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Living Wild and Precious

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Living Wild and Precious

Monthly Archives: July 2012

30 Day Challenge – Day 23 – avoiding burnout

31 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by Carla in 30 Day Challenge, creativity, gratitude, rest

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

avoiding burnout, burnout

It’s funny, right now everything I chose for my 30 Day Challenge is going swimmingly.   I adore my morning grass time. Today the angel’s trumpet is full of blooms.

There’s nary a stray paper in sight because I spend ten minutes a day corralling the papers so they’re not allowed to reproduce.

I’m still so happy to sit with my sketchbook and my super-smooth oil pastels and play on paper. Today I started a portrait of the sweet turtle who lives in the yard. Here’s the progress:

But aside from that, I’m bushed.  I could press on and keep working, continuing to ignore my body, leading eventually to a lot more resistance and maybe even illness, and definitely some stress breakouts, or I can go rest.  I’m opting for rest.  I didn’t make all these great changes to my life to keep playing the burnout game.

Do you still play the burnout game?  Do you kind of give yourself a break but not really, so that all the pushing and pushing eventually adds up complete body breakdown?  Or are you beginning to listen – to realize that your life is made up of minutes and hours, and how you spend those minutes and hours is how you spend your life?  And that spending minutes and hours pushing and being stressed and harried means living a stressed, harried life?

I’m going to go rest.  And all is well.

30 Day Challenge – Day 22 – mind disregarding body

30 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by Carla in 30 Day Challenge, creativity

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

mind and body

My mind is completely overriding my body right now, which is screaming for sleep, so I’ll keep this brief.  But I want to point out that if you let your mind keep overriding your body day after day, hour after hour, eventually you’ll pay the price.

All is well here – had a wonderful day.  Even made a lazy sketch of waterfalls. Maybe back to something a little more careful tomorrow.

30 Day Challenge – Day 20 and 21 – Listen to your Soul, Rest and Play

29 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by Carla in 30 Day Challenge, gratitude, hiking, nature, oneness

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

conversation with your soul, rest and play, retreats

I just spent two days and nights away on retreat.  Even though I was the host and facilitator, I had plenty of time to soak in the rejuvenating power of nature and really hear my soul speak.  She said something like this – it was telepathic so not exactly these words, but this was the feeling: “There’s abundance.  There’s always enough.  The world is full of riches and pure delight, laying them at your feet.  Love is all around you.”  She was so calm, so shining, so bright.  And I don’t think she was talking about material riches, like gold or diamonds.  It was much more about the abundance of beauty and life and love all around me.  So much to appreciate.

Would you like to hear your soul?  All you have to do is close your eyes and imagine your soul coming out of your body and manifesting itself in a way you can visualize – maybe a person, maybe a glowing light, maybe an animal  – it could be anything.  Then feel its wisdom, its pure love, its complete acceptance of you.  Feel it wash over you. Then hear what it has to tell you, as it sits or stands or floats before you.  Listen to its message, then let it come back into your body in whatever way it does – maybe straight to your heart, maybe through the top of your head, or some other way.  Then feel yourself fill up with the love and wisdom of your soul, and open your eyes and see the world from the point of view of your soul.  This is a beautiful visualization to practice over and over.  It’s one of my favorites, both for when I’m feeling stressed and when I’m feeling peaceful.

What I love about retreats like this is that it was a weekend dedicated to pure rest and play. We had lots of time alone to rest and reflect, and time together to process, share and hike and explore in nature.  I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow, but here’s one of my favorite photos from the weekend:

I’ve been drawing too – I missed my drawing time on Friday, but that’s ok – I picked up again Saturday and today.  I sat inside the small gazebo on the gorgeous grounds of the B&B where we stayed and drew the view through the lattice.

And today I played with the message from my soul, and with a somewhat green version of my wild and precious tree. Quick play sketches.

How are you?  What has your soul had to tell you lately?  What feels like rest and play to you right now?

Message me or let me know in the comments!

