What Would it Take to Get Excited?

A dear friend of mine posed this question earlier today, and it really got me thinking. 

First of all, how often do we go for excitement? 

If you hate your job, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re not thinking of excitement as an initial matter – you may be thinking of survival , or of less misery, or of a vacation on a beach.  But are you thinking about what would EXCITE you?  Probably not. 

What would it take to get excited about __________?   (Fill-in-the-blank with whatever thing you’re wishing was different in your life).

Excitement = Aliveness. 

Aliveness is remembering you’re alive.  It’s energy.  It’s blood flowing.  It’s a heightened sense of … everything.  You are alive.  (And what a freakin’ awesome thing that is!) 

Second:  This query points to the larger question of – what are you going for in your life? 

If you’re going for survival, I invite you to name it.  “I’m going for hanging in there, getting by, doing pretty OK.”  I’m guessing that if you’re reading this blog you’re probably going for more than that in your life.  And yet, we’re all stuck somewhere. 

Maybe you're going for survival without even consciously being aware of it.
So check in with yourself.  Where are you just going for survival?  For getting by? 

Now, ask yourself another question:  What are you really wanting in that area of your life? 

Survival?  I think not.  You want more than that.  Way more.

In this moment, consider what excitement would look like.  What would have to happen to get you excited?  Like super excited.  Way excited.  Like jumping up and down.  Like smiling to the moon excited.  (Seriously, take a few moments to go there.  Really go there.)

Fun, isn’t it?  :)

Here's an idea:  Your WILD self loves excitement.  That naturally enthusiastic, courageous and free part of yourself that is eternally pointing you toward what you love LOVES feeling alive.  It's the giddy kid, it's the burning passion, it's the thing that makes you feel most on FIRE.  Tap into excitement and you KNOW that wild place inside you.  You know that you're alive.

What’s possible if you go for excited?

Yours in wildness~~
Lisa

p.s.  Want some help fleshing out your vision of what that awesome place looks like?  Email metoday for your free exploration session and let’s find out! 

I’m seeing now that I have to remember my human parts.  I need to remember to be gentle with myself.  To enjoy.  To stop and smell the flowers, literally.  To get outside every single day.  To put structures in place that support me functioning at my best so that I can do all the things I want to do.  So that my BEING supports the doing that I’m doing. 

I am seeing this more clearly now, and I’m liking the view.  It helps to put the pieces of this puzzle together.  My inner critic may whisper that I’m “lazy” or “failing” if I have to take a breather for a day or two – now I’m telling her to take a hike for a little while. 

Because I know that my spirit needs space to breathe.  My wild heart needs time and energy to do what it loves to do.  And going, going going doesn’t give my wild heart, my spirit, my soul what it needs to thrive.

So I’m going forward with greater awareness and consciousness of what pace is *right* for me.  And changing my pace so that it works for me. 

Phew, that’s a relief.

Yours in wildness~~
Lisa

What Are You Going For?
 
What are you going for in your life?  In your work? 
(Because they’re really the same, aren’t they?)

What are you aiming for?
What do you want?

Go ahead, picture it.

Okay, you’re living that. 
What do you want beyond that?

What’s the wildest version you could imagine?

Double it.  What’s that look like? 

We need to raise the bar what we’re going for. 
It doesn't have to be hard.

How much good can you do? 
How much love can you create in the world? 

What Are You Trying to Control?

I’ve been thinking about control lately – of trying to control things, of wishing I could control things, and of the feeling I experience when I’m trying to control.

What control looks like for me:  I want a person to be different.  I want them to start doing xyz or stop doing xyz.  I want a situation to be different.  I want things to go the way I want them to.  I think that I should be able influence a situation to have a certain outcomes.  I want a guarantee. 

When I try to control something, it doesn’t feel good.  The feeling is hard to put into words.  Resistance.  Holding onto something . . . tightly.  Constriction and discomfort.  Hardness.  Shortness.  Sharp.  

Significant life transitions often mean doing something completely new.  Career changes, personal changes, and finding a path that allows you to your time and energy in ways that are meaningful to you – often means going into uncharted territory.  Doing something you’ve never done before.  Looking at your world in a new and different way.

Getting off the rails, and hacking your way through the bush. 

• Do you find yourself wanting security and stability as you go through a big life change?
• Do you want to know what comes next, what you can be sure about, in the midst of ever-present uncertainty?

