Making small clay creations embellished with her mother’s Norwegian sayings was an outlet for Kristine’s grief after her mom’s passing. Little did she know her porcelain art would become a business, Beanpole Pottery, with orders from as far as Australia. Tell us a little about..

Source: Becoming a Potter at 61: Kristine’s Story

WE Are The Life of The Party  by Molly Davis

Together around an outdoor fire, a group of us have shown up to continue our conversation about the matters that matter to each of us, and ultimately, to all of us. The good, hard, sometime exhilarating and often scary work of learning to live our own genuine lives. A lifelong process. Perhaps the process.

As we make our way through the evening, I am struck both by the commonality of our desire to be our most authentic selves and, by the uniqueness of what each person in front of the fire brings to our collective party.

Starting from the left and moving around our little circle:

She always brings something unexpected and more than a wee bit magical. A poem, a story, a question, which is usually preceded with a few words about not being sure why this offering, for this night. But, she has obviously learned to trust that inner nudge which I’ve yet to see lead her or us astray. On the contrary, what she shares moves us both deeper and further. Because of her, we cannot stay in our boxes.

Moving clockwise.
There is a quiet knowing that radiates from her. A sense that she is one of those sacred healers, here to mend our planet and the souls that inhabit it. She brings a kind of gentle fierceness that invites us to find our own brand of strength. The question she poses causes us to ponder long after we have left the warmth of our fire behind. Her smile, which starts in her eyes, is infectious.

Another tick to the right.
She grounds us with her quiet and thoughtful presence. There is a kind of safety in the way in which she listens deeply. While slow to speak, what she says always matters, and it is obvious that it comes from a place of deep self-knowing. From her we learn that an economy of words can carry a wealth of wisdom.

Uh-oh. My turn.
(While it is always easier to illuminate the gifts of others, understanding what I bring is equally important. So here goes.)
I provide a space in which we can all show up. As ourselves. The real ones. As I listen for the message beneath the words, a question takes shape in my mind that I can ask of us all. And in searching for answers together we are able to find our own ways forward.

The empty chair to my left.
She sits in her home 100 miles away, and yet is as present in the room as the rest of us. By trusting the voice within, she knew that she needed to stay put. In saying ‘no’ to joining us, she said a powerful ‘yes” to herself. It takes courage to act on our own behalf. Her willingness to choose to honor her self encourages us to do the same.

Completing the circle.
She is the spark that keeps us gathering in front of this fire and reminds us that we aren’t meant to fend for ourselves. Often the first to talk about the “hard” of finding our way, she opens the door for the rest of us to keep it real and talk about what is below all of our fairly together surfaces. And, she is usually the first to swear… for which I am eternally grateful!

Seeing the individual amidst the collective is a reminder to bring what we have to any and every party to which life invites us. Work. Family. Friendships. Communities. The world. Each one of us brings something that no one else can. Together, we are the life of the party.

Whatever you have…. BRING IT!

Just One Thing by Molly Davis

The other evening I had a small gathering of women from our little town. No agenda. Nothing special on our minds except to have some time together on a beautiful evening. As the sky grew darker, the lights still up from our daughter’s glorious outdoor wedding last month glowed above us and out into the nearby pines. Night sounds floated in on the cooling night air; cows in the distance, evening bird song, a few dogs barking and then the sweetly eerie cry of a coyote. It was a time of ease, space and grace.

I had decided to make the evening simple. No big production of food or even cleaning up. I think I swept the floor before they came…but I’m not sure. I made my favorite popcorn concoction which includes butter (lots), salt (plenty) and big flake brewers yeast (enough). That and a couple of bottles of wine and the Piano Guys on my iPad. 

We’ve all been talking about the importance of connecting and spending time with other women.

There is magic that happens when women gather.

