How big is your Brave?

July 14, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

How big is your Brave?

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” She also said, “Do at least one thing every day that scares you.” Eleanor Roosevelt was not one to ignore our human need to be brave. Bravery. It calls to us and it asks us to listen. And to act. To do that which intimidates us yet still draws our attention, rallies our inner forces, and knits our talents together. To simply be who we are and to not worry about what others may say or think. As my wise, wise sissy tells me, “What another person thinks is none of your business.” Truth, Sis. This is one of the many reasons I appreciate you.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. Do the thing you think you cannot do.” I strongly suspect that Eleanor was one heck of an advocate. I surely would want her on my team.

This song (video below) by Sara Bareilles is inspiring to me. And it is so sweet, too! Firstly, I very much like the concept/quality/action/trait (I don’t know what to call it) of Bravery. When I act in Bravery, I am stretched in ways that preclude my ego and encourage me to stand up and take a stand. For others. For me. And for those who don’t have a voice. When I am Brave, I give myself permission to say or do something that might lead to judgment or reprisal . . . but I say or do it anyway because my moral compass is in the driver’s seat. Being more of an introvert, afterward, I am always a little surprised and shook up that I took a stand without even really thinking about. It just felt like the right thing to do.

I also like that the video below chose dancing on a public street to symbolize Brave Expression. Have you ever danced in public when others are looking at you and saying, “Huh?” Or have you ever been the first one out on the dance floor? Or do you dance for the security cameras just because they are there?

See, that’s the thing. Dancing is one of those forms of personal expression that can be intimidating to a lot of people. I think this is true because dancing taps into a part of our inner soul and allows it a splashy escape to the outside world. Very few people think that they, themselves, are amazing dancers. Am I a fantastic dancer? No, not really. Do I love dancing? Yes! This is why I don’t want to wait for permission and squander some awesome dance music while waiting for someone else to break the ice and get the party started on the dance floor. I guess I feel that there is a shortage of live-band, dance-worthy music in my life. . . so, as a rule, I’m not going to miss a single second. It is so fun to dance!

Click on the aqua-blue link below for your free journal download. It is written with the idea of inspiring Brave in your life. An action of being Brave provides one of life’s rewards that leaves a shadow of inspiration behind. It doesn’t feel like it stays for very long, but I think that it does. I believe that being Brave grows us from a deep part within.

Your Amazing Aqua-Blue Journal Prompt:

Your Brave. journaling prompt

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and start your journaling binder. Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart. After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say. The only one. Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write. Repeat. And enjoy the journey. It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you, I promise. Life is meant to be grown.]

Sara Bareilles – Brave

Try Something New: What’s Stopping You?

July 12, 2016July 12, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

Is there something that you have been wanting to learn? To do? To try just once to see what it would feel like?

Is the Fear of Failure holding you back? Does it feel like a lack of resources is underwhelming your life? Is there someone in your life who is telling you that you procrastinate and you never finish anything? Is there a voice in your head that always gives you bad advice? Don’t start. You have so much to do around the house. You have to get up early in the morning. You haven’t done laundry for a week. The garage is a disaster.

Do you feel like you simply do not have enough time to even think about starting something new?

You make the choice.

Well, there’s bad news and good news. The bad news: You don’t have enough time. The good news: You do have enough time. You choose which news you want your inner soul to hear. You choose.

I kept delivering the bad news to my heart, my mind, my hands, my spirit, while forestalling the good news for an unspecific time in the mythical future when “I had more time.” I was living in a steady hum of constancy that was focusing on everything that wasn’t quite right with my life: playing an elaborate shell game with finances, juggling too many jobs with school and homework, barely keeping up with household chores, and feeling like my life had all the fun sucked out of it by some cosmic vacuum cleaner. All of this MindSpeak was proving to be so exhausting to my Inner Spirit that I simply stopped trying to inject newness or creativity into my day.

It felt like I was buried by life’s stuff.

