we work toward something, we embark upon an open-ended and never-ending journey. While we may identify milestones and set goals to get us closer to our accomplishment, in our minds we're always "on our way" to the goal rather than "in" the experience of achieving it. This is precisely why..we must.."enter the image" of our heart's desire and "think from it"...Gregg Braden,The Divine Matrix

These words struck me last night as I lay in bed reading this book. The reason they stood out on the page for me is that I have witnessed again and again in my life exactly what Braden is talking of here. It took me a very long time to get to this way of looking at things.

I used to set goals and think that they were somewhere far away from me. That I'd have to tread down a long path to get to where I needed to go and that path was linear. I'd make lists of my goals and resolutions each New Year. Sometimes I'd be disappointed when I couldn't meet my goals. And then there were even years where I hesitated making any resolutions at all because I didn't think I could keep them. But all of that changed and this is how it happened:

Several years ago, while I was doing a thirty-day silent meditation course in Massachusetts, I saw a book. I wasn't thinking about it. It just popped into my head. I tried to push it away, but I couldn't. The entire book with all its chapters flipped in front of me. I saw the title very clearly. I thought I was going mad. I tried to block these images out of my head and continue with my meditation, but they would pop up again at unexpected times.

After the course, I continued on with my life. I set goals and made plans and got disappointed once again when I wasn't able to accomplish the things I thought I wanted to do. Then, one day, I decided to let go of making plans and just let myself "be" for awhile. Oddly enough, I started to see very clearly what I was meant to do in my life. I'd get flashes of it. I think that I had become so open to whatever might come my way that instead of forcing goals upon my life, the things I was meant to do started to arrive. All I had to do was tune in to the present moment and I was able to see, in each moment, what action I needed to take. Sometimes, while tuning in to the moment, I saw that I needed to set some goals, so I did.

I realized, by tuning in, that everything is not linear; that the past, present and future are all connected. I started to see myself "in" a goal rather than working toward it. I felt I was already there, even though I was still in the moment and hadn't arrived in present time to the completion of that goal.

I could see where I was headed so I started to live from the destination. This is very different than dreaming of the future or of where you want to be. This is living it in every moment. When you are already there, there is nowhere to go but here. This was quite a revelation for me, actually. I understood fully why people say, "Be here now!"

If you are living your life for some lofty plan or distant goal and are constantly dreaming of how your life will be once you "get there" then you've lost touch with where you are and all your answers lie in this moment that you are in. From this moment, all other moments collapse into each other.

This doesn't mean that you don't do anything because you are already there. No, that is not what I am saying. What I'm saying is that if you stay present, you will know what you need to do next and, if you are really tuned in to yourself and the present moment, then the answers will come easily. You can make plans, but you can't plan how you will get there exactly or how things will unfold. That is the mystery of life.

Back in 2004, in my meditation cell, I saw my completed book. I saw that people were reading it. I saw the title very clearly. This baffled me. But I couldn't ignore what I felt, so I started to take steps towards this book. The odd thing is that these steps started to come to me fairly easily. It doesn't mean I didn't work. I worked continuously, but whenever I wondered what I needed to do next, an answer would come or someone would show up who would help me get to the next step. This really blew me away. I had never experienced anything like this before in my life.

Now that I can see clearly where I am headed, I live as if I am already there. The truth is, I am there. And I know this is going to sound really odd, but HERE is also THERE. Once you feel this in every ounce of your being, then life starts to unfold quite naturally. You no longer wonder where you are going because you are here and that's all there is.

Just enjoy each moment. See what the moment has to offer you. Be open. You can still make goals, but enjoy the natural unfolding of those goals. If what you set out to do doesn't happen for you, maybe you weren't meant to do it. Don't be hard on yourself and set unrealistic goals or force yourself to do things or fight with yourself or punish yourself. Anytime you do that, you will rebound back to where you were and you will be frustrated. Be gentle and kind to yourself. Love yourself where you are right now. Treat yourself in this moment in the very best way you can and soon, step by step, moment by moment, you will find yourself right where you need to be.

If you find yourself in ill health, financial difficulty, pain, sorrow, depression or any other negative place, accept where you are. Don't crave to be somewhere else. Only by accepting where you are right now and loving yourself right now, can you start to move through these things. Even if you find yourself faced with death itself, if you come into the moment and accept where you are, moving into and beyond death will be easier for you than if you were to fight against it.

When you take care of this life you've been given, life starts taking care of you. Peace to you all.

Week 43-Lesson 43: Book Trailers are the Rage

2011-11-20T19:17:00.000-08:00

Book trailers are all the rage, apparently. The LA Times recently ran an article entitled: How to Make a Book Trailer for $50,000. Two thoughts: 1. Um, gee, that's quite a bit of money that I don't have hanging around 2. Who, in their right mind, would pay $50,000 for a 5 minute book trailer anyway?

Not me. After reading this article, I just about decided "nay" on the trailer. But then I got all inspired to make my own book trailer using iMovie on my Mac. That lasted for about a day or two. Making your own book trailer is no easy feat. I don't consider myself a tech-savvy gal. It's trial and error with me...and mostly error at this point.

Fortunately, a lovely blogger friend in NYC who has toyed around with Final Cut has stepped up to the plate and has agreed to take a stab at my book trailer. Thank goodness because it seems like I've been taking stabs in the dark.

So I'm turning this lesson over to you because I realize I have a thing or two to still learn about this topic. Here are my questions on this topic:

Do you watch book trailers?

Do they ever sway you to buy a book?

If so, which recent book trailers would you recommend?

Would you consider making your own?

So I'm going to still work on the trailer while my friend is also working on her version. I'm not one to give up easily (as many of you who have read my blog probably know). I'll post both trailers here when they get close to resembling something you'd like to watch. Right now I don't have much.

On another tech-note, I was pretty excited about the little "Book Release" app. with confetti I found (view apps on right of this page). It shows how many days are left until my book comes out in bookstores nationwide. If you haven't preordered yet, you can order at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Links are also above. Preordered books come at a considerable discount, so don't miss out! (That's my plug for the day!)

Peace be with you friends, and please leave a comment if you are just stopping by. I love meeting new people!

Week 42-Lesson 42: Tell Fear to Take a Hike

2011-11-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

If you search "fear" on this blog, you will find many posts on this subject. It's a popular topic here. And for good reason.

I find myself feeling it again. And again. And again. It doesn't go away, but I've learning to accept it as part of the package.

I didn't post last week. I've been posting weekly for almost an entire year. Luckily, I did 5 posts instead of the usual 4 in April, so I think I'm still on track. In 2010, I posted every single day! And when you post every single day, there's nowhere to hide. Whatever you are experiencing or feeling comes out. A lot came out here in 2010. My entire publishing journey, from idea to book, is summed up in those previous posts. From feelings of unstoppable self confidence to feelings of utter despair and self doubt, it's all here.

Last week I was feeling the later, hence the lack of a blog post. I've been blogging here for two years. There are close to 500 posts on this blog, but last week I wanted to call it quits. I wanted to pull the plug on all that I had created--the posts, the blog, the book, etc. I just wanted to go back to my nice, little anonymous life before I became a blogger. Fear had a tight grip on me. It would not let up.

Why would I want to pull the plug on my dream? This is a good question.

Friends say that I have a tremendous ability to focus. Once I decide on a path, I don't allow anything to get in my way. I have one-pointed awareness. I'm like a hawk or an eagle staring down dinner. It can be scary to cross paths with me when I am "focused".

I wish I could be more like a middle-way Buddha, but I'm an all or nothing gal. And I've been leaning towards "nothing" lately. At least I was this past week.

Even when I appear confident, fear is often perched on my shoulder shouting, "Who do you think you are?" and "What do you think you are doing?"

My book will be published April 3, 2012. I'd be lying if I told you, "I'm ready! I can't wait!" The truth is, I'm afraid. At least when I write, I can hide behind my computer. But I won't be able to do that on book tour. I'll have to face the public and their questions. And what if the reviews of my book are unfavorable? What if someone asks me a question I cannot answer? What if I do something weird on camera?

Oh, fear, will you please take a hike? I feel you. But I'm going to do it all anyway.

Week 41-Lesson 41: When Things Fall Apart or You Feel Stuck, A Breakthrough is in the Works

2011-10-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

"Breakdowns create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together."--Unknown

Someone broke through my husband's yoga school not too long ago. They came in the middle of the night. They sledge hammered the cash box only to find a couple of quarters. Then they went on to sledge hammer a big hole in the wall, sparing the Buddha artwork, right below some beautifully painted sanskrit words that I believe said something like "The light in me honors the light in you." I think they wanted to sledge hammer through the wall to the other side (to the business next door?) in hopes of finding what they were looking for. This person was desperate. This person had reached the end of his/her rope. This person needed a breakthrough in more ways than one. I believe this person wanted money to solve whatever crisis they were having.

