Peace Archives - Page 4 of 5

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Spiritual Life

Endurance

Julianne HarveySeptember 20, 2016September 19, 2016Leave a comment

Most of us endure because we have to, not because we want to. As humans, we are incredibly resilient beings. We can gut it out when we are under duress and make it through to an easier stage, mostly because there is simply no other choice.

I’m working on not complaining as much these days. Life is hard for everyone. My pain is not different from your pain. It all hurts. When it sucks, it really sucks, but the good news is that we are all in it together.

To endure is to weather hardship in a dignified manner. Moaning and bitching about elements out of our direct control is a waste of energy and it reduces our ability to feel strong and capable. When I think about the people I most admire in the world, those who make it through turbulent periods with grace and poise are among my greatest heroes.

It’s just damn hard to do it myself. But I’m getting there, inch by inch. I can endure the worst circumstances and so can you. So much of what ails us is in our own minds. If we believe we can survive and eventually thrive, we will. If we sink into self pity and compare our suffering to someone else’s, we are moving further from dignity and can benefit from a course correction.

One of the biggest cliches is “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But it’s so very true. We don’t grow in the easy seasons. Those are for resting and gearing up for the inevitable freight train that’s on its way to disrupt our orderly existence.

The hard shit reveals who we are, for better or for worse. It proves to us our own strength and highlights our weaknesses, not so we feel ashamed but so we become conscious of them and can begin to work on these troublesome areas.

I am determined to stop focusing on petty garbage that doesn’t add any value to my life. I’m trying to move in the direction of peace and joy by veering away from stress and drama. I proved to myself this summer that I can do unimaginably hard and scary things. And I can do more than just make it through them, but I can in fact endure with a certain element of dignity.

I used to waste so much time seeking approval from others for my choices, my words, my imagined legacy. It feels fantastic to pull that back from society in general and sit on it myself, like a hen keeping her vulnerable baby chicks warm when the air turns cold.

Now is the time to endure with as much grace as we can muster. If the sun is shining and the birds are singing for you, enjoy this day. Soak up the warmth for one day soon it will rain or snow and you will need to summon resources of strength from deep inside of you to make it through.

And if you are enduring something awful or scary now, remember that this too shall pass. You always have a choice. You can complain about how unfair all of it is, or you can endure with a smile nailed on your face. Think ahead to when the crisis is finished. How will you want to remember this time? How did you react when that was the only part of the situation that you could control?

In Culture, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Uncertainty

Julianne HarveyAugust 23, 2016August 22, 2016Leave a comment

Uncertainty is a part of life for everyone. We can defend ourselves against it, using strategies such as denial, manipulation and over-confidence in our ability to control outcomes, but at the end of the day the result is the same: uncertainty is always a factor.

I’m a Type A personality, so I find uncertainty to be an uncomfortable bedfellow. And yet as I practice going with the stream and not against it, I discover a fresh source of peace and contentment. When I believed I was the centre of the universe, by squeezing my eyes shut and willing certain things to occur, I felt more in control of my circumstances. But I paid a high price in stress for this make-believe certainty.

It was never real. Not then, not now. It’s the equivalent of a toddler standing in the middle of the room with her chubby hands pressed against her eye sockets, shouting, “You can’t see me!” I’m embarrassed to say I lived more than three decades of my life with this as a worldview. But the older I get, the clearer my uncertainty becomes.

I’m more certain now in my uncertainty than I ever was in my certainty. I’ve said that before and I’m sure I’ll state it many more times before I’m through. The sheer relief of admitting out loud that I don’t have the answers and I never really did is liberating. It’s the bubbles in a freshly-poured glass of Prosecco. It’s the helium that allows you to soar above your surroundings and see the bigger picture.

Uncertainty means you need faith on a daily basis. It requires you to let go of your preconceived ideas about how any experience or relationship should go and invites you to surrender to what is and not what you want it to be. Living this way allows you to recognize that you are one part of this world and not the whole shebang. You play a small but valuable role but huge amounts of this life are above and beyond what you can influence or manage. And this is more than okay.