I wasn’t merely stuck. I was buried. I would find myself paying bills online while listening to a class-assigned podcast while brushing the dog while folding the laundry while feeding the cat. I was all over the place. All of this multi-tasking madness. . . until I thought to add a new personal challenge to the day’s mayhem: Try something new every single day.

In the beginning . . .

In the beginning, this challenge verified the bad news –> it was something that felt like an added extra that felt to be overwhelmingly huge and impossible. My MindSpeak went into hyper-mode: When am I going to have the time to try something new every single day?! My days already feel like pasta in a pot of water — on constant boil and threatening to spill over onto the clean stove top at any given second.

The Wooden Spoon Trick

But I was so craving Different in my life. Better. More centered and mindful. I remembered reading that if you lay a wooden spoon across a pot of boiling pasta that it won’t over-boil. The pasta can boil merrily away with no more messy stove to clean up. So simple and easy . . . and it works! This Wooden Spoon trick reminded me that life need not be so overly complicated. Just try . . . and do . . . and lay the spoon across the pot. And try again. It is absolutely possible to turn a moment of my day into a gesture of mindfulness. I can make it happen. I will make it happen. I scrawled across the top of the wall-mounted white board in my office with my blue marker: You’ve got this! Try Something New! Today! I mean it!

It has proven to be a bit of an experiment to see how it works.

I originally intended on focusing on one single something new to try for the 30 days — in an effort to create a positive new habit. My thought: develop some consistency and build some sense of discipline by adding only one thing for an extended period of time. Like one of those scary-clown jack-in-the-boxes, all sorts of ideas came popping up out of my mind’s Procrastination Department. Play piano every single day. Save on gas and ride my scooter to work every single day. Eat a healthy breakfast every single day. Work out every single day. Sort through one box in the garage and get rid of stuff. Do one or all of these things every single day for 30 days.

What did these things have in common?

But I found that these ideas weren’t working — and they weren’t very inspiring either. And besides, everything that I was thinking of involved fulfilling some obligatory should: be healthier, practice music, save the environment, clean the garage. All of which are very lovely ideas, but still . . . This challenge was supposed to be fun and invigorating.

As I was casting about for the best way to implement my challenge, I discovered that was working was trying something different, unique, and unexpected every single day. Examples? I started piano lessons — and have been pretty disciplined regarding playing everyday. I went dancing at a casino — great stories as a result of this adventure. I broke out the new orange-and-white kitchen towels that had been preserved in their pristine state in my kitchen drawer — now brightening my kitchen and thoroughly broken in with the hues of red wine, carrot juice, and tomato sauce. I introduced myself to a stranger — and we have since become acquaintances.

You get the idea. I called an old friend just to say hi. I bought Swiss chard at the vegetable stand. I wrote a long overdue letter. I told someone about my current writing project. I had dinner at a restaurant that I had been wanting to check out. I took photographs of garbage. I added kale to my morning smoothie. I had fun with some color and painted on canvas. And another new thing for me? I set aside judgment of “what is good” when I was done painting. I simply valued the experience and the time spent swirling color around.

I started reading my horoscope. I subscribed to a new-word-of-the-day website. I started blogging. I bought three tiny wooden tops, which are proving to create a really relaxing “stop point” during work and study time at my desk. I spin the tops and, while they are spinning, I do absolutely nothing. I learned that an absence of activity can feel pretty good.

My Try Something New Challenge has proven to be that magical wooden spoon on the pasta pot. I not only have enough time to Try Something New, I have plenty of time. Life’s harried pace has reduced its boil a bit. Not completely, but a bit, nonetheless. Nothing is boiling over and making a spilly mess that I have to clean up.

It feels like I have effected change. Like the motion of the little tops, the vibrational ripples have been spreading. There have been some really fun and surprising and happy results from being willing to shake things up. I don’t understand the way that time has expanded, but it has. What I learned about this personal challenge: The hard part was starting. The easy part is enjoying the expansive feelings of reward and appreciation.

You’ve got this!

Would you like to share in this challenge with me? Is there something new that you have been really wanting to do?