30 Day Challenge – Day 19 – watch out for Compare and Despair

27 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by Carla in 30 Day Challenge, thoughts

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

compare and despair

We all do it sometimes – we look at what someone else is doing and we get all worked up.  They’re doing it better, faster, more creatively.  They’re younger – or older and wiser – or cuter, more eloquent, and more talented.  They don’t seem to make any mistakes.  They have it all together.

Wow.  Can you see that this is so not helpful?  Check how your body feels when you get yourself in compare and despair mode.  Does it feel delicious or horrible?  Does it get you motivated or make you want to curl up in a ball under the covers?

Now, take a minute to focus on  your own life.  Your own accomplishments.  Your own progress.  How you look from the outside to other people. Go ahead and make a list of some of the cool stuff you’re working on, that you’ve completed, that makes you loveable, fun, fast, talented, creative, eloquent and fabulous.  Wow.  You’re pretty amazing!

My challenge update: I got up early for grass time, and papers are in good shape. Early grass time meant I got to see our resident turtle – I can’t believe how often I see her now!  She was cruising along – crossed the yard and then settled into a clump of Mexican petunias, where no one would ever know she was there.  Turtles can make progress with their deliberate little steps!

Have a great weekend and celebrate your own progress!

30 Day Challenge- Day 18 – when routines shift

26 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by Carla in 30 Day Challenge, making change, thoughts

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

missed routine, skipping a day, what if you skip a day

So you’re going along just fine with your new habit – you even made it through the doldrums!  And then your schedule shifts.  There’s a trip, or a special occasion, an illness, or a really really busy day.

What do you do?  Do you go ahead and skip a day?  If you do skip a day, does your silly little lizard tell you you have to start over, like life is some game of Candyland or Chutes and Ladders?  Does your mind want you to go back to “go” – and not give you any credit for what you’ve done so far?  Does your mind make it mean that you’re a failure – does it say, “See?  I told you you wouldn’t be able to pull this off.”

Well, if you do find yourself skipping a day, remember that you don’t need to believe any of that ridiculousness tossed out by your mind.  And that’s what it is.  It’s not true and it’s not helpful. Remind yourself of that.

And maybe you don’t have to skip a day.  Maybe you do the thing you’ve been working on at the end of the day.  Maybe you break it into a bunch of pieces.  Maybe you shift things slightly, but not all the way back to the way they were before you started your great new habit.

I’m hosting a retreat this weekend – a beautiful getaway for a small group of women seeking clarity and connection.  I’ve been busy today getting ready, and I’ll be away from home for the next three days.  So I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to stick with my routines.  30 minutes of drawing and 10 minutes of silent time in nature will be no problem – they’re practically built into the retreat.  I’ll skip my ten minutes on the paper maintenance since I’ll be away, and maybe add a few minutes on to paper management in the coming week.  Having a plan for a shift in routine really helps!

Today I let my inner 8-year-old come out and I just played with colors.  I didn’t want to think about drawing, or value, or tone.  I just doodled.  Remember how soothing it was to decorate your notebooks in school?  That’s how today felt.  Drawing hundreds of hearts over and over for about 15 minutes was almost like repeating a mantra.  Then I filled a page with colorful geometric shapes, trying to make it a game, making up rules for what the next shape or color or size would be, without focus on balance or composition.  Just pure play.  They look coolish when I keep them really small.

Grass time happened really late in the day today.  I had a lot of errands to run and coaching appointments this morning.  The gift of enjoying grass time late, still with a loyal cat by my side, was noticing the beautiful sky at sunset.  I’ve learned to ignore the vast number of power lines and the giant transformer and power pole when I look at the sky — the camera has more difficulty editing it out.  See if you can focus on the sunset instead of the electrical paraphernalia.

Keep paying attention to the thoughts you have, especially if you skip a day.  Remember, you don’t have to believe them.  Just start again tomorrow.  Don’t let your mind make a federal case out of it.  Really.  It’s kind of like the sky and the powerlines.  Which one do you want to focus on?

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Hi! I'm Carla and I'm so glad you've stopped by! Relax here a while and find out how to bring more wild and precious into your life. Pop over to the Blog tab to read what I've been up to lately, or check out the Happenings to see what's coming up on the calendar!
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