Your Future Self Thanks You

I was watching Kris literally tear down some walls and got to thinking about metaphorical walls. The places we put ourselves without ever realizing it. The ways in which we end up boxed in by fear, longing, regret, destructive patterns, inactivity or … you name it. Boxes come in all shapes and sizes, after all.

A common tool used to break out of our metaphorical boxes? Journaling. A daily peppering of paper with words. A place to ponder, to digest and to escape the day’s bustling activity.

While I love journaling and use it as a tool for reflection often, I realize the idea of keeping a regular journal can be intimidating. To a lovely individual new to putting thoughts on paper, it’s like asking a single question about wheatgrass and receiving a shipment of wheatgrass reference books and research materials in reply. Total overkill.

Unlike taking those first steps into the world of wheatgrass, though, you already write every day. Whether it’s updating your Facebook status, texting a friend or replying to an email, you’re no stranger to stringing words into sentences and sending them off. We’re just going to use those writing skills you already have as a vehicle for your dreams.

First, imagine your world in six months.

Perhaps you got the promotion. Perhaps you’ve just received news that your cancer has gone into remission. Maybe you were finally able to quit the corporate gig and strike out on your own entrepreneurial adventure.

Whatever is at the top of your mind right now, imagine a best-case scenario for it that’s happening in six months time.

You’re in a better place.

You’ve made it through your treatments and you’re regaining your strength.

Better yet, your Crazy Sexy Diet has made treatment unnecessary!

You’ve just scheduled that trip to Bora Bora to lie on the beach and swim with dolphins. (Not your dream? Oops, sorry. That’s mine.)

Now, grab a piece of paper and begin writing a letter to your six-months-from-now self. We’re going to allow this letter to be a tiny, potent time capsule for your fondest wishes.

In the first part of your letter, let your future self know you’re proud.

Imagine the tasks, hardships and bumps in the road you’ve overcome in the past few months. Outline each one and let your future self know why, exactly, you’re swelling with pride at this instant.

Next, fill your reader with hope for the future.

Whether your six-month vision comes true or not, you’ll want to provide the reader (that’s you!) with hope for the future. Imagine the joys that are in store just past the six-months-from-now mark and share them.

Finally, encourage your future self to tackle present obstacles.

You can be sure that the time between creating and receiving this letter hasn’t been an easy-breezy-beautiful-Cover-Girl sort of situation. There are new issues to face. Give your future self words of wisdom to continue to face her present challenges.

Sign the letter with love and a flourish. (Yes, a flourish. No ordinary signing will do!)

Seal the letter, stamp it and address it to yourself, then … find your favorite friend. Ask him or her to send this letter to you in six months.

Don’t just tuck the letter away and promise to read it in six months. The shock factor of receiving a letter from your past self via snail mail will amaze you – and voila! You’ve come full circle in the magical world of writing.

One last thing before I go on my merry way: Your future self says, “Thank you.” (My future self met her and we high-fived in the hallway. I promised to relay the message.)

Kristen Kalp is a writer and orphan hugger who can help you write better for your business.

Photo credit: rhoadeecha

On Having Gratitude This Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re reading this post today, and you’re currently in the U.S., you’re probably engaged in any number of annual rituals – from cooking to watching football, to silently (or not so silently) cursing family members who drive you crazy. Many of you might also be thinking about what you’re grateful for right now. If you are, I’m right there with you.

As my sister, Kris, can confirm, I’ve always been a huge dork about having gratitude on Thanksgiving. For other people this holiday might be about turkey or pilgrims, but for me it’s always been about taking one day to really focus on the things I have in my life that are positive. While I incorporate gratitude exercises into my regular journaling throughout the year, each Thanksgiving I make a bigger effort to list everything that I can think of to be grateful for, including the “little” things. I also try to take the day to just generally reflect and give thanks.

The good news is that in recent years, study after study has shown us that there are real, hardcore benefits to experiencing and celebrating gratitude. Research has demonstrated that people who keep daily gratitude journals (giving thanks for about five things/day) can experience as much as a 25-percent increase in day-to-day happiness in as little as a few months, and that this is even true for people who suffer from painful, life-threatening illnesses. Some studies also show that exercising gratitude can improve your health (namely by moderating stress and improving sleep quality).

