I recently broke my foot two days before going on a long-awaited beach vacation. The break was a non-weight-bearing injury. I didn’t know what that meant when the ER doctor first used the term, but I soon came to understand that it meant what it sounds like it meant; you cannot put your foot down on the ground for any reason, not without risking surgery or excruciating pain. And in my case, not for six weeks. While it’s not something you think about until you need to, not being able to set your foot down for any reason is a kind of big deal; it makes life very challenging.  Essentially, with a badly broken foot, you have to just sit down and sit still. 

At this moment in history, our world is not okay; we are not okay. Oddly, however, when things are not okay, we are told that we should be okay, should be able to get okay with not okay. The should police tell us that adversity is an opportunity for growth, and within all difficulty lies a great teaching. Suffering is our guru, a gift. And yes, that may all be true. But I wonder, does our positive, spiritual narrative around life’s challenges rush us into a pseudo-well-being, a flimsy mental construct, an okayness that’s not entirely real, not earned? Is there a time and place for actually not being okay … before we get to being okay with not being okay?   

So here I was, in this adorable boardwalk beach town, a town with endless opportunities for walking and running, for exploring neighborhoods by foot, spectacular hiking, bike riding, and swimming. A town meant to be fully and physically enjoyed … and no possibility of doing any of it.  I watched as my family (with my encouragement) traipsed off to explore the sweet town and neighboring towns, stroll the boardwalks, take sunrise jogs, participate in power yoga classes (on the beach), swim in the gentle waves, laugh their way through gigantic suburban grocery store aisles, and, basically, have a whole lot of fun. 

In the grand scheme, having to sit down and sit still is not the end of the world, not the biggest deal, and certainly not even a blip on the screen when it comes to what’s happening in the world.  But, for someone like me, it is a big deal—a monumental deal in fact. Moving is a fundamental ingredient in my well-being, like breathing and eating. Strange though it may sound, I don’t think a day has passed in the last 35 years when I didn’t feel immense gratitude for being able to head out on my daily walk or run. When I was pregnant and on bed rest, I knew that I would do anything and everything in my power to never not be able to move again. I have relied on being able to move and move quickly in order to feel emotionally and physically well; it’s my fix, my go-to feel-good drug that’s served me for a lifetime. So, here I was, sitting in my seat at the beach, still as a sloth, unable to give myself what I needed to be well. 

I felt really bad about not being able to walk or run or move much at all. But I noticed that I felt almost as bad about feeling bad. Many people I talked to about the situation told me some version of the silver lining to every cloud adage, with a little “oh, what a pain” thrown in for good measure. My more spiritually-inclined friends were excited by the situation and the teachings that awaited me in this opportunity. I felt disappointment in myself for thinking that this moment was anything other than perfect, and should be any other way, and sternly told myself to accept the present moment without resistance, since that’s all there was. My family reminded me to practice the power of now, along with the power of surrender, neither one of which, apparently, I was practicing. As my body atrophied on the sofa, my mind was soaking in shoulds, the ways I should be better-experiencing this unfortunate opportunity. I chided myself with Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how,” thinking about all those who had suffered before me with a purpose. I went full throttle on the self-throttling. I still felt awful about not being able to move and the timing of this injury with my long-awaited active vacation, but I felt just as terrible if not worse about the fact that I was feeling so terrible.    

But then it occurred to me that I was rushing myself to learn and feel something new and expansive in this mess, before I had actually learned it or felt it. I was demanding that I be a person who walked through this with great optimism and spiritual perspective. I realized that this idea of a hidden teaching, the “why” that made the “how” okay, and all the rest of the shoulds might just be a narrative that I was constructing. I was skipping an important step in the process, a step that needed to happen so that I could actually learn and grow, not just script the narrative of learning and growing. 

I was rushing to be okay with what was not okay, but without giving myself permission to genuinely not be okay, and not be the face of reason and hope. I had constructed a narrative about growth and opportunity before actually experiencing either one. I felt enormous pressure, most of it coming from inside myself, pressure to not be bothered, to find acceptance and peace about this situation. But I wasn’t there, not yet anyway, if I ever would be. Rather than compel myself to use this as a teaching, I had to actually let myself feel bad, feel sad, feel upset, feel angry, feel irritated, feel disappointed about this situation, this unfortunate event—to live it as I actually experienced it. I had to let the teaching teach me rather than construct a teaching that would work for my mind.

Getting okay with not okay is not about feeling good or even comfortable with what doesn’t feel good or comfortable. It’s not about manufacturing a positive lesson in a negative situation, before that lesson has actually revealed itself. It is, however, about having the courage to allow yourself to not be okay, actually not be okay, without judgment and the urgency to change it. There’s no reason to berate or shame yourself for feeling bad; bad things happen and we, sometimes, just plain have to feel bad. The feeling-bad part is a part of the process and the very part that leads to feeling good again. When you stop judging yourself for not being okay, you are indeed being okay with not being okay.

The post Rushing to Be Okay Before You Are Okay appeared first on Nancy Colier.

29,200 days. That’s how many days we’ll get if we’re lucky enough to live to 80.

I think about that a lot, not to be morbid or frighten myself, but to remind myself of the importance of each day I get to be alive. The knowledge of 29,200 doesn’t keep me from occasionally watching too much Netflix or perusing eBay, but it does wake me up to the profundity of a single day, and evoke a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to experience another day of life.