While I was a little "freaked out" by my husband's retelling of the story, my husband remained calm and collected. He talked to the people in the business next door, spoke with the police, picked up pieces of wall and garbage strewn all over his normally beautiful yoga studio, told the people who showed up for his 5:45pm class to come back later and managed to get everything patched up for his 7:30pm class which carried on as normal. One of the 5:45 people said, "Who would break into a yoga school called Yoon's Yoga Bliss?" (My point exactly. All you'll find inside is a big open space with a bunch of yoga mats, belts, blocks and blankets.) My husband thought for a minute and then said, "Someone who needs bliss, I guess. Unfortunately, you can't steal it." He felt more sorry for the person who broke in than he did for the state of his yoga school.

Now everything is back to normal. The wall is back to its original condition and my husband has installed a security system to appease the nearby businesses. All the yogis and yoginis hardly noticed. They all continue to come with full enthusiasm. They know that you can't force a "real" breakthrough, it takes time, energy, patience and PRACTICE!

From my recent perspective, it appeared that certain things were falling apart. But just as things and situations around me seemed to be breaking down, I kept hearing the word "breakthrough". At 7AM one morning, the phone rang. The person on the other line said,"This is Breakthrough Security calling." All I could think was, "Not again." But it was just the installation man calling to say that he'd set up the security system.

My husband and I decided to retreat to Breitenbush Hot Sp rings this past weekend. It was my birthday and instead of the usual Halloween bash we've done in the past, I needed a nurturing getaway. On the way there, we got stuck in traffic and a torrential rain that often washed out our view completely, making driving quite dangerous. Fortunately, we arrived in time for dinner, but had to try and find our cabin in a downpour in the dark in the woods with all of our bedding and possessions getting soaked through. Now it seems comical, but it was no laughing matter when it happened. To top it off, I locked the keys in the car and we were "in the middle of nowhere" Oregon.

We threw our stuff in the room and walked in the dark towards what we thought might be the hot springs. It was now about 9pm. We peeled off our clothes and stepped inside these healing waters. I no longer felt the rain. Everything that had sat heavy on my shoulders melted into those springs. It dissolved right then and there. At that moment, I knew things would be okay. I recalled all the times I was hit by a storm, and remembered that there was always a calm after.

When you are feeling grief or depression or stuck or stress or anger or loss or pain or whatever, IT WILL PASS. And if you can "ride it out" and just observe the storm or the stuckness, you will BREAKTHROUGH. Promise. No storm lasts forever. No pain lasts forever. No feeling of stuckness lasts forever. And guess what, YOU won't last forever, so might as well make the most of it. What is the point of getting all worked up over something that will just come to pass.

The next day, the sun broke through the morning clouds revealing the most incredible view from our hot spring. There wasn't a cloud in the sky (okay, maybe one tiny one).

I had to laugh that afternoon when I went to lunch with my husband in the dining hall. I read, "Breakthrough Yoga at 2pm in the River Yurt" on the schedule of events listed on a whiteboard. I smiled to myself and thought, "How appropriate!"

Week 40-Lesson 40: Do Nothing

2011-10-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

When you "do nothing" it doesn't mean "nothing" is happening. It may mean you've done as much as you can do at the moment. That's how I feel right now. I reposted Lesson 20 of my 365 lessons on this exact day last year. Apparently my life runs in cycles. I needed a "do nothing" lesson at this time last year too. So here it is again:

365 Lessons-Lesson 20: Do Nothing

I am taking a 365 degree turn here, which happens when you write 365 lessons...every day things change and what seems to be right for one day, may not be right for the next. While yesterday's lesson was all about saying "Yes!" to life and getting up and feeling the life within you, today's lesson is about doing nothing.

Some people may be thinking, "I don't have time for that!" or "I've got to do something, I can't just sit around all day." or "People need me." or "I need to help those who need me." or "I have things to do!" or...................

Sometimes I throw the list aside or maybe purposely lose the list..and by the way it's hard to cross things off the list when you lose it. It's a little scary when I can't find my list of what I need to do. I'm no longer in control. I no longer have an agenda.

So, I woke up this morning, meditated, ate breakfast and looked outside at the clouds changing shapes outside my dining room window. The sun, which is rare in Washington State this time of year, was casting light all around the dining room. And then it dawned on me. It's Wednesday. Both my husband and I work at night on Wednesday. So, without really thinking too much about it, we hopped in the car and drove down to Discovery Park and took a long, slow walk on the beach. We didn't do or say much. We just walked. The waves washed softly on the shore, the tide was coming in. A woman, who seemed to have a permanent smile on her face, was walking the other direction. The sun was on her face. It seemed we were the only three people on the planet and we were walking to end of the world. My husband said, "Nice day!" and the woman responded by saying, "Yes, it's the most beautiful day in the world!"

We walked to the lighthouse and around the point. Mount Rainier, which was completely covered in snow, stood still like a guardian of all the beauty that was around us. We sat down on the rocky beach between some logs and closed our eyes and just felt the sun on our faces and listened to the lapping waves and the caw of a seagull every now and then. It felt like we were sitting there for an eternity. The beach was deserted.

I still don't know where my list is, but I'm sure things will get done. When you plant a seed in your garden, you can't force it to become a flower. You have to wait. If you have done your job of planting good seeds, all will come to fruition. It's only a matter of time. Sometimes nothing is all you can do. When nothing comes, I embrace it. Instead of trying to hold my thoughts in my head, I let them go...I let them float out to the sea in front of me....I let them go. I have faith in the nature of things.

Sometimes nature can be cruel and sometimes it can be so beautiful. We are so tiny compared to it. Sometimes nothing is all we can do. We have to let things take their course. In nothing I often find the answer without even trying. In nothing there is everything...everything that is important.

Week 39-Lesson 39: Judge A Book By Its Cover

2011-10-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

There's some debate on the internet as to where the origin of the quote "Don't judge a book by its cover" came from.

I'm not sure those words hold true anymore. Book cover design has evolved over the years to become a science and an art form in and of itself. I discovered, after doing a bit of research on the internet, that its sole purpose is to share "the heart" of a book.

I read a very interesting post entitled Current Trends of Marketable Nonfiction Book Cover Design written by Thomas McGee over at Wine Press of Words. In the article, he said:

"Symbolism provides a powerful avenue for design to shout the heart of a book's message. With simple imagery or topography, a point is proven with as few words as possible. Once again, simplicity makes the most powerful design."

When I first received my book cover design (see picture above) from my publisher, I was surprised to find that I really resonated with the concepts. After all, anyone who reads your book is going to have a different take on it. I've heard stories of writers who were clearly "not happy" with the cover designs their publishers came up with. When you put a book out into the world, particularly a memoir, it really is like a birth. I haven't experienced a "real birth," but this is as real as it gets for me. A part of YOU is now out in the world and it's hard not to be attached to what you have created.

Now imagine someone wants to "dress-up" your newborn. You get the idea. It's a very personal thing. When you have a traditional book contract, you certainly have some say in the cover concepts and can even offer up your ideas, but ultimately it will be the publisher who decides.

I am fortunate to have a wonderful editor who listened to my ideas, thoughts, suggestions about the cover concepts I was presented with and implemented those suggestions. For example, the subtitle of the book, Ten Spiritual Lessons of Faith, Hope and Love, was removed (It still shows on picture above). While this did give more specific insight into the content of the book, I felt the title Lessons from the Monk I Married really covered all the bases of what the subtitle was trying to covey.

The old Korean traditional door, perhaps from a temple or a house, is so symbolic. The "temple door" shows up in my book on a number of occasions. To me, it represents something sacred inside. It could be considered the door to our own "inner temples." The closed door shows a longing to know what is inside. To discover those parts of ourselves that are hidden.

The pink lotus is a very big symbol in Buddhism. The lotus blooms out of the depths of murky, muddy water. It symbolizes an upward growth and the unfolding petals of the lotus suggest an opening. The fact that this lotus rests in the handle of the door, to me, shows that the opening of "the door" will happen.

Presented together, the graphics on the book really speak to me and bring me back to my journey and my feelings of that journey.

My publishing date is April 3, 2012. That's still almost 6 months away. Who knows if the cover will change between now and then, but the cover is now up on Barnes and Noble and this gives me the indication that this cover is going to "stick."

Here's the link to my book available NOW for preorder on Barnes and Noble (It's also available on Amazon and other venues):

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lessons-from-the-monk-i-married-katherine-jenkins/1031027819

Please share it with all of your friends, Facebookers and Tweeps. Preorder sales can really make or break a book (plus, it's currently selling at 32% off the cover price!). Don't forget to click the little "like" button on the B & N page and request it in Kindle and other forms.

I believe I have something important to share and I hope as many people as possible can read my book and benefit from my journey and the messages there. The book cover holds a lot of meaning, but there's much more inside the pages!

Here's the overview of the book of the book on Barnes and Noble:

Katherine Jenkins came to South Korea not only to teach English, but also to pursue answers to life’s difficult questions in the hopes of finding a sense of purpose and peace. Her travels there brought her to a remote temple, where she unknowingly crossed paths with an unassuming Buddhist monk. Months later, they met again by chance—and both their lives were irrevocably changed.

