Archive for the 'Growth' Category

Walking towards joy

Published 05/01/2019 Counsciousness , Death , Growth , Life , Philosophy , teaching , Uncategorized , writing 1 Comment
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2018 I am glad to see you go.

You nearly got the better of me. You tried hard to break me, along with 2017, 2016 and 2015. All of you went on rampages of preposterous proportions to see if you could be the one to wear me down and make me admit defeat. You nearly did. Each of you in your own way did your best. Throwing at me whatever you could muster. Digging deep to maintain the deluge.

I’ll admit you brought me to my knees a few times…. more than a few….but I am made of more than the sum of all of your excruciating pain and heartache. I am made of stardust and little bits of warrior woman. I have fueled myself with love and hope and I have rebuilt myself on a foundation of strength and softness. I stood up to your storms and swayed in your wind. I am still here. I am still rooted. You did not win.

These years came with heartache, immense loss, death and betrayal on a scale I hope none of you ever come remotely close to experiencing. I have mourned and cried. I have shuddered under the weight of worry and surrendered to the storms. I have extended grace where I could and wrapped those I love in all the light I can find.

I am still doing the work. I am still fixing and healing and soothing my soul. There is always work to be done.

Listen carefully 2019. I have set an intention. My intention is simply to move towards joy. I seek joy. I seek light and love and laughter. Work with me universe. Work with me. It is a simple and unassuming request. I do not ask that you provide it, for I can find it for myself. I only ask that you do not stand in my way.

Do not block the light I seek so desperately. Do not stand in front of love.

2019 I ask that you hold my hand and walk with me towards joy.

It’s been a while…

Published 03/10/2018 Counsciousness , Death , Growth , Life , Uncategorized , writing , Yoga Leave a Comment
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I’ve been absent from this space and I have missed it. Not an intentional break. Not a holiday. Not a ‘working on myself’ break. No sabbatical for me.  I have been absent because life seriously got in the way. Seriously fucking in the way and the words had to play second place.  Something had to give.

There has been so much I have wanted to say and I have sorely missed this space. I have missed the pouring of words through me onto this page.  I had so much I wanted to write about.  So much that needed to be curved and moulded into words… but much of it wasn’t my story to tell so I left the pages vacant and wondering.  What is mine to tell simply cannot be told yet. It needs to shift and simmer in me a while yet.  It needs to soften so that my words do not pour out in an angry wounding diatribe.

2018 has been a year that has hit me and those close to me hard.  Really hard.  It didn’t shape up the way I would have liked.  The story, if could have written it, would have been different.  It would be filled with blossoms, sweet summer nights and words from a novel fit for the romance shelves.   I certainly wouldn’t be watching my daughter traverse the time and space of unimaginable grief and immense loss.  As graciously and bravely as she is doing it, it is not how I would have written the story.  I would not have held her, broken and weeping, as she said goodbye to her beloved Matthew moments before they turned off his life support.  No. That is most definetly not how this story was supposed to go. It is not how anyone’s story is supposed to go.

I would not be swimming against the anger and grief of my own story.  The words that bubble up for that may possibly never be written here.  There is a saying ‘the thing you are most afraid to write, write that’.  One day maybe, one day.

Through it all I have taught, run the business and done human things.  The stuff that just is and the stuff that just has to be done.  We do that.  We make our beds and show up the best we can.  We clothe ourselves, conceal our broken parts and go out into the day with the bravest heart we can find.

I did my best to get on my mat every day.  Moving my body so that the energy of trauma and sadness can move through me and not make a home where it is not welcome.

The ability to show up to teach even when it felt impossible has kept me grounded and humble.  The human connection that comes at times of loss and grief never failed to move me and I am grateful to each and every one of you.  My close friends listened (and continue to do so) endlessly to my stories.  They called and they showed up.  They bought me coffee.  They drove me where I needed to be at silly hours of the night.  They let me overstay my welcome and checked up on me when I went quiet.  These are really good humans.

I will be eternally thankful for these good humans.

 

 

 

 

On food and how I move.

