Simply Authentic...your soul voice is calling.

On Vacation

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from. –Seth Godin

This is one of my favorite quotes, ever, on the history of this planet or any other, from this or any other time / space dimension. It is the super greatest quote…and I must be speaking in superlatives because I am now officially on vacation and will be heading to Seattle for an Alaskan cruise tomorrow. For a whole week!!! Yippie, yahoo!

Seth Godin’s quote notwithstanding, I do need this time away. Just trust me on this without my telling you about the short-tempered, impatient, working at home at night three days in a row person I had become in preparation for my…

…vacation.

Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away. –Go Go’s (Kathy Valentine/Charlotte Caffey/Jane Wiedlin)

Authentically Yours, Laura

Simply Authentic...your soul voice is calling. The Heart of Social Media

The Heart of Social Media

I have friends who post on Facebook (hereinafter referred to as FB) every single day, several times a day. I have friends who are irritated that other friends are encouraging them to get involved in social media, when they have absolutely no desire or time to do so. 

Me? I post photos on FB about once a week and keep tabs via notifications. I try and go in at least two or three times a week to post likes and happy birthday greetings. I post a link to this blog every week on FB, usually on Sunday later in the day. FB is where I went when I was creating a group forum for my 30^th high school reunion last summer, and it’s very convenient when you want to message a few people at the same time to plan a get-together. I’ve never played a FB game. I like to chat from time to time.

I like it, in other words. I think I have a healthy relationship with social media. My obsessive/compulsive leanings lie in other directions. Like…oh, never mind…I’ll talk about my quitting smoking again and need to pick up stuff that has been tracked in on the stairs in another post. That is if it is quiet enough for me to write about it, because I’m very sensitive to sound...in fact, I can hear my cat scratching in the litter box right now, which means I’d better go scoop out the cat poop and sweep up all the litter Lady kicked all over…

I’m sure you are nothing like this. (As Anne Lamott would say, when I refrain from picking stuff up off the stairs long enough to remember to credit her.)

Some of us like social media more than others, and we all have our “stuff.” I read something Martha Beck wrote in O Magazine not long ago (can you tell I read O Magazine virtually cover to cover every month? Seriously, I’m not addicted!) that talked about the myth of social media – how everyone seems to be so much happier in posts on social media than they really are. How seeing someone else’s happiness on places like FB can lead to a form of jealousy and feeling “less than.”

Know, when you see the photos and read the posts, about a friend going to somewhere like, say, Aruba, that they are in exactly the same boat (so to speak) as you are. When someone sends you a personal message, like a friend recently did to me, saying something like “I really like your new profile picture, but the color is all wrong – you look so grey” that the color is all wrong only if YOU think it is.

I don’t see social media going away, and it can be an authentic expression of your heart as if you were speaking / meeting with the person in person (like me with my friend who thought my hair looked grey, whereas I was perfectly happy with it.) If someone writes something that brings about an emotional reaction…you have the opportunity to breathe first, get your bearings, and determine how to respond. When you think about it, this is a bonus, having time to prepare how to respond (rather than react face to face) in the great virtual hub of humanity.  Or you can always just say LOL.

Authentically Yours, Laura

Simply Authentic...your soul voice is calling. Earning a Loving

Earning a Loving

I just got home from the theater after seeing Star Trek Into Darkness. This was a great movie, action-packed for sure!

I’m by no means a Trekkie, or Trekker, or whatever the term is, but I did enjoy Gene Roddenberry’s original series on television as a kid, and many of the TV shows and films as an adult. I love how the current cast, plot and direction pay respectful, and humorous, homage to the original TV series, and how Leonard Nimoy was once again in this film, playing an older version of Spock.

 

The classic dynamic between Spock’s logic and Kirk’s impetuous gut feelings remains wonderfully intact. Thank God.

 

It occurs to me that we (humans, without a drop of green vulcan blood running through our veins) each may battle at times between our “logical” mind and our “illogical” heart. I know I do! I have learned to pay close attention to my emotions, but there are times I look at my emotions and just go “What the f…? Where is this coming from? And why the h… did I have to experience this just right now? It’s so…inconvenient!”

Which, for some reason, brings me right back to something Michael Brown wrote in THE PRESENCE PROCESS: A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness, a book I mentioned in a previous post:

The idea that our purpose in being alive is found in something we are supposed to be doing is a misunderstanding that originates in childhood. It’s a misunderstanding passed on as part of the ancient belief systems that are energetically imprinted in us from the generations before us…

Our parents ask, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” This question denies the validity of everything we are already. Consequently, we behave as if manufacturing a life that supplies the correct answer to this question will bring us the unconditional love we didn’t receive as children.

This quest sets in motion the endless “doings” that become our adult life experience. We try to prove we are worthy of being alive by succeeding or by not succeeding. Even though we are already alive, we go in search of a purpose through which we may “earn a living.”

What we are attempting is to “earn a loving.”

Which brings me right back to a trailer about mountain men I saw before the Star Trek movie started.

What do I do for a living? I live for a living. –Paraphrased from trailer re: mountain men

Authentically Yours, Laura

Simply Authentic...your soul voice is calling. Alternate Futures

Alternate Futures

This is another post I pilfered from O Magazine (May, 2013 issue, page 148) because I loved this exercise too much not to share it!

Rachel Swaby engineered this article entitled, “Imagine The Possibilities”: Renowned adventurer Roz Savage helps you chart a course toward your future—whether you decide to go this way or that.

Thirteen years ago, Roz Savage thought she had everything she needed to live happily—a successful career as a management consultant, a husband, a home in London, and a little red sports car to boot. But in her day-to-day life, Savage routinely felt unfulfilled and much older than her 33 years.

So, one evening she sat down and came up with two alternate versions of her future: The first continued from the life she’d already built; the second was inspired by her long-buried desire for adventure. The exercises kicked off small moves—like a trip to South America—that led to bigger challenges. By 2005 Savage had left her job behind and set out to pilot a 23 –foot-long ocean rowboat across the ocean alone.

Today, at age 45, she’s also traversed the Pacific and Indian Oceans solo, and is feeling happier, more attractive, and more self-confident than ever—all thanks to her dual reality check. Even if you don’t think your future holds sweeping changes, Savage warns, taking the following steps “could have fairly dramatic consequences.”

1. ON A SHEET OF PAPER, MAP OUT YOUR FRIENDSHIPS, FAMILY, CAREER, AND LOVE LIFE FAR INTO THE FUTURE. This document should reflect the natural progression of your present circumstances. On another sheet, describe the person you aspire to be.

2. REFLECT ON YOUR ALTERNATE FUTURES. For Savage, imagining herself as an adventurer “felt like a truer version of my life.” She also discovered she was “rather bored” writing the realistic one.

3. DECLARE YOUR INTENTIONS TO DO SOMETHING GRAND. After Savage resolved to row solo across the Atlantic, she gave several newspaper interviews announcing her plans. “I just decided I was going to make it happen, and that was it,” she says. For the rest of us, a simple proclamation to friends and family should suffice.

-Rachel Swaby, O Magazine

If you decide to do this exercise, let me know what you discover, or uncover!

Authentically Yours, Laura