Seeds of Life

"Thoughts are the seeds of life." - Cindy Reinhardt

One year ago this week, I launched the The Zone blog. It seemed to come forth not from a single seed, but from many planted throughout life. Yet, perhaps somewhere inside me was a single seed that finally was ready to germinate.

When I penned that first blog, I promised an eclectic approach to life and success with a focus on reclaiming personal power and supporting a shift to creating more care, compassion, collaboration and community. I hope that I’ve fulfilled that as much for you as I have for me.

I said that I wanted to challenge our thinking (yours and mine!), poking around the edges of what’s possible, exploring how nature and ancient wisdom define and guide us to success. Only you know whether these weekly excursions have elicited that for you. For me, the discipline of this weekly post has sharpened my observation of nature and self, bringing forth a sense of personal satisfaction.

When I launched last August, I didn’t know that I’d soon be in the midst of moving. I had no (conscious) idea that the home I was offered as temporary housing by a friend would, like dog in a shelter looking for its ‘forever’ family, claim me as its steward. But somewhere, like the seeds that burst forth The Zone, different seeds were ready sprout in new ways.

Those seeds of home, quiet, nurture and nature brought forth this August’s launch of Dragonfly House Crestone. I welcomed my first guests to this place of peace last week. The next guests arrive later today. It seems that it is a part of my natural rhythm that seeds of change bring forth blooms in the form of new (ad)ventures in August. That’s a new awareness for me to reflect on as I look ahead.

Every seed has within it, the potential to develop fully into its full essence. The pine cone brings forth a beautiful tree. The pea pod, nutritious food; and marigold seeds, splashes of color and protection from tomato loving critters. These, like loving thoughts, deserve our care and nurturing.

Other seeds, like the tiny stickers that grab Luke’s fur to get a ride to fertile ground are like those thoughts that persist, yet don’t serve us at all. I think that I’m learning to be as meticulous with my thoughts as I am in combing Luke after each walk to remove those stickers, refusing to give them new, fertile ground to grow on next year.

Reflection for the Week: What thoughts do you need to comb from the fur of your consciousness?

Reflections on Nature and Remodeling

"The mind within does the real seeing, the real interpreting of what the eyes look upon. The eyes can truly be called ‘the windows of the soul’." - Ernest Holmes

I always thought that the bible verse about the eyes being windows of the soul meant that when you look into another’s eyes you can see their soul. Until reading a selection from The Science of Mind that included the above quote, I’d never considered the idea that how I see the world, more particularly the events that I manifest into my life, is a reflection of my soul. Duh, of course it is. And, yet this BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) deepens my awareness that I am always at choice about how/what I see.

In the earthen dam that was washed out on Sunday in a deluge of rain and hail, I can see a huge problem that I inherited when I bought the property and that someone else is to blame. Or, I can see an opportunity to commune with my land and the surrounding land as well as with others who know more about drainage than I to create the best course of action. Do I choose fear and anger? Or, do I choose faith and love?

If I truly believe that every event in my life is there for me and my learning and if I am aware of that belief, then most likely I will choose faith and love. Then I’ll throw in a dash of curiosity: what’s possible now?

Perhaps I would more closely reflect how nature deals with challenges, including those brought to her courtesy of we humans. Remember the western wood peewee nesting outside my front door a few weeks back? Last weekend, just before starting construction of a new deck right below her nest, I thought she’d abandoned it and there were no babies. I climbed up to remove the nest and to my amazement there were two small furry gray beings pulsing. I climbed down and ‘momma bird’ soon arrived to warm her babes. A few days later, two beaks appeared and momma began to feed them. Yesterday they were more active as construction in and around them continued. This morning, the nest is empty, the babies fledged, out of the nest to make their way in the world.

Observing momma and her nestlings living above the chaos of construction noise, people coming and going and hollering back and forth all day for a week, made me present to how I’m navigating the remodeling projects in my new home. My eyes are seeing beauty unfold in the new tile, fresh paint and little touch ups that I’m choosing to do. And, for the most part, my being has danced with the unexpected oversights in planning (mine and the contractor’s) or his (and my) idiosyncrasies.

Luke too has simply observed as his quiet home became a beehive of activity.