I do too.

And . . . {SPOILER ALERT}

Going through a major change to get to a new and different place requires letting go of control. 

It’s likely that:

You’re not going to know how it will turn out. 
(In fact, how you approach it will affect the results you get.)

You’re not going to be guaranteed success. 
(But how you approach it will affect the outcome in a big way.)

You can’t control every single aspect of a life change. 
(And if you try to, you’re likely missing out on opportunities along the way.)

It’s hard to let go of control. Believe me, I know.  I was a woman who wanted to be completely self-reliant and self-sufficient.  The stuff of good ‘ole American dreams.  I wanted to be able to do it all.  (Okay, I still want to be able to do a lot, but I realize now that I can’t do it all on my own.  In fact, that idea of needing to do it all on my own sounds just dreadful now.)  I still struggle with wanting to control. 

Yet sometimes when I feel like I’m working really hard, I notice that I’m operating with the belief that, “It’s all up to me.  I have to make every single piece of this thing happen.”

And the belief that It’s all up to me has an impact on what I do:  I am so focused on the map ahead that I forget to take a side path and discover something new.  I forget to listen to messages from my heart.  I don’t let the magic in.

On the other hand, when I’m willing to let go of control I can still work hard and trust that good things will come of my hard work.  I just don’t have to be 100% responsible for making them happen. 

I can acknowledge that my 100% input may yield 50% result on one day, and 800% result on another day.  I acknowledge that some days I may be able to only put in 40%, and that’s okay.  It doesn’t mean that I’m a failure.   

Letting go of controlling every aspect of a thing can be the most terrifying thing you’ve ever done . . . and there is a wonderful warm bath of trust waiting for you. 

Letting go of control allows for more movement.  It allows for miracles to happen.  It allows for a natural unfolding.  It allows for more ease and less tightness. 

Because when you let go of control, you are aligned with a greater truth: 
You can’t control everything.  Plain and simple. 

You can show up and create something important and meaningful, but you don’t have to have every single step of that process planned out to a T.  Because that’s not how life works. 

When you give up trying to control, you allow the magic to happen. 

What are you trying to control right now?  What’s possible if you let go of that control?

Yours in wildness~~
Lisa

Why Nature Matters So Much (To Me)

If you’ve read my blog, you might have noticed that I use images of nature to illustrate the life concepts that I often write about.  If you’ve read more than a couple entries that you’ve probably noticed that I use photos of nature very often in this space.  

As I look back through my blogs over the last year I notice that virtually all of them use images of the natural world.  And virtually all of them (99.8%) are photos that I take in my daily travels and select specifically because I feel that they resonate with the writing for the particular day. 

You may be wondering...

Why so much nature, Lisa?
Isn’t it all a little too abstract?
Don’t you take photos of anything else?

Sometimes I wonder about these things myself.  Yes, I do take photos of other things, but the majority of my photos are of nature.  I mostly them on my iPhone, and I also take them on my Canon 50D.  I take videos of trees blowing gently in the wind because I am awestruck.  I take photos of grass and flowers and trees as if I were a scientist studying them – from different angles, capturing just-the-right light, documenting them.

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Why?

Nature moves me.  It speaks to me.  It evokes my emotions – reverence, amazement, gratitude.

When I go out into the natural world, somehow I remember who I am.  My internal voice comes through loud and clear.  My head empties out and I can hear what my heart is saying to me. 

I am at peace. 

I experience a different perspective of reality on this Earth – of tiny humans on a big planet, the vastness of it all, and how small a human life is while at the same time holding infinite potential to have an impact on this planet and its inhabitants.

When I am out in the natural world and slow down, I think about how the air (oxygen) I’m breathing could have come from the tree next to me.  How the sun shining on my forehead is the same sun that fuels the life of the grass beneath my feet and the food that grows in fields miles away from me. 

It makes me realize that the kale I ate in my salad tonight was grown with the help of the very same sun and the very same oxygen (and much more, of course), and that by eating it, then the Earth becomes part of me.  The sun becomes part of me.  The oxygen becomes part of me.  It fuels me as I go about my day to day life.  Same thing for the chicken that was on my salad. 

I realize what I’m saying is something learned in a middle school biology class, and yet when I experience it, I am amazed each and every time.

