The Awakened Heart Project

Nov 18

Letting Go: This is How You End Suffering

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 41: Letting Go: This is How You End Suffering

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” –

Ann Landers

Let Go, Be Free

This is not the first time the idea of “letting go” has been discussed throughout this project. And frankly, it probably wont be the last. Letting go, is something that is so important to inner peace. Holding onto emotions, thoughts, believes, perceptions, memories play a role in our lives. Sometimes we hold onto a memory for pleasure, because it brought us joy. Or we hold only a belief because letting it go bring us fear. We can’t image it any other way. However, there is a lot of suffering that remains when we continue to hold onto negative events, beliefs, and/or perceptions of people or events, etc. When we do this, we create another reality. Read more

Nov 12

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day and Neither Were You!

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 40: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day and Neither Were You!

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Progress and Growth

Nothing in life worth having comes easily. Can you hear the voice of your father repeating those words to you as a child? Just as you were trying to throw in the towel and quit whatever it was that you felt was too difficult. No matter where we heard those words, or who said them to us, we’ve all heard, in one way or another, that the best things in life require work. The most rewarding things in life require work.

Personal growth is just the same. It takes time, and it takes works, but the pay off is worth every last second. Don’t forget to give yourself credit for every single accomplishment you make. Give yourself credit for stopping your negative self-talk. Give yourself credit for those five minutes of meditation. However big or small, don’t believe your accomplishments are small. They’re not! They all lead to something much larger, and each and every component towards a more awakened self is a piece of the puzzle. You wouldn’t be where you are if you didn’t make those choice to consciously change.

Finding Your Spirituality

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 39: Finding Your Spirituality

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is Spirituality Anyway?

What does spirituality mean to you? Do you even know? Is it synonymous with religion? Is it something that you practice? Something you believe in? Or is it deeper than that?

Spirituality is vaguely defined, and is unique to each individual person. Conscious Bridge: Evolving to Oneness writes, “[Spirituality] is one of those terms that we use thinking that we all have a common understanding as to what we are talking about, what the truth is; we don’t. It’s like the word “God” – it means different things to different people depending upon their worldview.”

Social scientists define spirituality as “the search for the sacred”, where the “sacred” refers to God, higher powers, and also other aspects of life that are perceived to manifest from the divine or exhibit divine like qualities which are transcendent and boundless. This can be experienced through beliefs, practices, experiences, relationships, motivations, art, nature, war – virtually any part of life, positive or negative, can be endowed with sacred status (Pargament, Mahoney, Exline, Jones, & Shafranske).

The term “search” refers to Read more

Sep 30

The 5 Love Languages

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 38: The 5 Love Languages

**“All of us blossom when we feel loved and wither when we do not feel loved.”**

― Dr. Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages for Singles

How Do You Speak Love

Love is a universal way humans speak to one another. From a very early age, we show and receive love from the people in our lives. The love we receive (or lack there of) and how it is expressed helps to shape us into the people we become as adults. Individuals that grow up without love and security typically grow up to have serious mental health, behavioral, interpersonal, and/or personality issues later in life. Love, truly is one of the most important aspects of a healthy, happy, life.

Although we know love is critical, we don’t always know how to express it. Further, we don’t always know how to express it in a way that the person receiving it, knows that our intentions stem from a place of love. Some of the conflict with this too is due to the fact that we, ourselves, don’t always know what makes us feel most loved and/or how others can show us love. Expressing and receiving love is another form of communication in itself. We all respond to different forms of communication differently. What works for some, may not work for others. Thankfully, Dr. Gary Chapman has developed The Five Love Languages an easy way to breakdown how we each can communicate love to one another in a language that the receiver can understand. For more on Dr. Chapman, CLICK HERE.