Published 10/04/2018 Body , Growth , learning , Uncategorized , Yoga Leave a Comment
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I promised this some time back but – well you know – life kind of gets in the way of life sometimes.  Curve balls, commitments and chores seep their way into all the spaces of your day and all those things that are not so important on your todo list take a bit of a backseat.  This blog has had to take a bit of a demotion to my not so important list for a while but hopefully a revival is on the cards

This particular post has taken it’s sweet time in coming to fruition.  Some things just have to mull about in the brain for a while before they are ready to be committed to the big wide world.  Prompts and prods over the last week or so have given me the push to put pen to paper (which isn’t really the case but you know what I mean)

I regularly, and by that I mean probably twice or more a week, get asked what I eat and what I do to look the way I do at 53.  Well thank heavens these poor people only see me prepped and ready for class in yoga pants that I swear put everything back in it’s proper place.  However, they all want to know so I’m going to tell them and anyone else who is listening.

Firstly I move. A lot!  I do yoga 7 days a week.  I teach classes 6 days a week and you will find me on my mat doing my own practice every day unless work gets in the way.  If that happens I just do as much of my class as I can.  Over the week this probably works out to between 1 and 3 hours per day.  Not every day is three hours but an hour is my minimum.  Personal practices vary between vigorous (inversions and arm balances ) and just rolling about on my mat stretching this way and that depending on current curve balls and state of being.  I teach vinyasa and when it comes to yoga you don’t get much more vigorous than that and classes will leave you in a happy sweaty heap.

So I’m strong and flexible but mostly I get on my mat because it fixes my head and my heart…. both of which need a whole lot of fixing.

What do I eat….

A lot of potatoes….and pasta.

When I say a lot of potatoes I really mean it.  Potatoes – good old fashioned Irish white potatoes (Irish on my father’s side) are the foundation of my diet.  I love them baked, wedged, roasted, chipped – just not mashed! I will cook three or four medium sized potatoes just for myself at most meals. It is possible I will come back as a potato in my next life!

At home I am predominantly plant based.  This means that 80% of what I eat comes from plants).  I don’t eat meat at all and don’t have any dairy at home.  Eating out I’m a little more relaxed and don’t cry if there is some feta in my salad.  I do have one general rule.  If it needs to tell me on a packet what it is I don’t eat it.  I eat real food. A carrot is a carrot and it doesn’t need a label.  Processed food is a no no!

So average day – actually every day – starts with sugar and wheat free muesli with added seeds, raisins and rice milk.

Then around 9 (I might have a small coffee addiction) I’ll often be found having a croissant at VovoTelo to keep me going.

Lunch time varies depending on classes and meetings.  Favourites are pasta with mushrooms and tomatoes from VovoTelo or a baked potato and curried lentils from Nouriti.

I often get in late from class so tend to make things that are either quick or can last a few days.  Three bean chilli is one of my go to meals.  I’ll have this with two or more baked potatoes or rice.  Sometimes I’ll make a quick pasta dish with tomatoes, peppers or mushrooms depending on what I have in the house. Always plenty of onion and garlic and a healthy helping of pesto.  Lentil stuffed peppers with wedges is another firm favourite but my all time best meal is an abundantly large tray of roasted vegetables (including lots of potatoes of course).  Best things to add to this are brussels spouts, carrots, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli and sometimes I’ll throw in a can of lentils at the end.  Saturday evenings are made for trays of roasted veg and Netflix!  I have a few apps on my phone for recipes.  Forks over Knives and Yummly having proved themselves to be the best for me.

….I love coffee, matcha green tea and try to drink plenty of water.

….I drink alcohol rarely, if ever, and don’t drink any soft drinks.  Water is my soft drink.

….I don’t have a sweet tooth.  Dislike cakes of any sort and ice cream but you might find the odd ginger biscuit in my house.

At the end of the day you have to put good stuff into your mouth and you have to move your body. Potatoes and other carbs are not your enemy.  Being lazy is your enemy and eating rubbish is your enemy.

Get moving and eat real food people…oh and meditate!

 

On travelling solo.

Published 11/05/2017 Growth , learning , Life , Philosophy , Travel , Uncategorized , writing 1 Comment
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No one can say that my life has not been interesting.  From the very beginning it appears I was destined to live a life full of challenges interspersed with an occasional adventure.