The conversation settled into an easy rhythm, threaded together by a common theme; the importance of living authentically and fully,finding purposeful work that uses our gifts, fills us up and does a bit of good in the world. While we all are living in the midst of different chapters and circumstances, the same thoughts and questions seemed to be coursing through our veins. Somewhere along the way, one of the women read a poem she brought to share. “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, reminding us that we all have a place “…in the family of things.” We all took home a copy. And then I asked a question, “What is one thing you feel called to do right now?” No further explanation was needed, as I knew that every women on that porch had the answer within. It was a matter of trusting what she heard and bringing it out in the open to consider. After living for 60 years, if I know one thing to be true, it is that we each have an inner GPS. There are a ton of other voices, maps and directions that vie for space on our radar screens. Tuning into the one that is ours is the trick. And, it is one that even the oldest of dogs can learn. Trust me on that.

One by one we answered, each in our own time. And it was true, we all knew what that one thing was.

Make an appointment with the life coach whose name and number has been quietly waiting on her desk.

Get out those pencils she bought a month ago and start drawing.

Begin journaling to excavate the creative work that lies beneath her surface.

Keep on writing that book. Everyday.

Spend time in quietness, just listening.

Just one thing.

It is how any and everything begins.

What is just one thing you know you are called to do today?

The following text is a June 2012 New York Times blog post by writer-cartoonist Tim Kreider called « The ‘Busy’ Trap »:

« If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in [a hospital’s intensive care unit] or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 [grade point average] make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications. I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another’s eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. Not long ago I Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was [rendered obsolete] when “menu” buttons appeared on [TV remote controls], so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the [Metropolitan Museum of Art] or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?

But just in the last few months, I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy. For the first time I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint; it makes you feel important, sought-after and put-upon. Except that I hate actually being busy. Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this.

Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check e-mail I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I’ve remembered about buttercups, stink bugs and the stars. I read. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.

Perhaps the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved as I do. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle. My role is just to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play. My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy. »

Shame is an internal, insidious experience that lives in the body. It can be one of the most devastating emotions because it often leads to isolation, which can then increase the entrenchment. Shame and bodily shame have been strongly associated with eating disorders and, in my experience, oftentimes prevents those suffering from seeking the help they so desperately need. Unknowingly, the dust of shame can sprinkle for generations to come.

Amy Ferris and Hollye Dexter compiled stories of shame in their new book, Dancing at the Shame Prom (available now through Amazon.com). This honest, vulnerable and beautiful collection recognizes the impact of shame on self-esteem, self-worth and the way we move through the world. Twenty-six courageous women shared their stories of letting go and breaking through the shame that has blanked them for too long. I can’t recommend this book enough and believe that everyone can relate to the suffocating grip of shame. I encourage you all to bump this book up to the top of your list and when you’re done, consider writing your own shame story.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing a mother, Kristine, and daughter, Kate, who shared their individual stories of going through Kate’s battle with anorexia. Below are their interviews.

Kristine Van Raden stumbled upon a bit of a miracle 15 years ago with her best friend Molly Davis. A shared idea led to an interesting project, which led to a dinner party with a slightly inebriated and highly enthusiastic publisher. Soon Kristine and Molly were interviewing strangers on street corners, produce sections of grocery stores -even on an elevator trip up the Eiffel tower- compiling a collection of letters from women around the world which became Letters to Our Daughters (Hyperion,1999). Since then, they formed Matters That Matter (LLC), offering workshops around the country, building upon the honesty and transparency of the women they have met throughout this experience. They have come to understand that we are all more alike than we are different, and that if we can get past the differences, there are common threads that connect us as human beings (taken fromDancing at the Shame Prom). Here is Kristine’s interview:

I tell people that drug and alcohol addicts can live without their vices and dependencies, but people with eating disorders cannot live without food.

Kate Van Raden is a self-taught photographer who pens both a fashion blog and poetry blog: katevanraden.wordpress.com She is also a twenty-seven year old woman who has struggled with the trials and tribulations of anorexia for the better part of five years; throughout college and modeling in New York. She is currently juggling a zoology degree, a full time job and her continued pursuit of wellness. Kate continues to attend treatment and therapy for her mental illness; making great strides towards increasing personal capabilities for love, growth and self-acceptance; all the while, passionately and vigorously committing herself to her work with endangered species. Kate lives with her three-year old hedgehog Rosebud in an apartment in Portland, Oregon (taken from Dancing at the Shame Prom). Here is Kate’s interview:

From the time I was young I wanted my family to be proud of me…on so many levels. I’ve been blessed with a loving family and have always wanted to feel like I measured up, contributed. I have always worked hard at the challenges before me; school, college, scholarships, foreign exchange, relationships, etc. I guess you could say I am a pleaser. I wanted to please those who loved me and I wanted to feel successful in my own right.

