Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Calm & Resilience

Category Archives: leadership


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Adulting

When I was a small child, I had needs.

My survival relied upon having my needs met by others.

I developed coping strategies to optimize the potential my needs would be met.

I had to believe I would survive. I was reliant on others.

As an adult, I can survive on my own.

I can need nothing.

My needs are now replaced with wants.

Wants are preferences that guide my choices and mold my experiences.

From the space of wants, I transition from believing I can survive to knowing I can thrive.

I move from engaging coping skills and relying on others to making choices in collaboration with those who authentically support my growth along with theirs.

There is power in wanting and knowing.

Wanting and knowing bring assuredness, clarity, and focus.

Expectations fall away, choices become simpler, and I begin to align more and more with my sense of fulfillment, harmony, and success.

Feeling the difference…

I need. I want.

I believe. I know.

I want.

I know.

I know.

I know.


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Self-Care Plan

Ease in movement

Confidence in heart

Peace in spirit

Clarity in thought

Patience in receiving

Kindness in expression

Assurance in being

Joy in doing

Stillness in action

Flourishing intuition

Thriving in grace

Abundant in gratitude

Living in love


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New Beginnings

On the other side of the door

Is a bright spacious light

Guiding me into confidence,

Inviting my voice to be heard,

My gifts to be shared.

I replace worry with curiosity,

Hunger with satiation,

Hope with appreciation,

And old patterns and beliefs

With the great, beautiful unknown.

Flashes of doubt and distractions hold me back, producing a veiled illusion that I’m not ready.

I was born ready.

I am here to be curious.

I am here to expand,

To learn

To grow

To create again and again,

To step more and more into me.

The hinges are well-greased,

There are no locks.

Softly I focus my gaze,

Clear my throat,

Open my heart,

And turn the knob.


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Dearest One

Don’t wait for them to see the richness and uniqueness – see it yourself…

Unwind your tangled perception of you…

Enjoy the where you are and the where you will be, each full of challenges and delights…

Please love yourself just a little more…you are harder on yourself than anyone else ever could be…

Do all things because they feel good and nurture you not because they are “right” or provide a shield from the deep dark thoughts and feelings that face you…

Fearlessly take the hands of hurt and pain and walk with them for a bit, let them guide you out of the darkness until together you find the space to release each other…

Take your time in the process of caring for you above all else…slow down and tend to each and every element of you as if massaging a baby tenderly with the balm of divine love…

Feel grateful for the ease and healing in every breathe…

Move your body with the joy and freedom it was designed for…

You, my friend, are made of love and all those with truest loving eyes will see that and that is all that matters…

Turn your truest loving eyes towards your own heart and hold it sweetly, love it dearly, and this will be enough.

Photo compliments of Pauline Campbell.


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Constant Source

Attract.

Repel.

Draw in.

Push back.

Play with gravity.

It is your choice how close or far away the energy they bring will orbit you.

Their rugged terrain, gaseous atmospheres, unruly conditions, or waterfalls, nirvana and bliss all belong to them.

See them,

Be grateful for them.

Allow them to be just as they are.

You are the sun.

The constant source of your own truth.

Capable of adjusting their orbits,

Cultivating trust and safety,

Assured in the joy and peace that comes from being at the center of your universe.


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Bad Me

Jealousy points towards unmet desires.

Disappointment implies that joys and successes rely on others.

Anger signals the breaching of important boundaries.

Fear rises from insecurity and a false sense of incompleteness or inability.

These are not bad or broken parts surfacing to limit and constrict.

These are powerful markers built into me that arise over and over again not to point out my weakness, lack, or flaws but to strengthen my knowing and clarity.

My power lies in being not formed by them but informed by them.


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Fearless Living

Once there was an old belief that said,

“I am afraid…afraid of hurting others because I feel their hurt as if my own…hurting others jeopardizes my relationships and in that I run the risk of feeling their anger or worse, their scorn and disappointment. It is better to deny my joy than risk upsetting theirs.”

For a long, long time that belief walked confidently along its path unhindered. One day, it stumbled on that well worn path upon a rock of joy. It tripped over pebbles of power, and fell upon a bolder of truthfulness. As the belief lost its balance, it fell into a net of beautiful jewels all connected by a golden thread of love, of creativity, kindness, and great joy.

The belief grasped at the edges of the path, grappled with the sensation of free falling, longing for the predictable order of its existence. In the blinding beauty of the sparkling jewels, the belief had no choice but to release its fear, to drop into the wide and open net, to be held by a greater force in the space of free will and joy.

Gradually, the belief allowed itself to let go of the path and discovered its power to attract truthfulness and joy. It found that in that vibration there was no room for fear, hurt, or loneliness…only love.


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Clarity fleeting

So, I sit here day after day wallowing in my mistakes, misfortunes, pain, and suffering.

I hold onto them in my body like appendages…the tension in my muscles, the crookedness of my bones, the heaviness of my head…and heart.

I carry them as reminders of my faults and flaws.

And yet, when I sit in stillness, when I fill and empty with awareness on my breath, I find only peace…ease…joy.

Remembering…

…the gentle touch of others, through their hands, hearts, and smiles.

…the power of my cognition to work the puzzle pieces of every day life.

… the essence of my kindness and great capacity for love.

…the gifts of receivership and gratitude that present so abundantly and frequently.

I’ve been conditioned to hold onto and dwell on the lack and sorrows as if they belong permanently.

Love, joy, and freedom are somehow deemed as temporary.

Today I give myself permission to release it all – to breathe in and out with equanimity in every moment, to imbibe and cleanse, receive and release, storing none as defining me and simply allowing it all to live through me without reliving or retaining any of it as me.

Clearing the channels of experience so that all flows, informs, and re-minds me that I am everything and defined by nothing.


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Divine Wisdom

I’m not waiting.

I’m allowing.

I’m unlimited creative genius,

Divine!

I am not waiting to be rescued or for my destiny to find me.

I am getting out of the way!

Waiting means I’ve got it all planned out and everything is going to be step by step as I envision.

I know that I don’t make it happen.

I allow it to happen.

So many other forces are at work. Why would I think it’s just me marking my path.

It’s me counting on you and everyone and everything around us.

In that way I cannot control the direction I go in.

All I can do is know that I am headed that way.

I know what it feels like to have the future I am destined for.

The how is irrelevant.


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Finesse

Why is it when I step out of my suffering, I am uncomfortable with the suffering of others?

Guilt arises at the feeling that I am free of pain somehow at their expense.

It is difficult to exercise compassion for the suffering of another when I hold no compassion for myself and the value of feeling pain free.

Compassion wrapped in guilt results in creating a false story in order to take on someone else’s.

True empathy is understanding suffering, holding a space of great strength and courage – enough for both of us – rising from my own pain and rising even higher from my own joy and knowing that by maintaining my balance, finesse, and freedom I offer more room for healing than by falsely taking on the suffering of others.

Compassion without guilt provides a clear path to alleviate suffering.

Compassion filled with joy brings independence, hope and healing.

Compassion is powerful.

Guilt smothering.

Empathy delicately empowering.