So too, reminding myself of the day count of a human life encourages me to pay attention to this moment, treat this day like it matters, and live this day, the only day I’m certain I’ll get—to the fullest.

So the question then begs, what does it mean to live a day to the fullest to make it matter?’ It’s a question I think all of us should ask ourselves. It may be the most important question we can ask, because it forces us to consider what really matters—what makes a day or a life of days feel meaningful.

The message we often receive in our society is that living each day to the fullest means packing the day full with activities and accomplishments. It means travel, adventure, taking chances, being productive, and of course, success. Our version of living fully usually has a lot to do with what we achieve and/or attain.

There’s nothing wrong with achieving and attaining, but getting, doing, and accomplishing may not be what a well-lived day includes for ourselves. How can we know what makes a day feel meaningful or fulfilling if we never ask ourselves, and never listen for our own answers?

We waste a lot of days just going through the motions of life, doing what we’re supposed to do but never stopping to contemplate the value of a single day. Sleepwalking, in a sense. We fall into the trap of accepting what our society and other people tell us we should do with our days, what we’re supposed to want, what’s supposed to matter. The problem is, it may not be what we want, may not matter to us.

For me, a day fully lived is not necessarily a day packed full with activities. It’s not about what I get, get done, or accomplish. It is, however, about the quality and presence of my attention, how I show up for the individual moments that make up this day. It matters to me that I show up present and with kindness.

What makes a day matter is not what the day contains in terms of its contents, but rather that the day contains me, that I am present, physically, mentally and emotionally, tuned into my senses, noticing what’s actually happening in my physical reality, and my inner and outer environment. To fully live, for me, is to be conscious and grateful for the profound gift and opportunity that this one day is.

Furthermore, contemplating the reality of 29,200 makes me more rigorous about not distracting myself with entertainment, information, technology, or any of the other endless choices we use to escape, ignore, or avoid the day.

It also means not engaging with the narratives and judgments my mind wants to write, not going down the rabbit hole of thinking, not distracting myself by thinking every thought that appears in my mind. 29,200 makes me far less tolerant for negative thinking or excessive rumination, far less willing to let my mind control my attention, take me off on this tangent or that, and thereby kidnap one of my 29,200 days.

As I see it, with only this many days to play with, why would I waste a single moment thinking about what I can’t control, makes me feel bad, has already happened, may never happen, doesn’t help me, or just plain isn’t true?

The finite-ness of our days is a what is not a what if. What does the reality of 29,200 days provoke in you? How does it change the way you choose to live today?

We can all benefit by taking our day count to heart, deeply considering what we want to do with and who we want to be today. Don’t take anyone else’s opinion on what makes a moment or a day or a life meaningful. Only you can answer this question for yourself and only you can create a life that fulfills it, one day at a time, one moment at a time.

Ask yourself, how do you want to show up for today, who do want to be, what is your life in service to, and what, ultimately, do you want? Start today, or even better, now.

The post How to Make Every Day Matter appeared first on Nancy Colier.

What a wonderful tradition indeed.  A yearly sabbath of sorts when we consciously step off the treadmill of busyness, productivity, and getting, and devote our attention to appreciation, goodness and love—the very best of the human being.  Thanksgiving is a day when we practice wanting what we have.

The big secret is that the nourishment we set aside for Thanksgiving, one day per year, can be something we feed ourselves every day.  While we might not feast on the mashed potatoes and pie part of Thanksgiving every day, we can in fact feast on the heart food part of this ritual, the gratitude and kindness, the thanks and giving. And, we can do that every single day of our lives, in one form or another.

Pausing throughout the day to notice the little moments (or big ones) that we appreciate—gestures, interactions, experiences, anything that just feels connected, heart-filling, satisfying, joyful, warm—good—creates an amazing ripple effect.  We start to experience appreciation even more and remarkably, more of the appreciate-able moments seem to show up.  Just the simple act of taking a second to deliberately notice what we appreciate moment to moment injects a noticeable dose of happiness into our lives.

In addition, when we end each day with a conscious noting of what we appreciated throughout the day, what went well, what we enjoyed, what we liked about ourselves and others, the world, our life, we are effectively locking in a positivity and depositing a currency of goodness into our emotional heart-bank.

Paying attention to what we appreciate, stopping to give thanks inside ourselves and to others on a daily basis is one way of living Thanksgiving every day–making Thanksgiving a habit.

So too, a daily Thanksgiving involves a practice of giving—the second half of the Thanksgiving word equation.  We can look for the opportunities to offer kindness to others, just because, without a goal—to offer a moment of undistracted listening, word of support, non-judgmental presence, curiosity, a smile, kind glance, moment of patience, a real hug—something that perhaps will lead the other to appreciate what they experienced with us.  Every day we can give ourselves the experience of being appreciate-able.  Whether or not the other person notices or mentions it is not what’s important; giving to another is a gift to them, yes, but more than anything it’s a gift to ourselves. We appreciate ourselves (and our life) when we give; we feel good about ourselves when we behave as the person we want to be.