It all began in Singapore where my mother, just twenty-one, fell pregnant with her second child.  She had married my father, a slim and charming Irish airforce man at nineteen and their first posting had been to Singapore.  A couple of years later we returned to England and within a year or so we were off to Germany where I began my schooling. I distinctly remember being dragged to school through the snow… not eager to leave the warmth of our top floor flat and the sweet stories of ‘Listen to mother’ on the radio.  Three years later I had to leave my first best friend Gillian and return to England.  I cried for a week and experienced my first broken heart.

Back in England it felt like we moved incessantly.  House after house and school after school.  I became a bookworm.  The corner of the school library and a soft cushion became my friend. The books I read being familiar faces no matter where I found myself.  It was during these years that I discovered the value of knowing how to be alone and I remember my mother telling me how important it is to know how to do this.  To being easy in your own company.  To savour the very sweetness that is solitude.

Finally in my teenage years when my father left the airforce and started his own company we started to settle and yet life began to fall apart.  My father, a typical irishman was a drinker and the more money he made the more he drank.  During his airforce years he had never really been home and I was probably to young to be aware of his addiction.  Now it was glaringly obvious and his indifference to me became a thorn in my side but, at the same time, I developed a deep friendship with my mother that lasted until the day she died.

A week after my seventeenth birthday, having been dumped unkindly by my first boyfriend, I hopped on a plane and went stateside to escape yet another broken broken heart and my father.  I stood at Atlanta airport feeling tiny, afraid and incredibly vulnerable.  All I could think was ‘how am I going to survive this’….but I did.  I ended up in South Carolina and spent a year exploring life, making friendships that are still alive today, learning to stand on my own two feet and the art of ‘conversation with a stranger’.

A year or so later I returned to England and instantly regretted the decision.  Driving through the grey, damp streets on a foggy November morning I longed for the sunny skies of the carolinas, the friends I had made there and once again to be far away from my father and the shit storm that surrounded him.  Just eighteen I sat in my parents little house in England and felt lost, alone and once again incredibly vulnerable.  No plan and no idea where to start. My parents marriage a mere pile of rubble and his love affair with the bottle all the stronger.

Now so many years later I am so grateful for those early adventures.  I am eternally grateful for those early life lessons of savouring solitude and travelling solo.  Of learning to talk to strangers and of reading anything and everything.  Of knowing that broken hearts do mend and that there is power in vulnerability.  Of knowing that you don’t have to tolerate other people’s stuff no mater who they are.

Today I savour my solitude and that little armchair at the back of the bookstore is still my friend.  I have more books than clothes and still love ‘conversations with strangers’.  To hear snippets of their stories and exchange friendly smiles.   I am alone, a little lost and once again feeling incredible vulnerable…..but it feels like home.

It doesn’t have to be this way…

Published 07/02/2017 Counsciousness , Death , Growth , Life , Philosophy , teaching , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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In my little world right now I have people close to me who are suffering the unimaginable – stuff we can’t even dream up.  Worlds being turned so upside down that the simple act of breathing becomes impossible.  Heartbreaking, excruciating stuff.  The life is not fair kind of stuff.  The cry for three days and still not catch your breath kind of stuff.

They are not doing this to themselves.  It is forced upon them by the universe for whatever lesson it is they have come to learn in this lifetime.  It is out of their control but it is also out of everyone’s control.  It is just the way it is.  The universe’s plan.  It’s unbearable, but it is the universe’s plan so we catch our breath and move forward as best we can.  It is not in anyones’ control so we breathe and move.  Step by step. Day by day.  Knowing we are doing our best.  All of us doing our best in every moment.

Also in my little world I have other people close to me who are suffering due to the choices of those around them. I have been in that place.  I know how it feels.  I know every single desperate inch of how it feels.  It’s equally heartbreaking….but it’s different.  It’s different because it doesn’t have to be.  It’s the ‘choice’ of the other person.  It can be fixed.  It may take courage but it can be fixed.

Do something once and it is an accident.  Do it again and it’s a choice.  Didn’t have to happen.  Didn’t have to go down that road.  Didn’t have to hurt the people around you.  Didn’t have to do that.

Do it again and it becomes selfish.  It becomes weak.  It lacks integrity and soul.  It becomes pathetic. It becomes deliberate.  The deliberate cause of suffering to others.

Addictions are a disease they say.  Perhaps.

Choice is not a disease.