Thus, I’m not only experiencing the pleasure of the fresh, new look in my home and the joy of preparing her to receive and nurture guests, I am filled with joy and personal satisfaction about the process. What could be better that that?

Reflection for the Week: How would your life shift, if you knew that everything holds the potential to serve your learning and growth?

Mitigation With Love

"There are lots of things, including changing the kind of inner dialog, that can mitigate anxiety." - Scott Stossel

Mitigation is on my mind this week as I commissioned an awesome crew to help me mitigate the property surrounding my new home. I took on this project with a healthy respect for the potential that exists here for wildfires and, more importantly, with love for the land and the trees. I wanted to give them new life, something that removing dead branches does for a tree. I want to be a good steward of this land.

As I began thinking about this week’s post, I wondered ‘just what does mitigation have to do with life’?

Mitigation is defined as ‘lessening the force or intensity of something unpleasant’; ‘the act of making a condition or consequence less severe’; and ‘the process of becoming milder, gentler, less severe’ (thank you dictionary.com).

Early this morning, I noticed that unlike the 48 weeks prior to this one, I felt tense about what to write. I tossed in a dash of ‘should’ (really Cindy, you should start thinking about this earlier). The trust I feel each week about the message revealing itself waivered. Breathe.

Then, as it always does, the message began to come clear: ‘mitigate the pressure on yourself’. Ahhhh, yes, that. First step: the morning walk. This morning the air is clean, crisp, and cool after thunderstorms dropped blessed rain. Breathe that in. Notice how happy the earth feels under my feet, soft with the new moisture. Smell the freshness. Be grateful. Give thanks. Nature has her ways of mitigating tension and pressure. When we allow her to she shows us the way.

Thoughts and ideas began to flow. The process of becoming ‘milder, gentler, or less severe’, personal mitigation starts within. At its best, love is the foundation.

Like the fire mitigation project I completed this week, thoughts anchored in love not fear make life flow with ease. In choosing loving thoughts, I’m better able to walk through life with grace. Love, patience, gratitude, compassion are just a few of the seeds I can use to mitigate from the inside out.

Unlike the fire mitigation project, personal mitigation is an ongoing process. It requires my presence and awareness to notice when dead branches show up as thoughts that don’t serve me. For only with that awareness can I make the choice to replace fear with love, impatience with patience, loathing with compassion, and ungratefulness with deep reverence and gratitude.

Reflection for the Week: Look deep inside to discover any thoughts that need to be mitigated. Insert love to replace each and every one.

Independence Is The Law

"Dependency is a basic violation of Universal law." - Gregge Tiffen

There is no question in my mind that the radical, revolutionary visionaries that founded the United States were deeply in touch with Universal law and sought to create this nation aligned with Universal principles.

I also believe that we’ve strayed as a country and as individuals from living fully into the independence that was a pillar of their creation and still is immutable Universal law. Taking responsibility for operating from independence requires attention, awareness, and (gulp) courage.

I’m coming to experience (and thus to deepen my belief) that at any moment, in any circumstance I have the power, the free will to choose differently. The rewards for making those choices are vast and deep, the most important being the joy of self-satisfaction and its deepening to self-love. These are not selfish, self-centered ways of being. Rather, they are what we are meant to experience as we chart the path of our lives in alignment with the unique blueprint that we each came to this life with.

The process of purchasing a home provided many opportunities to do just that. I did my best to rise to each occasion (and I forgive myself for not always doing so or for being less than gracious through part of the process). As I look back at the hoops that I jumped through and the amazing support that I received, I’m aware that at every turn, every hurdle I remained at choice. I never felt a sense of being a victim or of ‘having to do’. I chose with each hurdle to act from ‘okay, here’s my next step, let’s see where it leads’ rather than ‘I have to do this because, if I don’t, they will (or won’t) …’.

Either way, my actions might well have been the same. But the gift of making them from a place of choice protected me from any sense that I could lose or be hurt. I was willing to ‘let the chips fall where they may’. At its core that is the promise and the gift of independence.

Today, I not only own a home that I love (and look forward to sharing with others who need and want respite from the busy, noisy world), I have a deep sense of gratitude and satisfaction for how I walked through the process. The home and other material things I can’t take with me when I’m complete with this life, this body. But, the satisfaction, the gratitude and whatever wisdom I gained from the experience are forever a part of my consciousness.