Every day when you wake up, ask yourself:

• What kind of person do I want to be in the world today?
• Pick a word to live by (patience, kindness, curiosity, presence—whatever resonates) and live your day through and infused with that word. When you notice you’ve forgotten that way of being or have missed the mark, just restart the day with your word leading the way.
• What do I want to offer to the world today?Every evening before bed, consider the following:
  • What did I appreciate today, what filled my bucket, nourished my spirit, made me feel connected, inspired, joyful etc.?
  • What did I do well today?  Where am I proud of myself? Where have I grown?
  • Where (perhaps) did I miss the mark today and so have an opportunity to grow?

  Thanks and giving are ways of life, not just things we do one day a year. Pausing, every day, to notice what we already have, what’s already here, what we’re not lacking, is an easy and joyful practice to get in the habit of.  Thanksgiving is a habit we can build; just like we build bad habits, we can build good habits. Thanksgiving on a daily and deliberate basis is a practice that pays back in spades.  It’s not hard to do, not something you have to change clothes or travel for; it’s not sweaty, painful, irritating, boring, or difficult.  And, what it gives back is profound.  In terms of bang for our buck, Thanksgiving is a habit that delivers.

  From a cultural perspective, it’s also interesting to notice that the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday.  While Thanksgiving is a day when we focus on what we have, on being thankful for what makes us happy, when we’re encouraged to feel our completeness, Black Friday is a day we focus, with vigor, on what we don’t have, what we could get that would make us feel better, and what else we need to be happy.  Our consumer-minded society trains us to believe that more stuff, more pleasure, more entertainment, more fame, more followers, more, more, more, more of everything, but mostly more me, will finally make us happy.  But here’s the problem: it doesn’t; the more we get, the more we crave and the more convinced we become that we don’t have enough, don’t have what we need, can’t want what we have.  The more we try to get enough, the more we feel like we don’t have enough.  It’s a Sisyphean Conundrum.  We roll the boulder up the hill only to have it roll right back down on us.

  It’s no surprise that Black Friday sits on Thanksgiving’s heels. If we wanted what we had for too long, if we knew that we were okay just as we are, we might realize that we don’t actually need more stuff to be happy; we might realize that it’s not stuff that nourishes us or makes us happy in any lasting way; we might realize that we have enough and are enough, that we can be okay right here where we are, satisfied with what’s already here.

  There’s no doubt that appreciation, wanting what we have, giving just because, is bad for business. But there’s also no doubt that appreciation, wanting what we have and giving just because is good for everything else under the sun.  Practice Thanksgiving, appreciate and give…make it a habit, every day, not just one Thursday at the end of November each year.  There are few habits so easy and enjoyable to practice that can so fundamentally change who you are and how you experience your life.

The post Can We Learn to Want What We Have? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

-Life management: schooling, homework, tutoring, forms, academic, athletic and social schedules, playdates, activities, camps, birthdays, health care, appointments, child and family travel, holidays, vacations, weekend planning, scheduling, grocery shopping (remembering everyone’s faves) cooking, cleaning, laundry, house repair, date night planning (if still applicable).

-Provide primary connection and emotional glue for all members of family: knowing names and details of who’s who in the children’s lives, who’s being mean and nice, the latest crush, who got the lead in the play, when the next math quiz happens, who needs a tube of glitter for tomorrow’s science project, and all the other infinite events that go on in everyone’s day to day life.

-Serve as that person who makes everyone (else) feel appreciated, seen and known.

Oh, and did I forget, in addition to everything just mentioned (and the infinite things not mentioned), moms usually work full or part time jobs outside the universe that is the home (where children believe moms begin and end).

And finally, in their “free” time, most moms are picking up stuff, putting out fires, answering cries for help, and responding to the unending stream of needs that is the essence of modern mom-hood—all set to the soundtrack of  “can you…would you…will you…”.

What’s most remarkable about the mom job however is, ironically, not the enormity of it. What’s most remarkable is the fact that (from my research) most moms feel unappreciated. Moms from all walks of life describe feeling unacknowledged and unseen for what they do and are for their families. Being a mom these days (and maybe always) seems to be a job that’s taken for granted, thankless for the most part.  It also appears to be unique in that it comes with the expectation that appreciation is not and should not be needed or wanted by the one doing the job.  And in fact, to want or need appreciation as a mom would be self-serving, inappropriate and even shameful.

As a psychotherapist, I talk to women all day about their internal experience, the private experience they don’t usually share with others. Again and again, I hear moms express the deep longing for appreciation, the wish for some acknowledgment from their kids and partner, that they might notice what mom does to make everyone else’s life go well and just plain happen.  As a mom myself, I am remarkably aware of how little appreciation is offered for the amount of effort that being a mom requires, how infrequently gratitudeis expressed for all the important details we attend to. I am also aware that it can feel shameful to admit that I might want my family to occasionally notice and express unprompted appreciation for what I do for each of them individually and also for the family as a whole.  It feels self-indulgent because as moms we’re supposed to be selfless, and certainly not need anything as childish and greedy as appreciation, or at least not want it any day besides mother’s day.

To appreciate something is to value it, be grateful for it, and recognize/acknowledge its importance. As human beings, we all long to be appreciated, to have our goodness seen, our positive intentions and efforts recognized.  We want to be known and valued for what we do that’s helpful.  To want and need appreciation is a primal human longing.

