dogs

I think . . . you are a really good dog.

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

Val. cognito ergo sum. valentino

Dogs, how I love thee.

There is something about the way that my dog looks at me that reassures me that all is well with the world.  That things are going to work out.  That she always has my back. That she will be there after all of the dust has settled.  That my worries aren’t always going to manifest in the crazy ways that my imagination presents.

That life is meant to be lived in the moment.  That there is fun to be had and adventures to be discovered.  That spontaneity rules and patience serves.   That the moment is here to be experienced, not anticipated.   That it feels good to bust a move when I am just so darned excited.

Dogs.  Devotion.  Loyalty.  Trust.  And the best sense of humor on planet Earth.  We love them and they love us without hesitation.  You can’t get a friend more loving and loyal than your dog.  They lift us up when we most need it and then never let us down after that.  It’s like a constant sense of elevation that lifts the spirit and blossoms the soul.

Cogito ergo sum: I think; therefore I am  . . . a dog lover.

 

Things that make me happy: my new friend, Rico

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

 

Meet Rico.  I was working away at my office in town when who came in to make my acquaintance?  Rico!  Rico poked his head in to say, “Hello!  Life is good!  I see you!”  There is something about this face that says so much.  All you have to do is look in Rico’s eyes and you feel seen and heard.  Dogs.  They are beauties on earth.

“Dogs are angels sent from heaven

in order to help us to be better people.” – Robert Genn

“Angels are often disguised as dogs.”

“My earth angel came to me as a loving pet.”

“Please, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.”

10 Things I LOVE About Dogs:

  1. Dogs don’t judge.
  2. Dogs are always there to comfort and reassure.
  3. Dogs have a great sense of humor and they like to make us laugh.
  4. Dogs know more about my life than we do.
  5. Dogs have a keen sense of intuition that is reliably trust-able.
  6. Dogs know how to be in the present moment.
  7. Dogs are patient.
  8. Dogs are kind and empathetic.
  9. Dogs are beautiful — on the inside and on the outside.
  10. Dogs are warm and cozy and they smell good after it has rained.

Calling all dog lovers!

What do you love about dogs?  Please, share one (or more!) thing that you love about your dog or about dogs in general in the comments section.  Share your happiness about dogs with us, please!

 

Set your default to trusting yourself.

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

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trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

doubt: a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction

When you compare the definitions of these two words, it is easy to see why it is much more happifying to set your personal default to trust.

Doubt is one of those feelings that leaves us second guessing ourselves into an unsettled state that only leaves us feeling even more doubtful.

Like cells that have their own growth cycle, doubt undergoes different phases or stages. As cells multiply, there are checkpoints at the end of each stage of growth to make sure that the last stage is fully completed before moving to the next stage.

When we find ourselves at the end of a growth cycle or at one of life’s crossroads, let your checkpoints be governed by trust, not doubt.  

Questions of doubt:

Should I accept the new job offer?  

Should I move across the country to a town where no one knows me?  

Should I adopt a new pet?  

Should I go back to school?  

Should I break up with my boyfriend?  

Should I . . . ?  Notice how all of these doubts are foreshadowed by should.  

Re-frame with statements of trust: 

What if we were to re-frame these same questions with statements of trust? Notice what happens when you replace should with am and will:  

I am ready to start a new career.  

I am brave enough to go on a moving adventure.  

My life will be so enriched by adopting a new pet.  

By returning to school, I will learn so many amazing things.  

I am ready to honor my own preferences and become independent.  

Give doubt a shovel and it will bury your hopes and scatter your strength.  It is far more harmful and damaging than we give it credit for.  As we spend time doubting, we spin our wheels and allow opportunities to breeze by . . . even when they are exactly what we have been hoping to meet.  We think that by doing nothing, we are honoring our preferences . . . but are we?  Are we truly?

A Positive Challenge:

The next time you hear yourself doubting yourself or prefacing a sentence with I should or I shouldn’t, maybe you are merely at the end of a growth cycle and you find yourself at one of life’s checkpoints.  Please, be kind to yourself for feeling a little uneasy about launching yourself into the next growth stage.  It’s natural to wonder about the possibilities at these checkpoints.  Take a deep breath, eradicate any and all doubt, and replace it with a Trust Statement.  Say it out loud.  And repeat it as needed.  Imagine what life would look like and feel like if you trusted yourself more than you doubted yourself.

As my mentor Scott would say: You’ve got this!

 

Riding Shotgun

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

What is one dream scenario that you have lost sight of?

quote. mission statement dog work

theunseenwordsproject.com

Yesterday I was crossing the street, waiting for a break in traffic.  A small, beat-up truck passed me — the very kind of truck I used to drive — and I saw a man driving with his dog riding shotgun.  Remembering my one most-amazing-and-wondrous dog who rode shotgun with me in my old truck, I felt a pang of sweet memory pass through my very core.

This particular dog went everywhere with me, so it was a common sight to see the two of us toodling around the county with the windows rolled down while singing along to some tune on a cassette tape.  The dog actually had a better singing voice than I did, but she was no critic.  Happy were we who got to go everywhere together.

When I saw this man and his happy pup in that truck, a dart of awareness passed through me.  It was one of those movie-montage moments where I could view time on film.  I could see me and my furry friend driving here and there in the succession of broken-down trucks that I had the misfortune of owning.

Yesterday as I watched the truck go jouncing down the road, I realized that one of my essential criteria for living a happy life had somehow slipped through the cracks of my ever-shifting paradigms.  At one time in my life, I would not even consider a job opportunity unless my dog could accompany me throughout the work day.  I turned down jobs in Alaska, California, Canada . . ..  If I couldn’t bring my faithful sidekick, I knew that the job wasn’t the right one for me.  As chosen priorities lead to reality, I ended up opting to live in a wall tent on 572,000 acres in a wilderness area.  It was a great situation where my boss did not care in the least if my dog tagged along.