Please, leave a reply and post your One New Thing and share how it is enriching your life. We all would love to hear about it!

Life is a lively event.

Try something new, spin some tops, & effect the ripples of happifying change.

What’s stopping you?

When Losing & Gaining Are the Same Thing

July 11, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

My journal question of the day from my 5-year journal of 1,825 Answers is: “What do you have to lose?” This one is a True Stumper. Answers came flying at me from the left and the right. From above and below. And a few shot their arrows of truth straight through my soul. I thought of the physical and the cosmic, the overtones and undertones of this question. The tangible and the intangible. Terra Firma and Universe. Worldly and spiritual. Scary and serene. Serious and funny. Physical and emotional.

What I first wrote for an answer was intuitive: “Absolutely nothing.” But then, I don’t know, something nudged me again from the inside so I added: “Absolutely everything.” Then my rational brain wrote: “I really don’t know how to answer this.” Then my spiritual self wrote: “The concept of loss encompasses a great deal of life’s essence and interpretation.”

I sharpen my pencil and go back to the original question on the page and cross out everything I have written and write in response to “What do you have to lose?”: Optimism & belief & my ability to love.

And I realize that I am writing myself into circles that are far too confining and . . . truth: I need not be so confined by someone else’s question. I simply rewrite the question and cross out the word lose and write in the word gain, re-phrasing it to read: “What do I have to gain?” By re-writing the question, I am inspired to re-write embedded self-perceptions of lack and to safeguard any existing self-perceptions of wealth — true, real-life, inside wealth.

And then I think: Wait a second. Losing and gaining might actually be the very same thing . . . for when I re-phrase the question as “What do I have to gain?” my answers are the very same as for what I have to lose: Optimism & belief & my ability to love.

Nothing like a little convoluted writing to unsquiggle a simple question. My takeaway from today’s question: Gaining is the same as Losing. Perspective sometimes wins out over reality. It’s time for me to think on Abundance Theory and keep focused on the sunny side. Eventually time gets us to where we want to be heading . . . which potentially leads to the next question: Where am I going anyway? A question to be answered on another day . . .

So . . . your journal question for today: What do you have to gain?

If you feel comfortable sharing your answers, please, do so in the comments below. We all grow from others’ diverse experiences and perspectives. What do you have to gain?

Life is a remarkably lively and engaging event.

Go forth, answer squiggly questions, and appreciate what you do have in life.

What’s stopping you?

Embrace Your Inner Honey Badger & Make Some Mud Balls

July 9, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Escape your present reality and think like a honey badger. Every time I watch this BBC documentary clip of the honey badger, I am so inspired by this animal’s persistence. The honey badger’s focus on escaping the enclosure is nothing short of amazing. It uses any and every resource it has to get to where it wants to go. This animal truly is a marvel. And what a lesson to all of us who doubt or fear or give up or don’t believe that something is possible. The message straight from the honey badger itself: It is possible. Just watch the video (4:12) and you will see what I am saying. It is a hoot!

When I watch this video, I think about my life and about where I want to go. Where I know I want to be. What I want to accomplish. I am reminded of that quote by Lewis Carroll, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” Well, the thing is: I do know . . . and I am expending personal resource: time, energy, creativity, etc.

But still . . . am I using every resource that is available to me?

This honey badger’s tenacity shows me that the answer to my question is Absolutely not. The thing is: I know that I am capable of so much more. Perhaps this is what drives the pistons of life’s dissatisfaction or confusion or self-defeat within my inner world. I know that I have so much more inside of me to create, to offer, to be. In the video, the honey badger even makes mud balls (!) to stage its escape. Mud balls . . . an escape prop out of dirt and water. Maybe I am easily moved, entertained, and inspired, but I find this very inspiring. This honey badger never ceases to execute the next escape plan with what diminishing resources are available. It uses ingenuity to make its goal happen, no matter what “tools” are available.