At the same time, kids should experience a time in their life when they get to be fully taken care of without having to be aware of or grateful for anything or anyone, when they’re allowed to be oblivious to the fact that someone is providing for them. There needs to be a totally self-centered period in a child’s life.  And, there needs to be a time when the perfunctory, learned but not yet felt “thank you” is enough for appreciation. It’s not a child’s responsibility to be grateful to her parents for doing their job as parents. And yet, there also comes a time in a child’s life when it is important that she recognize that her parents exist as human beings, that they have feelings, are deserving of appreciation, and are working hard on their children’s behalf. This recognition is an important step in the healthy development from childhood into young adulthood.  Encouraging kids (when they’re ready) to feel empathy and gratitude for parents, not because they have to but because they just do, will ultimately help our children live connected and meaningful lives.

Recently, after a day of doing my job and using every spare minute between clients to arrange travel and other fun activities for my teenage daughter’s summer, and also getting my younger daughter’s medical and thousand other forms sent the different camps she’s in this summer, I disappointingly misspoke, asking my teenager how her French quiz went.  Well, apparently, in my exhaustion and bureaucratic stupor, I got the subject of the quiz wrong and received an icy and supremely agitated, “The quiz was in math.”  That was it, conversation over.  I had to laugh, there wasn’t anything else to do.  Failure, it’s the nature of being a mom.

It’s strange really, our society views things as black or white, either or.  We don’t well tolerate black and white, either and or.  As a mom, my children are the most important part of my life. They bring an ineffable joy and there is no thing or experience for which I could ever be so grateful.  Every day, I am astonished that I get to be a mom to two girls I cherish.  And, simultaneously, I dislike many of the tasks that being a mom involves as they are unpleasant and hard.  It’s an and not a but that separates these two concepts.  Because we want to be consciously appreciated for the incredible work we do, both the work we love and the work we don’t, does not contradict the fact that we choose to be moms and love being moms.  It’s all included…both and.

We live in a society where, at a subtle level, women are still taught that they’re not supposed to want or need anything for themselves, and for certain not appreciation or recognition. It’s bizarre really, wanting to be seen for our efforts is shameful for women and yet it’s inherent in every human being.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to be thanked and noticed for what we offer, it’s a wholesome wanting in fact, and one that when met, encourages us to keep on doing the good we’re doing.

This past mother’s day, I was happily surprised by my husband and kids with a lovely lunch at the restaurant they enjoy and a thought crossed my mind.  As much as I deeply appreciated this gesture, I would have traded a thousand of these lunches for one genuine “thank you.” Perhaps after returning from a 7 pm parent teacher conference on a cold February evening, or after a long day with patients and walking in to find three people, (2 small, 1 big) all waiting for their dinner to be made, or really any other random moment of standard mom-hood.

While it’s odd, it does seem that the simple act of stopping what we’re doing and offering someone a straight, heartfelt “thank you” or “I appreciate you” can, for some, feel too vulnerable, exposed, unnecessary, or even silly.  And yet, these simple moments of genuine appreciation are profoundly meaningful for the recipient, and also for the giver. The moments when appreciation is shared are the moments of connection that fill our emotional well.

Steps:

When you feel unappreciated or unseen, or notice the longing to be thanked, try these steps:

1.   Reject any self-shaming thoughts. Remind yourself that wanting and needing to be appreciated and recognized is normal and healthy, and you deserve it.

2.  Reach out to another mom.  She’ll get it.  Laugh about the fact that your kid hasn’t asked you how you are for years and yet is very good at asking for the credit card.  It’s a fairly universal first world experience for moms.  Get some support and chuckles from those who can fully identify.

3.  Ask for what you want.  Let your partner know, unapologetically, that it feels good to be seen for all that you do and are, and what you offer the family. When he does show appreciation without your asking, express your appreciation for his appreciation.  Appreciation begets appreciation.  If your kids are old enough, nine or ten and above is usually a good starting place, let them know that even mommies have feelings and sometimes need to be given a gold star in the form of a thank you.  It’s not about guilting or shaming them but rather, letting them in on the secret that mommies need things too.  It will help them down the road to be more empathic and grateful.

4.  Offer appreciation.  Appreciation is a form of love and our longing for it is in part a longing for a very particular kind of love.  When you offer it to someone or name it out loud, you’re not only modeling appreciation for your family, but you’re also giving yourself a small dose of the love you need.  It may feel counter-intuitive to give appreciation in the moments when you’re the one needing it (another giving not receiving). And yet, offering it can be a close cousin to receiving it, as it evokes the same feelings of love and warmth that you crave.

5.  Appreciate yourself.  Put your hand on your own heart and, to yourself, recognize all that you do and are.  Remind yourself how good a mom you are and how much you love your children and feel that love out of which all this wonderful effort is born.  Don’t skip the step that is honoring yourself because at the end of the day, only you really know how much you do and how incredible a job you are providing.  So be the one to also take that moment to acknowledge that truth.

How strange, magical, and deserving of appreciation is life;  just as I was finishing this piece, my 7-year-old daughter came into my office with this, “Hey mom, thanks for making me a playdate today and not making go to afterschool.”  Of course I cried, as I usually do when touched, and then I told her how much I appreciated her saying this, and how I hoped that one day she too would be as lucky as me and get to be a mom…because it’s the best job that ever existed.

