Happy Coincidences

I like to think of happy coincidences as those moments in your life that just seem to fit in perfectly regardless of whether or not you knew they were coming.

I could even use the word kismet. Not quite fate, but more like everything is as it should be. You should be exactly where you are right now. You should be exactly who you are right now. The people and situations in your life are exactly as they should be right now.

Everything is perfect.

I'll use myself as an example.

I've always felt drawn to "New Age" type stuff. I use quotation marks because what really is new age? New age is old stuff, just new again because fresh eyes are finally open to it. Regardless...

I was the kid who dragged her parents into the health food store at age 8, completely spellbound by all the cool foods, spices and things that I couldn't pronounce. That was just what I liked.

I wanted to try veggie burgers before they were cool or even accepted.

I never questioned why or how the thought of health food stores appeared in my young brain, but I just knew that that was something that was me.

Fast forward 20 years and now I work in holistic health and nutrition. The once odd ball desire of mine to head off to a health food store is accepted as normal and the word "organic" is widespread and over-used.

Why is this a happy coincidence?

Because it was the beginning of an enlightening journey for me that brought me to the present moment.

Without that childhood desire, I don't think I would have started to re-learn about the things I loved as a child.

I always felt like I was a different child. Danced to the beat of my own drummer, so to speak.

I conformed, like a good kid, but somehow always kept at least a little of what made me unique.

But, like most adults, I became a product of my situations and life experiences and I forgot who I was at my core. I let myself get caught up in things that never deserved the years I gave them, let alone any time at all.

But that was perfect for me. I needed those experiences to be able to re-open my eyes to the coincidences that are happening all over my life now. Only now can I appreciate all the blessings that I have been given.

So I call them happy coincidences.

You may think of it as just strange coincidences. Like when you're thinking of someone or something and that person calls or the thing you were thinking of appears.

You might scratch your head and wonder what just happened, but I like to think that it meant to happen that way.

If we didn't think of coincidences are happy or good, then we would miss out someone or something really great. We can learn a lot from the experiences in our lives, but we need to keep an open mind and an open heart to do that.

It can be a lot harder than it seems.

So, try it today.

Keep an open mind and when you meet someone new or someone not so new, when you have a new experience or go through a particular situation, ask yourself, "What can I learn from this person, this place, this experience? What can I take out of this that is good and beneficial to me? How can I encourage things like this to continue happening OR how can I discourage this?

You have the choice. You decide how you are going to deal with all the happy coincidences that happen in your life.

The Choices We Make Are More Important Than We May Have Ever Thought

For the last week or so, I've been having some very interesting conversations around the idea of "Choice."

We are all intelligent people so it shouldn't be a foreign concept when I say that we all have the capacity to choose everything in our life. Almost like a short order cook, our choices can immediately influence our surroundings and our current situation.

This sounds like it could be horrible, right?

Well, yes and no.

Being able to consciously make our own choices and decide for ourselves who and what we spend our time, money and energy on will, in effect, put all the responsibility of how and why our life plays out the way it does on us, YOU specifically.

We, therefore, cannot blame anyone else for how our life is going- not considering events and natural disasters outside of our normal control.

So what does that mean?

That means that I cannot blame you for me having a bad day. That also means that you cannot take credit for when something good happens in my life.

See how that works?

We create our lives with our choices so now the time has arrived for you to finally claim your life as your own.

You can say that your life is not your own- you have a family, you have a job or career (there is a difference), you have responsibilites, you have things that you HAVE to do.

I don't agree.

I believe that all of the above "limitations" are merely the residual effects of choices that we have made in the past.

Yes, you have a family. You chose, either consciously or not, to have that family and all that goes along with it.

Yes, you have a job or career, once again, you made that choice to have one because you wanted something or you were told it was what you HAD to do.

It all goes back to what you want to do, what you want to be and what you want to have.

You make the choice.

It is your decision.

It is your life.

It is time to reclaim the power of creating your life with the decisions that will take you from where you are now to where you'd like to be.

There's a problem though.

You have already put yourself onto a specific track. You have set course in a particular direction and are steadily plodding along towards that end point.

How do you get off?

Bad news- you don't.

Good news- it's never too late to make different decisions.

This makes me think of the movie "Groundhog Day." Bill Murray keeps making the same choices, the same decisions day after day, week after week and all he gets is the same exact thing he got the day before.

Does this sound familar to any of you?

You do the same thing, you get the same result.

BORING!

Is that the life you want for yourself?

Yes, perfect! Keep going!

No? Good, make the change now. You already know how.

Once Bill Murray was willing to change his usual routine, deviate from his everyday choices, then he was able to change the outcome.

What you need to do is to become more aware of your choices.

If you live your life without looking around, you will never see all the options open to you.