The word escape has so many different connotations. It can mean that I am escaping from something that isn’t pleasant or that is demoralizing. Or it can mean that I am experiencing a moment of escape, like the feeling of reveling in the sunshine on that Maui beach . . . but still with life’s root-of-reality reminding me of that which I will be returning to once vacation is over . . . something that isn’t bad but that isn’t all that great either.

Watch the video below (4:12), be inspired, and then click on the aqua-blue link to a fun and inspiring journaling prompt below. Have fun with the prompt. It could very well have the power to create a ripple effect into how you choose to live your life. I wish you the very best of energy with your respective dreams and goals.

Click on the aqua-blue link below for today’s journaling prompt: Your Great Escape Plan

Your Great Escape Plan

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and add it to your journaling binder. Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart. After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say. The only one. Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write. Repeat. And enjoy the journey. It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you, I promise. Life is meant to be grown.]

Leap & Land with a Bang

July 7, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

Check out this BBC video of mobula rays and their artistic, acrobatic, and aerobatic show. They are spectacular. Who knew that rays could leap — and land — so amazingly? Their landing sends a huge boom through the water. The higher they leap, the bigger the bang upon landing. It is believed that the rays that make the biggest impact, give themselves the best odds of standing apart from the herd and of leaving with a mate.

Watch these fabulous flying rays (3:12):

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150512-watch-these-giant-rays-fly

Mating rituals aside . . . when in a group, how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you get noticed? How do you draw attention to yourself? This is not about ego-grabbing narcissism that demands every speck of attention in a social setting. This is about expressing yourself in your immediate world such that you get noticed, feel understood, and build the best opportunities to connect with others. Connection . . . it truly is what makes the world go around and is what gives significant meaning to what we do when we aren’t in the midst of connecting. We, as humans, need connection . . . why not do it with a figurative bang?

So, taking a cue from the mobula rays . . . the higher the leap, the bigger the bang upon landing and the better chance to stand out from the crowd. What is one thing you can do today or tomorrow or the next day to get noticed? To make a difference? To be you? To exercise your unique you-ness? Give yourself some credit for being important in the grand scheme of things. Leap spectacularly and land with a big bang.

Being able to think of something that you will actually do might be a stretch for us introverts. It might feel unnecessary or unbecoming or way out of one’s wheelhouse. But why not try one little thing, make a change-up in your wardrobe. Skip down the sidewalk to retrieve your mail. Engage with the barista as you wait for your Americano. Leaping is different for everyone; it is something only you can define for yourself.

Think One New Thing. Leap and land and leap all over again. It looks like these mobula rays are expending a tremendous amount of energy to go flying out of the water. This is something that I think we sometimes want to avoid: The water feels so comfy. I don’t think I can leap very high. I’m not very athletic, after all. Landing might cause me pain. Someone might laugh at me or think I am weird. Simply put? Expend the energy. Your life will become different because of it. I promise.

And the thing about leaping is that there is gravity on this planet. You will land. With a bang. Why not make it a Big Bang and stand out from the crowd? Take a stand for you. For a friend or a colleague or a student or a child or a stranger. And for the world that surrounds you. The Universe will thank you for it.

Click on the sky blue link below for today’s journal prompt. Have fun discovering (and making!) your leap!

Leap high and land with a bang. journaling prompt

Best When Fresh

July 5, 2016July 5, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Love and eggs are best when they are fresh. – Russian Proverb

If you could hatch one idea or concept or event or mindful change or good habit or new relationship or . . . . what would it be? Be creative and pick what bubbles to the surface first. I can think of a few right now that are nest-ready and deserving of some attentive sitting right now. The secret for me and my sometimes-scattered ways is for me to take a deep breath, focus, and put in some serious incubation time. Who knows what might hatch as a result of some focused care, attention, and positive intention?

