Author: valeriecameronmerritt

For the weekend ahead, choose a person you care about.  Visualize the person surrounded by your blessings and glowing light.  Pay attention to their presence, words, and actions.  Notice if there’s a stronger connection or understanding after dedicating yourself to their wellbeing in this way.

 

 

 

“I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  – Thomas Edison

I can’t think of a more positive way to perceive failure.  There is so much to learn from trying different ideas and finding new ways to approach creativity, exchanges in relationships, and even understanding ourselves.  We all fail and we all make mistakes.  What counts most is what we learn and how we choose to change.  Here’s to perceiving failures, in whatever form they present, as stepping stones to learning!

Think about the language you use with topics and towards others and that thread of thought that constantly runs in your mind.  What is given life within you and then communicated to others?  Watch yourself for self defeating lingo and behaviors.  If you’re not aware, you may find yourself draining the life from what you love and what loves you.

Give yourself permission to have full presence with the gifts of life.  You don’t have to cut yourself off from people or things thinking you do not deserve them or that you must have done something in particular to have them.  You can readily accept what is before you.  It is waiting to be recognized and held with gratitude.

And more than being grateful – you can breathe a steady flow of life into what you love, and do it emphatically!  The whole universe will thank you for allowing love to work through you this way!

 

Happy Wishes Everyone!

Jess and I have chatted a lot over the last week about showing up for yourself.  We hope you will focus on the most positive way you can be there for what’s in your best interest.  Can you carve out time to walk, swim, bike, stretch, or meditate?  Can you speak kindly to yourself? Can you smile in the mirror? Can you be present with your meals?  Can you say to yourself that you are important enough to make time to do the things that will ultimately lead you to feeling better?  Can you be accountable for showing up and loving yourself?

Starting small is perfect and practicing yourself into a larger habit will come easily with little increments!

 

A post of support for the sensitive soul:

I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as too sensitive, only the level of sensitivity that suits you.  To whatever degree you find yourself sensing and responding to the world around you, this point of experience must be your current intersection with need.  If the sensitivity is excruciating for you, perhaps the need is to awaken to your own power in releasing yourself from the emotional state, however, if the sensitivity level that matches you makes another person uncomfortable let us say that this is not your issue.  If you find yourself hearing, “you are too sensitive”, I hope you will own your gift in living with the fullness of the senses that are yours for this lifetime.  Please tell me why you are here if not to sense and respond to this world?

If you, like me, seem to feel every emotion magnified – can you find the delightful offering in this?  Sure, it can have a downside but there is also an incredible upside when you learn to turn the tides as they ride in to you.  In valuing yourself and the experience you are having through knowing your inherent worth and the worth of what life shares with you, you can find healthy outlets through the senses.  Welcome the gifts of your soul to find a home in your life.  The circumstances  that match your level of sensitivity through sameness or contrasting polarities will be drawn to you!

Seeking fulfillment outside of yourself is a lively game, that has many of us captured in it’s allure for the majority of our time.  We seek fulfillment in our work, defining and inflating the sense of self with our accomplishments.  We look for it in physical pleasure, through technology, games, and movies.  Sometimes we partake in over indulgences with food, drink, and other vices because it helps to numb the emptiness we feel.  We associate this emptiness with an outside need.  We need other people and things to fill it up or distract us from this void we feel inside.   There are so many distractions that we see as normal in our culture.

There is nothing outside of you that can satisfy you indefinitely.  You will grow bored with what you have and you will seek more or you will seek different.

Everything you need to feel fulfilled is  inside of you.  It’s hidden under the layers of distractions that have become the standard in your life.  A quiet space with dedicated focus on deep breathing and connecting to your inner self will lead you to a greater contentment and peacefulness than anything you will find outside of yourself.

The love, the sense of wholeness, the feelings of contentment are all waiting there for you to uncover…

We think about waving a white flag when we want to quit something, when we give up or when we need help.  Often a mark of desperate measure and exhaustion, it’s not perceived as a positive sign.

What if we saw the white flag under a different light?  What if instead of giving up the flag could stand in it’s simplicity as a representation of surrender to what is?

In surrender, we can find ease because we are no longer resisting. Surrender, perceived this way, isn’t about giving up control though you’re willingly handing it over to the powers that be.

Surrender is acceptance and trust in the process of this incredible environment that hosts our experience.

Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you’ll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

 

“Luck is believing you’re lucky.” – Tennessee Williams

So much of luck is in how you choose to see situations and people.  Focusing on the good aspects can lead to a heightened awareness of just how lucky you truly are.

Surround yourself with good feeling thoughts and make time to do things that bring joy!

“The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

We may associate being alone with loneliness but this doesn’t have to be the case.  Creativity is often born in aloneness.  There’s plenty to be said about group dynamics and the energy found there for creative interplay, but it can be important to honor solitude as the positive space that bridges the unmainfest with the manifest.  What is and what will be need a meeting place as do the earth and sky.

It could be that what comes from solitude is a form of artwork, as was the case for Rilke, or it could be a quiet reflection, or a time of  rejuvenation that produces result in the quality of interactions to follow.  When you offer the gift of solitude you open a door from which many other gifts can flow.