Likewise if you go through life with blinders on. You might miss the next greatest thing just because it was off the beaten path or just out of your line of vision.

So make your choices, but once you make them, own them.

Use your choices and decisions to create the life you really want. Or use them to create the life that someone else believes you should have.

This is your life. Live it the way you want, after all, it's all up to you.

It's in your hands. Choose wisely.

Thoughts on a Monday Morning

I celebrated my 31st birthday about a week and a half ago and I have to say that with the new year added to my age, I feel like I've been granted a little more wisdom.

Ah, yes, the joy of getting older and finally understanding more of the world around me.

But I've been doing a lot of thinking, a good amount of clearing and cleaning and seeing things in my life a little bit more clearly.

I also tend to feel that exercise helps me to think as well, maybe that's why I like marathons so much. I feel like I can go through the full range of my emotions through 26.2 miles. Maybe I should be counting how many times throughout the run I feel like jumping for joy, crying my eyes out or wanting to scratch someone's eyes out. I wish I was joking. : )

But I've learned that the little things in life are going to be the pieces of my life that are going to make the most difference.

Let me break that down.

I'm thinking that making a difference in other's peoples lives is going to be more important to me than anything else.

It's not going to be just about the dollar signs or just about who likes me for this or for that, but rather how I made them feel or how I made an impact on them.

So I know that I need to focus on things that are not going to benefit just me, but as many people as I can possibly reach out to.

Just some thoughts for today.

Vacation Musings...

After a much needed vacation, I returned to New York rested and a little saner but also with a lot on my mind. I guess when the body and the mind get a chance to slow down, you start to notice things that perhaps you've gotten too used to.

Just a quick background info- my mom took a little tumble in the backyard and ended up injured. Not the best scenario for a vacation but also the best prescription for the two of us. With her out of commission, we were forced to slow down considerably and have a little more R&R than perhaps we would have.

Enter the wheelchair and cane.

I have always thought of myself as a fairly tolerant and considerate person. I believe that my parents taught me the best they could have and I am very grateful for that.

BUT I feel like there are people on this planet who have not been blessed with the same education.

I met some of the most helpful and considerate people over the last few weeks. I am really grateful to them for taking some of the pressure off of me- most of it self-induced I admit.

I hate seeing the people I love in any sort of pain. I hate seeing the look on their face when they just can't help themselves in the same ways that they are used to.

Getting ourselves in and out of cars, planes, elevators and cruise ships was a challenge for sure. I am surprised by the reaction of other people while witnessing my experience.

Just to vent for a moment- the complete lack of regard for someone in a wheelchair amazes me. Why do you need to ram your oversized suitcases into an elevator without looking to see where you're aiming your bag? Perhaps there is someone in a wheelchair sitting there with knees braces and ankle braces that could perhaps be in your line of attack? Perhaps your patience has been earned, if not given willingly, just because someone can't move as fast as you'd like them to. Perhaps you could give up that "go, go go" mentality for just a moment as someone tries to do something for themselves that they haven't been able to. Perhaps you could put aside the pushing and shoving just for a little bit. Perhaps you could say please, thank you or any of the other trivial "common" everyday sayings that we all take for granted.

I saw all of this over my vacation and some or most directed towards myself or my mom. Having her slow down forced me to slow down. I needed it so much more than she did. I had to put aside my own agenda of constant movement, constant action, I need to be here, I need to do that mentality.

I also did see an amazing amount of kindess and that was also something that I really needed to see and something that I need to embrace myself.

As much as it saddened me to be on the receiving end of some unkindness and intolerance, it really opened my eyes. I needed to see all of this and I needed to learn how to buffer myself from it and not be nearly as sensitive. It's not a personal affront. Some people just don't know any better.

My job now is to open up just a few more pairs of eyes and maybe make things a little bit easier for someone else. Life is hard enough for all of us, we could do a little something to make someone else's journey a little smoother.

Just my two cents...

When Friends become your Family

I've been toying around with this idea for a while. I kept thinking, yes, let me write about this now. Or no, it's not quite time yet.

But the truth comes out that this is much harder to broach than I had originally thought.

I have a wonderful family. My mom is close by in both location and heart. My brothers and their families are not so close in distance and although, we don't always see eye to eye, we always have each other's best interests at heart.

But what happens in between all the family time?

You work, you play. You spend time in places where your family is not.

I don't know where I read the statistics, but we spend more time at work than we do at home. How scary is that? No matter how hard we try, we often end up spending more time with our co-workers than we do with our loved ones.

This can be a challenging situation for some, as it was for me in the beginning.

On the outside looking in, we are as different as different can be. Our cultures are different. We had different degrees of education, majors, family situations, siblings, places of birth. You name the difference and we had it.