Your prompt for today:

Open your journal and draw a line down the vertical center of your page. On the left side, write a minimum of three things that you would like to hatch right now. On the right side, write a brief description of what your hatchling might look like. Have some fun with this and take a few minutes to relax and to do some nurturing. For example:

Playing my mandolin every single day —> Sitting in with that fun Monday band at the book store

Eating more health-conscious lunches —> Create one of those fun salad-in-a-jar concoctions for work tomorrow

Get outdoors more in this beautiful weather —> Take more mini-breaks while working and take some short walks to stretch and to get some fresh air

As you can see, some of your ideas might require some time while others do not require a lengthy incubation period at all. Some are as simple as going to the produce market, buying some fresh veggies, and washing out a Mason jar. So simple . . . but a hatchling, nonetheless.

Click here for a fun video on how to make a Mason jar salad the night before . . . we can all benefit from a health-conscious lunch.

Life is a lively event. Be good to yourself today. Go forth and nurture those eggs.

Yes, you can go home again . . . if only in your dreams.

July 4, 2016July 4, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

My Hometown

Last night, I had vivid dreams of my childhood home in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. The place where I learned to swim in post-thunderstorm mud puddles, to build elaborate snow and ice tunnels, to discover the magic of reading, to try to walk to the end of a rainbow, to revere and emulate Mae West, to respect the wisdom of my older siblings, and to understand that life sometimes deals out unfairness without warning.

These dreams of last night involved highlights of childhood that were happy, peaceful, and creative. They were moments that contained laughter, bliss, and sibling camaraderie. It was a rare gift of benevolent recall via slideshow with me starring as my own little-girl self. The dreams allowed me to visit with my father, who recently passed over in December, and he took me by the hand and led me on a tour of highlights that reminded me that my early life, indeed, offered shouts of joy that have somehow become strangely muffled in the memories of my adulthood.

Life is what I make of it. And so is fun and my sense of playfulness. This past weekend, while writing out my to-do lists on my wall-mounted white board, I caught myself wondering, This is nothing but work and chores and items of destined procrastination . . . What happened to simply having fun? I wrote “HAVE FUN!” at the bottom of the lists for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday going forward.

Still, I started to wonder: What has happened (!?) to me and my life such that I am having to start prioritizing fun? What happened to getting out there and having some good ol’, mud-puddle-stomping, spontaneous fun?

In an effort to re-gain spontaneous Fun in My Life (back to that concept of planning and prioritizing again!), I am going to try an experiment. As I seem to need the reminder, I am going to write on my list of to-dos everyday for one month:

Have some fun . . .

And cross it off my list. And just see what happens. And enjoy life. I want to move out of my current state of Get-‘er-Done to a renewed paradigm of Have-Some-Fun.

Anyone out there want to join me? And keep me posted on what you do? For me, it’s time to re-claim that girl who liked to sit on the front porch rail of our house, swinging my legs, and belting out Mae West quotes and tunes (C’mon up and see me sometime!) to any passerby who traveled through our tiny town. It’s time to start having some Fun!

Mae West: You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

Main Street, Hometown

Timshel & Epigenetics

July 3, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Earlier in the week, I posted about your personality (Nature versus Nurture) and the Glory of the Choice (timshel). These thoughts stayed with me throughout the week. . . and then I came across this TED talk today about epigenetics: “How the Choices You Make Can Affect Your Genes” by Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna. Here is a summary of this TED talk: “Here’s a conundrum: Identical twins originate from the same DNA … so how can they turn out so different — even in traits that have a significant genetic component? Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna explains that while nature versus nurture has a lot to do with it, a deeper, related answer can be found within something called epigenetics.”

If you have 5:02 today, view this TED talk. The information is very compelling, satisfying, and inspiring. The way that it is explained in the talk is to “think of DNA as a recipe book.” The narrator goes on to explain how “genes in DNA are expressed when they’re read and transcribed into RNA . . . which is translated into proteins into structures called ribosomes.”

And so the story unravels into the most intricate, yet simple, explanation as to how the choices you make in life very possibly affect your genes. I have spoken with people who have done Genetic Re-writing work, and it now makes more plausible sense to me. This is interesting research and, after thinking on the wisdom of Steinbeck’s timshel, it all ties together in a very pretty spiritual-genetic bow: thou mayest + genetics play a synchronous role in how we experience Life.