What did you find most helpful in your recovery?
Honesty. When you are living with an eating disorder, your life becomes a lie; the lies you tell others about your health and weight, the lies your eating disorder tells you about your self-worth, your body, your perceptions, the lies you tell yourself about listening to the influence of the eating disorder…at least in my experience, giving myself the gift of honesty was the moment I saw hope. To this day, being completely honest and candid with myself and those I love is one of the most important tools I use to maintain my health. In my family, we don’t lie. We don’t let things hide in the dark anymore…we stand up and bare the horrible, terrible, unacceptable truths about ourselves, and give one another the chance to love us anyway. It is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. Without question, the unconditional love and support of my family kept me afloat many times when I couldn’t see my way clear to the next step. We have done it all together: family therapy, group therapy, individual therapy, nutritionists, psychiatrists, psychologists and hypnotists…read all the books, talked with experts, traveled to clinics, sought help and support where ever possible. I had committed to recovery, and I would NOT fail at that.

I want to express my deep gratitude to both Kristine and Kate for continuing their courageous contributions to the issues of shame and eating disorders. Without a doubt, your stories have already helped many. Thank you both!

And to Amy and Hollye, for embarking on such an important project, for giving these 26 women voices to express what has felt inexpressible and for inspiring countless others to begin their own journey.

Aging in America isn’t always easy, especially when we’re bombarded with messages trying to convince us that youth equals beauty. ‘Old’ is something we should avoid at all costs, they seem to tell us, and if we don’t . . . well, maybe it’s time to just step aside.

It’s enough to make women run for the hills, or to the nearest plastic surgeon.

That’s not what I chose to do after turning 50. Instead, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, interviewed experts on just about everything, followed the programs and advice, and wrote The Best of Everything After 50. As I inch my way toward 56, I feel way better now than I did a decade ago, ready to take on whatever is next.

But, that’s only part of the story.

While I was trying to figure it all out, I erroneously imagined I was the only one who was scared and confused by aging. But, little by little as I started talking about it, doing interviews, writing, and connecting with other women on social media, it soon became apparent that I was not alone. We all — with very few exceptions — have many of the same concerns and the more we reach out to each other, I discovered, the more empowered we become. Sure, I learned a great deal from the amazing experts I interviewed. But it’s the real women in my life (some I’ve never even met) who continue to sustain me with their support, encouragement and wisdom.

According to Ann Baker, founder of Women at Woodstock, that makes me an official crone.

Huh? Isn’t that an insulting term for older women? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary called a crone an ugly, withered (and usually wicked) old woman. I was mystified why this lovely woman on the other end of the phone — whom I’d never even met — would call me that with such glee in her voice. Ann quickly explained that women across the country have been embracing the concept of the crone as a ‘wise woman’ and the movement is growing.

The crone, according to legend, is part of a sacred trio — Maiden, Mother, Crone – and because she is the oldest, the crone is also the wisest.

Furthermore, Ann told me, there’s a ritual called the croning where women, usually those who are at least 50 and have gone through menopause (but women of any age can celebrate their croniness!), claim their cronehood very often by throwing a party and inviting all their girlfriends to join in the fun. Or, it can be a more solemn, serious affair. Women all over the country are embracing the concept of the crone in a positive way. It’s all about the act of becoming a wise woman and accepting your rightful place in the world, but it’s also about sharing your knowledge and wisdom with other women of all ages.

Ann had her own croning ceremony to celebrate her 50th birthday, even though she didn’t have any idea what “croning” really meant. She invited women friends to a rented cabin in the country for a weekend, asking each to bring a favorite photo, CD, or DVD. They listened to the music each had brought while cooking together, hiking, and talking. Oh yes . . . there was A LOT of talking going on, especially focusing on what they all still hoped to achieve in the future.