Lessons from the Monk I Married traces Katherine and Seong Yoon Lee’s long journey from complete strangers to happily married couple. Jenkins tells the unlikely tale of how their bond transcended physical and cultural boundaries, weathering difficult separations and requiring enormous leaps of faith; of how Seong Yoon left his teachers, his temple, and the only life he had ever known to be with her; and of how their relationship challenged her to let go of expectations, set aside emotional and cultural confines, and find her own path. Presented in the form of ten fundamental spiritual lessons, their story is rooted in Buddhism, yet the lessons Jenkins has to offer—about openness and expectations, faith and hope, and ultimately love—are universal.

Heartwarming and inspiring, Lessons from the Monk I Married is more than the improbable story of a girl from Seattle who found peace of mind (and love) with a Buddhist monk—it's an approachable guide to the most elemental spiritual questions of our day.

Thanks for sharing friends and thanks for caring!

Week 38-Lesson 38: Don't Settle for Second Best

2011-10-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

Lesson 344: Don't Settle for Second Best was one of the 365 lessons I wrote in 2010. Today I came home from work at around 8pm, grabbed a snack and then pulled out my laptop to see what was going on in the Land of Internet. As soon as I turned on my Apple computer, I read "Steve Jobs-1955-2011." I just sat there staring at his photo. This great, creative person had just died approximately 30 minutes before I decided to sit down and use his product. So I'm reposting this post as a tribute to Steve Jobs. Thank you Steve for making my book writing experience so smooth. I wrote my entire book on this lovely machine. Here's the post I wrote on the day I bought it:

I got a MacBook Pro today. I have no idea how this blog post is going to turn out because I'm still learning all the functions on this computer. So far I like it but it's taken sometime to figure everything out. It's so different than my other computer. I can already feel that it's going to be good. My fingers seem to just glide over the keys. The keys are so awesome. They light up when it is dark. Check it out!

I had to take back the Sony Bloggie camcorder I bought because it is not compatible with a Mac. Instead, I bought a new Flip because I love them and my old one got damaged. I bought anUltra Flip which takes better quality pictures and can be used with HD.

Do any of you have a Mac out there? I'm trying to figure out how to widen my documents on the screen to full size. Right now I'm typing in a tiny box because I'm not sure how to widen things. I bought Word for Mac so that I can write my book on this computer.

So why did I decide to get a Mac? Well, here's the thing. If you are a driver, you want the BEST car. If you are going to do the Tour de France, you better have the BEST bicycle. And if you are a writer and you are about to have a book published, it's a good idea to have the BEST computer out there. If your work disappears or you get a virus, then what?

But it's more than that really. I realized it is much more than that. Most of the time I am happy with shopping at thrift stores and finding things for sale that are a bargain IF I REALLY NEED THEM. I find that people often shop for bargains just to shop for bargains and then they have a lot of junk they need to get rid of later. Instead of buying a bunch of things you don't really need, why not hold off and buy something you do need from the money you save from not shopping for bargains all the time.

Lately, I find I'm happier with less. But if I'm going to buy something that I need to use everyday, it should be of excellent quality. Quality is much more important than quantity.

You could have a million things, but if they all break after two days, then what's the point? The same goes for anything else in life. I'd rather have one true follower of this blog than millions of people who just follow to follow and aren't really reading. What is the point of having millions of followers if no one is reading what you are writing or if what you are putting out there isn't quality.

What I write here has been helpful to me and I hope that it has been helpful to you too. The Dalai Lama said,

"We have become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are times of fast foods but slow digestion; Tall man but short character; Steep profits but shallow relationships. It's a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room."

Don't settle for second best. You deserve the best life has to offer. When you make quality a priority in your life, quality is what you will give and what you will receive.

Week 37-Lesson 37: Don't Push It

2011-09-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

Don't push it.

These three little words are relevant to so many situations. I'm house sitting with my husband at a lovely house over near Puget Sound. A few hours ago, we were trying to get the DVD player to work. Machines are not as simple to operate as they were in say, 1957. We now have to have 5 or 6 remotes just to turn on the television. I miss the days when all we needed was a simple on/off button.

My husband and I tried to figure it out, but finally gave up. At one point we had sound, but no picture on the screen. Instead of getting sucked into a button-pushing frenzy, we stepped away from the machines for a while and opted to read books instead. We are here in the most beautiful setting right on the Sound. Perhaps the fact that we were unable to operate these machines was a sign that we were meant to enjoy the beauty that is all around us.

Still, I'm not one to step away easily from something that doesn't work. I am usually quite determined to figure a dilemma out and will work on something for hours until I do so. Today, while looking down at the 5 remotes with endless buttons, I finally said to myself, "Don't push it."

My husband and are, I'm happy to report, not big arguers. However, every once in a while we have a tiff about something ridiculous. Yesterday was one of those days and I don't exactly remember what it was about, but my husband's final words were, "Don't push it."

It doesn't matter if you are talking about actual buttons or other people's buttons, "Don't push it" are certainly words to live by.

It's also important not to push it with ourselves. I tend to have an obsessive nature when I work. I work all hours until something is finished, but I'm learning quite a bit from my husband who is very in tune with how he feels from the inside out. He knows when to stop something or when something is not "flowing." When he feels a struggle might ensue, he is very good at stepping away and getting a broader perspective on things, which in turn helps him to make the right decision in any given situation.

I, on the other hand, tend to get too close to a situation and cannot be satisfied until I figure it out. Fortunately, I'm learning to change this trait. I have come to realize that I am more effective at working and solving problems when I am relaxed, rather than when I push myself. I also find that when I let go of trying to find an answer, it usually comes easily and in a way I never expected.

Don't push it! When things aren't working out for you, get some space, do something different, take a break, regroup, meditate, breathe, take a walk and come back to it later. All of the greatest things in my life came to me in a way I never expected them to. Whenever I decide to flow with life, rather than try to move against the current, life always has a way of opening doors that seemed, at a time, impossible to unlock.

*Special Note: I put all the commenters name into my magic lotus bowl (see last post) and drew Allison Ellis's name. Congratulations Allison! You are the winner of the Dustin O'Halloran meditative piano solos CD!

Week 36-Lesson 36: We Are Stronger Than We Think We Are

2011-09-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

I am honored to have the opportunity to interview Priscilla Warner, New York Times best selling co-author of the Faith Club and author of the just released book entitled Learning to Breathe: My Yearlong Quest to Bring Calm To My Life. Priscilla will also be appearing on The Today Show this Friday (9/23) to talk about her book!

Since the age of 15, Priscilla has suffered from panic attacks so debilitating that they leave her unable to breathe. Her new book follows her journey from panic to peace and tells how she finally learned to breathe again. Please visit her website (http://www.priscillawarnerbooks.com) or her book trailer for more information about her book.

And don't forget to leave a comment on this blog post for a chance to win a free Dustin O’Halloran meditative piano solos CD. This beautiful piano music is the perfect antidote to traffic, stress and anything else that ails you. Great for yoga practice as well.

I will put all the commenters names into my lotus bowl (bowl shaped as a lotus) and randomly select the winner to be announced in the next blog post!

And now for my interview with Priscilla!

I know it's not easy to pick just one, but what is the biggest lesson you learned during your one year journey "learning to breathe"?

I learned that we are stronger than we think we are.

For years, I thought I was a weakling. I suffered from panic attacks so debilitating that I thought I was dying. My central nervous system and body seemed to be defective and out of control.

But I have healed enormously. I’ve written a book that I hope will help the 6 million Americans who suffer from panic attacks, and people everywhere who feel their bodies, minds and lives have been weakened by anxiety, stress and trauma.

To all of those people, I say:

Do not despair. There are so many ways to heal, so many excellent techniques, treatments, teachers and therapists available.

Do not compare yourself to others. We all come into this world with different constitutions, brains, hearts, bodies and central nervous systems. One person’s exciting event is another person’s worst fear. (It’s safe to say that I will never jump out of an airplane, even with my “new” brain!)

Through my yearlong quest to bring calm to my life, I learned that I’m strong. That I have inner resources I didn’t know I had. That I won’t crumble if I allow feelings that had terrified me for so long to be present.

How did you arrive at this lesson? What was the process?

I suffered my first panic attack when I was a fifteen year old waitress working at a college cafeteria in Providence, Rhode Island. My heart pounded, my throat closed up, I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was dying.

A doctor prescribed medication, and the fact that I needed pills to calm myself down defined who I was for the next forty years. I felt so alone. Nobody else I knew suffered from these attacks. Nobody was afraid they’d have a heart attack while working behind a supermarket cash register, answering a question in a classroom, or making a presentation in a conference room.

I functioned very well on the outside. I married a terrific partner, enjoyed success in my career in advertising and gave birth to two beautiful sons (while begging my obstetrician to let me take Valium.)

But I never felt my body was strong and whole until I went on this journey.

In a funny way, my years of panicking prepared me for the sort of out-of-body experience that meditation can bring. I knew what it felt like to be in an altered state, and I welcomed this new, calm one. I really enjoyed the challenge of being still. Life began to slow down. The fact that I could sit, without judging myself harshly, was thrilling! And the lessons I learned about the suffering that we all experience grounded me and gave context to my panic, doubts and fears.