The reason why this works is because the neural networks in our brains operate on the basis of habit, and you can think of this in terms of practicing a behavior. Any action that we take, or thought that we think, gets recorded in our brains by becoming imprinted in our neurons. As we repeat those actions or thoughts, grooves (effectively) get created in our brains that make us more likely to engage in that kind of thought or action again in the future. From this standpoint, by looking at things on the bright side — by having gratitude for the things that might otherwise go unnoticed — we are literally training our brains to do more of that in general.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that your problems aren’t real ones, or that there’s never a time or a place for acknowledging and accepting the things in life that are painful. On the contrary, I think that sadness, grief, and anger are all normal emotions that are part of the human experience, and we have to make room for all of it. It’s just that this post isn’t about that — it’s about taking the time to notice the things in life that we can otherwise take for granted. Think of it as an exercise – an exercise that can benefit you no matter what your personal circumstances are.

This is just anecdotal to my own experience, but I will say that it seems like the more I practice gratitude the more I have to feel grateful for. I think I’m just better able to look on the bright side than I used to be. I also notice that my frustration tolerance has improved, as I’m more able to focus on the positive in moments that would otherwise be difficult, challenging, or even just plain annoying.

Here’s what I do, and I suggest that you try something similar: My list always starts with what seems most basic or fundamental, and I work my way out. I’m grateful today, for example, for the parts of my body that work. I am blessed with the gift of sight and — despite some occasional joint pain — two hands that are capable of typing out these sentences right now. From there I can be grateful for my home and my bed, my family or my friends, my sweet little dog and his four, fuzzy paws.

If you lack one of the things I just listed, or feel emotionally triggered by a loss of some kind as you read this, can you think of something else you can feel grateful for right now? Something that might otherwise go unnoticed? The goal is to stop and give thanks for the little things that might be overlooked on a different day.

If you’re reading this and you’re still having a hard time thinking of what you have to feel grateful for, challenge yourself today by trying a little harder. To paraphrase Danielle LaPorte’s post on similar subject matter, if you’re reading this right now, you have internet access, which means that you also have electricity. That alone is something to be grateful for.

So yes, I’m giving thanks for many things this holiday season. I will also be, per my usual custom, inspiring and annoying my family members by making them talk about what they’re grateful for all day long. Please join us: What are you grateful for today?

For more information about this author, please visit, visit www.lesliecarr.com.

Photo credit: mtsofan

It Takes Courage to Want More

I wrote this letter to the part of myself that dared to listen to her pain more than her need for stability. That part helped me write my first book, “This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love,” and discover my best life.

Years ago, I sat on a beach and considered ending my life. I didn’t see another choice. I was an honors graduate of Harvard Law School on partnership track at a major law firm. I couldn’t bear my day/evening/weekend job, even with its lush paycheck. I couldn’t figure out any other options with my frantic, analytical mind. I had no glistening faith or trust in myself, the universe or even the tooth fairy, back then.

You build that faith when you leap, not before.

So I screamed and cried in my journal. I let out one desperate wail near sunset. This letter is to her with my love and gratitude.
You wanted an impossible life. You wanted freedom. You wanted to rip off your lawyer clothes and identity and walk on beaches on a weekday. You didn’t even really know what you wanted. You just knew you wanted to live and that there had to be something more. You thought you were imbecilic or weak for wanting fairy-dusted utopia as you saw it, without a plan, money or a strand of reasonable possibility. But you wanted it so much that you didn’t want to live if living meant existing in the life you knew, the “responsible” life that did not involve sand in your toes and being yourself.

I remember your wail, your helpless, crazy cry. It was as though you fell to your knees and screamed “Uncle.” It was in that wail I believe the angels heard “Yes father, yes mother, yes universe, yes life energy, yes love, yes, yes, yes.” You didn’t know that saying no to the only life you knew was saying yes to the life that would come. I have this life now because of your courage and dignity, your commitment to dreams you couldn’t even name. I am beyond grateful.

You wanted to be a writer with all your heart, though you considered that forbidden territory to be childish and reckless. Well, I want you to know you weren’t crazy. You were meant to write, and that desire has saved your life, mine and probably many others’. I wrote a book and it got published by a major New York house and it hit some bestseller’s lists. Because of my writing, I have a devoted following of smart, creative people who attend my workshops, retreats and coaching programs.