The 5 Love Languages

Dr. Chapman believes that there are 5 Love Languages which people understand in the expression in love. Each individual will have a preference as to which language they understand the easiest. This may Read more

Sep 10

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Forgive, Accept, Embrace

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 35-37: Forgive, Accept, Embrace

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”

– Steve Maraboli

Life Lesson 35: Forgive

They say, “Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” Do you agree? I think in many ways, yes it is. Forgiveness is something that no doubt hard to do. We have these emotions and thoughts that surround our experiences, and the ones that hurt and leave a scar often make us jade and resentful. Pain shuts us down and causes us to put up a wall for protection. We build a moat around our heart, and guard it with everything we have. We say, “This will never happen again. They will never hurt me again. They can no longer we trusted”. The problem with all of this is that these walls also keep out the good. Further, when we don’t allow ourselves to forgive, we are unable to release the pain. This pain will stay with us forever. Even worse, sometimes, the pain was simply a misunderstanding, that could quickly and easily be corrected if we didn’t jump to building that wall and moat around our hearts.

We are all just human beings. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes, and sometimes that means hurting others. Sometimes, it’s intentional, but many times it is not. Before you jump to conclusions about another persons intentions, take a step back and ask yourself if you’ve even made a similar mistake. Or ask yourself, could I be thinking too much into this? Perhaps, there’s an explanation. The best approach however, is ti simply TALK to the person that hurt you. Tell them how you felt, and how you interpreted their actions. A mature, reasonable person will take the time to give you an explanation and often Read more

Aug 20

Creating Your Bucket List

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 34: Creating a Bucket List

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

– Zig Ziglar

Life Lesson: The Bucket List

Have you seen the movie Bucket List? The one with Jack Nicholson, and Morgan Freeman? It’s a great little movie. The kind that’s rather cliché, but makes you smile, makes you cry, and leaves you feeling warm inside. It’s the story of two men, who are both dying. As they realize they’re running out of time, they decide to complete everything on their bucket list…together. The movie captures incredible moments -some on a grander scale than others. Nonetheless, it leaves you thinking, “Yes! I can do that! I need to do that!”

Creating life goals that aren’t always career focused or family focused is an important part of building a meaningful life. It seems many of us have constructed bucket lists that are centered on excelling in our careers (e.g. to be the vice president by the time I’m 40). Or, centered on money and material objects (e.g. to make a six figure income, and build my million dollar home). Or, the lists are more about others or hopes, but things that are totally out of ones control (e.g. to have three boys that all play soccer).

Don’t get me wrong; ALL of these goals, dreams, and aspirations are important and relevant. There is nothing more important than family, and having career aspirations is admirable to say the least. On the other hand, we are made up of far more than just our careers and Read more

Aug 13

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Maybe Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Are All Wrong

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 33: What Are Your Basic Needs?

“We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death.”

– Leo F. Buscaglia

Life Lesson: What Are Your Basic Needs?

Last week we talked about define who we are from our internal world rather than external world. We tried to rid our identity of labels with “assumed roles” to define who we feel we are at our deepest levels, -our souls. This week, we expand on the theme of internal and external influences, but more specifically needs.

More than often, we put the external world in which we live in before anything else. We put our jobs first, the carpool first, the expenses, etc., well before we put our internal needs and desires. We are raised to believe that “This is how you live”, -this is what is means to be a “productive member of society”.

In 1943, humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow proposed his theory of The Hierarchy of Needs. This hierarchy suggests that people are motivated to fulfill basic needs before moving on to other, more advanced needs. He displayed this hierarchy as a period. At the foundation level, humans much fulfill basic physical needs like food and shelter before moving onto other needs, such as self-esteem and relationships needs.

This theory does makes sense. However, I recently came across a somewhat opposing viewpoint by Mark Nepo, author of The Book of Awakenings that I found just as true. Nepo writes:

While this is in part true, I believe there is a dimension of the inner life that is as imperative and equivalent as food and shelter. Without the fulfillment of these basic inner needs, we are just fed and sheltered bodies void of life. Without love, truth, and compassion, all the comforts of modern life don’t matter, because we are simply reduced to biological machines, not even as present as animals.

Nepo argues that when we begin to live our life from the perspective that basic needs must be met first, the result is that we often defer the risk to love in the process. We make comments like, Read more

Aug 5

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Who Are You? Forget Labels and Redefine Yourself.

