You know, one of those days in which you wonder, “What is it I do?” And you bemoan not becoming a nuclear physicist because at least they know how to split atoms.

One of those days in which all your plans, which just a moment ago were so shiny and promising, suddenly resemble false fronts on a movie set.

One of those days when you calculate how little money you can live on.

Otherwise known as a farm-fantasy day. Or move-to-the-ashram day. Or find-a-cozy-cave-in-Greece day.

You are going to give it all up for the simple life.

Give up the struggle, the effort, the bustle, the doing, whatever it is that feels so hard right now.

Yurts are always part of this fantasy. As well as spaciousness and time to do what you want. Shelling peas also shows up for me, not sure why.

There is a desire for wholeness and rest in the farm fantasy – you want to heed that.

There is also a desire to be rescued, to not have to be a grown up anymore – you don’t want to heed that.

Hold the desire for spaciousness, living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal in one hand and

in the other,

hold the exhilarating, humbling truth that choosing your life is damn hard work, putting yourself out there takes a huge amount of courage (whether selling your paintings or putting up a profile on Match.com), not to mention brain glucose, and being conscious,in general, is rewarding, sure, but also very, very taxing.

Farm fantasies are fun as long as you don’t confuse them with finally being safe. Finally being enough.

Watch a BBC period drama, read a historical novel, churn some butter and get back to putting one foot in front of the other. You aren’t doing anything wrong – it’s hard, it’s scary, and you are so not alone.

P.S. Non-farm fantasy retreat this weekend at Kripalu with me. You get to give up the struggle while staying awake. That’s good stuff.

P.P.S. Links: Living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal, enough.

I’ve been doing Choose Your Life Monday posts for awhile now. I’ve blogged about being aware of various patterns, I’ve shared Life Organizer questions, and now I’m doing this post a bit differently.

Over the years, I’ve had a rocky relationship with holidays.

Celebrating the solstice by lighting candles in all the windows then going for a walk in the dark and talking about what had brought us light during the year, then coming back to our house blazing with light and reading solstice stories aloud and drinking warm beverages – yum!

I adored making magic for Lilly when she was little – putting out cookies and milk for Santa and then taking a bite of the cookies after she was in bed thrilled me more than her.

But death (Dad) and teenagers and divorce and new families make everything so different.

I am good at stating the obvious, aren’t I?

In the face of all this change, I find wanting to collapse and not do anything.

I find myself wanting to whine that things aren’t the same.

I find myself being drawn into blech land.

Hiding behind work and being a crappy shopper and various other stories so I hide.

I don’t engage.

Whoa!

I don’t think so, sweetie.

That is such an old, dead response.

Let’s try something better.

Instead, I gently ground my energy and turn toward my feelings of sadness and disappointment and grief… hello feelings.  No, I’m not interested in what-ifs and wishes- I’m staying with my feelings… ah, such tenderness, such sadness, such longing, such gratitude… breathe…. stay here with the feelings…

Big big breath, so big I feel my ribs creak…. energy spills up and out my head….

Descending, grounding… being…

Resting…

A deep still spaciousness fills me…

I remember, “Oh right, I can choose how I want to do the holidays.”

I see how much of my suffering lives in me.

Which means I get to choose what experience I want to have this year!

Oh holy mistletoe, Batman! Now that is good news.

And what has also been helpful to me is…

Comfort Cafe Holiday Helpful Suggestions

We’ve been sharing ways to make the holidays more meaningful and saner at the Simpler Holiday forum. I thought you might enjoy reading some of the treasure trove of ideas to help you see new possibilities for your holidays, too!