Because everything is connected.  There is no Lisa without the sun, just as there is no trees or air without the sun.  What I breathe, eat and take in from my environment becomes part of me – literally!  (And it leaves me and becomes part of something else, but truth be told I know much less about that whole process. But ‘nuff about that for now!)

Thich Nhat Hahn says that when you drink a cup of tea, you can see a cloud in your tea.  The simplicity and truth of that is so beautiful.  So beautiful it feels beyond words and comprehension sometimes.

And then there’s the effect that nature has on our souls, our spirits, our hearts – whatever you want to call it. 

Nature heals.
Nature calms.
Nature brings us home to ourselves.

You know that sense of peace that seeps in when you walk through the woods when you’re mulling over a thorny issue?  The quiet of the trees, the rustling, the breeze.  It seeps deep into you and soothes.  It helps you, and you may not even know why or how.  But it does.  You come home to yourself with help from the trees and the breeze. 

What a gift we have to be on this planet.   We can’t ignore that fact.  And the power of nature – what it can do for our wellbeing, our minds and our hearts – is something that I’m going to be exploring more and more.  In real life, and on this blog. 

Nature helps us to know ourselves more deeply.  It gets us in touch with the natural parts of ourselves, the wild parts of ourselves, the parts that are free and deep and knowing. 

The world needs humans who are in touch with these wild, natural, free, deep and knowing parts.  It’s how we’ll heal ourselves, our relationships with each other, and our connection to our planet.  

Stay tuned for more :-)

How has the natural world spoken to your soul recently?

Yours in WILDNESS,
Lisa

Tune into Nature

How do you de-stress?  How do you clear out your mind when it gets full?

The other day I went to a beautiful park not to far from my house and sat in silence for 2 hours and 15 minutes under a tree.  No talking, no phone, no distractions. Sitting, laying and gazing.  Just being with nature.  In utter silence.  It was glorious. 

It’s incredible how a few moments tuning into nature around us can make a world of difference when we’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed or full of the day-to-day.

Next time you’re seeking some calm and clarity, head outside.  

Find a place in the grass, in a tree, under a branch. 
Then slow down and tune in. 
Be patient – it make take a few minutes.

A Story about Learning to Show Up

Sometimes I don’t know what to write when I blog.  Luckily, 10 months ago I made a pledge to myself that I would blog 2 times per week for the next 6 months.  I did, and never missed a day.  Then I extended it for another 3 months, pledging to myself that I’d write 2 times per week.  I did.  With the one-year mark within reach, again I pledged to myself to write two times per week for another 3 months.  And here I am today.  So when I don't know what to write, I show up and write anyway.  Something always comes out. 

Some days I don’t know what to write.  My vision of this blog is that it is inspirational and useful, beautiful and accessible, varied and motivational.  I tap into my wild heart when I write, in order to give you permission to tap into your wild heart.  Looking back on the last 10 months, I honestly can’t believe what’s come out as I kept showing up and writing about whatever was there for me.  I feel really good about that.  I showed up, and I’m going to keep showing up.

And there’s always room to grow.  I want this blog to reflect who I am on a deeper level.  I know that I could do better at that sometimes.  So, I aspire to go deeper while acknowledging how far I’ve come so far.  To even begin blogging was a huge stretch for me.  I had a few fall starts in the 2 years prior to starting this blog – blogs that I wrote and kept private, blogs that were public but I never committed to. 

This is the first time I’ve put myself, my heart and my mind out in public so regularly and so openly.  As it turns out, it’s not as scary as I originally feared.  And yet, to write about what’s on my mind and in my heart twice a week is still a stretch for me.  It’s not always easy.  And yet it’s absolutely critical to me that I continue to do so – because it is one way that I put my heart into the world and practice showing up in a purposeful and meaningful way.

A seemingly random but related story:  When I discovered meditation several years ago, I went to a weekly practice group in New York City.  One evening, a teacher told a story about when she first started a sitting group.  She said that when she started a leading a meditation practice group years ago, she didn’t know what was going to happen.  She didn’t know how the group would grow.  So she decided to just keep showing up.  Week after week she would show up.   Sometimes a few people came.  Other times not a single person came to the group.  And she just kept showing up, time after time.  After a while, her efforts began paying up off.  People came to rely on her steadiness and, well, reliability.  They started to come, and the group grew steady over time. 