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 32: Who Are You? Forget Labels and Redefine Yourself.

“Sincerity is the fulfillment
of our own nature,
and to arrive at it we need
only follow our own true Self.
Sincerity is the beginning
and end of existence;
without it, nothing can endure.
Therefore the mature person
values sincerity above all things.”
― Tzu-ssu

Life Lesson: Who Are You?

Who are you? Have you ever really thought about this question? Who are you as a person? I’m not talking about how others define you. I mean, how do you define you? What makes you who you are internally? Sadly, the definition of ourselves’ tends to be defined by external circumstances. For example, you fail a test in school, the definition of yourself becomes, “I’m a failure”. You get married, the definition of yourself becomes, “I’m a wife” or “I’m a husband”. In contrast, if/when you get divorced, you come, “The divorcee”. But it’s not like in the time you were a wife, to the time you were divorced, you suddenly transformed into a new self, right? Or what if you were employed in the morning as a bank teller, but by the end of the day you were laid off. You’re no longer a bank teller, but are you a different person? No, you’re not. These external labels do not define you. Inside your soul, you are so much more than these labels.

How many times have you been introduced to someone and they ask, “So, what do you do?” immediately implying that they want to know what you do for a job. How often do you respond with something other than your job? I’m guessing hardly ever, yet I’m sure most of us do much more than what’s in our job description.

What if, instead of asking, “What do you do?” when you met someone knew, you asked, “So, who are you?” What do you think their response would be? Would they take a minute baffled by your question to reflect on it? Would they simply ignore it and describe their job as if on autopilot, unsure of how to answer such a question? Think about it for a minute; if someone Read more

Jul 31

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Your Values Become You

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 29, 30, and 31: Your Values Becomes You

“To be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing its best,
night and day,
to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight,
and never stop fighting.”

~ E.E. Cummings

Life Lesson 29: The Value of Values

Defining your values in life is an important part of growth and development for many reasons. I think Kevin Daum puts it well when he explains, “Our personal core values are there to guide behavior and choice. Get them right and you’ll be swift and focused in your decision-making, with clear direction. Get them wrong or leave them ambiguous, and you’ll constantly wonder how you got into this mess. ”

Life constantly pushes and pulls us in different directions. In order for us to maneuver through life, we need some sort of compass. That’s where values come in. Our values help guide us through life. They help us develop into the people we want to be. They help ensure our path to personal growth and fulfillment is headed in a direction that is conducive to our happiness and well being.

For instance, let’s say you value family, but your job keeps you away from them 70 hours a week AND you travel. Your children are young so by the time you get home, they’re asleep. You find you’re only seeing them on the weekends, while also trying to get everything else in your life done. You tell yourself that you must provide for your family to justify being gone all the time. But in time, you begin to resent your job, you become depressed, and you feel disconnected. Then, you begin to wonder is the pay worth the sacrifice? For many people it is, but for others, it isn’t. They’ve simply been living on autopilot and never realized they turned down a road that took them away from their values and livelihood.

You see, our values give meaning and purpose to our lives. But when we don’t live by our values, we end up living by someone else’s. Further, dissonance between our beliefs and our actions is significantly distressing, both mentally and emotionally. Believe it or not, long term, it can lead to problems like depression.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,

 Your thoughts become your words,  

Your words become your actions,  

Your actions become your habits,  

Your habits become your values,  

Your values become your destiny.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

Are you destined to live a life of someone else’s values? I hope not. Your life can be exactly what you want it to be, but it requires you to take some time to evaluate what you want out of life, what you don’t, and what paths you’re willing to take to get there.

“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave them all over everything you do”.

-Elvis Presley

Life Lesson 30: Defining Your Core Values

Understanding why establishing personal core values are important is just the first step. The next step is to spend some time actually thinking about what these values are, and writing them down. It may be difficult to hone in on your top values, but I challenge you to do so.

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from things we do”.