Combined with meditation, body based therapies were also very powerful healing tools. Initially I found EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming) too powerful. When I watched the flashing lights that bilaterally stimulated the left and right sides of my brain, the memories that surfaced were too disturbing for me to process. So I began doing Somatic Experience therapy instead, where I sat on a therapist’s couch and learned how to ground myself, and then slowly called to mind stressful situations. I moved back and forth, in my body and mind, between feeling grounded and scared. My body released stress and grew stronger. Then I was able to handle EMDR.

Early on, I discovered Trager therapy. A skilled therapist used light touch body work to help me feel more connected to my central nervous system. Every cell in my body seemed to come alive, and that took me a while to adjust to. I learned to slow down my breathing, along with my reaction to my newly awake self.

How can others apply this lesson to their own lives?

I want people to know that they can heal in ways they never thought possible. That they can turn pain into understanding and growth. That they can survive because they are stronger than they think they are.

We all die. We all suffer. But we can choose the path we take through that suffering. That path will twist and turn in ways we can never expect. But if we put one foot in front of the other, and approach life one step at a time, one breath at a time, we can move from a painful place to a productive one. We can accept sadness and feel grace. We can find teachers, therapists, techniques, experiences and resources that don’t have to cost a fortune, but that can make a huge difference in our lives.

What prompted you to write a book about your experiences?

I was sitting on an airplane about to take off from Tulsa, Oklahoma, when I opened up a magazine and read yet another story about Tibetan monks who meditated so effectively that their pre-frontal cortexes lit up on MRIs. I’d been fascinated whenever I saw stories about these people who seemed to be able to mysteriously calm their minds. And the idea for a book popped into my head. What if I could change my brain? What if I could become, in my own way, a monk in a minivan, meditating in malls instead of monasteries? I wrote this book for my fifteen year old self. I wish that back then someone had been able to share with me an honest account of what it feels like to be scared, anxious and alone. And then to heal.

What final words would you like to leave with the readers here about your experiences and the lesson you have learned?

I feel calmer, more peaceful, and happier than I could have ever hoped to feel.
And even when I’m not at peace, I have the confidence to know that I can sit with whatever I feel, and that this too shall pass. No moment lasts forever.

My mother is in her 11th year of Alzheimers disease. I have been able to forgive her for what I missed in our relationship, and I am less attached to a particular outcome every time I visit her. I am still sad to see her fading. I long for her, and I worry about what will come next, but I am not experiencing the anguish I used to feel.

I still worry about the safety and well-being of the people I love, but my heart has expanded to include love for all living beings, and that’s just too much to worry about in an obsessive way. I’m a speck in the universe, and I like it that way. I don’t feel powerless; I feel a sense of humility, along with a powerful connection to the world.

Thank you so much Priscilla for taking the time to share with us about your book and experiences. I feel lucky to have received an advanced copy of your book and am thoroughly enjoying it. Those who have experienced panic attacks and anyone else who is on a quest to bring calm to their lives will find this book helpful.

Week 35-Lesson 35: Follow Your Instincts, Not Everyone Else

2011-09-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been in a store shopping and picked something up to look at only to find three or four other people suddenly interested? What is it about that? I went to a 50% off thrift store sale several years ago (I like to hunt for treasures) and found four Eames era dining room chairs sitting in a corner. No one was looking at them. I picked one of the chairs up to take it over to the counter to pay for the set and suddenly three people were huddled around me oohing and ahhing over the chairs. One woman even grabbed one from the set and said, "Are you going to take all four of these?"

A few days ago my husband and I brought our blackberry picking bucket over to Llandover Woods. The blackberries are pretty good this year. I could have guessed that the picking spot right by the parking lot would be crowded with people and their buckets. There were hardly any berries left on the branches, yet people wouldn't move. They were climbing down on their hands and knees searching and searching for berries on ONE bush.

My instincts told me, "Forget that spot. Go down the path to end of the road." I felt there must be more "undiscovered" berries down the path...but it required a bit of work to get to them. We'd have to walk through the woods to the bottom of the hill and then head out on a road to a strip of what I swore were berry bushes along the street. It could have been a long walk for no berries, but it was worth a shot. Plus, it's a beautiful walk through the woods.

Lo and behold, guess what we found? Clusters of perfectly ripe berries hanging above us, below us and all around us and NO ONE was there!

What is it that makes us want to follow everyone else? What makes us so afraid to step off the beaten path and forge our own trail through the woods? Is it the fear of being laughed at or criticized? Is it the fear of failure? Is it fear of the unknown? Is it laziness?

Humans are creatures of comfort, habit and the "tried and true". Anything new takes effort and time to get used to. Often times, it's easier to follow what's comfortable than what our instincts are telling us. But if we don't follow our instincts, we will pay. Maybe not now, but somewhere down the line.

Following our instincts takes practice. Instinct is like a muscle we have to train, otherwise it gets all out of shape, rigid and inflexible. When you start training yourself to listen to your instincts, it gets easier and easier to follow them.

All of us have had the experience of making a choice that went against what our instincts were telling us. Perhaps we made a decision based on what everyone one else was telling us or what everyone else was doing. Is it any wonder why it didn't work out?

I've done this so many times. Too many times to count. I made decisions about my life based on what I thought was right for me rather than what I felt was right for me. I've gone out with people, stayed in relationships, taken jobs and taken responsibilities that I thought were right, only to find out, through a lot of suffering, that these things were wrong...at least for me. But this is part of the learning curve, I guess.

Most of us have been "followers" to some degree, especially when we were young. We followed because we were told to do so or because we didn't have a choice. We were weak and susceptible. We needed guidance, so we followed our parents, peers, teachers, etc.

But there comes a time when we need to integrate all that we have learned and make our own choices about things, even if they no longer "match" who we once were or who we thought we were.

Who you are right now is important. Are you comfortable with that person?

It's risky to be yourself because you might not be accepted. You might get hurt, criticized or outright rejected. But I have come to the point where I don't care anymore. I've got to be me.

These days I rely heavily on my instincts. I give myself space to hear what is going on inside and I listen. My instincts rarely let me down. In fact, I really can't recall any time I've been led astray by following them. On the other hand, I've often been let down my following "ideas" of who I should be or what I should be doing.

I don't want to "keep up with the Joneses" or anyone else. It's hard enough just keeping up with myself. I don't want to "follow" anyone else, but I can still learn and get inspiration from people. Like Oscar Wilde, for example, who said,

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

Week 34-Lesson 34: Life Has Been Just Fine Without a Cell Phone

2011-09-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

I don't have cell phone. This absolutely shocks people. True, I have a Mac and as a writer I'm on it a lot, but a cell phone...NOT! I was toying with the idea of getting a iPhone until I read this poem by my dear Aussie friend Sharni over at Sharnanigans entitled "iPhone....It's Over....". I think I've changed my mind about getting anything after reading that one.

I know, I know. It's good for emergencies. I get that. A few months ago I got rear-ended because a woman was on her cell phone and not paying attention. I didn't have a cell phone to call the police, but a mail carrier saw the whole thing and called in the accident for me. After that incident, I almost buckled and forked over the money for a new cell phone.

But I'm still cell phone-less in Seattle.

The fact that pay phones are now almost obsolete was another reason I almost gave in.

The truth is, I've only ever had a "real" emergency once or twice in a year and I've always found someone nearby with a cell to help me out.

Friends have suggested pre-paid phones. I had one of those when I first moved to Seattle and barely used it. Eventually, after I didn't refill the minutes, they gave the number away to another person.

Here's what I don't like about cell phones and why I don't have one:

1. I dislike people who wander aimlessly through the supermarket with one of those phones you can't see stuck in their ear somewhere asking their spouse questions like "Should I get 1% or 2% milk?" or "Should I buy sprouted or whole wheat bread?"

2. Even worse are those who walk around Greenlake fully engaged in a conversation, profusely gesturing with their hands and face, and "no one" is walking with them. I swear it looks like the person has gone mad.

3. I teach English as a Second Language and every now and then salsa or Beyonce will rip through the air at the worst possible time (like during a test). And then there's the task of finding the darn thing which is often buried in the bottom of someone's handbag.

4. I REALLY dislike it when I'm out with someone who takes a call while we are having lunch and talks and talks and talks....about NOTHING.

5. I get perturbed when people text at stoplights and forget they are driving and everyone behind this person, including me, misses the light. I want to announce over loud speaker, "You are in a car, you are the driver, please DRIVE!"

6. And the #1 reason I don't have a cell phone is because they seem so impersonal and disruptive. It feels like the owners of the phone have become slaves to the calls. I never want to become a slave to my ringtone or my cell phone.

The thing is, cell phones were non-existant not too long ago and somehow we all survived, right? We were able to find our way out of predicaments and sticky situations. Life went on. We bought milk and bread and didn't need to consult with anyone about it.

As a writer of this blog and an upcoming book, the computer consumes a large part of my life. I'm also a teacher at a community college and am required to be "connected" during the work week. I have learned to leave my computer behind on vacations (like the lake getaway I just came back from.) It felt so nice not to be "connected".