Invitation For The Week: As you bask in the stars and stripes, the red, white and blue, enjoy a burger and your beverage of choice, take time not just to be grateful for the promise of independence, but reflect on the attitude you bring to your life’s choices and the freedom those choices represent. Are you operating as you are meant to: independent of all others? Rinse, repeat, and ask again.

Summertime in the Cycle

"Be aware of yourself. If you are not doing what you want to do and where you want to do it, you are out of your cycle." - Gregge Tiffen, Impatience Fishes and Empty Pond

In two days we reach the midway point in the earth’s annual cycle. We’ve come a long way from the shortest day of light, Winter Solstice, to the longest, the Summer Solstice. In those six short (or long, depending on your perspective) months dark has given way to light. Stillness and quiet stepped aside and invited us to dance and engage more fully in life outside of us. The light, vibrant, active energy of summertime that lay dormant under a blanket of snow has come alive yet again.

Flora offer a wonderful illustration of the contrast between the seasons and this coming of the time of growth and vitality. As winter approaches trees drop their leaves and turn inward. In spring, new leaves appear. And, now dressed fully in their new green, trees provide shade. They bear fruit for our nourishment and eating pleasure and for their own procreation. Flowers, dormant in winter, have their own cycles that bring them out into the light to show their colors, like this cactus on our morning walk.

Elsewhere in nature, streams frozen in winter, begin to trickle in spring and now flow fully in summer’s warmth. And we, though we have lost so much of our connection with the nature’s cycles, somehow naturally follow this pattern.

This year especially I notice that I am. Ideas and projects given quiet, thoughtful attention in winter have come to life. In the cold, dark of winter they were but seeds of possibility, dreams, ideas. Like all seeds though they contain the full potential of what they can be and with the light and warmth of summer, they are bursting forth.

Some days they seem to carry me rather than me having to move them along. Those are the days of magic, flow and synchronicity. When I look back on them, they are the days when I listened and followed whatever my internal compass seemed to say.

Nature’s cycles remind me that everything has its divine right time. The more deeply I’m aware of and in touch with those cycles, the more patient I am with cycles outside of me. My gratitude for the tomatoes on the vine feeds my patience, knowing that one day I’ll taste the wonder of that gift. I’m more accepting and patient when I’m in tune with my own rhythms. I hear those inner nudgings to take action ‘now’ as well as those that suggest I wait, allow things to unfold in their time.

That’s the dance in which the experiments of life and experience of curiosity become an increased capacity to adjust and to adapt without losing who I am. In the longer light, warmth, and outward flow of summer with all of its activity, as I reach out in many directions, let me not forget my own rhythms and cycles in this larger dance that life presents.

REFLECTION FOR THE WEEK: Are you doing what you want, when and where you want?

Dare To Be Loco

"Choose to be a locomotive. The cars will follow." - Gregge Tiffen

As I began to write about this idea of being the locomotive in your life, the two words ‘loco’ and ‘motive’ jumped out and me and as often happens in this Thursday morning writing space, the direction shifted … a least just a little bit. For me, that’s part of the joy of this commitment to write and share each week. And, that commitment is part of being the locomotive in my life, no matter how others respond.

Some days I discover that takes courage. Someone makes a comment that I take for a moment as a criticism. As long as that criticism is in play in my decisions, I’ve become the car, allowing someone else’s opinion to be the locomotive. Awareness first, then the courage to choose differently, put me back as the leader in my life.

It takes courage as well to buck the world’s ways, many of which seemed designed to keep us as box cars or tankers in the train of life, following what they would have us do. Parents, family, friends, schools, teachers, and more are well intentioned in what they offer, but they can’t know us and how we operate. They can’t know what is true for us, just as we can’t know them or any other. [Have I mentioned how I’m learning that living my life is a full time job (especially when I choose to be the locomotive!)? That, if you will, is a story for another day.]

I’ve long thought that many people ‘diagnosed’ as ‘crazy’ in some form need less pharmaceutical drugs and more understanding and space to be who they are.   In my heart I believe they are simply on a different learning trajectory than the systems – religious, educational, business, government – are designed to support. My heart sometimes aches for them and for what we lose in the approaches that we take toward those who don’t conform.