The post The Invisible Mom: If You Feel Unappreciated as a Mom, You’re Not Alone appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Surrender is too often misunderstood, boiled down to a few affirmations about “letting go,” and then misused as a self-help instruction. But, in our misunderstanding, in our trying to do surrender with our minds, like we do everything else, we drain surrender of the true miracle that it is.

What surrender is NOT

Failure or defeat.

Punishment.

A decision to “let go.”

A task that we can do/accomplish with our mind.

A state that we can will ourselves into.

The decision to be comfortable with what is.

An ending.

What surrender IS

Everyone of us, at some point in our lives, encounters a situation that rocks the foundation of who we are and what we think we can bear—is past our limits if you will.  Sometimes it’s a situation we’ve been living with for a long time and sometimes it’s a sudden event that overwhelms us and for which our usual coping strategies are useless. While the content may differ, what these experiences share is the power to bring us to our knees, figuratively and often literally as well. And, the power to change us.

Our minds try to control everything they come in contact with, that’s just their nature. Ostensibly, to try and make us happy, our lives better.  We have elaborate and seemingly endless strategies for trying to make sure that our lives contain the experiences we want and don’t contain the experiences we don’t want.  Our minds will fight with, reject, ignore, push against and keep maneuvering to change those situations that we don’t want.  And then there comes a time, a situation, when we can’t keep fighting, either because it’s too painful, or because we finally know at a body/heart level that it’s futile and some other as of yet unknown path is needed.  Surrender begins here, where all other strategies end.  But, surrender is not a strategy; it is the absence of strategies.

Surrender happens when we know that we don’t know anything anymore and certainly not anything that can help us.  It arrives when we know that we cannot think or see our way through where we are. In true surrender, we don’t know if what’s to come will be better or worse, more comfortable or even less.  All we know is that we can’t do it this way, the way we’ve been doing it, a moment longer.  Surrender happens when it can’t not happen.

Surrender itself is easy; it’s the path to surrender that’s excruciating.  But what’s amazing is that when surrender does arrive, it is accompanied by a great sense of ease and peace. It’s not like the situation remarkably gets better or easier, but we feel better and more easeful when we know in our bones that we cannot fix or figure it out. Oddly, something deep within us relaxes when we acknowledge that we don’t know how to do it, don’t know the way.  We feel an inner softening when we agree to turn it over to something larger, the unknowable, or simply to the truth of our own not knowing. From our knees, paradoxically, we feel a remission from the suffering.

The post Why Surrender is So Powerful, and How to Experience It? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

And then I went home.

I love my family, my work, and so much about my life.  I am so lucky and I know it.  But as re-entries go, the instant I walked in the door on Sunday afternoon, I was immediately catapulted back into the “normal” world.   Tasks, responsibilities, groceries, broken cell phones, dishes… all the usual stuff that is modern life, hit me like a major league pitch to the head.  And with that too came the always present (blessed) need for my attention, from everyone.  I needed to be caught up on what I had missed while away.  The overpowering truth that I had lived over the past three days, on the other hand, was unsharable, at least in language.  And certainly I could not expect those who had not experienced it to “get” it in any real way or, for that matter, be particularly interested in it.  Life at home, regular as it is, needed my attention—now.  In an instant, I had left the place for bathing in the ineffable profundity and meaning of existence, stoking awe for this human experience, and steeping in gratitude for getting to be alive.  Back in everyday life, it was no longer about the meaning of life, it was about the doing of that life.

It was a painful re-entry, not because I wasn’t thrilled to be with those I love, but because it felt like a loss, like in order to re-enter life, I had to give up my beautiful connection with the Divine, as if I had to come back up and swim at the surface when I had been down deep in the beauty of the timeless.

The experience got me thinking a lot about whether it’s indeed possible to feel awe and gratitude for being alive—all the time?  Can we stay connected to the profound when living the mundane?  Can we hold onto the sacred in the midst of the regular, stressful world of living—stay tethered to what really matters when doing what needs to be done?

It turns out that there’s good news and bad news.  The bad news first: it is not possible (unless perhaps you’re enlightened and I’m not so I can’t vouch for it) to feel wonder and awe all the time.  While self-help gurus tell us that we should be in a continual state of astonishment that we can walk, or bliss because we can experience the color blue, in truth, if we have always walked and always seen blue, it isn’t always possible to see these experiences as mind-blowing or particularly fabulous.  There is nothing wrong with you if the activities of normal life do not evoke a sense of great reverence.  Sometimes, after someone has died or we have lived through a trauma of some kind, we, for a time, crack through the window of the sacred.  We get what it means to be alive, and to have this gift of incarnation.  And then, usually, that sense of awe at being alive closes and we return to the everyday with perhaps just a slight scent of the sacred left behind.  The truth is, we have only ever known ourselves to be alive, and so the fact that we are alive doesn’t always feel like the incredible coup it’s supposed to feel like.  And really, how could it?

The good news: we need contrast to feel what we feel.  We need to live without a sense of the unbelievable-ness of life so that when it does appear, we can really experience it.  If it were here all the time, we wouldn’t recognize it as something remarkable.  More good news: gratitude does show up when we stop demanding that it appear; grace does present itself when we stop expecting it to be present all the time.