-Freya Stark

Exercise in Action:

Below, I have provided a table of core values for you (128 total!). This is just a list of suggestions or common values. Please feel free to add to it as you wish. This exercise is for you, not me, so do what’s best for you.

Step 1 – Go through the list and cross off any values that don’t resonate with you.

Step 2 – Write down your top 30 values.

Step 3 – Go through your list of 30, and write down your top 10

Step 4 – Go through your list of 10 and write down your top 5

Hey, no one said it was going to be easy! But if you’re like me, you’ll end up lumping many into categories.

There are a number of websites out there that can help you do it if you don’t want to take the time to write them down. While in school, I had to complete the Card Sort Activity which is very similar. It is more related to work values and how you want to structure your work/life balance, but it’s still incredibly useful. If you would like to complete that, click HERE

This is a great image of another way to organize your core values:

I know it can be hard to determine your top 5 values, so don’t get too caught up in getting exactly five if it’s a struggle. Like I mentioned before, I categorized quite a few things to fit them in. For example, Friendships and Family I lumped into the same category. This question can be helpful when narrowing down your top values, especially number one.

The most important thing in life to me is….

Life Lesson 31: Living Your Values

How will you know if you’re living your values each and every day? For each of us, this will be different, but it’s important to write down some sort of ideas to help you visualize successfully doing so. In the research and science field, we often state that, “Outcomes must be measurable”. Taking the example of the overworked parent again, maybe valuing family means leaving their job for a less demanding job with similar income. Or maybe it mean, leaving letters for their children in the weeks their gone, or committing to two hours of no distraction on the weekends. Remember, it will be different for every person. What’s important is deciding how you will fulfill your values. Knowing how you will do this will also help you recognize if/when your lifestyle is headed in a place that will not be fulfilling. Here is another question that may help guide you:

I will know when this value is being met in my life when…

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Registration for The Awakened Heart Project is closed for the year. However, follow the blog for the opportunity to participate in 2014. With An Open Heart will be going through some major changes in the coming months! Stay tuned!!!

Please fill out the form below to be notified when The Awakened Heart Project will begin again. Thank you.

Jul 15

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You Must Always Move Forward in Life

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 28: You Must Always Move Forward in Life.

“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?”

― Mary Manin Morrissey

Lesson 28: You Must Always Move Forward in Life.

Living in the past is something many of us do, at least occasionally. Sometimes it’s heartwarming to reminisce about the past and talk about joyous memories. However, periods where ruminating about the past in a negative way, in a way that distracts you from the present and keeps you from moving forward, is never beneficial.

In life, you must keep looking ahead of yourself, not behind you. You must move forward, looking upward, as if you were a rock climber. You don’t look down, or back, because you know this will only trigger fear and uncertainty. This will paralyze you.

So, each and every day you remind yourself never to look back and second guess your life because there is no way to turn back. Each day you remind yourself that the present moment is all you have, and in that moment you have the ability to make changes. You stay focused on what it is you want out of life, not what it is you don’t have currently. You know that change will be hard, but you also know change can bring great joy. Just like a rock climber, moving forward and upward, takes strength, and determination, but in time it get easier because you’ll be stronger. Although it may be hard at first to never look back, you know in time, you will get stronger and it will get easier.

Anything worth having takes emotional strength, the will to go on, determination, and focus. This is one of the major lessons in life. Nothing amazing is just handed to us. The things that are handed to us don’t have the same value as the things we work for. It may seem easier to just get carried to the top, but once you’re there, will you have the strength to stay there? Will you have gained the needed lessons to be successful there? Mountain climbers learn their way up with each step. They know how to navigate the terrain. They know how to recognize areas of “danger” (e.g. people that will suck life and happiness away from you). These climbers appreciate the view at the top, because they know how hard it was to get there. The individuals’, who take the helicopter to the top, miss out on every step along the way. And when it’s time to navigate their way down they are at a loss; their only way down is with a helicopter. That is, they will never feel they have the strength survive without help.