Addictions are selfish and destructive.  They are harmful and hurtful.  They cause pain wherever they go….and they go everywhere.  They are everywhere.  They are all around me causing immense suffering to people that I love dearly and so many people I don’t even know.  People I have yet to meet.  Addictions are selfish and they are a choice!  I am astonished at the prevalence of them.  I am astonished at the quiet whispering voices as they tell me their stories.  Their stories of breaking hearts and loss of hope.  Stories of broken families and suffering children.  Stories.  So many stories.  I am over whelmed by them.

I do not understand despite a lifetime of being in this place.  I do not understand someone making that choice.  I do not understand the destructive selfishness of it all.

I watched my father destroy his family unit. Destroy his job, his friendships and eventually destroy himself.  Done and dusted and pushing up the daisies by the time he was my age.  He knew what he was doing.  As a child I knew he had chosen his addiction over me.  His selfish destruction of everything around him was more important than I was.

And then I watched it again….

It was a choice.  It was not a disease it was a choice.

It simply didn’t have to be that way.

It never does.

 

 

Don’t be co-dependent on your story.

Published 27/09/2016 Counsciousness , creativity , Growth , learning , Life , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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We all have our story.  Pages and pages of stuff we travel with.  Baggage we hold on to.   Each of us with our own piteous little pieces of our past.  Your father walked out when you were little or your boyfriend cheated on you once upon a time.  You never got that promotion you always thought you deserved or  your school marks didn’t reflect how hard you worked.  You were not chosen for the A team so gave up sport. That guy never asked you out and then dated your best friend.  He left you.  She left you.  Little traumas.  Notches in the bark of our souls that make us who we are. We are filled to the brim with them.  Overflowing with them.  You can’t get to adulthood without bags of the stuff.  We carry it around and blame our messy lives on it.

I am guilty.  A father who was indifferent to me at best and drunk a lot of the time.  A shabby english comprehensive that, were it not for the daily register, would not have noticed I was there.  My father’s job that made us move every few years resulting in no roots anywhere,  no sense of belonging, no real home.  These are just aspects of my childhood.  I would not dare to tread publicly into my teen years let alone all the diatribe that followed.  I would not dare to go on pulling out the relentless garbage of my life and laying it out and telling you ‘see….that’s why’. That’s why I can’t. That’s why I’m too scared. I couldn’t possibly because….

Here I am in my very adult years trying to lay down that heavy load of history.  The mountainous pile of the former me that I have dragged around year after year. The relentless hurt that the last few years delivered in breathtaking quantities.  I am trying, in tiny daily steps, to release any co-dependency on my past.  To believe that ‘I can’ despite a life of believing that ‘I can’t’.

It’s not easy.  We are comfortable in our co-dependency.  It’s a beautiful excuse.  It’s a beautiful excuse to stay in our sweet co-dependent state. It’s a reason to not.  A reason to not write that book or start that business or take up that sport.  It’s a reason to not be easy in that relationship.  It’s a reason to not open our hearts to all the incredible possibilities.

As safe and comfortable as this co-dependency is you are not all that has been.  It’s done. It happened but now is now. It’s not who you are in this moment.  Place all those bags of stuff gently down and move on. Let your heart gently open to all the promise and wonder of what life can offer.

You are not what happened to you.

There is so much to come.

Grief does not know of time.

Published 20/07/2016 Death , Growth , learning , Life , Uncategorized 3 Comments
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Grief is an disobedient entity.  It does not know of boundaries or timelines.  It does not care for working days or weekends.  It does not arrive at the prescribed time, waiting its few mandatory days after shock and despair to enter stealthily through the door.  It does not wrap you in its dark cape for the allotted or subscribed time you might have read about and so think ‘oh yes so now you are here and in x number of days you will be gone and I can move on’.  It does not come when you are expecting it.  It does not always come with death. We have many reasons to grieve and most of them we ignore.