While our connection with the sacred is not something that must be or can be be front and center all the time, and not something that we can control, nonetheless, there are certain things that we can do to encourage it to appear—to invite awe into our everyday life.  And, since most of us want to feel a sense of wonder at being alive and gratitude for the opportunity to have experiences at all, to “get” to live, it is worth laying the internal groundwork from which awe can grow.

In order to feel gratitude, we need, first and foremost, to be in our life, that is, to be present now.  The surest way to feel gratitude is to pay attention to how we are and where we are at this moment, so that when gratitude does appear, we are here to notice and feel it.  While some experiences contain a beauty that can render irrelevant any tangle of thoughts in which we are lost, for the most part, noticing grace when it arises relies on our being awake and aware to what we are living inside and out.

As we cultivate our own presence, we can also, consciously, move our attention and point of reference from the contents of our life, the thoughts feelings and sensations that are appearing, to the presence that notices the contents.  That is, we can make it a practice to not just focus on what is happening in the relative world, the dishes we are washing, as the determinate of wonder, but rather on who or what is aware that it is all happening, who or what is inside the lens we call awareness. This slight but enormous paradigm shift, from what is perceived to what is perceiving, can instantly put us in touch with a sense of the miraculous.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that all experiences appear and disappear without exception.  While it is human nature to grasp onto those experiences we enjoy, like awe and gratitude, to try and make them stay, these too are subject to unending change.  Imagining that awe could or should be permanent is like imagining that we ourselves could be permanent.  And to remember, as a final paradox, that it is precisely in its impermanence that its grace exists.  One without the other could not be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

The post How to Make Every Day Feel Sacred: Cultivating the Profound Inside the Mundane appeared first on Nancy Colier.

What was clear was that Kate was not only living the experience of fullness that day, but also the experience of what that fullness meant about who she was as a person. It was in that secondary experience, the story about herself, that the unbearable suffering was housed. It wasn’t the Moo goo gai pan in her belly that kept her from being able to be in the present moment, but rather the “me” story her mind had crafted out of the previous evening’s experience, which in fact made her present moment intolerable.

In a similar event, while out walking together, my friend stubbed her toe. I could see from her reaction that she was in real physical pain. But as I soon also witnessed, the suffering that the stubbing caused was not in her toe or foot—the real suffering was in her mind—in the story that she told herself about herself, as a result of what had happened to her toe. In the minutes that followed the stubbing, I watched as my friend transitioned from a happy, confident, and calm woman to a clumsy, inattentive and anxious little girl, the person that her father had berated and in whom he had been chronically and un-correctably disappointed. I watched as she re-dressed herself in an old identity, which included being a person who was perpetually distracted and to blame for not being able to improve her life. The pathways that connected the pain in her toe to the suffering in her mind moved with lighting-speed and were mighty powerful.

Back in my office with Kate, I asked if she could, just for a moment, experience the physical phenomenon that made up what she was calling her fatness and her disgustingness. Quite simply, what it felt like in her body at that exact moment, twelve hours after having eaten the last bite of food. At first she reported a series of emotions; she felt icky, leaky, fleshy, gross, a mess, and more. But all of her descriptions related to how she felt about herself, about who she was. Her body’s experience was nowhere in her description or awareness. I could only hear her mind raging on about how it felt about her, what it had decided about her worth and value—as a result of what she had eaten. When I brought Kate’s attention to this distinction, she immediately switched to a new chapter in the story about herself, specifically, her own psychological problems. At that point, a host of interpretations about herself and why she had eaten the food came tumbling out of her mouth; ideas about her parents, her psychological trauma, and her need to escape the moment into the anesthesia of food. Her body had still not been invited into the dialogue.

It took many attempts, but when Kate was finally able to drop out of her mind and down into her body, this is what she found: a tightness or presence at the waistband in her pants, a kind of achiness in her knees and pelvis, and a mild sense of fuzziness in her head. When the body’s present moment was allowed, such was the extent of her actual experience of the Moo goo gai pan and the whole event. A bit of tightness at the waistband, an achiness in knees and pelvis, and mild head fuzziness. When Kate was able to experience the moment directly, having untethered it from what it said about her and her identity, she felt profound relief. She even started to laugh, and suddenly she was entirely present in the room, the very same room she was going to have to leave just minutes before.

In that moment, stripped of its “me” story, the bloatedness (as she called it) in her body could just be what it was, a set of mild, completely bearable sensations. She realized that the problem, the suffering, had never been the sensations or the food in her belly. In fact, the sensations themselves had never even been experienced, never made it past the mind’s gate and into awareness. At last her experience could simply be what it was, which amazingly, was virtually nothing. Lightness entered the room, and the day once again belonged to Kate. Having unhitched her me-story from the present moment, disrobed her experience into its sensorial nakedness, Kate was delivered back into her life.

In the Advaita tradition (a part of Hinduism) there is a remarkable expression. It says this: you are not experiencing suffering, you are suffering your experience. Experience arises but how we want to be in relationship with that experience is up to us. An experience always appears as sensation in the body; it may be unpleasant or not, but either way it need not become an experience of profound suffering. Our experience becomes suffering when we give it to our mind to run with, and to use as material in its narrative about who we are and how we’re doing in our life.