Once I led a women’s retreat on the whitest sands anywhere on a beach in Mexico and I thought of you, sitting on another beach, in another time, as I led those women to their freedom. I’ve taught in the rain forest of Costa Rica, zip lined through a jungle. I visit San Francisco often and hang out with creative, brilliant friends, some of them famous. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself famous, but my fans would, so maybe I am a little.

Now you’ll love this, because I know it will tickle your writer’s heart and the Brooklyn girl in you, eyes clumped with mascara and insecurity, who once dreamed of being in Manhattan with reason to be there. Well, I stay in Greenwich Village, write in artsy coffee shops and meet my publisher for lunch, not because he’s my publisher but because he’s my friend.

I live in Colorado under blue skies, with golden sun, trails, mountains and parking spaces for everyone. I get up when I want to and I am free. I have people who work for me. Yes, I can pay other people’s salaries, all because you chose your silly reckless dreams; you chose to write.

I finally feel like I belong in this world. I get to have life-changing conversations with people, almost daily. I meet visionaries and business leaders and actresses and authors and I meditate with them, lecture and, at the most beautiful retreat centers in the country, watch them melt and laugh and discover and grab their own inspired calling with both hands and one ravenous heart. It’s magic. It’s breathing. And I am paid for this. I can die with peace in my bones now because I know I have done something here on earth that matters. I’m so proud to be using my gifts in this way.

Here’s what I’m trying to say: I’m so grateful you believed in something more. I am so grateful you allowed everything you knew to unravel. I am so grateful you questioned what was available in life. I am so grateful that while you were terrified, you still chose to be different. I am in awe of you, because you knew there was something else and you believed even when it was excruciatingly painful to believe. I am grateful you chose the unknown, because I am living in its abundance.

I would have missed this life if you had gotten yourself under control, buckled down and accepted the status quo. I would have missed this life if you had allowed the pain to weigh in one more ounce than your thinnest hope, and you had ended it all instead of begun it all. I am terrified that others might not realize they have a choice or that their pain is not a lack in them, but their own flare of unexpressed wild beauty, creativity, heightened potential and the golden-eyed jaguar that resides within them. It motivates me to keep sharing. I don’t want someone to stop believing on my watch.

I am grateful to all parts of myself that chose this journey over and over, because it has required choosing over and over again. I am living this life because of every one of your decisions, through doubt, exhaustion and dim determination. I am grateful.

What letter do you need to write to part of yourself?

For more information on how to optimize your life, visit http://www.ThisTimeIDance.com/.

Photo credit: Cassandra Rae

5 Lessons Hospice Taught Me About Living

I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked, “How can you work in a hospice and be sick yourself? Isn’t it awful?” For those of you who don’t know, I have been living with and trying to heal from a chronic illness, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (RSD/CRPS), for the last six years. I took a second year clinical internship for my master’s degree in a hospice for that precise reason – I wanted to grow personally, spiritually and professionally so that I could continue to uncover my authentic self and the secrets to a miraculous healing. And, no, it isn’t awful. It is personally, professionally and spiritually challenging, rewarding, fulfilling and soul feeding to have the opportunity to provide end-of-life care in the forms of support and counseling to individuals and their families in one of the most, if not the most, challenging times in their lives.

For all the incredible work hospices and their teams of professionals do, they often have bad reputations largely due to misinformation and misunderstandings of what hospices actually are. Hospice is specifically for comfort and palliative care and it does not hasten death. Patients and their families elect to have hospice care when curative treatments are no longer available or desirable and aggressive treatments have been ceased. To be admitted into the program, the patient has to be given a prognosis of less than six months to live and stopped all aggressive treatments. Most desirable, the patient is treated in the home-care setting unless there is a symptom or cluster of symptoms that cannot be managed in the home. In this case, the patient is treated in the inpatient unit where his/her acute symptoms can be better managed.