I always remembered that story.  It inspires me to show up, consistently and reliably.  When I decided to leave lawyer-land behind and quit my day job, I had to learn a new way of showing up.  Following my heart and soul and creating a world-changing business was a completely different ballgame than filling the role of employee who just showed up and got paid.  Talk about a radical paradigm shift.  I didn’t know how to do it. 

But I knew I had to keep showing up, over and over again.  I had to keep showing up as a human being committed to living my purpose in life.  I had to keep showing up as a woman who was listening to her soul and acting on it’s messages.  I had to keep showing up as a coach who is deeply, deeply passionate about what I’m doing and knowing that I’m serving a better future for the world with my coaching.  I know that by showing up, I’m helping to create a world in which people are alive and living fully. 

If I don’t show up, I am failing to do what I was created to do.  And that’s a feeling I don’t like to live with.  I need to show up for my blog, and for my life.

Keep in mind:  I wasn’t always like this!  A while back I just showed up because I had to.  I physically showed up to get a paycheck.  I was bored a lot.  The whole equation didn’t make sense to me, because I always felt like there should be more to it.  Back then I didn’t know what else was possible.  I didn’t know that I could work harder than I ever had to work before and love it.  I didn’t know that I had something unique to offer to the world, something that the world needs.  (Sidenote:  We all have something unique to offer that the world needs.)  I didn’t know that I could feel so compelled to offer it that I would learn to show up over and over again.  I didn’t realize how ALIVE I could feel if I lived my life this way.  Now I know. 

Honestly, I can’t even imagine what’s to come from here.  Yes, I have some ideas.  I have a vision of where I want to head, and I know I’ll be surprised.  10 months from now, I have no doubt that things will have happened that I can’t even imagine today.  That’s how I feel looking back to last June when I started this blog.  I wonder how I did it all.  Then I remember, I just kept showing up. 

What are you wanting to show up for?

Yours in wildness~~
Lisa

Get Visioning with a Vision Board

I often work with my wonderful clients to develop a vision for where they’re heading – in their businesses, careers, relationships and beyond. 

I believe that when you know where you're headed, it's a lot easier to get there.  If you know what you want, you’ve got a lot better of a chance of obtaining it.

A vision board is easy, fun and often surprising way to start shaping your vision.  It gets you in the visioning zone.  It helps bring out the seeds of what’s inside you to the outside, so that you can see it.  It helps make it real. 

To make a vision board you need 4 things:

1. Poster board, a piece of cardboard, or any surface that you’d like to create your vision board on
2. Magazines
3. Scissors
4. Glue or a glue stick

The easy part:  Gather a bunch of magazines – the ones that you’ve got saved, ones you get from friends, or the one you stick in your purse at the dentist’s office.  If it’s just you, have at least 4-5 magazines.  Another fun idea:  Get together a few friends and vision board together!  Have everyone bring some magazines to add to the pile.

Flip through the magazines with a soft focus (no reading!).  Just look for images, phrases or words that jump out at you, call to you, or appeal to you.  Don’t worry about their meaning and don’t judge them as “good” or “bad.”  Rip out whatever you’re interested in and put it in a pile.  If you see images or words that represent something you’re wanting more of in your life, rip those out as well. 

After 20-40 minutes when you’ve got a good pile, set the magazines aside.  It’s time to start making your board.

The fun part:   From the pages you ripped out, start cutting the photos or words to the size you want to put on your board.  Cut away any extra parts of photos or words that you don’t want.  Then start placing them on your poster board in whatever way feels right.  There is no right or wrong.  Just start placing and see how the pieces want to arrange themselves. 

The surprising part:  As you continue to lay out the words and images you’ve chosen, rearrange them intuitively.  If certain images or words seem to go together, put them together.  If there is a flow that emerges, follow that flow.  Discard any images or words that don’t “fit” with the vision that you find yourself creating.  Only add what feels like it belongs (to you) to your vision board. 

When you like the arrangement that has presented itself, begin gluing!  Glue the images and words onto your poster board, making any adjustments feel right.

Ta DA!  The final product will likely surprise you!

Lastly, put your vision board somewhere in your home or space that you’ll look at often.  Some of the messages on your board will make sense and be very clear from the get-go.  And, there will likely be others that aren’t so clear, and by keeping them in mind (and in a visible place in your space), new meanings will emerge over time. 

Stay open to what your vision is telling you, and where it’s guiding you! 

What has emerged from your vision boards?

Yours in wildness~~
Lisa