Enjoy what is.

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Have you ever thought about how things often have to change in one person’s life before they can change in another’s? Think of a romantic relationship. One individual might be ready to find that perfect someone, but the person they might end up with could be working through a past relationship and is not ready to open up. I think of who I was and where I was at in my life in college. I would not have been the person I was when Chris met me. We would not have worked. Yet, at a later time in our life it was the right time, and it did work out.

The same is true for a job. There might be a specific company that you have always wanted to work for, but never got that job, then one day you do. As you look back at the different managers and leadership, you see that you probably would not have fit in years earlier, yet you do now. Of course you can now see that all in hindsight. Yet that information can help to direct us today. We are each where we are meant to be when we listen to our inner voice, and take the steps that come to us. Our inner voice. We all have a voice that we make the choice to listen to, or not. Often when we do not listen to that voice, we later do things that we regret. Ring a bell?

There is a right time, and a right place for everything. Maybe we will never end up working for that one company, or end up with that individual that we have always been interested in, but if we can know that right now, in this very moment we are where we are meant to be, we can stop wasting time wondering what our life will be like. Enjoy the now. Enjoy what is.

Encaustic badass

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Each year a few days away from our anniversary, we venture to the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. We try to go on Friday so that if we fall in love with a piece of artwork, there is still the possibility that it has not been sold. We have had this tradition for quite a few years, and sometimes we do not find or purchase anything and other years we come home with grins and excitement to go back on Sunday to pick up our new piece.

Karl KaiserThis year we came home with smiles across our face. Karl Kaiser’s talented encaustic work has come home to hang on our walls, and we also got to meet him at the Festival of the Arts. I am enamored with his work. If you are not familiar with encaustic, I encourage you to check out his blog as he will show you how he does some of his pieces. Encaustic is a form of painting using hot beeswax. Many encaustic artists mix their own colors, and you will find that each artist has a very different finished piece of work.

I have been wanting to start doing my own pieces, and had always been told that I would need a blow torch. Based on my multi-tasking and often dream world thinking Chris has not wanted me to have a blow torch in the house. To my excitement, Karl let us know that I could use butane to start out.

The piece you see is many, many layers of wax cut down and embedded into another piece. I love the rich color that he has brought into this piece. If you want to follow Karl’s work, you can like him on Facebook, check out his website, or his blog.

Sea squirts inspire play

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You have to keep playing. Get on your hands and knees, crawl through the dirt, climb, surf, dance, sing. Each day the more we play, the more we grow. I do not mean your waist, I mean your brain muscle. Play is a catalyst to keep adapting and growing, learning and evolving. Last week I finished reading “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul” by Stuart Brown. It is a very interesting book and makes me realize how much more I need to PLAY in my life. This specific idea about sea squirts resonated with me:

“The sea squirt is an example of a basic principle of nature: Use it or lose it. If a capability is not being used, it becomes an extravagance that is jettisoned or fades away. Either we grow and develop or we waste away. Most animals don’t go to extremes like the sea squirt, but the pattern remains the same. Most animals grow new nerve connections extensively only during the juvenile period. The sea squirt stops moving, and many higher animals stop playing, and the brain stops growing. But not humans. The brain can keep developing long after we leave adolescence and play promotes that growth. We are designed to be lifelong players, built to benefit from play at any age. The human animal is shaped by evolution to be the most flexible of all animals: as we play, we continue to change and adapt into old age. Understanding why many animals stop playing in adulthood, and why humans don’t, helps further understand the role play has in adult life.” Page 48

A little side note about sea squirts. Earlier in the book, Brown explains that sea squirts swim around during adolescence, then attach themselves to ships or other structures, then later eat their own brains. It was his example of something that stops developing and growing. If you think about most kids, they do not stop moving, they do not stop playing. Even if they are glued to video games their brain is thinking, changing, even strategizing their next move.

Adults need to be more agile. We need to move it. We need to play. This week I am really going to try to embrace the idea of play. I am going to get rid of my sea squirt mentality and be adventurous, learn, play, and have fun. Are you with me?

 

Change the way you look at things

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It hit me hard and felt like a colonic. Yes, that is what I said. It felt like a colonic. I have had one, I know what I am talking about. All the foggy thinking, gunk, and stirring thoughts and emotions were sucked out of my thought. A dilemma I have been agonizing over for the past few weeks, came clearly to me. I needed to shift my thought. I needed to change how I looked at this situation. It all happened after I came across this quote last week:

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change.”

After a little Google sleuthing, I think it is a quote from Wayne Dyer. I am not sure if he means that by looking at a situation differently, we will see it differently. Or, if he means that by looking at a situation differently, the actual situation (or people involved will actually change). Maybe both would/could happen. Either way, it was an eye-opening moment for me. It has made me think about my little dilemma differently. How I approach it, how I think about it, and how I react to it. Hopefully, that means that it will resolve itself in a way that is better than I can even imagine.

Are there things in your life that could benefit from looking at them differently? Things within your marriage/relationship or with your family or friends? Is a work situation that you think is beyond repairable worth looking at differently and a slight shift gives you the answer(s) you need to realign, change course, and take a project to the next level? Just as I was hit hard, take some moments today, not to get an actual colonic, but to have a colonic of your thoughts. Clear out the gunk, change the way you look at things, and just maybe things will change.

Addicted to cereal?

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I was talking to someone the other day, and they mentioned a friend who was a cereal addict. I know there are definitely worse things to be addicted to, but it made me start to wonder how we get addicted to things. I, myself, have an addiction to salt, often in the form of chips. Give me salt any day over sugar. If you really want to make my day, give me a mixture of both, a little salt, then something sugary, back to salt, and so on.

But, back to the cereal addict. See I know what it is like to be a cereal addict. I live with one. The addict in him shows up often around 11 pm, just before bed. He is a midnight snack cereal user. The only other time the addict might be found is if he is still hungry after dinner. He is good though, mostly his guilty pleasure is for fairly healthy, only slightly sugary cereals. However, offer him a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and he is a goner. Yuck. Cap’n Crunch and Froot Loops leave this film and raw burn on the roof of your mouth.

Now that I am a serial green smoothie drinker, I no longer have cereal for breakfast. I am only known to steal a bite or two from the cereal midnight snacker. All I need is a bite to quench my craving for that sweet milky taste. I have friends who are cereal addicts. I have never asked them why cereal is their guilty pleasure. Now I am curious. A few years ago, we had the opportunity to visit and tour Pixar, and I had to remove my significant other from the “Cereal Bar.” The below video is one that gives a bit more detail about the Pixar Cereal Bar.