However, if you open up your heart and allow the differences to take on a lesser importance, then you find that you are really not all the different from the people you work with.

As much as I've thought about it, my co-workers have really become my brothers and my sisters. We've got each others best interests at heart, much like my own brothers have.

It's a very interesting situation because by not being related by blood, you are more open to sharing your opinion and being open about your past. There is no pre-existing knowledge of a shared childhood. They are seeing through your eyes and are able to add their own knowledge of their own childhood into yours. They can help to color your memories with a brighter and more vibrant spin than perhaps you were able to give it yourself.

The best thing that you walk away with is a larger support network of people who know you, who love you and accept you exactly the way you are.

You can choose your friends. You cannot choose your family.

You cannot choose your co-workers but you can choose to have them become friends.

I feel very lucky to have a group of people who know me and understand me (sometimes more than others) but still love me unconditionally and wish me the best.

So this can be challenging to write about. How do you put into words the gratitude you have for people who you spend so much time with, who you can't escape from but yet who you have no real ties to other than the shared experience of your workplace?

You really can't. But the opinions they have of you, if you're ever lucky to hear them, is perhaps higher than the one you have for yourself.

"Don't mistake her kindness for weakness."

"You are destined for greater things, I can just feel it."

I am so very grateful to have them in my life. I couldn't have chosen better.

The Nature of Passion

Okay, so before you think this is some post about sex and sexuality, it's not.

I want to address the topic of passion and I mean more about passion for life.

A few months back I was driving down the East Side of Manhattan and when I hit the point where the Harlem River Drive becomes the FDR- right under the Triboro Bridge- I saw a familiar face.

After many years of driving through rush hour traffic, I've come to recognize some fixtures on the highway. It's not uncommon for me to see the same drivers, in the same cars, driving at the same time from week to week.

One of these fixtures is a, let's call him artist/poet, Otis Houston. The only reason I even know his name is because he posts signs pointing you to google him or check him out on myspace, or small poems or words of wisdom.

Sometimes its his form of performance art. There is usually some sort of fruit involved, like watermelon. You'll see a little more of him here.

http://thewinger.com/words/category/black-cherokee/

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=341712841

Even though he catches my eye every day I see him, there was one day that stuck out moreso than others.

On one day, he had posted a sign that I will never forget.

"Don't ration your passion."

Simple, right?

It's not just about the words. If you think about what he was saying with that sign is that you shouldn't hold yourself back.

We are in a society where we are always, even painfully, politically correct. Why?

Who are we helping by not being honest with ourselves? Who are we helping by holding back who or what we are?

Read this, it could change your life.


"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you NOT to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others..."

-- Marianne Williamson


So think again what it is that you do with your passion? Are you hiding it? Are you making the most of it?

My question is- can you do more with it?

Are you living your life's purpose or are you hiding it because you don't think you'll be loved or accepted?

I've made the decision that I am going to be my beautiful, wonderful authentic self. I am not afraid of succeeding in my chosen field. I am already successful. I am already embracing my passion.

Free yourself. Live your passion. Live your life.

Or in the words of Otis Houston, "Don't ration your passion."

The Master Cleanse

Have you ever heard of the Master Cleanse?

It is a somewhat severe cleanse that is designed to help loosen up your digestive system, clear you out and leave you with more energy, better digestion and an overall better sense of physical well-being.

Well.

The last time that I went on the Master Cleanse, I spent 10 days drinking my lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water mixture. I felt pretty good until about the 8th day. I know now that 10 days for me is too much.

When I decided to do the cleanse again for 3 days, I figured, no problem!

I made it just over a day and a half. I wasn't into it. I knew that I was going to be hungry the first day as my body transitioned to a liquid diet. My energy wasn't off really. My mood was good. But my brain wasn't into it. So I stopped.

I try to explain to my clients that deciding what you need to eat is such a highly individualized thing that it changes all the time. I can't give someone a super specific diet that they will follow for the next month, season, year because it just won't work.

The recipe for the Master Cleanse does not change.

My body, however, does.

I don't feel like a failure that I wasn't able to do my 3 days. I'm actually really glad that I was able to listen to my body and know that maybe, this wasn't the cleanse for me, or the cleanse for me right now.

I'm open to experiementing and I'm glad to be able to have the chance to do that.

I'm realizing more and more that being gluten-free will do me more good than cutting out anything else like fat or sugar or salt like a lot of people might need to do to get to their ideal diet.

Doing the research for gluten-free foods and products can take a lot of time but I consider myself very lucky that I've surrounded myself with people who are either in the same boat or who are willing to support me through that process.

If you think that there is something that you're eating that you shouldn't be, don't hesitate to experiement with taking it out of your diet. The worst things that can happen is that you add it back in.

Not a bad deal!