I have learned that I can live without a cell phone. I haven't self-combusted. I have learned to tolerate the strange stares when someone asks for my mobile number and I tell them I don't have one.

People often ask me, "How do you contact your husband without a cell phone?" I'm always tempted to say, "Oh, we contact each other telepathically."

I see him when I see him. I don't need to call him every minute. We set times and dates to meet each other, just like the old days. We leave little hand-written notes to each other that say things like, "I'm at the Vietnamese restaurant down the street, come join if you get this note." OR "I'm made you dinner, it's in the fridge, Enjoy XOXO!"

Yes, life has been just fine without a cell phone. When I drive, I drive. When I walk, I walk. When I eat, I eat. Multitasking is overrated and leads to hypertension.

But truth be told, I might have to get a cell phone. Especially after my book launches. Yes, I might have to bite bullet, fork over my wad and join the ranks of "everyone else."

If so, is there a ringtone that chants "Ommmmmmmm?"

Week 33-Lesson 33: Let Go of Judging Others

2011-08-29T16:36:00.000-07:00

"Try not to judge people. If you judge others then you are not giving love. Instead, try to help them by seeing their needs and acting to meet them. It isn't what anyone may or may not have done, but what you have done that matters in God's eyes."-Mother Teresa

We all do it to some degree. "She's wonderful" or "He's a jerk". The truth is, we've all been wonderful or a jerk at some point in our lives. What makes us so different from anyone else? Harsh judgement of another is usually based on either our past experiences with this person, fear, how we feel about ourselves or where we are in our own lives. If you have been judged unfairly, realize that it often has very little to do with you and more to do with the one issuing this judgement. If you can see it in this way, you will have compassion for anyone who speaks harsh words about you.

In 2009, I felt compelled to write this blog, even though it was quite a scary move for me. I have always kept my writing locked away for fear of what others might think of it. This fear blocked me from opening and sharing my thoughts and connecting to others.

When I posted my first blog post in January 2009, I felt fully exposed or naked, if you will. Yet, I also felt it was time to share these thoughts and my story. Most of the commenters encouraged me to keep opening and keep sharing. I could see that people were getting something from what I was writing, so I kept going. There have been a few comments (2 or 3 out of hundreds) that have been filled with criticism and negativity. These commenters (or maybe it's just one) chose to hide behind "anonymity," perhaps for fear of being exposed, just as I was.

I chose to delete those comments as I did not find them constructive or helpful. So much energy is wasted in idle gossip and judgement of others. There are so many wonderful, even GREAT, things we can do in this world if could just drop this useless activity.

I try to give most people the benefit of the doubt. I try to find in myself "love" for those who have nothing but negativity to dish out. I try to listen to criticism to see if it is based on truth or if it is a reaction. Constructive criticism can be extremely helpful. As a writer who just finished a first book, I don't know where I would be without all the feedback and constructive criticism I received from editors and pre-readers of my book.

One of the "anonymous" commenters asked me to "stop writing." Perhaps this commenter is someone I know or perhaps he/she is really "anonymous." And for a moment I thought, "Maybe I should stop writing." Fear kicked in and had me believing that I should stop. Was I picking up on the fear that another was dishing out? Who knows.

Instead, I decided to sit fear down next to me and give it some love. And I decided to keep writing.

Week 32-Lesson 32: Better Late Than Never

2011-08-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

I think life starts after 40; all my time on earth prior to turning 40 was just a "warm-up." After all, what do we know when we are 12, 20 or even 30? But 40?--that's smack in the middle of the life expectancy of most humans. Those of us who are 40 or over should know a thing or two about life by now, right?

It's funny how I used to think I needed to "have it together" by 22. Like somehow that diploma I received upon graduating from college meant that I should have it all figured out. But the truth is, I didn't have the slightest idea of where I was headed, and I still don't.

Do any of us?

Instead of knowing exactly where I'm going, I know where I'm not going. I know what doesn't make me happy, where I don't want to be, and who I don't want to spend time with. I keep chiseling away at this puzzle of life and trial and error has led me to where I am now....and even though the picture was pretty fuzzy for the first half, life is currently looking pretty good. I've weeded out and removed debris and the path is now getting clearer. Better late than never, right?

Better late than never can apply to so many things in life. I wonder who said that? They couldn't have been more on target.

I missed a blog post last week, but I'm writing one now. Better late than never. Life got in the way. My book, Lessons from the Monk I Married, is now in production. I'm in the process of contacting people to do book blurbs. It's going well and I think I'll have a number of great blurbers! In March 2012, my book will be published and available in bookstores throughout North America. When the book comes out, I'll be 42.

Is that old to be publishing a first book? I don't know, but better late than never!

While in the car today on the way to the dentist to have a molar observed for a possible abscess, I thought, "I should have had it looked at a month ago when the thing was bothering me?" And then I thought,

Better late than never!

Some people out there who are my age or older have lost their jobs, are getting divorces, have children who are leaving home for college or never had children to begin with. Some can't pay their mortgages anymore and some have never owned a house. By 40, we should have it all figured out, right? We should have it all together.

But if life begins after 40, then we're just getting started. Like new babes, the world is our "oyster." There's "no one" to be and "nothing" to know.

It's better late than ever!

(Ode to all my friends and readers who are 40 and over. And for those of you who are younger--don't worry, you're still doing the "warm-up" and if you are paying attention to the signs along the way, you won't get led astray! )

Week 31-Lesson 31: Let Yourself BE Alone

2011-08-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

I was alone today. In fact, there are many days when I am completely alone...by choice. Yes, I'm married, but my husband and I have this thing we do: Somedays we spend our free time together and sometimes we go off our separate ways.

Today my husband set off for the mountains. He decided he was going to do a six-mile hike at Snow Lake. It sounded enticing, but I had a few chores to do around the city and then ended up going on my own hike for two hours in Llandover Woods in Seattle.

While I was walking, I let myself be enveloped in a silence which turned out to be full of sounds. Bird calls, a distant ferry horn out on the Sound, the swooshing of leafy green tree branches in the wind, it was a symphony of nature. I felt the gravel beneath my shoes and the breeze on my hands and face. Along the path, blackberry and thimbleberry bushes seemed to call out to me. I stopped and plucked a big, red thimble berry from a bush nearby and stared at it in my palm. "Perfect," I said. Before I started my walk I had asked the universe to give me a sign, a word...something...anything. Funny, this was the word that came out. I popped the berry into my mouth and felt the sweet juice burst on my tongue.

I was alone in these woods, but I felt I was walking with wonderful company. A woodpecker knocked on a tree nearby. A monarch butterfly fluttered in front of me for a few minutes. In those minutes, I let it take the lead as if it were a guide ready to show me something I hadn't seen before.

I looked up at the sky through my sunglasses. I saw a perfectly round orb through the hazy clouds. It couldn't have been the sun, it wasn't bright enough. It was the full moon. It seemed odd in that moment, like a hole to another world. I have seen the moon on many occasions, but this felt different.

I wandered past mansions along the Sound. I stared out at sailboats and barges out on the distant sea. I closed my eyes and breathed in the salty air. What more was there? I felt full and happy. I was alone, but I didn't feel it. I felt part of every single thing.

After weaving through the neighborhood, I got back on the woodland trail and headed toward my car. For a Saturday the path seemed unusually empty of people. Now I'm back at home. My husband just walked in with a big smile on his face.

"How was Snow Lake?" I said.

"Perfect," he answered.

I couldn't help but smile back. He took the words right from my lips. Perhaps we are more connected when we fully experience our time "alone."

Week 30-Lesson 30: Open Up to Fear

2011-08-02T18:21:00.001-07:00

I thought if I traveled, I'd find something. Maybe I'd find God. Maybe someone out there could ease the difficulties of life. You know, I used to talk to God. I'd often ask him (her?), "What should I do?" Often times I'd close my eyes and pray very hard. I didn't want to not know where I was going. I needed to be reassured. I needed to know if things would work out.

But no answer came.

And then one day, when I least expected it, after a long run around the neighborhood, a crystal clear voice said, "You know what to do." The voice was strong and reassuring. But I didn't feel strong and I didn't feel I was any closer to knowing what I was meant to do in this world.

I wanted to follow that voice. I wanted to know it intimately. I wanted to understand where it came from. What if I went the wrong way? What if I did the wrong things? What if I made mistakes? What if people didn't like what I was doing?

I was afraid. I didn't have any answers. I made a lot of mistakes in life (and I'm still making them). I fell down quite a bit. I was not a happy person and I didn't respect myself nor did I believe I had anything positive to offer the world. Still, I could not forget that clear voice that came to me on that fall day of my senior year in high school while running down a narrow path flanked with bright orange and yellow maple leaves. The air was crisp, but the late sun shone on my face and filled me with an incredible warmth. But it did not last.

After high school I traveled all over the world searching for that voice. I traveled to Mexico, South America, Asia, India, etc. I meditated, I practiced yoga and once again, in deep silence, I basked in that inner warmth and stillness I had felt for those few moments in high school. For a time, I attributed these feelings to a certain practice. I believed that something outside me--the environment, an organization, a teacher, a guru, God--made me feel like this. Without this practice or a certain environment, I thought that this peace and this joy could not last.