The situation had all the potentiality of being lonely, but I never thought of it that way.  I was living in the midst of all of this incredible grandeur and my dog was right there by my side.  She was my true-blue, thick-and-thin companion in the middle of all that vast quiet.  She would run ahead of me on the trail and defy any bear, cougar, coyote, or free-range horse to come anywhere near us.  My time within all of that beauty there was such a rare opportunity, I appreciated every single day that passed.

All of this was bound to change.  And it did. During my years there, this ace #1 dog-of-a-lifetime passed on to Dog Heaven and other canine companions joined me.  Ultimately, a new job opportunity came up and I couldn’t pass it up.  The only problem?  I couldn’t bring my new dog to work with me.  The schedule was pretty good and the two of us were still able to get out and roam the trails on our 3-day weekends . . . but there was a shift.  And it was bigger than me not being able to bring my dog to work.  It was me compromising on what was important to me.

Looking back, I can see that “Bringing My Dog to Work” served as a bullet point on my Higher Self’s mission statement.

The years have passed.  That job led to another dog-restricted job.  Then I returned to school, and we all know how major universities feel about dogs sitting outside classrooms waiting for their human.  Not a good idea.  The mornings were full of classroom time and the afternoons were taken up by various half-ass jobs that supported me through school.

Outdoor-dog time grew to be more limited for me and free-range hikes turned into long evening strolls through the neighborhood.  Life had changed, as had I.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was focused on Ahead instead of looking at Right Now.

quote. Val. IMG_0103

theunseenwordsproject.com

All of these compromises.  With me feeling so buried by my decisions concerning education and future employment, the changes were all taking on priority status without me realizing that I was granting permission, one way or another, to something that was counter-intuitive to my internal mission statement.  I don’t rightly know how it all happened.  I don’t know when a yes became a no and a no became a yes.  Life changed when I consciously reversed the two and said it was all for a Better Future.

That’s the problem with giving in and giving up . . . you don’t realize that it has all happened until it feels like it’s too late to do anything about it anymore.  But that’s just it . . . it’s not too late.  Not at all.  All sorts of good decisions are before me.  All I have to do is choose.

Life is a lively event.  So many baby steps lead to where we are today.  Today, I want to honor my preferences.  Back up a little bit and review my Mission Statement.  Do a little editing maybe and re-commit to what is still important.  Invite my dream to ride shotgun with me again, roll down the windows, and belt out a tune.

How about you?

  • What’s riding shotgun on your Mission Statement? On your personal manifesto?
  • What’s one dream scenario that you have lost sight of?
  • Is it still alive inside you?
  • Are you ready to take some baby steps to renew it in your life?

We sometimes feel so bogged down by the progression of changes that have taken place in life that it can feel like it is impossible to reinstate one of our long-ago dreams.

Today might be the day that you sit down and ask what is important to you.

  • Commit it all to paper.
  • Keep the items approachable by using simple language. Dreams, written in your own language, will mean more to you than if they are crafted using lofty words and expressions.
  • Put your manifesto where you can see it easily and daily. Maybe it is your bathroom mirror or it is the wall by your desk or on a kitchen cupboard.  The important thing is that you make it visible.
  • Read your manifesto aloud. It might feel weird the first few times you do this, but it is as important that you hear the words as it is seeing the words.
  • When making decisions, think about what is important to you. Let your Higher Self guide you.
  • Dreams are meant to be followed.  Follow them.  They know the way.

 

 

 

 

Author bio: Kennedy Farr’s passion for writing caught light at the age of four when she first learned how to spell her name at a yellow kitchen table on a sheet of lined tablet paper.  Kennedy is a daily writer and blogger, a lifelong learner, and a true believer that something wonderful is happening right now in this very moment.  Kennedy lives high on the mountainside of an emerald-green island in the Pacific Northwest.

Website: https://theunseenwordsproject.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theunseenwords

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Unseen-Words-Project-1095815913825818/ 

 

Collaboration. It’s the Everything that creates Something.

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

Helen Keller wrote these beautiful words: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” 

Here is Google’s “define: collaboration“: the action of working with someone to produce or create something

I like the openness of this definition.  I like the creativity for which the word something allows.  It provides Choice.  The something can be good or bad.  Mindful or careless.  Happy or tragic.  Loving or selfish.  Beautiful or stunted.

Life, at times unfortunately, allows for both.  But this duality gives us Choice.  To dream.  To build.  To create.  To collaborate.  To experience.  In my ideal world, I am opting for good, mindful, happy, loving, beautiful.  And then some.  Having this Choice leads me to consciously and unconsciously create and allow ways for these intentions to collaborate and build something that is bigger than the human spirit.  Bigger than what I could ever do on my own.  I want Positive.  This is the direction in which I want my life to travel.  And I want to travel with those who believe this same thing.  It makes life such a fun adventure.toaster oven

This OK Go video is awesome.  It is a creative masterpiece of collaboration.  I hope that you have fun watching this!

And here is a link to an article that describes the video’s selfless and fantastic motivation of helping needy animals:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2010/09/ok-gos-new-music-video-for-white-knuckles-features-talented-dogs-and-raises-money-for-homeless-pets.html

There are many behind-the-scenes videos and outtakes as well.  It is all just so fanciful.  I hope you enjoy this creativity!  I always feel so good after I watch this testimony to collaboration.  🙂