I am practicing staying in each moment I am in. I don’t allow myself to forecast far into the future any more, for too much will shift and change and I’ll be forced to re-evaluate anyway. So I may as well just decide once, when the moment is upon me, instead of having fifty outcomes mapped out. It simply takes too much energy to live that way.

If you need permission not to have all the answers, please accept this from me. You are not the world’s Wikipedia. As Rumi said, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” We are marvellously complete, all on our own, but we must live this life to the best of our ability day by day. We don’t have to see around every upcoming bend, simply because we cannot. The job is too big and we are defeated before we begin.

It’s lovely in some ways to live in this age of instant information, but it messes with our natural rhythms. We aren’t sages or fortune tellers. We aren’t certain of what is coming. What we do have is our natural intuition, our sense of humour, our huge, warm hearts that can love without measure. We don’t have certainty of what will happen next or a set prescription for how others should behave.

We are responsible for ourselves and for our dependent children. We can let the rest slide from our shoulders. We can walk away from the drama and the fears of others that spread like wildfire if we let them. We can learn to live with uncertainty; to talk ourselves through it the way we get our kids through difficult situations. By breathing, discussing it in a calm manner, eating a bowl of chips or some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Uncertainty is part of life. We may as well embrace it instead of fighting it.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Stay the Course

Julianne HarveyJuly 12, 2016July 11, 2016Leave a comment

How we handle stress reveals us on a primal level. We have nowhere to hide when the pressure builds. Do we blow up, retreat, soothe with food, shopping, alcohol or sex, or do we face it head on with grace and calm?

Very few of us do the latter, but it’s a new goal for me. I know that the time to prepare for stress is when the seas are still, not wild with uncertainty. We prepare for hardship in the peaceful times, by developing skills that will see us through the bumps that are sure to come in the future.

Confidence is always an inside game. We are sunk if we hinge our self esteem on any outward achievement or praise, for these are fickle and will certainly fade. Our surest hedge against internal or external disaster is to stoke the fires of our belief in ourselves on a regular basis. Waiting until the stress arrives means we are too late.

I’ve been living this out lately, after a turbulent period of suffering. Those old demons that hunch on my shoulder and plague me with taunts of being less-than, not good enough and worthless have finally quieted down. I simply waited them out and in time they got bored and went on to irritate someone else.

Half of this life is just outlasting what tries to defeat us. It’s important to stay busy with other pursuits to minimize the dark forces working to pull us under.

I’m loving this season of internal calm. It’s that dewy, clean feeling after a hard rain. It’s less a triumph than a relief that this particular storm has ended and patches of blue sky are visible once again.

All I know is that it helps to do our internal work each and every day, especially when we see no obvious evidence of it. If we stay faithful to our soul, when the tough times mysteriously end we will see the benefits of this devoted attention.

If you are hurting right now, with no clear answers or insights, simply stay the course. Nourish yourself with the gentle sustaining routines. Wash your face, apply sunscreen, listen to happy music, drink water, eat your vegetables (and also chocolate). Pain doesn’t last forever. Neither does self-doubt, fear and worry. One day, you’ll wake up and feel contented, hopeful, a little bit more secure in your own brave identity.

You are likely doing better than you think you are. I say this to myself as a mantra when all seems lost. Life can be rough with many mountains to climb, but we can do it if we pack the right gear and we train for the trail so we are prepared.

Gentleness and courage are suitable bedfellows for the calm times and the terrifying ones. One day, in the very near future, you will experience a personal breakthrough. You’ll feel different, you’ll see the world in a new way, and all of that constancy in the darkness will get you to that unforeseen moment of light.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth

For Those in Need of Encouragement

Julianne HarveyMay 10, 2016May 9, 2016Leave a comment

From time to time, we can all use some encouragement, even if we have to give it to ourselves. Life can beat us down, or we can be cruel to our own precious selves, and we are in need of a pick-me-up.

One of my favourite quotes from Rumi is, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” Everything we need is already inside of us, curled tight in the bud, simply waiting for the right conditions to bloom and blossom. I firmly believe this to be true. But sometimes the wait is so long and we begin to lose hope that a miracle is, in fact, underway.