With an emphasis on personal choice, dignity, respect and quality of life, the services are designed to support each patient’s and family’s unique set of needs. The care is provided by an experienced and licensed interdisciplinary team, including physicians, registered nurses, social workers, clergy, certified nurses’ aides and trained volunteers. In particular, clinical social workers (me!) provide support to and counsel the terminally ill and their families and address a full range of psychosocial services from diagnosis through bereavement.

So, what have I learned from working in a hospice? Here are five lessons hospice and the dying have taught me about living:

1. Practice Gratitude. If you woke up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning, a trip to the hospice will set your day straight – and fast! Working in a hospice provides you with the daily opportunity to remember and acknowledge all of the blessings in your life. When you are assisting an individual at the end of life, suddenly your small (and sometimes big) struggles don’t seem so daunting anymore. It simply allows you to gain an often much-needed perspective. Take time each day to practice gratitude, big and small, and you will find your happiness and sense of fulfillment will increase dramatically.

2. Love Deeply. When you are at the end of life, all of your material possessions, diplomas, professional achievements and awards, etc. will mean nothing to you. What will matter is love: those who you love and those who love you. Take the time to focus on those you love now while you still can. Please, don’t wait until you are at the end of life to appreciate the healing and transforming properties of pure, unconditional, selfless love.

3. Be Understanding. While the mental health field often holds theory and treatment planning as two very important pieces to the therapeutic puzzle, providing a non-judgmental, compassionate, empathetic sounding board for your client/patient to feel understood is often just as or more powerful than putting into action a well thought-out treatment plan. In hospice care, you may only see a client and his/her loved ones once, which does not allow for elaborate treatment planning and execution. As human beings, we all have many things in common, and I firmly believe a desire to feel understood is a common thread that holds us all together. Take the time to sit with your loved ones and validate their feelings. Allowing them to feel understood lessens isolation and increases feelings of happiness, peace and contentment.

4. Be Supportive. Social work and mental health care, specifically talk therapy, are all about speaking and connecting with individuals, but sometimes, especially at the end of life when patients are unresponsive, your supportive presence is enough to make a large impact on the patient and his/her loved ones. Being a supportive presence includes all of those non-verbal communications and cues that communicate caring and compassion to someone in need of support, including gentle touch, eye contact, posture, facial expressions, and active, empathetic listening. You can be a supportive presence to those you love now by focusing less on problem-solving and more on practicing your non-verbal communication skills.

5. Suffering Can Be a Catalyst. What threatens to destroy you can actually save you. In suffering and complete ruin, we often find the power to transform ourselves and those around us. Suffering isn’t all bad, although it may seem that way at times. With suffering can come many lessons. Learn from your own suffering, but also learn from the suffering of others. My patients have taught me more in 10 months than I have learned in my 26 years of life.

While I didn’t experience a miraculous healing of my symptoms, and in fact, went through some of the most trying times physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, in working with the sick and dying, I have discovered how to truly live. By facing my own fears, I have learned how to ask some of life’s most daunting questions and experience levels of self-awareness, introspection and closeness to God/Source/Spirit/Creator that I never imagined possible. I have also experienced a profound clarity concerning my own life’s purpose (to help others and alleviate suffering), and that is a gift I could never put a price tag on.

Maria Mooney, MSW, LSW, is a raw vegan licensed social worker living with a progressive neurological disease, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (RSD/CRPS). Follow along as Maria reflects on lessons learned through her health challenges, shares her experiences with alternative and traditional treatments, enjoys life to its fullest and heals herself at her blog!

Photo credit: _Libby_

6 Steps Towards Emotional Wellness

by Jennifer Reger

I’ve spent the past five years on the quest for wellness, with much of my time, efforts and money devoted to better food choices. I bought organic, read label after label, avoided processed food, and experimented with various food plans before choosing a vegan, plant-based diet. With all my energy focused on food, and more recently a regular fitness routine, I managed to overlook a crucial component of health: emotional wellness. And with everything else going on in my life, you’d think I would have worked on this sooner.

I felt a lack of direction in my career. My job was paying the bills, and I was grateful for that. But I knew I needed a creative outlet, and my passions were going unfulfilled. I hadn’t been able to find a relationship that stuck, which in hindsight was a blessing, but nonetheless painful. Bottom line: I had mistakenly relied on social identities and external factors (things and people) for happiness, which left me feeling less than stellar. So while emotional wellness should have been at the forefront of my health venture, food was my main priority and a distraction that I could control in terms of outcomes. I soon realized I needed to cultivate a daily practice focusing on emotional health that I could do as I dealt with my work and relationship situations.