I don't know exactly when things changed. I don't recall the exact day when I understood that voice or when I overcame my fear. I think it was gradual. Meditation helped, yoga helped, walks in nature helped, writing helped, friends helped, books helped--I am grateful for so many things that aided me on my path and gave me the courage to open up.

But that voice. The one that said, "You know what to do." It didn't come from God or Buddha or yoga or meditation or my husband or my friends or my family or anything else. All of these people and things played a part in understanding these words.

"You know what to do" came from me.

Not the Katherine Jenkins "me," but the one that is opened and fearless. The one that is not separate. The one that is connected to everything.

(Also published on Writers Rising, a collaborative blog of writers from around the world!)

Week 29-Lesson 29: Know When It's Time To Let Go (The Birth of a Book)

2011-07-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

So I am down to the last bit of editing on my book. During the editing process, quite a number of pages were cut for various reasons, but I think the length is good. I'm currently at 52,781 words (about 185 pages) after editing. Who knows what the final product will look like. Perhaps it will be a bit longer, but this is how it stands today on my computer. I'm really happy with it and almost ready to let it go.

"Let it go" doesn't mean I'm ready to walk away. It means I'm ready to let it be whatever it's going to be in the world. This book is like a baby. It came from me, but it does not belong to me. I authored it, but I cannot know how it will affect each person who reads it.

But I think I'm ready...or getting close to being ready! At least I'm ready to surrender over the written part. There's so much that goes into writing and publishing a book. The book process is far from over, but the "written part" is pretty much DONE! There will be more stories here on the process. After all, it still has to come out.

I feel a mixture of fear and excitement rolled into one. It's my life. I didn't hold much back. I let it all out and soon (7 months from now) it will be on book shelves across North America for all to read. My life will be exposed. I will be exposed. This sort of makes me want to hide under a rock for the next three years or so. But I'm trying to also "let go" of the "I".

If I look deeper, I realize that there really isn't much difference between "you" and "me". Yes, we have different stories, but we have all experienced pain, suffering, love, loss, grief, confusion, joy, etc. My hope is that through sharing my journey, we can connect. Each one of us is so unique, but there is also something universal about our human experience.

So I'm willing to put it all out there. I'm willing to release my story into the world, in spite of all my fears, in order to share part of my journey with you. Because I know writing it was so helpful to me in understanding how I got to where I am right now. If it was helpful to me, perhaps it will be helpful to you. It was not an easy road. I wasn't always a happy person.

But somehow, along the way, I was willing to become a happy person. Somewhere on my journey I decided to let go of the negativity. And somewhere on my journey I not only decided, but came to believe that I could be anyone I wanted to be. And once I made that decision, I stuck by it.

And I'm still sticking by it.

Soon this thing I created will come out. I wonder what it will look like? I wonder how it will be received? I really don't know, but I'm sticking by it.

And I'm also going to let it go.

Week 28-Lesson 28: Don't Stop Believing

2011-07-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Reviewing where you have come from helps you see again where you are going. I've been writing lessons for 28 straight weeks! Last year I wrote 365 lessons, one for every single day in 2010! And last year on this day I celebrated two things: My 200th post for the year and a book deal! It's helpful to have 365 posts to remind myself of how far I've come and how much there is to be thankful for. I can't believe it was a year ago today that I found out my book would be published. Time flies! Here's my 200th post for 2010. It's a repeat, but it's a good lesson to remember when you feel like giving up or you're starting to lose belief in things:

Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world. She took the midnight train going anywhere....Don't stop believing, hold on to that feeling........Journey

I couldn't help but quote Journey here. 200 days of blogging; it's been a journey for sure! I feel like each step in both this blog and book process were so worth it. It truly was and IS a labor of love. I never stopped believing. I believed right through all the people who told me "It's impossible" or "Very few people get book deals" or "That's a pipe dream" or "You'll probably get rejected" or "Yeah, right, sure you are going to write a book, everyone says that!"

If you are afraid of being rejected or failing, you'll never do ANYTHING. If you fall down, get up. If you fall down again, keep getting up. Fall down and get up 1000 times if you have to. Did I tell you that my book was rejected by several publishing houses? Did I let that get me down? Heck no! If anything, it gave me fuel to improve and keep going.

Wasn't it Walt Disney who went bankrupt a number of times before his dream of Disneyland became a reality? Even if it would have been wise to give up, he couldn't. He believed in what he was doing too much.

Believing in what you are doing takes amazing strength. You have to cut through all the naysayers. You have to surround yourself with people who are positive and who cheer you on. Keep those people close to you. The people who say, "Keep going, you can do it, YOU ARE GREAT!" are the people you need around you at all times. Oddly enough, these people may not be your closest friends or family members in the beginning. They may be complete strangers. People you've never even seen before. You have no idea why they are cheering for YOU, someone who they don't even know.

I honestly believe we are all connected. Not just believe, I KNOW. Recently on my Lessons from the Monk I Married Facebook fan page, I wrote, "You can't afford a negative thought. Your life is worth too much." Your life is so important. YOU are so important. What you do affects everyone. We don't live on tiny islands in our houses closed off from the rest of the world with our families. Everything we say and do affects everything and everyone around us. If you are distributing anger or other negative emotions around all the time, then you will tune in to more of the same and you are not doing any favors for anyone. In fact, you are polluting the world around you with this negativity.

Being negative is a choice. Harboring negative thoughts is your habit. Negative things don't just happen to you, you draw them to you with your thoughts. Watch your thoughts.

Being positive is also a choice. Harboring positive thoughts is also a habit. Positive things don't just happen to you, you draw them to you with your thoughts. Watch your thoughts.

How you view your life depends on your thoughts. Negativity feeds on more negativity. It's a vicious cycle. All addictions are vicious cycles. To break them you have to have tremendous strength. You have to BELIEVE anything is possible.

What are the messages you tell yourself daily? What do you believe about yourself?

I believed that I could succeed and that my book, Lessons from the Monk I Married, would become a successful book. I just got news today that, yes, IT WILL HAPPEN. My agent negotiated a very nice book deal for me.

Many of you who have followed along on my blog here let me know that you never doubted it. You told me it was just a matter of time. You are the people I want near me. I'm so glad you've been walking along here with me, it's made a TREMENDOUS difference and I seriously don't think I could have done it without you. Your positivity has added to my positivity. What a tremendous force that is when we all pool it together. Just think of all the amazing things we can do! Don't stop believing, there are so many great things in store for YOU!

Week 27-Lesson 27: Life is the Sum of All Your Choices

2011-07-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

"Life is a sum of all your choices."-Albert Camus

If I told you that the life you are living now is a result of the choices you have made, how would you react?

Maybe you are angry or depressed about your lot in life or maybe you feel gratitude and appreciation? Maybe you oscillate between these two? I'm not writing this post in order to engage in a discussion about my past or yours. I'm writing this post to let you know that every single moment you have a choice and those little choices you make become your life. While we can certainly learn from our past, it's this moment that will decide our future.

A year or so ago, I bought a book at a thrift store called "Awakening Intuition" by Frances E. Vaughan. The book was first published in 1979, but the words in it are as true today as they were back then. Chapter Two is entitled "Choosing Your Own Way." On the first page of the chapter it says:

"Consider the choice factor in everyday life. Everyone makes hundreds of choices every day, both consciously and unconsciously. But choice is something you have to be aware of if you are really going to exercise it. It becomes real when you believe in it, when you recognize it and when you exercise it."

And then this:

"Choice does not exist for you if you do not see that you have it. It is only when you see that there are many possibilities in any situation and many possible reactions that you can consciously choose what you really want. When you react to situations automatically, out of habit or conditioning, you do not experience yourself as free."

I don't know your life situation. Maybe life couldn't be better or maybe it really could. How you "view" your life in this moment sets the stage for the next moment....and the next one...and the next one.

We can't blame anyone or anything on the outside for where we are in life. You choose how you want to be in this world. Every single moment you get that choice. You are responsible for your inner condition which is part of your outer conditions.

It took me a very long time to realize this. I spent a great deal of my past angry and wanting to put the blame on others for my "lot" in life. Now I can clearly see that it's my choice.

After reading the book above, I started thinking about all the choices I have made in my life.

And then I thought about the choices I made today. It's very interesting to go back over your day and think about all of your choices. Here are some choices I made today:

1. I decided to walk with my best friend along Lake Washington and then take her to lunch.

2. I decided to buy red sandals and blue pants.

3. I decided to eat chocolate, drink milk and surf the internet a bit.

4. I decided to read Awakening Intuition by Frances E. Vaughan

5. I decided to write this blog post about what I have learned from this book.

6. I decided that I don't always make the best choices, but that most of my choices are, in fact, conscious.

7. I decided to Google the title of my book and found that there was a write up about it on RT Book Reviews.

8. I decided that this was pretty amazing considering that I haven't finished the book yet.

9. I decided that life is pretty good right now.

10. I decided that I ate too much chocolate and that I might just have tea for dinner.

Those are just a fraction of my decisions and thought processes today. How about you? What decisions did you make today? Do believe that the choices you make today affect who you are at this moment and who you will become?