If you’ve been too afraid to try for something you want, now is the time. Don’t wait. You are more powerful and capable than you know. So much beauty resides in you, waiting to catch flame and burn brightly out in the world.

Step out and take the risk that scares you most. Believe that the net will be there when you leap. We hold ourselves back far more than circumstances or other people do. It’s time to try for it, to cease shrinking back, to grasp what you are longing for.

Look around for those who can help you. Who do you find inspiring? Spend time with them. Watch and learn. Be amazed. Refuse to sell yourself short by being with the small-minded, critical, angry people. You deserve better company, so go make it happen.

If you feel rushed and stressed, slow down and simplify. Take a garbage bag around the rooms you live in and get rid of unnecessary clutter. Don’t keep things “just in case”. If it creates physical mess, it also adds to your psychic junk pile. Clear it away and experience the freedom of less. My new life mantra is: It’s better to want less than to have more.

Know that you are good enough. Not someday, when you achieve some mythical level of success or an ever-changing dollar amount in your retirement fund, but NOW. In this moment. If everything you need is inside of you, all you have to do is claim it. Experience the happiness and contentment that comes from knowing that who you are is already valuable beyond measure.

It’s in you. It is you. The answers are not out in the world, they are in your own identity, and they are not what you think they should be. It’s okay. Breathe deep and do your level best to let go of the drama, fear, stress and horseshit around you. Go inward, for that is where your peace and love reside. You’ve had it all along – now the task is to clear away the noise and clutter in order to access it.

In Books, Identity, Personal Growth, Spiritual Life

The Untethered Soul

Julianne HarveyMarch 8, 2016March 7, 2016Leave a comment

I just read The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer (thank you, Pam, for the recommendation!). The book blew my mind. As I turned each page, I felt something in my cells and molecules shift and rearrange. Reading it was a holy, beautiful experience.

Singer’s basic premise is this: we are not our psyche. We should be sitting in the seat of awareness; observing what happens, but not being personally involved with it. He talks about how energy is designed to move through us, but we block this healthy process by storing unpleasant emotions and they remain trapped inside of us. This keeps us living in the past, bound up inside by negative energy and fears.

He offers a better way: to feel emotions or notice thoughts as they come, but then relax your shoulders, breathe deep, and choose to let them pass through you. It’s just energy, and not personal to us (even if it may feel personal). This practice helps us learn to live in the present moment instead of remaining fixated on events from years ago or anxiety about what could go wrong in the future.

I’ve been practicing this and I’m utterly amazed at the difference in how present I feel in any given moment. Life is not meant to be taken so personally. Shit will continue to happen to us. Small and large energy shifts will occur in us, where we feel unsettled, afraid, joyful, optimistic or angry. We can notice these feelings and name them, but the key is to let them go so they don’t stay trapped inside of us.

The same is true with thoughts. Our racing, fevered minds can get us into all kinds of trouble, but we don’t have to engage with the rabbit-trail our thoughts want to lead us on. We can simply observe the thought, “Oh man, I forgot to pick up the dry-cleaning and where in the world did I put that receipt I need for my taxes and the car needs more windshield washer fluid…” and then choose to let it go.

We are much more than our minds or our emotions. We have a higher consciousness, and it can only help to free us if we move beyond the confines of our frenzied thoughts and hyper-sensitive feelings.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself has offered me a new set of skills to practice. Whenever I start to feel worried or disturbed by the incessant chatter in my brain, I can observe from my seat of awareness and then allow the energy to pass through me. I don’t want anxiety about the dry cleaners or taxes or windshield washer fluid trapped inside of me for the rest of my days. No thank you!

I’m looking for peace and beauty and inspiration, not a prison of drudgery to whatever stress my mind or emotions can dream up for me. Making a conscious effort to be aware of my thoughts and feelings has anchored me to the present moment in an entirely fresh and real way. I love it. I’m so grateful for this brilliant book and recommend it to anyone and everyone.