“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Mohandas Gandhi
I confess. I am a Workaholic. I rarely rest; I want to be working all the time.
It started as a child. My mother told me that once I was old enough to talk, my typical answer when she asked if I wanted to do something was, “I too busy.”
“Molly, do you want to come to the store with me?”
“I too busy.”
“Molly, do you want your lunch?”
“I too busy.”
“Molly, do you want to play outside?”
“I too busy.”
And so it has gone for most of my life.
The incredible irony of this is that I teach people how to de-stress, relax and live a balanced life. And am quite good at teaching these things! Proof of the saying that we teach what we need to learn.
I’m the girl who leaves a relaxing yoga class saying, “I don’t know why yoga has to take so long. I could do all that in 20 minutes.”
When I worked in a law firm, I was often the last to leave at night. And I never, ever said no to overtime projects. It wasn’t for the money; I just had a very strong sense of responsibility.
Years ago, my typical Saturday morning was: work out, clean the house, do the grocery shopping. When I returned at 10 am my roommate would ask, “Now that you’ve done what it takes most people a full day to do, what’s next?” And there was always more.
Continue reading“Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.” John Muir
We had a lot of thunderstorms in Michigan this year. A lot. It’s particularly memorable to me because each storm, as it gets close, necessitates unplugging all my computer equipment. [Losing a printer in a storm last year was all it took for me to learn that lesson!]
So the drill at my home during a storm is:
“Too often we define success as financial achievement. I view success as doing your very best at all costs.” — Bear Heart in The Wind Is My Mother
Here in the U.S., “success” is often attributed to the richest, thinnest, youngest and most famous. Is that backward? I think it is.
I recently came upon another meaningful definition of success. I invite you to ponder it. As a reader of this blog, I feel it’s certain to apply to you.
My last post was the “thirty day no-gossip challenge.” Since so many conversations seem to be about other people, particularly in a negative context, I promised to write a post with suggestions for positive conversation topics.
The idea for this post came from the memory of a sweet conversation I witnessed between my then four-year old niece and her 4-year old neighbor, Erica.
Continue reading“Gossip is black magic at its very worst because it is pure poison.”
Don Miguel Ruiz, “The Four Agreements”
Years ago I read an interview with actress Susan Sarandon in which she told a story about her daughter’s 11th birthday slumber party. The girls were full of gossip so Ms. Sarandon suggested the ground rule that they not talk about anyone who wasn’t there.
The astonished reply from one of the little girls was, “Then what are we supposed to talk about?”
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.” ~ Meister Eckhart.
Most of us know what an “attitude of gratitude” is. But do you know how it can change your life?
Continue reading“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Remember who you wanted to be” was a bumper sticker I saw recently on my morning walk around the lake — very profound in its simplicity. Most of us had dreams when we were children, dreams of what we wanted to be, do and contribute.
Yet very few of us grew up living our dreams. All too often they were killed by careless comments by our parents, teachers and other authority figures.
But if we all lived by the Original Instructions, there would be no more dream killing. Only support and encouragement.
“The thing that is wrong in the world today is that people have forgotten their instructions.” Onondaga Chief Leon Shenandoa in “To Become a Human Being”
And what instructions might those be, you ask? Every indigenous person would know: the instructions passed down from the Creator, the elders, the ancestors, on how to live a life in harmony and balance with the world around them.
Continue reading“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” Fitzhugh Dodson
The concept of making “new year’s resolutions” has become something of a joke in our society for about as long as I can remember — the joke being that people never follow through so the “resolution” will never come to fruition.
Continue readingAncient Wisdom is about sharing those ancient, universal teachings which can be applied to modern life to achieve more balance, health and spiritual inspiration. The world around us has changed dramatically over the past decades and centuries, but one thing has not changed: human nature. We still have the same longings, dreams and desires to […]
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