Sometimes when things come together like this, Life feels both larger and smaller than I could have ever imagined. Taking in the micro-vast world of genetics coupled with the infinite non-perimeters of the universe does a pretty good job of answering all of my questions for this week. Sometimes I just have to sit back and say, “This is all quite amazing . . . and I don’t even need to understand the detailed intricacies to be a Believer. I believe.

If you have a moment, please, do view this TED talk. If you have ever wondered about Life on Levels of Infinite Curiosity, it will not disappoint.

How the choices you make can affect your genes – Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna

Your journal prompt today (click below) is as simple and as a complex as is this topic of re-writing your genetics. Keep your writing clean and simple and don’t go down any rabbit holes or garden paths. Keep it easy and uncomplicated. Listen to your Higher Self and record what it has to say.

Epigenetics and Choice. journaling prompt

Your Personality . . . & the Glory of the Choice

June 30, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Your personality . . . what is it exactly? Aside from the usual adjectives of fun or moody or sunny or temperamental or intense or Type A or laid back or . . . what exactly? What does it really mean to be assigned a personality type?

We’ve all pondered the big debate of Nature vs. Nurture . . . how the spark of life is blessed/cursed/or combination-therein by congenital behavior . . . or wait! Is it actually shaped by environmental and emotional factors? And then these is all of the vice-versa stuff that leads one to accept and embrace both and then not think much about it.

Fascinating research points to many interesting findings that help us to understand Who We Really Are, our emotional and social intelligence, and our perception of positive and negative influences. Nature or Nurture? It is an enormous question that no one can really answer with total authority. Take the story of the two children — identical twins, actually — standing on the ocean shore. They are enjoying themselves while the salt water is gently lapping at their toes. Suddenly, a rogue wave washes over the top of them. The same wave, the same temperature of water, the same element of surprise. One of the twins starts to cry and scream and run from the water. The other twin splashes back at the wave while laughing. While this story would neither withstand nor support the rigors of a research study focused on Nature vs. Nurture, I like it nonetheless. It gives me pause: Why not laugh? It’s a heck of a lot more fun than crying and screaming.

And in the midst of all of this wondering and debating and agreeing, I do believe that there is much to be said for the concept of timshel — the Hebrew word for thou mayest.

When I think on topics of this sort, my mind wanders back to a Time of Great Impressionability in my life, and I was reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. What a book! Well, “the story bit deeply into me,” and Lee’s treatise on timshel has stayed with me all of these curious years later — a testimony to the notion that life is one great impressionable moment after another.

It is my hope that sharing this gem of Steinbeck’s brilliance and wisdom will not act as any sort of spoiler. The book is brilliant and one worth reading. Like life, Steinbeck’s writing is intense and provocative and profound. He writes the sort of story that stays with you throughout the years. I thank Mr. Steinbeck for opening my eyes, my mind, my heart, my soul, and my sense of wonder to the notion of thou mayest: “the glory of the choice.”

Last week, I came across this quite lovely Personality Test online. I normally don’t click on these tests, expecting some sort of hook to be set before you receive your “results,” but something prompted me to go ahead and try this one. Before reading any further, go ahead and click on the link and visualize your responses to the prompts.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/this-cube-personality-test-will-absolutely-blow-your-mind?utm_term=.onK9zJNbz&sub=4259074_8744597

All done?

What do you think? How much of the explanation of your visuals did you feel was accurate? At the very least, I felt that I was given a sideways glimpse into me — parts of me that are actually true that I generally don’t consciously associate with my “personality.” I think about Steinbeck’s artistic weaving of timshel into East of Eden . . . and I am reminded that thou mayest carries with it a personal(-ity) responsibility of creative and paradigm-shifting mindfulness that requires daily cultivation, acknowledgement, and celebration on my part.