Pain = Gain. This is true in so many realms of life: The pain of sore muscles after lifting weights but the gain of seeing results in time; The pain of childbirth, but getting to hold your child moments later and watch them grow up; The pain of suffering through the loss of love, only to find love again. Everything in life is constantly going through changes. We’re always under construction. It takes time to build something great. At first it’s complete chaos, and everything around you looks to be in disarray. But slowly and surely, these come together.

Everything in life is a process. Respect it, and appreciate every step along the way. Appreciate the messy areas. Appreciate the times of pain. These are the times when you have the most to gain and you will if you don’t look down, but only look up. Don’t look back and second guess. Don’t look back and think you should have made a different decision. If you don’t like where you’re at in life, go forward and change it. Our past got us to where we are today and there are great lessons in that. But our past is an impossible place to live, so stop trying.

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The Awakened Heart Project

Registration for The Awakened Heart Project is closed for the year. However, follow the blog for the opportunity to participate in 2014. With An Open Heart will be going through some major changes in the coming months! Stay tuned!!!

Please fill out the form below to be notified when The Awakened Heart Project will begin again. Thank you.

Jul 8

Your Fate is in Your Own Hands

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 26 and 27: Your Fate is in Your Own Hands

“When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.”

~Honore de Balzac

Life Lesson 26: Your Fate is in Your Own Hands

This week, the focus is on personal strength and believing in yourself. It’s critical to accomplishing goals, and achieving the life you want. If you can’t believe in yourself, what else do you have going forward? The first part of this weeks lessons is a Buddhist story. Read it with a clear mind and be open to the stories lesson.

“Fate is in Your Own Hands”

Once upon a time, there was a general who was leading his army into battle against an enemy ten times the size of his own.

Along the way to the battlefield, the troops stopped by a small temple to pray for victory. Read more

Jul 1

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It Doesn’t Matter How Fast You Get There, If You’re Headed In The Wrong Direction.

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 24 and 25: It Doesn’t Matter How Fast You Get There…If You’re Headed In The Wrong Direction.

“Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going to fast-you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”

-Eddie Cantor

Life Lesson 24: It Doesn’t Matter How Fast You Get There…If You’re Headed In The Wrong Direction.

We’ve all done it. We’ve put ourselves on autopilot and headed in the direction of our dreams. Day in and day out, we work. We create lists, we’re ambitious, and we focus all of our attention on completing the tasks that will get us to our dreams. However, when we finally arrive at “our dreams”, we realize it isn’t a dream at all. We look back and ask, “What was I thinking?” Then we realize, we weren’t thinking at all. We were simply going.

One common example of this is the career-focused person who thinks they’ll be happy at the top of the company. They work like crazy for years. They sacrifice friends, family, and leisure time. They tell themselves things will be different and easier at the top and then they’ll have time for x, y, and z. But when they get to the top they realize the hours are still long, they’re disconnected from friends and family and they missed out far too many experiences to count. Reality sets in and they realize everything they lost along the way wasn’t worth the gain.

Granted, not everyone feels this way when they get to the top. And many people feel this way without ever getting to “The Top”; whatever place that may be for you. What’s important is that you’re headed in the right direction for you. YOU are the only one who can decide what direction is the right direction.

Don’t get caught up in the speed at which you accomplish your goals. Don’t get caught up in societies expectations of where you “should be” in life. Albeit, this is incredibly difficult in today’s world. Here’s an interested story on the topic: Read more

Jun 25

The Yin and Yang of Life

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 22 and 23: The Yin and Yang of Life

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
-Gilda Radner

Life Lesson 22: There is Still Fortune in Misfortune…If You Open Your Eyes!

You’ve heard this metaphor before: You can’t control the storm, but you can learn to surf! That’s exactly what life is all about. It’s about enjoying the ride, -even the bumps. Take every obstacle in stride, and learn from every experience, -good or bad. You must remember, YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT HAS TO FACE PAIN, OBSTACLES, FRUSTRATIONS, SADDNESS AND ANGER. Not a single one of us is immune to the ups-and-downs of life.

