Go Outside and Play

It has become our habit to run from location to location. We run, run, run everywhere. Once we get somewhere, the mental countdown is going on in the background of our minds for the next location. We can easily get so caught up in our day to day routines that the only time we see the outdoors is the few moments it takes for us to walk from building to car, then from car to building. Over and over again. How much time are you spending outdoors? Do you purposely seek time outside to appreciate nature?

Our indoor environments are filled with toxins. It is a wonderful and beautiful thing to see so many people making healthy changes for their indoor environments, including water systems, air filters and environmentally safe cleaning products. These changes are to be celebrated and encouraged. But it still doesn't make your environment as healthy and rejuvenating as the outdoors.

Mother Nature offers so many benefits to your physical body, your emotional health and your spirit! Fresh air alone can revive you and a gentle wind can literally caress your worries away if you let it. But you have to GO OUTSIDE to experience the benefits. Go for a walk in your neighborhood and listen to the birds sing and the dogs barking their excitement. Sit by the ocean, a lake, a river or creek and read a book or draw or talk to a friend. Put your music down and listen to the symphony of nature. Take your dog to the park. Sit in the backyard with your cat, bunny, hamster or little brother (ha ha). Give yourself 15 extra minutes in the morning to sip your coffee or tea on your patio and relax into your day with appreciation for a moment of peace. It doesn't matter where - just go outside. It doesn't matter when, every time is valuable and magical. It doesn't matter how often - do it MORE.

Break your routines. Make it a priority to reconnect with LIFE by going outside and appreciating it. By making room for being outside in your life your natural rhythms will reset to nature's clock. It will revive your spirit and soul. It will reconnect you with our Mother, rekindling the love between you, breathing the fires of passion into hope and faith in our futures together. You will begin to feel more connected to the cycles of nature and feel and see how they affect you individually and the world population collectively. You will have more insights into your own life. You will find more peace. You will feel more joy.

Try something. Try anything. Just go outside!
* Join a recreational sport league and play outside
* Walk, run, bike, swim - exercise!
* Go for an evening after-dinner walk before you tackle the dishes
* Save the last 10 minutes before you leave for work to sit on your porch and drink your coffee
* Go for a stroll after eating lunch
* Call a friend and reconnect over a walk at the park
* Turn off the TV and sit outside to read a book, or journal, or just SIT

There are a million different reasons and ways to get yourself to go outside. It doesn't matter how, it just matters that you do it. It is 100% vital to every single human being to connect with nature. You ARE nature, this is your true environment. For every goal you have, for every challenge you face, spending time outside in nature regularly will absolutely, positively make a very real difference for you. Make space for it in your life.

You, like every other aspect of nature, require fresh water, fresh air and the cycles of the great open sky above you to be healthy and thriving. Take care of her so she can continue to take care of you.

Quiet Time

It is so important, now more than ever, to create space in your everyday life for quiet time. Call it meditation, yoga, whatever, the format isn’t nearly as important as the point – be still, be quiet, let it all fall away. Our minds run constantly working on what we need to accomplish today, this week, next week, what went wrong last week, an argument you got in earlier, getting stuck on the details of a conversation that didn’t flow well, while keeping the grocery list in your head, worrying about how someone is going to respond, and endless other thoughts that run through the mind. This is the endless hamster running in our minds and without quiet time, without moments of true relaxation, we never get to create what we really want in our lives. Manifestation is a process of creation from our thoughts. If all of your thoughts are spent on the hamster wheel, then you create more of what you already have. So we get angry or frustrated with the lack of growth in our lives, but we fail to take responsibility for the fact that we created this reality with our thoughts.

Quiet time helps bring our thoughts back to zero so we can create what we truly want, so we can remember our dreams and build the life we desire. The more often you find quiet time to rest the hamster, the more clarity you will find in creating your future. There is nothing wrong with the hamster, we love the hamster, but the hamster needs to rest so she can do her job at her highest performance.

Quiet time allows us true reflection. Many of us believe the lies we tell about having really thought things through, or having done research on an idea, or taken the time to plan things out. We believe that just because we’ve endlessly obsessed about something in our minds – the job or career change, an important relationship in our lives, an argument with a loved one – that we’ve “thought things through.” The truth is that we haven’t thought them through. We’ve obsessed on the hamster wheel from our single perspective, convincing ourselves that our opinion is the only one that is right or true. But when you truly find quiet time, creating space for all of the thoughts to fall away, getting into the center space in our hearts, that is where we find our truths. That is where the scales begin to balance and clarity rises to the surface.

The hamster wheel is not the place to make decisions from. The hamster wheel is where we keep ourselves in the endless cycle of our lives, making the same decisions, reacting emotionally in the same patterns. Many of us are aware of the patterns we keep, but we find ourselves hopelessly victim to them, unable time and again to break out of them even though we recognize on a remote conscious level when we are in a moment of pattern triggering. We know we are launching into the same argument pattern or thought process but we "aren’t strong enough" (not true!) or haven’t enough emotional control to stop ourselves in the moment and choose something new.

You are NOT weak. You are NOT a victim to your personality. You just haven’t learned the tools yet to break out of the patterns. The very first, the most deeply important tool you can use is finding quiet time. It takes time to make this a habit, it takes effort to create this new space in your life, but it is EASY. It is SIMPLE. It is VITAL.

If you like to have an appointment and guidance, sign up for a yoga class. If you like group effort and a controlled setting, then find a meditation group. If you are tight on cash or feel awkward about creating a new habit in front of strangers, then get up a little earlier in the day or eliminate one sitcom a week and dedicate that time to yourself at home. You don’t need a special mat, cushion or chair. Just be comfortable. You don’t need to sit cross-legged or put your hands in a special position, just allow yourself to breathe. It’s OK if you fall asleep, that’ll probably happen a few times. You probably need it. The most important aspect is turning off the noise – yes, that means music, too. Go for a walk outside in nature (yes, that counts!). Put ear plugs in and sit in your bedroom.

There are a million excuses for why this is going to be challenging for you. DO IT ANYWAY. If you are seeking clarity, direction, peace and joy in your life, you must go within. You must find quiet time. You must get off the hamster wheel. In the beginning you may find it a challenge to stop your thoughts. Be gentle with yourself. This will take some time to get used to. Use your imagination to help yourself get on track. Remember your imagination? One simple suggestion is to see your inner mind as a blackboard and as the thoughts come up on the blackboard, mentally send the eraser across to clear the board again and again. Afraid you’ll think of something important that you don’t want to forget? Then keep a notebook nearby and promise yourself that you can write it down for later but then you must immediately erase the blackboard and get back to the quiet time.

Set aside time for yourself. Start with 10 minutes. Every day. Soon you’ll feel the benefits that quiet time affords and you will create more space for this exercise and you will even look forward to it. Don’t make this a giant effort that you have to reschedule your life for. Make this a promise to yourself so you can create your dreams.

This is one of those baby steps we are always being guided towards in creating our dreams. It’s a very little step that covers a whole lot of ground. Make a promise to yourself today. Create a new habit for your life and watch the magic unfold.

I would love to hear from you in the comments about the unique ways you have created to find quiet time. Or do you have an imagination technique you use to quiet your thoughts? Please share, it's likely there is someone else out there who could benefit from your experience.