Accept Yourself

To be beautiful means to be yourself. 

You don’t need to be accepted by others.

  You need to accept yourself.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?  Just accept yourself with all of your flaws and quirks.  Love yourself.  Drop the fears and wounds that muddy the beauty in your soul.

Imagine if we all did that simple act?  How the world would look differently?  What a wonderful world this would be!

It’s taken me a long time to chacha through accepting myself.  To look in the mirror at my image and tell my eyes that I love me, with all my imperfections.  I’m not always as secure as I’d like to be, as I am a continual work in progress.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be the finished product I’d love to be, but it’s in the journey that we grow, we learn, we inspire and we do our best with what we have.

And on a Sunday afternoon, that’s all I can be.

Namaste

Shine On!

xo

 

Bend and Sway With Change

The oak fought the wind and was broken,

the willow bent when it must and survived.

— Robert Jordan

I recently found this quote and had to share it with you as it goes along with my last post on How To Embrace Change. When we fight changes with the child-like attitude of “I don’t wanna,” we lose our power in whatever situation is changing.  I’m not suggesting to be a doormat and just let changes steamroll over you.  Oh no!  Not at all!  Neither am I advising you to fight the changes like a warrior, with armaments drawn and ready for battle.

I’m asking you to bend and sway…

Flow with life…

Observe the changes…

Embrace yourself…

Allow kindness in your heart…

Looking for the good in every situation isn’t easy, but you can do it.  Sometimes the good hides when the situation changes for what we deem the worst ~ we lose our job, a loved one passes away, we have health problems, relationships go sour, finances become depleted etc.  It happens to many of us over a lifetime.  We are not given the right to have a perfect life without rough patches.  But we are given the Divine Right to have experiences which grow us emotionally, mentally, soulfully and spiritually which test us and help us to expand ourselves in new ways to be better, kinder and more loving people.

Without the highs and lows in life, we could never appreciate peace.    It comes at a price though.  We have to stay flexible and to stop banging on the closed door in front of us.  Simply look around, observe the whole ‘room’ and find the gift of the open door on the other side of the room.  Yes, it’s that simple dear friends.  It just takes embracing change.

I’ve endured many changes in my life, many of which I did not choose, but I am still here as are you.  Together we can bend and sway with kind, loving hearts.  We can shine our heartlights, connect with others and keep walking on our life journey.  No matter what difficulties you are experiencing right now, know that change is inevitably beautiful and this too shall pass.

♥ Namaste ♥

Shine On!

xo

To Glow Is To Know

When we shine our heartlights, we glow….and when we glow, we know.  But what is it exactly that we know by glowing?

We show strength in shining our own special light into the world.  As we shine, we recognize others shining too.  In meeting other heartlights, many times we bond for we both know something that some have yet to learn.  We know that love, patience, kindness and presence increases our glow and allows others to see our heartlight shining as well.

We love, we forgive and we simply are who we are when we take the time to know ourselves and to shine our heartlights in the world around us.  In the movie Avatar, the phrase, “I see you,” is an acknowledgement of opening the mind and heart to the present moment and to spiritually be in that moment with the other person.  It is the ultimate compliment to understand another person, to truly love them for all of themselves and not the just bits and pieces we prefer.

Imagine for a moment our world full of presents of presence and heartlights twinkling like stars in the night sky.  Imagine the peaceful planet we’d inhabit if we were all to shine freely and not hide our heartlights or dim another’s.  I daresay it would be this side of Heaven.

Namaste is another way to acknowledge the divine spark we each hold.  It is amazing when someone says ‘Namaste’ and we know we have been greeted soul to soul.

So this week, perhaps as you go about your days, you could take a moment to connect with the other heartlights that you meet along the way.  Even if it is a fleeting moment, you could smile with a twinkle in your eye and know that your heartlights have connected.  Try it and let us know how it goes for you!  I am going to do it as well!

Shine On!

xo

Manifesting Grace Through Gratitude

Happy Monday!  I just wanted to share what I am doing which is free!  See below the email from Deepak and Oprah ~ if you are interested in joining the free 21 day mediation, please click below and register!  I hope you have the loveliest week ahead!  Be grateful everyday!