Personality assessment aside . . . overall, we need not be so hard on ourselves. I think we sometimes embrace the opinions of people — people who truly don’t know us — with far too much zeal, and we assign too much authority to the editorializing that is done by others. We have a proclivity toward jumping into the sinkhole: a morass of self-blame, regret, and guilt that we assign to nature- and nurture-defining personality quirks . . . epic actions that play with our hearts and attempt to define how we choose to forge present moments into future goals and dreams. Or . . . is this just my personality?

I used to have a quote taped up in every room of my house: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen. In the midst of one particularly Challenging Time, I was re-reading the quote, and I realized that I needed to make an edit. I crossed out about to happen and scribbled in happening right now:

Always believe that something wonderful is happening right now.

The current paradigm of Overwhelm in that moment screeched to a halt, and life felt like it took a gentler curve toward heart-healing and happiness. When I realized that I had a choice to become someone new on the inside, my whole life shifted. This epiphany didn’t segue into some neat and tidy story-book ending, but it did nudge me into a new place, such that I could get back into a timshel state of mind: “the glory of the choice.”

I leave you today with the prayer, the wish, the hope, and the thought that today is a good day for you. A truly good day. One of gratitude and filled with micro moments that tell you that Now is Now and life is evolving, constantly evolving, as something that is wonderful. If this moment isn’t all that great, just wait for the next one. It will be here before you know it — full of promise and full of timshel. With some refining, life really can be borne from “the glory of the choice: . . . keeping “the way open.”

Click on the highlighted link below to download today’s free journaling exercise. Have fun journaling and putting a new spin on perceptions and keeping your way open!

The Glory of the Choice. A Different Spin. journaling prompt

A reminder that gifts of beauty await when we keep our hearts open. So lovely.

[P.S. Here is the real Spoiler Alert: To read a longer excerpt that discusses timshel in greater detail from East of Eden, click here. If you are planning to read the book . . . do not click here.]

Fearless or Irresponsible? Living In the Overlap.

June 27, 2016July 23, 2016 / Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

For whatever reason, I was thinking today about a time in my life when I was acting quite irresponsibly. At least that is how it must have appeared from an outsider’s perspective. To me, and with a goodly measure of hindsight, what felt to be intrepid was probably pretty rash. And maybe even a little naive and dumb.

I was also thinking today about times in my life when I was acting quite fearlessly and how life was just one long ride of incredible excitement. Every day was new and different and challenges abounded as a result of this fearlessness. I was riding a big wave and somehow managing to stay on the board. I look back and think, Huh. How did that even work?

Fearless? Irresponsible? Is there even a line between the two? Maybe life is one big Venn diagram . . . a symbol of where we place our confidence in life, in love, in ourselves. I don’t know. In that we are never completely aware of the full consequences of our actions, it is unclear as to how willy-nilly my behavior truly was. And continues to be. Still, it seems to be true that all kinds of crazy and dumb can lead to positive outcomes. It sometimes comes down to the question of What we are willing to do for the pursuit of love and happiness? What kind of risk are we willing to take?

Click on the link below and print out this journaling exercise. Do some free associating with the diagram. I’m not suggesting any empirical outcome. I am simply asking you to consider that what you might carry as a regret might not have been as dumb and irresponsible as you think it was or is.

Life happens. Consider the alternative. I’d rather be living in the Overlap or even the Outer Fringes . . . knowing that I am willing to take the risk to try. Just try.

Fearless or Irresponsible. Living in the Overlap.

[Three-hole punch this exercise and put it in your special journaling binder. It is so rewarding to look back over writing that is honest and that encourages you to grow. My journaling friends all say that they are glad they have saved their writing in one binder or notebook. They also say that they are happy that they dated their writing and recorded their location. You might be in the park, at your desk, or on a ferry. You might be on an exotic vacation or you might be waiting for your laundry to finish drying at the laundromat. No matter where you are when you are recording your thoughts and feelings, when re-reading your entries at a later date . . . your spatial memory will trigger the Feelings of Epiphany you felt when you were discovering your Voice and your Truth. Happy writing!]

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The Unseen Words Project

Giving Voice to Your Higher Self

believe

How big is your Brave?