You might think that certain people have had made. That certain people have everything handed to them, or that they just lucky and don’t know the meaning of hard work or hardship. This may be true for a very small percentage of people walking this planet, but I know it is not for the majority. For most people, work was a very real part of their success. For most people, adversity, let downs, screw ups, and set backs, existed often on their life journey. There are more than a few people that even found themselves at a total loss and moving forward required completely starting over. It sucks, but life must go on, and so, it’s the only real option.

Karen Salmansohn, author of How to be Happy Dammit uses “The Fortune 500 Club” and “The Misfortune 500 Club” to help explain the Read more

May 20

The Joy of a Warm Summer Day

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 21: The Joy of a Warm Summer Day

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

All I Want To Do Is Sit In The Sun

I don’t know about you, but here in Minnesota, we’re really getting the start of spring and summer these days. Sure it’s been raining quite a bit this week, but when it’s not, and the sun is shining, there is nothing I want to do more than to be outside. I don’t always find the time to write these posts prior to Monday’s, so sometimes I find myself feeling very conflicted without my time. Today, I spent some time this morning putting together the patio table and chairs for the deck just so I could type outside. Right now it’s sunny and beautiful but come this afternoon, storms will be back in the sky.

What’s the point of me telling you this you ask? Every chance you get to do something that brings you peace, happiness, and joy, you should take it. A moment outside might seem insignificant, especially if you live somewhere where the seasons don’t change, but for me it’s incredibly important. I NEED the sun. My body, mind, and spirit instantly feel reconnected and exuberated when I’m outside and the sun is shinning. The warmth on my skin brings me soo much comfort. It’s almost hard for me to explain the affinity I have for hot summer days; there is just something about it that overwhelms me with happiness. I’m especially grateful today as I know rain will soon be upon me.

Every one of us will have Read more

May 13

We Are All Beggars Until We Begin To Look Inward

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 20: We Are All Beggars Until We Begin To Look Inward

“Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.”

~ Henry Van Dyke

The External World Keeps Us Disconnected

With all of the external stimulation we have at our constant disposal in today’s world, it has become difficult to spend any time, consciously stimulating our inner self. We spend time watching television, sitting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, (“googling” to our hearts content), reading on our computers or ereaders, watching movies, texting, emailing, shopping, -buying our way to happiness, building our ideal happiness on Pinterest…I could go on forever, but I wont.

It’s not hard to see that we’ve created a very external world where introspection is perhaps a rarity; where searching for happiness and inner peace are found outwardly. The problem with this is that happiness and inner peace CANNOT be found outwardly. The attempts we make to do this fail, -clearly they fail, or we wouldn’t be consuming as much as we consume. We wouldn’t be spending so much time disconnected from ourselves as we do.

We all want happiness, but we don’t understand how to get it. We spend our days in constant pursuit of happiness but never find it. We ask ourselves, “What will make me happy?” But we usually end up concluding that external items will answer this question. We think, maybe I need a new car; If only I weren’t single; If only I had more money; if I buy this, I’ll be happy. We also spend our days blaming our unhappiness on Read more

May 6

Letting Your Worries Go

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 19: Letting Your Worries Go

“I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety or fear try to call me, they keep getting a busy signal – and soon they’ll forget my number.”

– Edith Armstrong

Letting Your Worries Go

Worry is unfortunately a very real part of most of our minds. This pattern of thinking has perhaps increased in the last 300 years as well. As humans, our worries are no longer simple or basic; that is, surviving. We’re now worried about the mortgage, college, how we look, the home we have, how others perceive us, are our children popular, or did I marry the right person? Am I in the right career? Should I have gone on vacation? Do I have enough saved? Are my parents proud of me? The list can go on forever and ever; I’m not going to bother.

Despite the plethora of things we have to worry about these days, it is possible to get back to basics; -at least cut the list dramatically! Before we get into the how, I want to share a little story with you.

“THE TROUBLE TREE”

The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start.

While I drove him home, he sat in stone silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet the family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands.

After opening the door, he Read more