Recordings From Your Past

We bring to our day stories and memories from our past. These have been there for as long as we can remember. They are a very big part of who we think we are and how we face our day. How much influence they have depends on the power we allow them to have. If we reflect on our childhood and pick a topic, such as money, marriage, family, friends, sex, or career, we may find that there are recordings that play through your thoughts today. They create images and influence our opinions. Many of our thoughts are the filters through which we process our information and our beliefs. Let’s pick one of the above topics so that I can illustrate. Let’s choose money. Perhaps you grew up hearing, “Money doesn’t grow on trees!” You can imagine then how this would influence your relationship with money today. Maybe you have a bit of guilt when you spend money frivolously or perhaps you have used this recording to support your desire to save. This is not to say these recordings are good or bad. Simply, the impact that they can have on our current day actions and choices is constantly there.

Let’s try another topic. Let’s see what the recordings are for body image. “You should watch what you eat, it goes right to your hips.” “You are a beautiful and healthy person.” “You are clumsy.” Are you hearing some recordings coming through?

Being aware of what we bring to our relationship with self and others is important. Especially if we want to have a better understanding of why we do what we do or think what we think. Many of the recordings influence our relationships, act as a filter and can be a mirror that reflects our world back to us. Having insight to these messages from our past helps us balance our perspective on things.

These messages could have the power to limit us or propel us forward. These messages are not necessarily our truth, but we can give them supremacy and they then rule. We can understand them enough to use them as tools, allow them to be part of the equation in a balanced fashion and make them only one ingredient in the recipe we use to create our day.

These recordings from our past are a big part of who we are, but they do not define us. AND they are manageable you are in control of them and their influence. Become the master of your thoughts and take ownership of the messages they relay to you.

Blessings ~ Lisa

©COPYRIGHT 2012 Lisa Meade

Take Good Dose of Laughter and Call Me In the Morning

Children are often our very best teachers. Take for example the joy they find throughout the day. Children look at life through eyes of delight and newness. They see beauty where we see normalcy. They hear music, where we hear noise. And they feel laughter when we are often shut down. Hearing children giggle and then burst forth with a good belly laugh often brings a smile to our face. We recall how good it feels to really let go and have a whopping good, snorting, teary eyed, holding onto our sides, hard to breathe laugh!

We can invite laughter back into our lives through conscious choice. Laughter can happen at will, not only when encouraged by humor. When laughter travels from our core and travels through our bodies, through our cells, radiating outwards…we are body laughing! What a beautiful release of energy. What a tremendous embrace of happiness and joy. What a delight to share with others.

Laughter can create bridges where other communication fails us. There are no language barriers. It can unite strangers and friends alike. It connects. It bonds. It shares. It gives.

Laughter does a body good as well. It exercises our muscles, our mind, our lungs and our blood pumps wildly. It leaves us feeling more relaxed and less stressed. It gives us power to laugh at what frightens us or angers us. It reduces guilt or frustration. Laughter opens our hearts and allows things to flow, to brighten and lighten. It helps us shift our perspective to a more positive place.

The more we laugh and enjoy it, the stronger of a touchstone we create for ourselves. Sure laughter is easy when we are in a good place and a pleasant mood, but laughter can be just the right dose of “medicine” we need when we are a bit blue or in a negative mood. Even if it needs to be forced a little bit, our bodies will recognize the place of joy that laughter brings us and begin to create the responses we get so easily when happy. Laughter can nurture our souls and change our approach for the rest of the day.

The next time you are in a funk, feeling blue or moody or even having a frustrating day, try a bit of laughter. See how your body responds. Watch how the people around you resonate. Let your soul embrace the goodness that comes with a good body laugh.

Blessings ~ Lisa

©COPYRIGHT 2012 Lisa Meade

Living Our Fullest Potential

Today on Facebook I posted this quote from Steve Maraboli’s The Power of One, “Today, you have the opportunity to transcend from a dis-empowered mindset of existence to an empowered reality of purpose-driven living. Today is a new day that has been handed to you for shaping. You have the tools, now get out there and create a masterpiece.” I love the hope, the promise, and the celebration of this quote. It is a reminder of the gift we are given each and every day. We have so much potential within. Most of us barely touch it or access it. I can’t help but wonder what stops us. For some of us it is drumming up the courage. It takes some risk, some self-empowered thinking, and some daring-ness to tap into our fullest potential. Our society does not always support it. We are cautioned as children to not be too bold or too proud. We are often called arrogant and full of our selves when we step up and declare our strengths and gifts. We are not always supported and celebrated for living lives that are full and rich. Sometimes we receive others opinions of resentment for our wanting more.