For me, being the locomotive in my life looks like living life as a learning laboratory. My motive is found in the question ‘what can I learn today?’ Some days it may be learning from a tree or a rock on our daily walking paths, or perhaps the soothing sound of a mountain stream has a message. This week I’m being curious about how to stay in my own rhythm and timing as I engage in the process of buying a home. And, at the same time, a small part of me wonders if that decision isn’t itself perhaps a bit ‘loco’.

Perhaps it may not “make sense” by all of the measures of the world. But, in my heart and my being, I deeply know it’s my next big step in life. Operating from that place, I look forward to discovering what cars line up to follow on my track.

Question for the Week: Where might you dare to experiment in the joy of being the locomotive in your life?

Thoughts are The Seeds of Life

"With every thought, whether conscious or not, I create the quality of my life." - Cindy Reinhardt

We humans are such creative and powerful beings. Sometimes, we’re a bit silly too. Silly as in we have moments (hours, days, or longer) when we lose sight of just how powerful we are. Our thoughts are the foundation of that power.

When we forget, it seems as if we hand over our power to another person or an event. And, that they or it, not we, are creating the quality in our life. Who among us has not had the experience of thinking ‘if they (or it) would just change, I would be happy’? Those experiences have the possibility of waking us up and pointing to thoughts (conscious and not), beliefs, and stories that it may be time to shed.

I had just such an experience over the last week when at a tense moment in conversation some unconscious thought took over. I lost my awareness in the moment and with it my power to choose my path, to choose love over some (probably insignificant) fear. It wasn’t pretty.

These are the events in life that give me the opportunity to root out the weeds that pop up in the garden of my thoughts. I like to do so with care, rather than pulling and tossing blindly. Some weeds have hidden, unknown value. Upon reflection, they can be managed differently rather being destroyed. They can contribute to rather than detract from life’s quality.

My favorite weeding tools are contemplation, letting go, and forgiveness. Then, I nurture the garden of my remaining thoughts with gratitude, awareness, and practice.

As I walk through my own life’s events and, as a coach, have the privilege of hearing stories of the events in my client’s lives, I become ever more deeply present to just how powerful our thoughts are. With our thoughts we create joy. With our thoughts we create misery. We choose.

When we spill milk, we clean it up. We choose what tools to use and we choose whether to cry over the spill or to grow from it. With our thoughts we create the quality of our life from one moment to the next and beyond.

Experiment for the Week: Take time to notice your thoughts this week, especially in events that bring tension. What thoughts need weeding? What thoughts need TLC?

Changes in Scenery, Changes in Pace

"When we start doing things that are repetitive we begin to lose any sense of the experience. We lose any issue of the creative element." - Gregge Tiffen

I’m out of my daily scenery and daily routines this week, traveling to be with a friend and support her recovery from surgery. The changes in scenery (new paths to walk, a different mountain range with new beauty to savor, a spring snow storm, more dogs, houses, people and cars) and the changes in pace presented the opportunity for heightened awareness this week of how easy it is to slip into routines and out of awareness of the choices we make that contribute to the quality of our lives.

I’d been reflecting a bit on my observations when my friend gave voice to them. She went out with me to run a few errands, her first trip out since surgery. At one stop I parked in the shade of a tree and when I returned she shared how the change of scenery and change of pace created the space for the simple awareness of observing the bark of the tree, the movement of the leaves, the touch of the breeze on her skin.

So, this week, as I break the routine of a longer post with pictures, I invite you to do the same. Break some of your normal routines. Walk a different path in a different direction. Take a different route to work. Step with awareness into a shower or washing dishes. And, notice the multitude of creative choices that these simple acts hold.

Make an opportunity to go soak in the beauty that surrounds you wherever you are in the world!

Gratitude is An Act of Self-Care

"Nowhere else will you find greater demand or greater satisfaction than that which the bloom of self caring can bring to the Garden of Life." - Gregge Tiffen

I’d not especially noticed the link between gratitude and self-care until earlier this week when I had the experience of feeling deeply grateful for the commitment I have to what Thomas Leonard, my first coaching mentor, called “extreme self-care”. It was a bright, sunshiny Sunday morning after an amazing early hike with Luke as I sat down to enjoy the tasty brunch I’d prepared. As I took a moment to be thankful for the food and all who had some role in putting it on my table, a feeling of deep gratitude for how I take care of myself swept through me. In that moment I realized that living in gratitude is, for me, an act of self-care.