A few of the intriguing suggestions:

Our idea for simplifying was having a pajama day Christmas day …new jammies of course!
–Pauline

….One of my main simplify themes these past years has been to do “recycled giving”… finding items that I cherish but am ready to let go to someone else. I love how recycled giving brings out my creativity at the same time it helps me work on non-attachment to “things” …the gift has to really be a match, so it also tunes me into the whole reason for giving. What would this person most love to receive, and do I have something to give that would bring delight? The best gifts are usually those that tug at my heartstrings because a part of me is not “quite ready” to give them away.
–Sora

Starting on Thanksgiving I am going to do the 29-Day Giving Challenge. It was started by a woman who had MS, and she says it cured it. My sister is the marketing director of a mall, and last year they did a Senior Angel tree. She said the seniors asked for so little, mostly toiletries like nice soap or after shave. So almost everyone also gave extra stuff like cookies, candy, warm slippers, etc. The seniors were thrilled. I would like to do something like that. I find helping other people gives me a lift. This year it will probably be more important than ever to help other people.
–Gayle O

The nicest thing we do is drape a purple silk cloth over the windowsill and stick a “path” of 24 golden stars (like teachers use) leading up to the stable/ manger. Each evening we light a candle, move Mary and the Donkey (from Nativity Scene) one step (or star) closer to the stable and sing the carol “Little Donkey.” Now that is truly magical.
–Betty

What do you do to make the holidays more light filled? I’d love to hear. And if you are a member of the Comfort Cafe, come on by the Simpler Holiday forum and add your ideas.

One of the most delicious things about the interconnectivity of on-line life is getting to learn from people you would never have met.

Falling in love with their particular brilliance.

It is so precious and endlessly wonder producing to me. It’s why I blog. It’s why I created the Comfort Cafe. It’s why I Twitter. I know it’s not a replacement for real life connections and I cherish my on-line relationships.

One such extra-delicious connection for me is with Char, the force behind The First Step, an extraordinary patient advocacy service that simply blows me away.

It’s so needed and she is doing it so well! If you, or someone you love, is ill, check out Char’s website.

And I utterly wildly dig the questions she creates (she shares them at the Comfort Cafe forums regularly) She is better at creating questions than me!

This recent blog post of Char’s shows her question genius in action.

I’ve been wanting to explore these questions myself  so here goes:

What’s not working for me?

Char says: A hint for answering this question is to do it in your sloppiest most inarticulate way without trying to “figure it out”.  Whatever falls off your pen and onto the paper is perfect.

Feeling overwhelmed by projects and the holidays. Having to trek to Seattle again and again for doctor’s appointments. Feeling pressured. Feeling stiff from not exercising.

What are the signs that something isn’t working for me?’

A feeling of tension in my body. Noise in my head. Pain in my upper back.

How many of these things have actually happened in the last 24 hours?

All of the above.

What are some possible steps I can take to make things run smoother?

Return to my body. Always, always, always, for me, it’s about getting out of my head – which means stepping away from the friggin all holy computer – and coming back into my felt embodied experience…. I just did that. Here is what happened:

I felt my body, scanned it, what am I feeling?  Feel it, feel what is here, drop completely into it, stop pushing it away.

I noticed intense dark blue energy around my solar plexus, down the front of my body. Heavy, pulsating. Go into it.

I explored it, dropping my story about what the energy meant or where it came from. Be with it, be in it, follow it and also witness it, I am not just this energy.

After a moment, the energy exploded in roars and growls and rapid movement…. Let it move how it wishes.

Then it fell away.  I paused and rested. Ah…  Give yourself time to observe how you feel now.

Other possible steps: saying no to any new commitments for the rest of the year.  No phone calls or radio shows or interviews!  Continuing to plan each day the night before with only three main things to do, firmly commit to those three priorities, no secret “But if I have time, then I will.” Also, allot blocks of time for each priority – otherwise, I end up screwing around and wasting time and not actually resting or having fun. Keep it clean and simple!

Thanks Char for a Choose Life Monday check-in. You rock!

What to play?  Join in the comments or on your own blog. Be sure and link back to Char’s!

Over the course of Choose Your Life Mondays, I’ve blogged about being aware of various patterns, I’ve shared Life Organizer questions, and today, I’m in the mood to do something a bit different.

Friday was big juicy AHA day for me.

My therapist and I discussed  my unmet needs and my resulting Bright Shiny Object attraction, and she said,

A teacher of mine said God gets pissed when you don’t honor what you’ve been given.”

I felt a total heart-gut-body thunk.

Which is my body’s way of saying, “This is important information. Pay attention.

As we talked, I realized that, even though I have worked on this for 19 years - I still don’t always honor and value my work.

For many odd and good-hearted reasons, I do not revel in my work.

