If you caught my most recent FB Live (and you can watch it here), you saw me really up. My mom messaged me how much she loved to see me smile.
I talked about making Mindset Shifts and how gratitude is like a Power Tool for rewiring our brain’s neuro-pathways. It’s also for changing our thought patterns (because when we do, our responses and behaviors change, too, and, consequently, our relationships with others, with God and with ourselves.)
I was feeling great, because a) this is my one of my favorite topics, and b) that morning I was finally able to go on a power walk. The week before, I used discipline and willpower to get a lot of work done, so I had time. I woke up to a sunny morning, put on my walking shoes and stepped onto my walking trail! It felt so good! I had recommitted myself to a daily practice of exercise, as I intended to. Everything was going according to my plan.
But the next morning a splitting migraine woke me up (no worries, I’ve had those for years… and I although I have been able to greatly minimize them, they still occur.)
And outside, the rain was pouring down.
It was only Day 2, and I had to abandon my morning routine. “I’ll go to the clubhouse and use the elliptical” I thought… but my usual medicine wasn’t working, and I was in no shape to move.
So, instead, through one open eye, I checked my email. A friend had sent me a picture of icicles. Which brought up a river of tears. I didn’t expect that… but the icicles brought up so many memories of my kids and Matthew picking icicles and enjoying them like popsicles. The memory was so vivid, I could see their rosy cheeks and hear their giggles and laughter. I let myself sit (well ‘lay’) still with what I was feeling…
And then I remembered something else…
I once watched a little pond thaw out. It was the winter of 1995 and I was in Massachusetts recording an album at a beautiful studio set up on a farm. At the time I was in some emotional pain that I had tried to work out, pray out and surrender, but it stubbornly stuck with me.
Each morning I would walk to this little pond and watch how the weak early-March sun’s rays thawed each frozen drop. One at a time. Patiently. With no rush. And the pond itself, the fish in it and the birds around it, couldn’t do anything but wait, patiently, with no rush.
I remembered standing there: my eyes surveying the size of the pond – from the edges where the thin ice was melting to the thick layer in the middle of the pond – my brain considering the speed of thawing and my body feeling overwhelmed.
I felt heaviness in my chest, as if the task of melting the pond was, in some weird way, assigned to me: “It’s going to take forever” I thought…. “Or at least a few weeks.” I smiled as another gentler thought reminded me. Eventually the sun will get stronger and the ice will melt faster. Because that’s just how it is, always has been and always will be.
I wrote in my journal my intention to take what the little pond taught me and let love heal my emotional pain, one drop at a time, without me trying to rush it.
But I returned to NYC (where I lived at the time) before Spring arrived, and I brought some of the unmelted ice home with me. But that’s another story. 🙂
So… in answering Mike, who asked “Please write about doing the most important thing possible at every given moment”:
Sometimes the most important thing to do is to get up on your feet, roll up your sleeves and put your intentions into actions. And sometimes the most important thing is to allow Love to help you heal, patiently, with no rush and without control over it.
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