Grief.  It comes in the middle of the most perfect day.  You have just taken a deep breath of pleasure, the sun is out and you can hear the delightful laughter of small children.  What ever it was that was the cause of your grief was months, even years ago.  Long forgotten.  Dealt with, you thought, in the most efficient of ways.  Packed down tightly, taped up and placed in a long forgotten corner of a cupboard never opened.  Then there you are standing in line at the grocery store perched somewhere between the pretty little packets of nuts and the magazines depicting perfect homes and deliciously robust bodies and suddenly you hear a voice, or smell a scent and it hits you like a freight train.  Right there, out of the blue it hits you.  It was there all along.  A tiny ember barely alight somewhere deep within you glowing so quietly you could not even hear it’s whisper.  Then a memory, a sight or sound opens the door just enough to provide oxygen to that tiny cinder.  You feel the heat rise up within you.  Rushing and enveloping you.  Overwhelming you. You are in the middle of the line at the supermarket and all of a sudden you feel your world fall apart.

It comes in a dream and when you wake the day does not caress you with it’s normal sweet and charming hello.  You open your eyes to crashing waves of every unwanted and unwelcome emotion.  Immediate thoughts of ‘I cannot do this day’ engulf your both your mind and every pore from the tips of your toes to the top of your head.  We are who we are though and we get up and tape down that box and carry on.  We shut the door and hope the cinder dies down.  No oxygen, no fire.

Then there you are in line at the supermarket and the heat rises and your eyes fill with tears.   You cry at the checkout and you wipe your eyes at the parking exit.  You stop your car in a random spot in some side street and are engulfed in great heaving sobs that tear you apart.  Once it comes its unstoppable and the pain it seems is unbearable.  That fire will burn and the only thing to eventually put it out will be your own tears.  You can’t can keep closing that door and trying to put out the flames, it will never work.  It will come again and again at all those unexpected times until you finally deal with it.

Thats grief.  It’s unexplainable and although it is not always related to the death of a person it usually involves loss of some kind.  There are many reasons to grieve.  It can be the loss of a place.  The breakdown of a friendship.  The deep hurt from betrayal.  The pain of something that never was when you so desperately wanted it to be.  The bottomless despair that comes with the realisation that things are not how you thought they would be.  The loss of a future you thought you would have.

When it comes it might be because of all these things.  There is nothing to do but go with it.  Pull over at the side of that road and cry those tears.  Stay in bed and refuse to do the day. Open the door and let out that whole lifetime of piled up emotion. Maybe, just maybe then you can start to heal.

Practicing non attachment

Published 29/09/2015 creativity , Growth , learning , Life , teaching , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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A confidence crisis is not confined to an artist.  However, anyone who practices any kind of art will at some point or another face some sort of wobble in their confidence at some point during their creative life.  Probably several actually, and if they are anything like me then they will have them on a regular basis.  They will doubt their technical knowledge.  They will wonder if their creative pool has dried up and they might even want to sell all their kit convinced their last ever piece of create work has long since been produced.

Recently whilst standing before a class of eager and expectant faces I wondered what it is that gives us confidence.  What gives me the confidence to go before people and teach despite the fact that I still have so much to learn? What gives me the confidence to write these words that may will be shunned with hefty giggles and dismissive vocabulary? How do we take confidence into our hearts and lives.

For me confidence simply comes from non attachment to the outcome.  When I first stood on my mat before my very first yoga class I had to overcome a moment of anxiety.  Could I teach? Would they like me? Would they come back?  I reminded myself that every person there that day would have a different opinion of me.  Some would like me and some would not.  Some would eagerly return for the next class and some would go on a search for another teacher who resonated more with them. I let go of the outcome.  I reminded myself that it did not matter what each of their individual opinions were and that it was more important to teach in a way that resonated fully with me.

I believe our education system has to take a great deal of the blame for the collective confidence of the human race.  Imagine, if you will, the young child who stands before her parents and siblings in full confidence singing out a tuneless nursery rhyme.  She has no attachment to the outcome and is glorious in her unadulterated joy.  Fast forward a few years and put her in front of her class where she now has to recite a poem or speak on some inane subject she has no interest in.  Now she is told very clearly there will be a rating attached to her performance.  She simply has to be attached to the outcome.  She is taught to be attached to the outcome.  Each and every day, in everything she does she is learning attachment to the outcome.  In the words of Buddha ‘the root of suffering is attachment’.  She spends twelve years in education being taught to be attached to the outcome of everything she does. She is doomed until she has spent an enormous amount of time working on herself and unlearning this very thing.