Perhaps some of you will think “well, duh, of course …”, but for me it was an ah-ha moment. It took me back to when I first began to consciously practice gratitude over a decade ago. I started a practice of consciously breathing in love, breathing out gratitude. Several years later, I realized that love and gratitude lived in each and every breath I take.

This week I have a deep sense that this and other practices of gratitude are acts of self-care that make my life the joy that it is to live, one of many acts that keep me healthy, happy, and, hopefully, on purpose. My first and last thought and words each day are “Thank you” and I’ve come to feel those words in my heart. Meister Eckhart, the 13th century German theologian, philosopher and mystic, is quoted as saying "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." I’m experiencing the truth of Eckhart’s words as well as that in Gregge’s wise words above.

Living in gratitude, like self-care, is easy when life is flowing in the ways we want. As I celebrate the birth of my step-son’s daughter this week, I am grateful on many levels. I’m grateful for our relationship across the years and miles, for his happiness, his health and that of his growing family. And, I’m grateful for the internet which keeps us easily connected (not to mention the flow of baby photos since her birth!). It’s easy to be grateful.

But perhaps the ultimate self-care is to develop the capacity to be genuinely grateful in the midst of adversity. What kind of world might be created if we learned to be grateful to live amidst and navigate through life’s challenges with gratitude? Is gratitude a path to world peace?  And, aren't our children and our children's children worth whatever it takes?

Exploration for the Week: Notice your relationship to gratitude this week. What are you thankful for? What else might you be thankful for?

Self-Belief is the Foundation for Love

"Love will conquer all." - Lionel Richie

"The love that conquers all is the choice love. It is the unconditional love." - James Michael Randorff, Unit Leader, Bassist at Seventh Fleet Band & Musician at United States Navy

"Let’s consider that it is self-belief that provides the freedom for individuals to acknowledge one anothers beliefs without interference." - Patrece on behalf of P-Systems (www.P-SystemsInc.com)

These two ideas converged as I reflected on a Facebook post yesterday...

written by my amazing stepson (and soon to be father), wondering to myself ‘just what would make it possible for me to love unconditionally’. I wasn’t thinking so much about loving those close to me (although, like most of us, from time to time I find my love being conditional). I was wondering how I might love those whose views I don’t share, those whose actions harm others (at least as I see it). As I look at this morning, I suppose I was wondering ‘how can I be more loving in all areas of my life?’

Then, I thought about situations that clients have brought to our coaching this week: fear of failing in managing a team with members who act disrespectfully toward one another, a strained family relationship where manipulation trumps all else, a pattern of taking on things not her responsibility and thus creating confusion about what she really wants. What could love bring to those situations? What could be a foundation for developing the capacity to love?

That’s when I realized that self-belief is key. In order to respect another or their views, I need a deep conviction in myself that no matter what ‘they’ do, they cannot endanger that part of me that really matters. What provides the foundation for my capacity to love is my belief in me, my confidence in my capacity to weather any storm and to be the captain of the ship that is my life. If you are reading this you are breathing. And, if you are breathing you have weathered many storms. Acknowledging this track record is the start of building self-belief.

From self-belief comes the capacity to respect and to be curious about another person’s point of view rather than to be fearful of it. From respect and curiosity, new possibilities for conversations and actions are likely to arise. And, it only takes one of us to make the first move.

From self-belief comes relief from the pressure to prove something by taking on what isn’t ours to do.

From self-belief comes the possibility of forgiving those whose actions have harmed us in some way.

From self-belief comes greater possibility for unconditional love and the conversations and actions that will bring forth greater peace in our personal lives and on the planet.

From self-belief comes Luke’s sheer joy at playing in the creek in sub-freezing temperatures, my curiosity to explore and find the balance inherent in rocks,  and the audacity to connect these pics and the message. (And, you thought today’s pics had nothing to do with the topic. Surprise!)

Exploration for the Week:  Notice what situations trigger your to question your belief in you. What belief in you calls out for you to strengthen?