Tag Archives: authenticity

Alignment

Alignment

I have a rather embarrassingly large shoe collection. Perhaps I can blame this on my mother—shoes and groceries were the only things she enjoyed shopping for, so maybe I inherited my love of footwear from her! shoes-in-closet

At any rate, as I was dressing this morning, I wanted a pair of shoes at the bottom of a five-box stack. I lifted the lid from that box (with the four other boxes on top of it), pulled out the shoes, and let the lid drop as I reached for a garment on the other side of the closet.

When I turned back, that stack of shoeboxes was no longer nicely aligned. I jiggled with the top boxes, pushed and pulled a bit, then realized that forcing anything on top wasn’t going to have any effect. I needed to get to the bottom of the stack and center the lid on that box. Once I did that, everything else fell into place.

It made me think of how I handle the issues that pop up in my life. I can shuffle and juggle and try to force differences on the surface, but if my internal foundation isn’t flat and stable, all the tugging and pushing and smooshing in the world isn’t going to make things smooth on the top. Instead, I have to make sure what I’m doing on the outside is in alignment with what’s going on inside.

How about you? Are there areas of your life where your internal self is at odds with your outer self? If so, what choices might you make to create more alignment between the two?

Perfectly Imperfect

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Perfectly Imperfect

Here’s a phrase from a poem on gratitude shared in this week’s Purple Ink Café Writers’ Circle: “Our swimsuits, flapping in the breeze.”

Black Swimsuit

It created a rather humorous picture in my mind of an oversized swimsuit literally flapping around my body. That picture was immediately replaced by a picture of a swimsuit hanging out to dry after a day at the beach.

I can enjoy the beach, but am not a ‘beach person’ per se. I do love the ocean, though—the vastness and power of the sea, the way you can lift your gaze to infinity. It provides a bit of perspective when I get so balled up in my day-to-day concerns that I forget there really is a bigger picture.

And the specter of the swimsuit provides another challenge for me. It’s disconcerting these days to see all of the bumps and bulges revealed, and the icky blue veins and hills and valleys in these legs that once were smooth and firm, the product of years of ballet classes.

But this is also where I can see that it’s possible to take note of those imperfections, then move on to the blessings experience provides. It reminds me of my mother-in-law, Eleanor, who swam into her seventies, and never expressed self-consciousness about her appearance. Because she knew what really mattered—the delight of sharing joyful life events with her children and grandchildren.

Do you ever wonder how much we miss by worrying about appearances? There’s so much more to life than the way we look—physically or otherwise. As a recovering perfectionist, it’s challenging to expose myself to judgment, either by saying something that might provoke disagreement, or sharing a painting or an article that may be flawed in some way, or exposing a less-than-pristine housekeeping habit that’s still in the ‘working on it’ stage.

And that’s when walking my own talk can come to the rescue. The hand analysis and creativity coaching I do meets and greets that judgmental mindset, and allows me to see the appeal of the perfectly imperfect. There is true beauty in living, becoming vulnerable, taking some chances, gaining wisdom, and passing it along. We are all works in progress and beings in process, and there is magnificence in that.

Be Who You Are

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Dr. Seuss Quote

Isn’t this a fabulous quote?

It was a writing prompt in Kathy Kane’s inaugural Purple Ink Cafe Writers’ Circle, and so appropriate for those of us navigating the School of Love!

How can I get more comfortable with being who I am, and saying what I feel?

As I’ve gotten older, this task is a little less daunting than it once was. It’s been a long time coming, but it has finally dawned on me that I’m really not the focus of everyone’s attention. (Older women, by the way, can become virtually invisible—especially once you cross that great divide between ‘miss’ and ‘ma’m’!)

When we are teenagers, we have this self-consciousness that stems from the conviction that everyone is looking at us and judging us. The reality? Everyone else is so busy worrying about what others are thinking of them that they have very little time or energy to notice us.

This can be pretty obvious, too, in general conversations. How often do we really listen to what the other person is saying, right in the present moment, and absorb it? Frequently, we are forming our responses in our heads while the other person is still speaking. We miss the import of what they are saying, because we want to make our point or share our experience.

I get this mental image of two heads facing each other, with a mirror separating them. Each person’s words are bouncing back to the speaker, never penetrating the partition.