There are seven billion of us on this madly spinning planet.  Each and every one of us has a different perception and reality.  If you are creating something every single person that views that work will have a different reality of it and if you attach yourself to the outcome of each of those realities you will end up at the very root of suffering.  Create what resonates with you.  Detach yourself from the outcome.  Write the words that sit pretty on the page before you.  Take the photograph that is breathtaking in your eyes alone.  Paint on that canvas in the way that feels exquisitely beautiful to you.  Run the way that you want to run.  Move the way you want to move.  Sing the way you want to sing.  Detaching your self from the outcome allows you to do and say things that you otherwise might be reluctant to do or say. It frees you from your comfort zone and somewhere out of your comfort zone is where all the good stuff lies.

Try it for a day.  Detach yourself from the outcome of every single thing in your day and see how it feels.  Learning to detach yourself from the outcome is an incredibly liberating thing.  It frees you up to be your true self in all your magnificent glory.  It gives you incredible confidence.  It brings you back to yourself and in that place is all the joy and happiness you could ever want.

 

 

How the universe gave me a lesson in humility

Published 15/07/2015 Body , Growth , learning , Life , teaching , Uncategorized , writing , Yoga 1 Comment
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Last week I was taught a big lesson in humility by the universe.  Life lessons are rarely easy and often sent to us with such impeccable timing it is hard not to laugh at the synchronicity of it all.

I arrive at the national gym chain where I teach my yoga class.  I go to the studio to prepare my music  (I like to do yoga to the likes of George Ezra and Phillip Phillips).  I plugged in my iPhone, rolled out my mat and glanced at the clock.  Exactly seven minutes before class is due to start.  I love the number seven and was feeling pretty good about life.

If I have not already managed my own practice that day I like to spend a few minutes before class warming up so that I can at least touch my toes!  I also like to spend that short time thinking about what I will say at the beginning of class.  It is nice to start the lesson with a few words about some aspect of yoga philosophy.  I decided that I would talk about how there is no room for ego in yoga.  How it is about your own particularly journey back to yourself.  That it does not matter what the person on the mat next to you can do.  That you should not compare yourself to them.  I have a deep belief that ego is a very dangerous thing and responsible for so much of our worlds destruction so it is a matter close to my heart.  Now I say this but somewhere in the back of my mind is the awareness that there is a degree of ego attached to teaching.  There you stand in front of people, knowing something they do not and being able to physically do things they can not.  I am acutely aware of this and yet it still sits there in me.  I admit I get a kick out of the fact that I am probably well past my half way mark in life and able to do things with my body that most of the class cannot do despite being decades younger than me.  I hope I use it to inspire but I suspect that at times it feeds my ego.  It is a human thing.

Inhaling deeply I stretched up in Tadasana (mountain pose) and folded forward to Padahastasana reaching to place my hands flat on the mat in front of my feet. Something I do every single day at the start of my practice.  As I did this I felt a sharp and rather excruciating pain in my lower left back.  I collapsed onto my knees and muttered some exceptionally non yogi words under my breath. Actually I think I said them quite loudly! I tried to stand and could hardly straighten up.  I am sure you can imagine some of the very unpleasant things that were being uttered by me at this time.  I stayed on all fours and tried to roll my spine.  This was not good.

Only minutes to go and no time to call in another teacher.  Deep breaths Niki.  Deep breaths.  Keep calm and carry on. The doors open and bright eyed students appear with all the eagerness of the sun making its way into a new day.  Meanwhile my eyes are watering as if I have been peering into that sun for far too long.

I welcome everyone and go with what I had planned for this particular class.  I inhale deeply and talk of ego and how there is no room for it in our lives…and so we begin our practice.  I was able to do forward bends and most of the balances, however there was not even the tiniest hint of hope that my back was going to go past the vertical.

Humility.  I explain to the class that I had hurt my back and how yoga teaches us to be aware of our bodies and surrender to what they cannot do and rejoice in what they can.  I then tuck my ego firmly where it should be and ask a student to demonstrate all the poses that are quite frankly completely inaccessible to me right now.

Believe me when I say this was not easy. I admit I had to dig deep to find that humility.

Those guys upstairs must have been listening to my every thought and delivered that message to me with astonishingly beautiful timing.

What have I learnt from this.  I have learnt to show a certain tenderness to those students that find poses difficult.  I have learnt that I too must surrender to what my body cannot do and love it for what it can.  Most of all I have learnt that lessons will come to you at a time when you least expect them and you might not always like it but you really have no choice but to be as graceful as you can possibly be in that moment.