Week 26-Lesson 26: Disappear into Nature

2011-07-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

The never-ending list of things to do had me questioning whether or not an overnight backpacking trip into the pristine forests and mountains of Washington was really such a good idea. I still had a few chapters to finish for my book and I had e-mails to answer. Not only that, but a new quarter at the college was about to start up on Wednesday. I needed to get ready for it. How would I pull myself away? Was it really even reasonable?

No, not really. Nonetheless, I went. My husband is good at leaving it all aside and disappearing into nature. Every Thursday and Saturday afternoon, no matter what he has on his plate, he goes off on an 8-10 mile hike in the Washington wilderness. He's become religious about this and will not let anything get in his way. Rain, sleet, snow...he's out there. I really admire his ability to do this and he always looks so refreshed when he comes back.

So, seeing the results of his disappearances into nature, I decided to try it to. My husband and I hoped to go on an overnight camping/hiking trip to Goldmyer Hotsprings, a privately owned little sanctuary of peace at the foot of the Cascades along the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. There are no directions on the website about how to get to this place, but there was a phone number. I saw that they had office hours on Tuesdays and Fridays from 1-7pm. It was Friday at 6pm! My husband had previously tried to make a reservation and failed. He could not get through to a human. I called twice and got an answering machine and finally, on my third try, I got a real live HUMAN. Even though they only had space for Monday (4th of July), I booked it!

The woman in the office gave me careful and precise directions. I felt like I was receiving sacred information that was not to be whispered to another soul. It was an oral transmission of "directions" that I was so lucky to receive. Without these directions, it's very hard to find the hotsprings as the signage and information along the way is almost obsolete.

We packed up two backpacks with tents, sleeping bags and some food and headed out Sunday afternoon. Even though our reservation was for Monday night, we hoped the caretakers of the hot springs would let us in a day early.

Getting to these hot springs is not for the impatient. We bumped along a potholed road at a snail's pace for over 20 miles. We both felt a bit frazzled by the time we reached the trailhead, but once we stepped out onto the trail, everything changed.

Forests of pine shot up on both sides of the trails and the snow-topped Cascades greeted us.

The Snoqualmie river gushed passed us. As we walked along this river for 4 miles, the heavy weight of my life and things to do in Seattle seemed to fall behind me. I could not help but be completely absorbed in my surroundings.

I had forgotten how much time my husband and I had hiked together in the past. We circumvented Annapurna in the Himalayas. It took us 18 days. Talk about being absorbed in nature! I had forgotten how close we had become during that time. As we walked along, side by side, with our backpacks and gear once again, we were reminded of that time.

Why hadn't I gone with my husband on one of his many hikes in Washington? I don't know, but I was so grateful that I had decided to go on this one.

When we arrived at the caretaker's house, we begged him to let us in a day early. No luck. We'd have to camp across the footbridge on the other side of the river and come back the next day for hot spring soaking. Luckily I had reservations for the next day. How sad it would be to come all that way and not have a chance to soak in the hotsprings.

My husband and I set up the tent and then he fired up the camp stove. He cooked Korean ramen for dinner with tuna, sausage and egg. This was the staple on Korean camping trips we had taken in the past, so it brought back a lot of memories. My husband sat on a bucket and I sat on an old stump and we had another stump for our table. There, we fine-dined to the sound of a roaring river.

Later, we warmed up next to a crackling camp fire. It was a beautiful night full of millions of stars.

The next day, we headed to the hotsprings. We set up camp near the springs, even though we planned to leave in the evening. We wanted a spot to cook lunch and dinner, and to rest between soaks in the hot spring.

When we finally made it to the springs, I knew I had made the right choice. No one was in sight as we stripped down and slipped into the waist-high spring inside a cave along the river. The healing water immediately penetrated through us. It was pure bliss and so worth the hike and the wait!

We left the campground refreshed from our soaks and meals. Our hike back was peaceful and I felt completely full and light at the same time. On the drive home, the sun had set and cast the entire sky in a vibrant orange that got deeper as we approached the city. An enormous crescent moon hung in the sky. At 10pm, fireworks began to go off all around us--we saw the Lake Sammamish fireworks, Lake Washington fireworks and the Lake Union Fireworks. It was as if the city was welcoming us back on our drive home. We didn't need to "get a spot" to watch the fireworks...they were going off all around us.

I can't remember how I spent last 4th of July weekend, but I know I'll never forget this one. And I'm very grateful to my husband for encouraging me to let go and disappear into nature.

Week 25-Lesson 25: Nothing Looks Interesting

2011-06-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

I was at the Fresno/Yosemite airport on Sunday. After 10 days out in the "bush" in silence with very little stimulus, the airport was a rude awakening. There were people with backpacks, roller duffles and suitcases, whining children, fast food and kiosks full of things I really don't need. After a long period of no stimulus, suddenly the magazine display seemed to come alive with stars faces, colors, and words. The jewelry case which displayed mostly bling was overwhelming. Gum, newspapers, bottle openers, tacky fridge magnets and t-shirts seemed to enclose me. I found my way towards the exit next to the display of bestselling books. I thumbed through a few of them. "Nothing looks interesting," I said under my breath.

Nothing looks interesting.

"Nothing" looks "interesting".

Somehow nothing had become interesting. Because nothing, besides meditation, responding to calls of nature, walking, sleeping and eating was all I did for an entire 10 days. This might sound boring to those looking for an exotic vacation at say...a beach cottage in Thailand or a mountain chalet in Switzerland. But for me, this was how I chose to spend my precious time off. And not a minute of it was wasted time. From 4:00am, when the first gong sounded to 9pm lights out, we were working. Hard to imagine how meditation could be work. Let me tell you, it's the hardest yet most rewarding work I've ever done.

Maybe you've traveled all over the world. Maybe you've spent time on that exotic beach or at that mountain chalet. And I know, I have fond memories of those places too. But have you ever thought about taking a trip inside? Do you know what's going on in there?

Give yourself 10 days in silent meditation and I guarantee you you'll find out more than you can imagine. And if you are working properly, you'll uncover quite a bit..and not all of what you see you'll want to face, but when you do decide to face what's in there, things start happening. Good things...positive things...

Nothing looked interesting because I was full. Not full in the sense of "I ate too much" but full in the sense of "I have all I need." I felt light and clear and happy. This happiness wasn't about who I was with or where I was or what I was doing. It was a happiness or a very deep contentment with what was. It came from the inside out. Even the kiosk screaming with "things to buy" had its place. I felt like a scientist observing my new surroundings. Like every moment called for my undivided attention and thorough examination.

During the course, it was hot and dry. As not to make contact with my fellow meditators, my gaze was usually downward. While at the meditation center, we are meant to keep to ourselves. The point is to go inward. We are meant to be working alone, in silence.

Still, I couldn't help but notice the beauty around me. The California wild flowers became my friends. They greeted me every morning on my walk around the pond.

On the last day, we had an opportunity to view a new pagoda building.

This building housed dozens of tiny meditation cells. During the course, we meditated in the hall, but these cells would provide further privacy for the meditator. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to sit in the pagoda when it is finished.

On the last day, we come out of silence and have an opportunity to speak to one another. This is always an interesting experience. After having spent most of our time in silence with our gaze cast downward, we were now communicating and getting to know one another on the very last day.

The course had produced "shiny, happy people"...people full of gratitude and full of gentleness. The smiles were contagious.

Svetlana, didn't even hesitate when I asked for a ride to the airport. She said, "Certainly!" She also planned to volunteer and clean the kitchen before our departure. Everyone who works at the center is a volunteer. There are no fees for these courses, they run on donations and the hard work of volunteers who have all completed at least one course.

I cleaned my cabin and had a chat with my cabin mates, and then Svetlana and I went out for a little brunch before my flight. It was our reintegration into the world. We had a nice chat.

It was a very productive course for me and I received a lot of clarity. As I type this I feel so much gratitude that I have had this practice of meditation in my life for almost 15 years. But most of all, I was grateful for the opportunity to do "nothing" and to realize that stepping away from "doing something" all the time was what I needed. It's easy to get caught up in what we are doing as if the world revolves around what we "do." Sometimes more productivity and clarity can come from stepping away and stopping. What I found is that the world is not going to stop if you decide to and when you come back you'll realize you haven't missed much.

What I've gained on the inside cannot be measured or quantified by anyone or anything on the outside, but I know I have gained so much. And that is all that's important.

Week 24-Lesson 24: If You Want Silence and Space in Your Life, Then Practice

2011-06-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

When real meditation happens, the idea of "practicing something" dissolves.--Katherine Jenkins

People ask me, "What sort of meditation do you practice?" And I often answer, "Vipassana," because technically that's what I practice. But the very idea of "a practice" is a bit absurd when it comes to meditation, or anything else for that matter. A practice of anything is just a vehicle on the road to pure experience or awareness. A knitter doesn't focus on the needles, a writer doesn't focus on the keyboard, a painter doesn't think of the brush, and a speaker doesn't fixate on the microphone when they are "in" their art. When one is truly present, in whatever task they are doing, they become that task. The "how to" or the vehicle dissolves.