If we don’t believe we’re being heard, it’s hard to share our feelings. Feelings, after all, are messy things. Just going inside ourselves and sitting with them can make us feel pretty uncomfortable. Then to have to bring them to the surface and reveal them? Possibly to someone who may deflect them or disagree with them? Not easy.

But this is the curriculum in the School of Love—learning to identify and share our feelings, appropriately and at a proper volume.

Sometimes, we get a bit obsessed about the negative feelings that dwell beneath the surface, and forget that there are a lot of positive things down there as well. School of Love folks have the lifelong challenge of digging down, understanding what’s going on with our emotions, and then expressing them authentically and appropriately.

And when it gets scary, channel Dr. Seuss!

Shine Your Heart

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Shine Your Heart

Often in my yoga class, when we are either in a cross-legged sitting position or standing straight and tall in Mountain Pose, our teacher tells us, “Shine your heart.” It’s an instruction to pull our shoulder blades back and down, and present our hearts to the world. mountain-pose-815291_1280

It made me think of what this means. When I’m shining my heart, I’m exposed. Standing tall, letting others literally see the place in my body where my heart resides, is a posture of willingness to let others in. It’s a confident stance, but it’s also a vulnerable one.

It’s a contrast to what I often see when I’m out in the world. People walk around the mall or the grocery store hunched over the smartphones clutched a foot from their chests, staring at the ground focusing on the sounds coming through their earbuds, or hugging a grocery cart.

All of these stances are protective. They exclude others; it’s virtually impossible even to make eye contact when the shoulders are stooped and the gaze is lowered. And it makes me sad.

It may just be a posture thing, but it makes me wonder if it’s a vulnerability thing. “Let me draw in and hide myself, so I don’t have to interact with someone who may reject or disapprove of me, or make me feel uncomfortable.”

How about an experiment? Stand up, draw your shoulders towards your stomach, and bow your head. How do you feel?

Now, raise your head and draw your shoulders back, reaching your shoulder blades down towards your hips. How do you feel?

What does it mean for you to ‘shine your heart’?

The Beauty of Natural Diversity

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Natural Diversity

Photo by Joan Gallant Dooley

When my friend, Joan Dooley, posted this beautiful photograph on Facebook, I was amazed to learn that these eggs weren’t dyed for Easter. Each of them has its own distinctive, natural color.

It struck me that there is a message here about our own ‘natural colors.’

Our hands, our spirits, our creative process—each of us is unique. We are not like those mass-produced white eggs of uniform size, residing in styrofoam boxes in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, bred for mass consumption.

What is your ‘natural color’? What one-of-a-kind traits are you here to share?

Being the Prophet

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Being the Prophet

After considering how I can categorize and label my family and friends based on ‘knowing them so well,’ I started thinking about how easy it is for them to do the same with me.

It’s hard to drum up the courage to speak up and share the fact that I am a hand analyst. After all, hand analysis can sound a bit esoteric, and my family is anything but. Somewhere deep down, I’m afraid that my family and friends will reject it (and me).

The fear isn’t unfounded—I grew up with a lot of skepticism when it came to anything outside the strict boundaries of what the family viewed as practical and ‘realistic.’ One of my stepfather’s favorite sayings was, “Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Amusing, but squelching. So my desire to conform to the norm was molded in childhood.

Now, decades later, it feels safer to stick with the topics of children, grandchildren, homes, taxes or movies than to share something that could put me in the position of, “Who does she think she is, anyway?” So I have avoided those vulnerable conversations.

Since that’s the case, how can my family and friends do anything but categorize me as the mom, the grandma, the wife, the organizer? When have I ever given them the chance to see other aspects of who I really am?

At our next family event, will I be courageous and vulnerable, taking the chance to share something specific about what I do with someone who might be open to hearing it? Taking this chance is a particular challenge for me, because it brings me into a direct confrontation with the Life School aspect of my Soul Psychology—my Life School of Wisdom (after all, I don’t want to look like a fool) and my Life School of Love (I don’t want to chance generating or experiencing feelings that might prove uncomfortable).

How about you? How open and vulnerable are you with your own family and friends? What are the risks, and what are the rewards? And where do you see your own Soul Psychology challenged in the process?