Shine On!

xo

Today marks the first day of Manifesting Grace through Gratitude! As we set out on our journey, you may find yourself wondering, what is a mantra?
Mantras are powerful tools to support your meditation practice. These Sanskrit syllables are carefully chosen to work with and empower the teaching of the day. As you silently repeat the mantra during meditation, a few things happen:
• You quiet your mind – Repetition of the mantra helps you move beyond your thoughts and access the stillness within.
• You experience deeper awareness. The mental vibration created by the mantra allows your mind to access pure awareness.
• Make sure you won’t be interrupted – With daily use during meditation, the mantra helps your body, mind, and spirit relax into their true essence – pure potentiality and happiness.
If you find any of the mantras difficult to understand, or would like to keep track of them throughout the Experience, visit our mantra resource page for a full list of mantras and their explanations.
It is our hope that these mantras help bring the gifts of grace and gratitude into your life each day.
Namasté,
21-Day Meditation Experience Team

Interested in getting more information or trying the meditation?  Click Here!

Hello Daily Prompt!

Today’s Daily Prompt asks which Superpower we would choose ~ and I’m torn between the ability to speak and understand any language or the ability to make any 2 people agree with each other.  As synchronicity would have it, I already had written today’s post about World Hello Day so perhaps that qualifies my decision to get BOTH superpowers! 🙂

This morning I found out that yesterday was the 41st annual World Hello Day ~ did you know?  From the website, here I found out that anyone can participate simply by greeting 10 people!  This demonstrates the importance of personal communication for preserving peace which is something that I think many of us strive for in our lives and through our blogs.  To reach out to others in order to connect is what I strive for myself.  How about you?

I thought I’d share even if I am a day late ~ it certainly can’t hurt!  Perhaps you will feel inspired to say hello to 10 people today ~  in real life and perhaps via blogging as well!  Imagine how much good we could do if we all just said hello to someone else!  Baby steps, that’s what it takes to reach world peace…are you willing to say hello?  Please feel free to share this post as well ~ we could all use a kind greeting today!

I found a bunch of ways to say hello here.   I can’t guarantee that it’s correct, but I thought it was a fun way to start a Friday!

Mirëdita (to our Albanian friends)

Ahalan (to our Arabic speaking friends)

Parev (to our Armenian friends)

Zdravei / Zdrasti (to our Bulgarian friends)

Nei Ho (to our Cantonese speaking Chinese friends)

Dobrý den / Ahoj (to our Czech friends)

Goddag (to our Danish friends)

Goede dag, Hallo (to our Dutch friends)

Hello (to our English friends)

Saluton (to our Esperanto speaking friends)

Hei (to our Finnish friends)

Bonjour (to our French friends)

Guten Tag (to our German friends)

Gia’sou (to our Greek friends)

Aloha (to our Hawaiian friends)

Shalom (to our Hebrew speaking friends)

Namaste (to our Hindi speaking friends)

Jó napot (to our Hungarian friends)

Halló / Góðan daginn (to our Icelandic friends)

Halo (to our Indonesian friends)

Aksunai / Qanuipit? (to our Inuit friends)

Dia dhuit (to our Irish friends)

Salve / Ciao (to our Italian friends)

Kon-nichiwa (to our Japanese friends)

An-nyong Ha-se-yo (to our Korean friends)

Salve / Salvëte (to our Latin speaking ancient Roman friends)

Ni hao (to our Mandarin speaking Chinese friends)

Hallo (to our Norwegian friends)

Dzien’ dobry (to our Polish friends)

Olá (to our Portuguese friends)

Bunã ziua (to our Romanian friends)

Zdravstvuyte (to our Russian friends)

Hola (to our Spanish speaking friends)

Jambo / Hujambo (to our Swahili friends)

Hej (to our Swedish friends)

Sa-wat-dee (to our Thai friends)

Merhaba / Selam (to our Turkish friends)

Vitayu (to our Ukrainian friends)

Xin chào (to our Vietnamese friends)

Hylo; Sut Mae? (to our Welsh friends)

Sholem Aleychem (to our Yiddish speaking friends)

Sawubona (to our Zulu speaking friends)

As a global event World Hello Day joins local participation in a global expression of peace.  So that you know you are in good company, 31 winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are among the people who have realized World Hello Day’s value as an instrument for preserving peace and as an occasion that makes it possible for anyone in the world to contribute to the process of creating peace.

So what are you waiting for?

HELLO TO ALL!

Shine On!

xo

Daily Prompt: A Bird, a Plane, You!

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/daily-prompt-power/

You get to choose one superpower. Pick one of these, and explain your choice:

• the ability to speak and understand any language
• the ability to travel through time
• the ability to make any two people agree with each other

Photographers, artists, poets: show us POWER.