Meditation is a very odd thing. I practice (meaning I sit down with crossed legs for a period of time in silence) every day. I follow the technique of vipassana, which includes focusing on the breath and natural body sensations, but meditation really happens when I am fully present. I don't need to be crossing my legs and with eyes completely shut to be fully present. So why go on a meditation retreat like the one I'm heading to the day after tomorrow? Why attend a retreat at all if meditation is every moment?

Yes, it's true, awareness is available to us every moment, but the truth is that most of us are not aware of our moments. We are distracted by the lists of things to do, by what someone said, by our families, our friends, our jobs and all the other drama that constantly keeps us from the moment. Thinking clutters the brain and we are constantly adding to this clutter by giving the brain more and more input. Our poor brains are on overdrive. Instead of a computer crash, there's going to be a crash of another kind.

This crash of the human body can come in the form of stress, anxiety, pain, sickness, disease, exhaustion, poor digestion, lethargy, negativity and depression to name a few. If you suffer from any of these, chances are you are not aware of most of your moments. You are most likely reacting to the drama in your head--the drama or the thinking or the activity that never ceases until you cease.

Life is "the practice". Every moment offers us an opportunity to be present. But tuning in is hard and takes practice. This is the catch 22. If you have never gone inside and been silent, then you are missing an aspect of yourself that is always available to you. You are missing a vantage point that is so helpful.

When you create space within, you create space without.

For the record, I am not aware of every moment and lately I've felt overloaded with all that I have to do. But I've let it go a bit today. My husband always says, "When you feel like you have too much to do, that's when you need to go really slow." He's so right. So I slowed down today. I wish I had a "slow down" button I could push like those "easy" buttons they sell at Staples.

But telling myself to "slow down" has helped. Consciously moving into silence everyday or practicing silence and meditation have also helped. There is a purpose for this practice or any practice. Woody Allen said, "Ninety percent of life is just showing up." I think this is where practice fits in. When we show up to life with whatever we are doing, life takes us where we need to go. But it takes effort on our part to get there. Once we are there and once we are aware, there is nothing more we need to do. We are "in" the practice, we are the art.

So, my friends, I'm off to practice silence and meditation the day after tomorrow. This means I won't be talking for 10 days and I'll most likely have my legs crossed and my attention focused on the awareness of my breath and body sensations for most of that time. I wouldn't do it if I knew it wasn't helpful to my life. Years of experience has taught me that it is tremendously helpful and I have so much gratitude for this opportunity to practice deeply again. Creating space in my life has made me opened to life and my purpose here.

I'll be back and blogging on June 27th. Until then, may you all be happy, peaceful and have the necessary space to hear your heart's calling....

Week 23-Lesson 23: Bring Your Noise Cancellation Headphones to Your Cockatoo Gig

2011-06-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

Two cockatoos. I've been busy and haven't been online much. My husband and I are housesitting at a gorgeous location on Puget Sound for two beautiful, exotic birds--an Australian Long-billed Corella Cockatoo and an Indonesian Umbrella Cockatoo. It's been quite the experience. I can't really say that it's been wonderful, but there have been wonderful moments. I think the word I'm looking for is "challenging"... it's been challenging.

But I'm always up for a challenge. I love challenges. Through my travels all over the world, I've come face to face with challenges, but nothing quite like this. For one, the umbrella cockatoo, when threatened or when the sun goes down or for any old reason (still haven't completely figured out his habits), will start squawking at the top of his lungs and puffs out like a huge umbrella. It shrieks bloody murder. It sounds like the loudest alarm in the world that has no "off" button. The only thing you can do is walk away if you still want your eardrums intact.

My husband had to go to our house in Seattle and get our noise cancellation headphones. We now wear huge headphones on our ears while watching the sunset. It's hard to fully enjoy it when, in the background, we can still hear the muffled shrieks of this bird cutting through these high powered noise blockers. Eventually, we feel bad and go inside and try to calm the bird down. It isn't always easy. These birds love attention. Undivided attention. No multi-tasking in this house.

By the second day, I had packed my bags. I just didn't think I could hack this gig. My eardrums hurt. When my husband pulled up to this gorgeous house after his yoga class, I was on the front steps watching the last flicker of sun drop behind the mountains over the Sound. "What are you doing out here?" he asked. "I think I have PTSD, I responded." He started to chuckle and then we took a leisurely moonlit walk around this incredible neighborhood so I could blow off some steam.

The thing is, these little guys grow on you and I've learned so much from these birds during this week. I've learned to care for challenging animals. I've picked up on some of their habits and their responses. I've had little conversations with them. We talk to each other. We say, "Hello, how are you?" Sometimes the umbrella cockatoo imitates my laugh and I find this so endearing. I've even let one out of her cage and hand-fed her snap peas.

I'm warming up to these guys. And they are warming up to me and my husband. We are in a rhythm now, but it was a shaky start.

The lesson I'd learned is that taking care of birds is not a piece of cake. It's not an easy gig. It's tough. I had to sort of put my other life on hold to spend time with these guys. I wasn't on the internet for most of the week. I avoided this blog and many other things, including my book.

But I feel like I've been on a trip to Australia and Indonesia. I feel like I've travelled and I've learned something. I've learned that I like these guys, but I've also learned that this may be my one and only "cockatoo gig".

Week 22-Lesson 22: Witness the Abundance of Nature

2011-06-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I closed myself off from the world and wrote. But this weekend, with "80 degrees and sunny" in our Seattle forecast, I'm going to have trouble doing that. It's 8:15 pm and I'm finally sitting down to write. My husband and I spent four hours at Discovery Park in Seattle today. It's hard to explain this place and give it full justice. It's more than a park, really. It's.... a triumph of nature. Hugged by Puget Sound, a circular loop of this park offers vistas that seem like they belong in the pages of National Geographic. We started out in the forest, popped out on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound and the Olympics, and then meandered through a shady path of overgrown maples and cedar trees down to the beach....

The tide was out so we took off our shoes and walked in the shallow water. It was warm...like Hawaii warm! I thought, "If the rest of the Sound were like this, I'd jump in right now!" We get excited about sunny weather in Seattle. You probably are well aware that Seattle is known for its rain. But I'll take all of the rain–every single drop of it–to experience a day like today. To be honest, I love the rain. I love Seattle and I feel like the rain here is very conducive to writing and creating. If it were sunny every single day, I'd have a hard time getting anything done.

After walking along a long stretch of beach, we found ourselves on a concrete path on the cliff of the Sound in a field of daisies.

Finally, we disappeared into the woods again. That is where I ate my first salmon berry of the season. Oh, the abundance of nature! How could I write this afternoon when all of THIS was waiting for me right outside my door?

Do you frequently spend time in nature? Do you think it's important?

Week 21-Lesson 21: Without Commitment, Dreams are Just Dreams

2011-05-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

It's Memorial Day weekend and I haven't met a soul. Well, that's not entirely true, I exchanged a few greetings on my morning walks around the lake, but for the most part it's just been me. This is my second solo writing retreat within a month. The picture to the left was my office this weekend. Not too shabby, eh? It was warm this afternoon so I moved onto the deck and pulled up a table and chair and worked on editing Chapter 6 of my book. The flag and the carnation came from the auto body shop (see last post). I picked up my car from the shop Friday afternoon and these were the gifts, along with a "have a nice day" trash bag, that were left on my passenger's seat.

I got stuck in traffic on the way to the ferry. Everyone was heading out of town for the long weekend. There were families, couples, friends, dogs and cats all making their escape. There were no long booths when I got on the boat, so I opted for a chair in the middle of the ship. I sketched out my plan for the weekend on a notepad. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people laughing and sharing a meal together. Mothers with small children did laps around the boat, trying to keep their little ones entertained. I smiled at a little girl who came over to my side to see what I was doing.

What was I doing? Shouldn't I be with friends? Long weekends are precious and rare. Why was I spending mine alone?

Well, the reality is, I have a book to edit and a limited time left with it. I signed up for this. I chose this direction and now I'm committed. I know it was the right choice. But it's not easy, sometimes, to face myself. Alone, I tend to question all my motives for writing and for opening up my life to the public. With no one to bounce my thoughts off of, I get bogged down in my thinking. Editing requires a lot of mental power, my brain often feels drained by the end of an editing session. So, I've tried to divide up the time with cooking meals, walking, taking a bath, and well...sleeping. If I'm not doing one of those, I'm editing.

This is my third night alone without talking in full length to anyone. Writing, particularly book writing, is a very strange reality. While people move about their daily activities, the writer opens the door to an entirely different world. Hours can pass, and I only have a vague awareness of that time on the outside. So absorbed in the writing process, I tend to forget where I am and what time it is. I think when you become what you write, the writing itself becomes powerful. It takes on a life of it's own. When you give it your full attention, it guides you.

Now it's 11:00pm and I don't have much left in me. I think that's a good sign; it means I did what I came here to do. Doubts are still there, questions are still there, unfinished work is still there, but this commitment I have to this writing, to finishing this book, always pulls me through. Without this commitment, I could not do it.