I do it (whether it is write a book, an article, give a speech, teach a retreat, coach someone) and it’s over. Finto.

Which would probably be fine, even a good thing (no attachment, etc.) except I don’t get fed.

It’s like I’ve been creating this wonderful banquet for everybody and forgetting to eat myself.

I’ve known this for years and years but I always got stuck taking in praise and good feedback because I thought I would get a big ego.

I would get inflated.

God knows, I’ve met enough writers and teachers with big egos who are not nice people.

God knows, I’m so sick of the self-aggrandizement and narcissistic look-at-me nature of the Internet, I regularly think about opening a cheese shop instead.

But you know what?

Honoring what has been given has got nothing to do with getting a big head.

Getting a big head or being a dick head involves a story. Judgment. Comparisons. Your blog is bigger than mine or you fill a workshop faster than me or you were on Oprah twice and I was only on once kind of crap.

What my dear therapist got me to see Friday was:

What I’ve done is to be honored because I did it.

It’s not about good enough or reaching lots of people or even about changing people’s lives – although that is a nice thing to honor, too.

But first, and primarily, it’s about sitting smack in the middle of, “This is what I have created” without judging (discernment has its place, just not right now).

It’s about owning the creation and the ideas and words. “I did this!”

Without saying, “But if I had only said this” or “So-and-so said it better” or “Why did she write about the same thing and sell 2 million more books than I did?”

Creative people, this is so precious, pay attention!

If you are feeling stuck or scattered or always pinging to the next thing, try, please try, stopping to acknowledge and be with what you have created.

Experience it with your body, your senses, the is-ness of what you have created.

Drop all comparisons and ideas for improvement.

And if you have been given money, accolades, relationships, experiences as a result of your work, honor those, too.

Not because they make you special or better than someone else, but because they are here.

Honor what has been given.

The Irony is Not Lost on Me

That I help people own their creativity. It’s the essence of what I do at my retreats, especially the Writer’s Retreat, and when I coach my beloved clients.

So this week I will be – with my full heart and my healing body – HONORING WHAT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN.

I don’t know from where these gifts and words and ideas  have come or why I got to be their steward.

That’s not my business.

My business is to honor what has shown up.

I will honor do so while writing my novel, when reading your comments, when creating December’s content for the Comfort Cafe, when planning February Virtual Retreat… oh yes! Does this feel good!

Comment requests:

What has been given to you that you would like to honor? I would so love to hear!

Plus he’s adorable.

Am I allowed to say that about a venerable shaman?

He gave our small group a glimpse into Nawi Ollin Teotl (Movement of the Four Energies)

and his tradition stretching back centuries.  I found myself imaging what it is like to be part of a family that has held these healing traditions for centuries and centuries.

They even have a special way to greet each other, using their whole bodies.

Makes a handshake look so lame.

He opened our energy centers, we moved our energy, learned about why we need to eat insect eggs and he gave us the very best four questions.

These are golden! Life changing. Happy shaman dance making!

Drum roll please, the four questions:

What am I doing?
What am I thinking?
What am I feeling?
What am I perceiving?

Imagine you are driving down the road.

You’re thinking about your kid / blog / business / novel / lover.

You’re feeling grateful / frustrated / overwhelmed / frustrated /horny (had to throw that last one in).

You’re perceiving… whatever story you are spinning.

Here’s what you want to be doing:

Driving.

Thinking about driving.

Feeling whatever you are feeling while driving.

Perceiving the landscape, other cars, in other words… driving.

You have to try this!

I can’t do justice to the power of these questions.

It’s the more direct way I have found – besides the practice of delight found in Rick’s new book – to arrive here.

When I do it? I have so much more energy! Compassion! Goodness!

I’m all there, as in here, as in right now. All my senses. All my selves. (Hey, good title for a soap opera.)

One Caveat

Sometimes, I want to think about my ideas and projects when I drive because I get sweet and groovy insights.

I don’t always want to think about driving.

So I declare, “I give myself permission to use these questions when I want to be all here. If I don’t, that’s okay, too!”

Because being all present all the time is not always my intention.

My intention is to be aware and to choose.

Try it and tell me what happens!