The experience was so incredible she decided to create an annual event for all women over 50, where we could come together, and celebrate who we are now. A few years later, Women at Woodstock was born, an event she hopes to host every year.

I’m proud to say that I was one of the first crones Ann invited to speak at this first Women at Woodstock event, which takes place October 7th through 10th. Click here for the details. Other women who will be croning right along side me include the first editor of Ms. Magazine and best-selling author Suzanne Braun Levine, Robin Plaskoff Horton, founder of Urban Gardens, writer Amy Ferris, cosmetic entrepreneur and former model Cindy Joseph, and many other amazing, accomplished women, uh … crones.

While I didn’t have a croning ceremony when I turned 50 (not complaining: it was a trip to Rome with my husband and two daughters), I’ve been croning ever since. I rely on the solid network of women I’ve built these last few years and every encounter I have with them — face-to-face or virtually — makes us all more powerful.

Celebrating and reveling in your aging self is nothing short of revolutionary. Yes, our society may be tiptoeing into this new way of engaging with post-50 women, but change is most definitely in the air. The cynical side of me thinks marketers see the immense opportunities that the post-50 demographic represents. We are, after all, a large and quickly growing group with lots of disposable income, especially compared to other age groups.

The idealist in me believes that we — those over 50 — have finally gotten our message across, and it’s this:

Embrace your age, engage with life, take control of your future, and live. Care for your body, exercise your mind, be a part of the world, stay connected with people who are supportive, and you’ll discover a secret that many women over 50 who are doing these things already know: If you feel good, you look good. And if you feel and look good, age will be the furthest thing from your mind.

So . . . are you ready to embrace your inner crone?

INSPIRED BY www.purposefairy.com

Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:

1. GIVE UP YOUR NEED TO ALWAYS BE RIGHT

 There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?

2. GIVE UP YOUR NEED FOR CONTROL

Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu

3. GIVE UP ON BLAME

 Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.

4. GIVE UP YOUR SELF-DEFEATING SELF-TALK

 Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle

5. GIVE UP YOUR LIMITING BELIEFS

about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!

“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle

6. GIVE UP COMPLAINING

 Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

7. GIVE UP THE LUXURY OF CRITICISM

Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.

8. GIVE UP YOUR NEED TO IMPRESS OTHERS

Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take off all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.

9. GIVE UP YOUR RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

 Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell

10. GIVE UP LABELS

 Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer

11. GIVE UP ON YOUR FEARS

Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

12. GIVE UP YOUR EXCUSES

Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.

13. GIVE UP THE PAST

I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.

14. GIVE UP ATTACHMENT

This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another,  attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.

15. GIVE UP LIVING YOUR LIFE TO OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS

Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.

Misunderstandings…

We’ve all had them.

“You said, that I meant, but you did, and then I wasn’t, you’re wrong and I can’t.”

Sometimes, regardless of how sure we are that every rock has been over-turned, every possible outcome discussed and contemplated; roadmaps explored, compass readings, GPS and lining up the stars… we find ourselves surprised when we get to the end of the road with another person and well, they aren’t there. Not standing next to you, not a few steps behind. They flat out aren’t there. So you wait and wait for them to catch up and while you are waiting you notice a wiggly thing way off in the distance, and I’ll be go to hell…there they are, about a bazillion feet off track on a road that you never knew existed.

So as you stand there on your deserted road realizing that all the preparation you did obviously wasn’t enough because you and your companion still ended up on separate paths; you have a couple of choices to consider… (I DO love choices). #1 you could pleasantly wave good-bye to that poor schmuck and just keep heading for your destination. #2 you could start making your way through the prickly brush in the hopes that when they see you coming in their direction, they will do the same and meet you somewhere in the middle. Or #3 you go back to the beginning of the trip, the place you both started and plan and re-plan again in the hopes that this time you will travel more efficiently together.

We base our decisions on how important the outcome/destination is; how much we care about and respect our traveling companion(s); and how we want to feel about ourselves at the end of the trip.

Oh one last point…Money Ruins Everything! Be sure your travel plans include an air tight budget.  “you pay for the gas, I’ll buy the beer and Cheetos…DEAL.”