As an experiment, try unhitching your experience from what the experience says about you. Try experiencing the present moment directly, as sensation. Try refraining from using the moments of your life as material with which to construct your “me” story. Try experiencing your life instead of using your life to define yourself. It turns out, not taking your life so personally can bring great relief and even give you back your life!

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When we think about loving ourselves, we often run up against the judgment of selfishness. To love ourselves is considered self-indulgent and more than we deserve. To love ourselves is viewed as something that will take love away from others, as if love were a zero sum entity that could shrink or run out if we used up some of it up on ourselves.

Furthermore, when we think about loving ourselves, we assume that it is in exchange for being loved by others. We don’t want to be responsible for giving ourselves love; love is something that others are supposed to give to us. And for many people, there is resentment around self-love—the fact that they have to take responsibility for loving themselves and have to do what others should do for them. Self-love is an effort that they are tired of having to expend. In any case, loving ourselves and being loved by others are seen as either/or scenarios.

But really, why are we so resistant to loving ourselves? Why do we see it as such a punishment and imposition? In part it is because we don’t know what it means to love ourselves or how to “do” it. We view self-love as another chore we have to accomplish, like taking out the trash. We imagine loving ourselves as something that takes time out of our day, like an exercise regime that will leave us less time to spend time with our kids or spouse. In truth, these are false beliefs.

Self-love is not an act of effort but rather a way of being. It means living in a way, moment to moment, that makes room for our own heart’s experience, being with ourselves with kindness and without judgment. Self-love means asking, “How am I in this moment?” and then really sticking around for the answer, with an attitude of curiosity and compassion. So too, self-love means bringing our own presence into the body and attending to the body’s life with mindful attention. Self-love means coming home inside our real experience and giving ourselves the permission to matter.

Love is not a finite entity, quite the contrary. When we spend time lovingly paying attention to ourselves, attending to the nourishment of our spirit, we generate more love and enrich ourselves to become greater vehicles of kindness. Self-love inspires love for others.

In order to open the gates of self-love, it can be helpful to see ourselves as an expression of the Divine, Buddha Nature, basic goodness, the universe, divine intelligence, or, for you, whatever represents something larger and deserving of being cherished. Knowing and loving ourselves as manifestations/incarnations of the Divine, spirit in human form, we are free to offer self-love without resistance and free to love the universe and its wisdom rather than just our personhood.

This Valentine’s week (and every week), add yourself to to your own love list. Attend to the nourishment of your own heart. Place your hand on your heart and ask, “What do I long for at this moment in my life?” “How can I take care of my heart, my body my spirit?” Give yourself the gift of your own presence and sense the exquisite life force, the sensorial profundity that is right here inside your own body. Ask, listen, and keep company with your being; make this a way of living, not just for the second week of February but for your entire love life.

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People traveling these days appear to be too preoccupied and distracted by their technology to be able to experience their travels, which is not the same thing as experiencing their phones while traveling, but rather actually living the unknown that travel offers. People now appear to be too absent from the actual experience of travel to be able to be deeply affected by or change as a result of it. Regardless of where we are in the world, we can now use our personal technology so as to never really have to leave home, change in any way, experience the unknown, or stretch outside our familiar sense of self. Whether or not our body is physically on the other side of the globe is increasingly irrelevant to our inner state. As long as we are situated and tethered inside our Smartphones, we are able to stay happily and safely inside our comfortable sameness.

Technology has changed the experience of traveling. With personal devices now our constant companions, the best parts of traveling have disappeared. Rest assured what’s been lost is not that we no longer wear ties and skirts on airplanes and wear sweat pants instead. Rather, what is no longer is the given that traveling will include meeting new people or even, living new experiences.

Before our personal technology became a part of every moment, traveling included a lot of down time, long stretches when we didn’t have much to do other than stare out a window, read a book, or maybe, strike up a conversation with a stranger. With travel came a lot of just being, with ourselves and others.

Travel used to take us out of the comfort and routine of our habits, put our sense of self in flux, and liberate us from our idea of who we are. Travel held the capacity to make us feel and experience ourselves differently. Separated from our normal life, untethered from all the things, roles and relationships by which we define our identity, we were free to be whoever we wanted to be. The present moment and who we were in it held great possibility for freshness and the unknown. Anything could happen when we traveled because we were less defined and confined, and thus more open to something new.

Furthermore, what made travel so special is that we had an unequaled opportunity to meet the people around us, who were often quite different from us. Meeting people wasn’t just an opportunity but more like a given, an inherent part of the travel experience and why we engaged in it. It was also, frequently, through the new people we met along the way that our travels were inspired and enriched. We may have gotten to know someone on a train who then told us of an aunt who had a bungalow in which we could stay, or of a local restaurant not to be missed, or a spectacular mountain trail. People along the way offered priceless travel and life experience, just as we shared our own. We connected not just to other flights, but to other human beings. It was often these other humans, who started out as strangers, but with whom we ended up sharing a meal, a journey, or even our life. Undoubtedly, some of the most interesting and important experiences in my own life have occurred because of the people I met through my journeys, and sometimes just because I spoke to the person sitting right next to me.