Here are some of the steps I’ve recently taken in creating emotional wealth:

Take an internal inventory: Identify emotional triggers. I began my journey by acknowledging things in my life that drained me and that fueled me. Cheryl Richardson’s book, “Take Time for Your Life,” is a great resource and starting point; she provides a list that covers all grounds to explore: job satisfaction, relationships, spirituality, physical health and dwelling place. While a person is so much more than any of these parts, it’s important to recognize how we connect our emotional well-being to the quality of our experience with these aspects of our lives.

Practice self-care religiously. Nutrition, movement, quiet time (be it meditation, yoga or spiritual reflection), sleep and positive self-talk are essential. While they are components to general well-being, I’d argue they are integral to emotional wellness too. Ever experience anxiety or unexplained feelings of sadness after eating a super sugary cookie? Feel irritable after only five hours of sleep? How do you feel after a jog or green juice? Nurturing the physical, spiritual and mental aspects of your life will have you feeling pretty darn good and balanced.

When the going gets tough, give yourself some extra lovin’. Regardless of how well you might be feeling in general, bumps in the road are inevitable. It’s nice to have some “go-to” goodies when we need a little pick me up. This might include a feel-good movie (heck, it might be a tear-jerker to release pent-up emotion!), a favorite CD, a friend to lean on or hug or a cup of tea. And don’t forget to include some affirmations. They are powerful in creating a positive outlook on any situation. Love and light will come from you and to you. It’s amazing how saying (and believing), “Today is going to be a good one,” never ceases to result in a kick-ass day.

Mind the gap. I realized that I was spending way too much time inside my head, worrying about the future and regretting some things that had happened in the past (over which I had no control). I was both the prisoner and the warden in the cell of my mind. Yikes! If you find yourself fixated on anything besides the here and now or engaging in negative self-talk, check out Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The Power of Now.” His exercise of “watching the thinker” is revealing and freeing. After practicing detachment from both the mind and the ego, I was brimming with happiness and ease. Emotional wellness is indeed dependent on the state of one’s mind.

Nurture and expand your perspective; exercise connectivity. It’s so easy to get lost in our own worlds, the direction we are going or wish to go, and what means of fulfillment we are seeking. When done excessively, we can lose sight of the bigger picture or miss out on something great. A gratitude journal helps me recognize all the kind and generous things people have done for me that day and that I’ve witnessed being done for others. I have started to give a wink and a nod to challenges too – those perceived roadblocks, which are often the greatest teachers.

And if you’re feeling particularly low or isolated and the gratitude journal just ain’t doing the trick, there’s an awesome exercise in connectivity that you can do anytime, anywhere. Notice how everything you have experienced in a day – the bus you rode, a building you work in, the salad you grabbed from the deli, the shoes you’re wearing, the paper or book you’re reading – were all created and touched by others. Even if someone didn’t do something noticeably nice for you that day, there were many hands involved in the way you got to work, the food you ate, the book in your hands, what you wore. I always feel nurtured after this exercise.

Receive. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s worth repeating. Giving to others is great, but if you give and give and give there will be nothing left for you. And it sends the wrong message to the universe, too. Emotional wellness calls for balance and by giving too much without receiving, we deplete our energy sources. I’ve noticed recently that I regularly decline people’s help and attention, not wanting to be a burden. When someone asks how I am, I often deflect the attention by saying, “I’m fine. How are you? What’s going on with you?” I realized that such actions will keep things from coming into my life. It’s only in being open to receiving and being interdependent that we get the things we need. I’m still working on this one. Are you?

None of these practices is rocket science; they are quite simple. And chances are that the wellness warriors of the Crazy Sexy Life community are doing some of these very exercises. But in our fast-paced, information-overload world, it’s so easy to get off track. And it’s nice to get a reminder now and again to slow down and take a breath.

Jennifer Reger is creator of the wellness blog Holistic Health Junkie. She lives in Philadelphia.

Photo credit: Mr. Anathema