But if we can garner up the courage and step into our rightful power and take the gift of the new day then the magic can happen. We can transcend our place of powerlessness, of living small and of not accepting the brilliance the Universe holds for us. We simply need to make the commitment to self that we are worth the effort. This is the first and most important step in moving forward into the opportunities that await us.

Secondly, we need to be mindful of the tools we carry within. Practice affords us the skill we need to use them to their fullest potential. Practice helps keep us aware of what we have within and how to bring it into our daily lives. Take the risk of making a mistake and learning from it - that is a gift in itself! Not worrying about others opinions or feedback to our every move and decision makes room for our choices to grow, rearrange, and become solid steps forward instead of cautionary what ifs and should haves.

We need to learn to take ownership of our potential and of the gift of each day. By doing so we create opportunities for ourselves to live creatively, to explore so many possibilities, to try them on for size without worry about the perfect fit or the possibility of failure. Without failure, we will not grow and we will not have disappointment and yearning or longing. Those are the seeds to growth. If we are too satisfied with our life, why would we want to change?

Change is all around us. Notice the seasons, the plant life, the creatures we share this earth with and the evolving nature of our bodies. There are aspects of change that we cannot control, so we instead should embrace the flow. We should learn to make the best of it. We should allow the forward movement become a part of out journey and let it lead us into the unfolding of each day and see what it reveals. With this perspective we can grow and evolve and find ways to tap into our potential.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

~ Marianne Williamson

Blessings ~ Lisa

©COPYRIGHT 2012 Lisa Meade

Being Part of the Whole

How many times have you faced your day an felt as though you were so alone? We go through the phase of thinking that our experience, thoughts and feelings are separated from the rest of the world. No one truly is, as we are all a part of the whole. We create this delusion and imprison ourselves there. We put ourselves in a box that keeps us limited to our personal story in that moment. We limit ourselves to the few people, feelings and life situations around us to support this story as well. If we are able to break out of the cycle of doing this we find we can widen our circle and ripple out. We find that we hold a compassion in our hearts for all living creatures, of all of nature within this universe. It can offer us immense freedom and be a beautiful place for our consciousness to grow.

It often boils down to expanding our perspective on things. If we stay attached to our story we spend our days rationalizing it and justifying why we are feeling the way we do, saying what we are saying and doing what we are doing. If we can step outside of the story and view the many possibilities that unfold before us, if we picture that our view limits itself to only one version of many, then perhaps we can begin to work within the graceful place the universe offers us to be. We are offered an opportunity to embrace the concept of unity and wholeness. We see the various parts that make up the bigger picture or at the least have the potential to.

Living and experiencing consciousness is all about relationships - all relationships. It is a moment to see how darkness can exist within the light. It is a moment to accept that there can be negativity in a positive moment. We can sit with the existence of how the lower relates to the higher. In a state of consciousness we can be with the reality that contradictions exist but do not limit us or define us. We can be strong powerful people and yet have our vulnerabilities. We can be compassionate loving beings and still have a moment of anger.

I once read a quote from Dr. Norma Milanovich and Dr. Shirley McCune that stated, ""Higher consciousness, enlightenment, comes from meaningful experiences and lessons passed with the understanding that there truly is only one law - the Law of Love. When one leads a life expressing this belief, the mind and heart begin to open to new realities, and other dimensional truths become known."

If we embrace this concept, if we live within the limits of the Law of Love, then we become grace filled, compassionate, open-hearted beings that accept all possibilities and have no expectations to fill. We learn that our story is almost meaningless. All that truly matters is the moment, the eyes we are looking in right now, the breath we are taking, the act we are making. If we choose to focus our energies in the NOW and be ultimately conscious of only that … we end the need to prove, to judge, to make conditions. We then can take that energy and make the most of this very moment, to be fully present, to not live in the past or stress for the future.

We empower ourselves to be authentic and truth filled. We look at those in our lives with an open mind and heart and we begin to relate to them on a much higher level. Our inner spirit shines.

What a wonderful place in life to aspire to! Blessings ~ Lisa

© COPYRIGHT 2012 Lisa Meade