We are here to learn and grow.  To always try and be a better person tomorrow than we are today and   to try to do that with as much grace and kindness as we can muster.  When we don’t be sure that the universe will come along and give you a big flat slap as a reminder.

 

 

 

 

 

Letting go of your stuff

Published 22/05/2015 Art , creativity , Growth , Life , photography , Uncategorized 3 Comments
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Recently I had to ‘let go’ of something that was very close to my heart.  It had been in my life for a long time and loosing it was especially hard.  It took many deep breaths and quiet meditations to realise I would be OK without it.  That in reality, letting go of one thing allows space for another to come in.  It’s the letting go part that we sometimes find really really hard.

Life sometimes has a way of stripping you down.  Taking you back to the basics from where you start again.  During this process you may loose many things, or even many people but you will also find yourself.  It is a human trait to cling to stuff and people but loosing either pushes us out of our comfort zone, and it is out of our comfort zone that we truly realise what we are made of.  It’s where our creativity lies.

I want to put this into the context of art.  Lets imagine for a moment you are a photographer that loves equipment.  Has a passion for that extra stuff, reflectors and strobes, triggers and backdrops.  This is your comfort zone.  You are happy shooting your portraits surrounded by your expensive complicated gear.  Then one day your studio is broken into and all your extras are stolen.  You did however, have your camera at home with you.  Just your camera.  No tripod and trigger.  No tethering cable.  No flash.  Now the next day you have a portrait session booked.  It’s really important and you cannot cancel.  So you go back to basics.  You scramble in your mind for a location with great light.  You adjust your camera settings and start to play a bit.  You find yourself being less static without the tripod and shooting from new angles.  Stripped down you find a new seat of creativity.  You are so out of your comfort zone but that alone forces you to be creative.  The artist who finds himself with a blank canvas, a brush and three pots of paint will dig deep and get creative. He will mix those paints into every shade possible and create shadows and light out of nothing.

It’s the same with life.  Have you ever noticed those people who are hoarders.  How they are so often the same people who are stuck in their routines.  How they never move forward and expand.  They stay in the same house for most of their lives.  Shop at the same shop and eat the same food.  Hoard their stuff and die never having gone out of their diminutive comfort zone.  Then there are the people who have no fixed location and few belongings, that live from experience to experience and adventure to adventure.  Always seeking and probably always finding.

It is very easy to get stuck in our space.  Both our physical space and the space in our heads.  It feels safe and we as humans like to feel safe.  We like to feel like we can control our environment and we do this by knowing our comfort zone and staying there.  We don’t always choose to move out of our space.  Sometimes we are forced to.  Life comes along and gives a big kick and we are blasted out of our comfort zone into a new space that is unfamiliar and, to be honest, quite frightening.  We take a moment to catch our breath.  Thats okay.  Then we pick ourselves up and take a look around.  This is the point where we start to get creative.  Forced to expand we start to move forward.  Here’s the good part.  Here is where we find our creativity like the guy who looses his job and is forced to go it alone and work for himself.  When we loose something we make space for something new.  We open ourselves up to possibility.   We move out of our comfort zone and somewhere in that space we find ourselves.

When we are stripped down in life and we lose a lot all at once, this is when we have the greatest expansion.  This is when we have our greatest growth and become open to the most possibilities.  The more space we make the more ‘new’ can come in.

It is not easy.  No it is definitely not easy, but it is when we are laid bare, totally out of our comfort zone with nothing but space before us that we truly find ourselves. This is where we find ourselves being deeply creative.  Where we find the greatest expansion of our mind and our spirit.  If you never leave your comfort zone you will not grow.  In fact the opposite will happen.  If you do not let go of something there will be no space for the new.

Take a deep breath today and let go of something.  It does not have to be something physical.  It can just be an idea, a belief, something you have clung on to.  Send it away with an exhale.  Now there is space for something new and it feels so good just to have that space for a while.  Feel yourself expand as you wait for the new to arrive. When it does enjoy the growth.  It will often come in unexpected ways but it will come and you will grow.  The bigger the exhale the bigger the inhale.  The more you let go of the more space you create and the more room for growth.

Let go of something and you will come closer to finding yourself.

 

 

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