While it is very easy to use our devices to create a constant state of comfort and familiarity, there lies a great opportunity in travel and all experiences that pull us out of our usual circumstances. When we are willing to meet the unknown and possibly become someone different, allow ourselves to be affected by places and people we don’t know, we evolve and live—fully. The next time you are traveling, try an experiment: put your personal devices away and bring your attention to where you actually are. Notice your physical environment and the people in it. Feel what the air feels like in your new environment, listen to the sounds, see the colors, taste the flavors, smell the aromas; sync up your attention with where your body is in that moment. Notice too how your body feels in its new environment and if your sense of self is different in any way. Use your travels as a doorway to being where you are, In the process, you might also meet a new friend, have a fresh experience, or even find your self to have changed.

The post Has Personal Technology Killed the Magic of Travel? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

As an adult, I learned what actually goes on behind the scenes of the circus, specifically, the profound suffering of those very animals that I believed were so happy and excited to be part of my entertainment. When I stopped assuming all was well in the back tents (not the tents I could see) I discovered the cruelty and abuse that goes into making this day of “innocent fun.” With Ringling Brothers swinging through my hometown right now, I feel compelled to enlighten those who, like me, did not know better, and naturally assumed the best.

In case you didn’t know, wild animals don’t naturally do handstands, balance on each other’s backs, juggle beach balls, dance across planks, or any of the other tricks that they perform for us in the circus. The way the trainers get the animals to perform these tricks is not with unimaginable rewards, but rather with extreme and consistent punishment, some of it violent, all of it cruel. The elephants are beaten with metal rods, pierced with bull hooks on their sensitive bodily areas, eyes and face, shocked with electric prods and assaulted with blowtorches; bears have their noses broken and paws burned so they will walk on their hind legs. Monkeys and other animals have their teeth knocked out as well as being routinely drugged to make them more manageable.

Furthermore, the animals, when not in public sight, are kept in far too small cages, some so small as to prevent them from being able to stand up properly or turn around, and certainly too small to get the exercise they need. They are systematically deprived of adequate food and water and exposed to extreme heat and cold, which many animals are not biologically equipped to tolerate. Animals who are used to walking miles and miles each day are made to stand still for up to 24 hours at a time, chained like bicycles. So too, species like elephants and monkeys, who are supremely social, are often kept in cages alone, in solitary confinement, which is utterly detrimental to their happiness. And of course, animals repeatedly mistreated often become aggressive and erratic. For this they are then punished with even more extreme measures and the cycle of abuse continues.

Elephants in particular have many similar qualities to humans, in the way that they take care of their young and form emotional attachments to their families. In the circus, elephants are forced to have babies as early as 8-yrs-old, which is emotionally and biologically equivalent to an 8-yr-old human having a child. When the baby is born, it is immediately removed from the mother elephant. In order for this profoundly painful removal to happen, the mother elephant must be chained on all four legs (not just the usual 3) to keep her from attacking her handlers. The next cruel and rigorous process then begins, to break the baby’s spirit, as she is not only denied access to her mother, but also forced to assume the role of an imprisoned and powerless object for human entertainment. The practice of removing baby animals from their mothers before they are properly weaned, sometimes before they have even suckled with their mother, and then denying them contact with each other, is one of the most profoundly cruel techniques in the abuse of circus animals.

Most of us don’t know what happens to animals that have been enslaved by the human business of entertainment. It is not our fault that we don’t know. Everyone appears to be happy under the lights of the big top, humans and animals alike; the cotton candy tastes sweet, everyone is smiling and clapping, (including the seals) and we assume, understandably, that all is well. The circus is linked with childhood fun and a sense of joy; it is hard to believe and we certainly don’t want to believe that anything else could be true. But in truth, the animals in the circus are not well, and not having fun; what goes on in the circus, for the animals, is the antithesis of joy.

How is it that we can believe we have the right to misuse these magnificent and wise wild creatures for the purposes of entertainment and profit, without any consideration or empathy for their wellbeing? How is it that we believe it is okay to perpetrate such fierce unkindness on living spirits? Animals are sentient beings that experience pain, suffering, joy, fear, anger, warmth, safety, love, attachment and probably every other emotion that humans do. If nothing else, we should respect their dignity and treat them with the compassion that we wish for ourselves and those we love.

The next time we consider treating ourselves or our child to some joy under the big top, we should think about what our financial support of the circus means in a larger context, what behavior and ethics we’re really supporting with that ticket. We should consider those living creatures that are being exploited for our fun, those beings that have no voice to speak for themselves, and that have committed no crimes to warrant their punishment.
The next time we see an animal jump through a hoop of fire or perform any other ridiculous act, we should contemplate and imagine what had to happen to make that wild animal do something so counterintuitive to its nature. And maybe too, wonder where and how that animal might be spending the rest of the day and night when the performance we see is finished, and where the rest of its family is right now. Crazy though it might sound, we could expand beyond our own pleasure and include what that animal, the one doing tricks for us, might actually be experiencing. We can look past the three rings, beyond the sparkles and dazzling lights— to find out what is really true.

Most importantly, we should decide if we are okay with and want to support the cruelty that is being perpetrated on these living hostages, all so that we can have a few laughs. It is up to us, whether or not we are going to turn a blind eye to the suffering that the circus creates, to continue with our illusion of innocent joy and fun. Ultimately it is up to us, our choice whether or not we buy that ticket. I for one will choose to say “no.”

The post Burnt Paws and Broken Spirits: What Happens When the Circus Lights Go Out? appeared first on Nancy Colier.