Can I accept myself fully, all of who I am?  It’s a bit of a scary question.  When I dig deep, when I catch glimpses of those parts of myself from which I sometimes hide – can I really and truly draw in and embrace those parts of me?  Can I say that, no matter what, I won’t reject myself?  I won’t turn on myself.  I won’t leave myself lonely, out in the cold, and hurting without comfort?  I haven’t, all of my life, understood that kind of love.  The love I understood was far more conditional – I feel loved if I perform this way or look that way or say the right things.  In my young, underdeveloped brain that’s how I understood the world.  Over time and lots of healing, adapting, and creating flexibility, I have come to understand that I really can practice unconditional love with myself.  That no matter how someone else is frustrated with me, not understanding me, or even attacking me I can hold onto myself.  And when the voices of my own past, that reverberate inside me, seek to attack me – even then, I can hold onto myself.  I can love those parts of myself too.  It all comes from pain.  And if I hold on, and refuse to let go, I can heal the pain.  Today, I will practice awareness of the most ashamed and hurt parts of myself and I will hold them.

What can we do but trust?   What choice do we have?  Things in life will come along – struggles, problems, choices, good times.  All of these things will come and go regardless of how “good” we are or how “bad” we’ve been, regardless of how successful, rich, beautiful, motivated we are or aren’t.  The control we have in life is to trust that all is happening as it should be and to choose how we respond.  We can kick and scream and drag our heals as a two year old does, or we can open our hearts to love, support, and the connections that come through struggle and relax into the ride.  We will still have emotions.  We will still feel the sting of life.  That is ok.  Having emotions isn’t what determines our response or how we move through.  Trust is one practice that helps us move through life in a way that builds us up instead of tearing us down.  Trust helps us maintain our optimism about knowing that whatever we are experiencing is here to make us deeper and ultimately, our lives richer.  Today, I will trust that whatever is happening is meant to be – just for me and for others.  I will trust that, ultimately, it is far better than what I could have planned for myself.  I will say out loud – “I trust that this is for the best.  I may not see how yet, but someday I will.”

Embrace failure as a part of life’s important journeys.  Failure is an important part of success.  It is how each of us, who knows how to walk, learned to do it.  It is how each of us, who knows how to ride a bike, learned to do it.  We failed and we failed and we succeeded just a little and we kept on, and then we had success.  Failure means that you have tried something, and learned from it.  Failure means that you have set your sights higher.  Sometimes, when we set our sights high, we get afraid.  We may be overcome by “what ifs” – e.g. What if I fail?  So what do we do?  How do we adults, who forgot we learned to walk, get ourselves to face those fears?  One thing we can do is reward failure!  When you try something and fail, you deserve to pat yourself on the back and say, “good job, you took that as far as you could, way to go!  Nice work, you found the edge of that idea”.  You also can say to yourself, “well, you did a poor job at (fill in the blank), now you have an opportunity to make a connection by apologizing and finding out how that could go differently”, whoopee!  What if we really valued and praised our failures – think of all the potential things we might try.  Not all failures are alike – some failures will be painful for a long time.  That’s ok.  Usually, those bring about really important deepening and knowledge.  But there are many possibilities, that we face everyday, that seem more doable when we embrace failure.  Today I will try something in a new or different way, and embrace my failure joyfully.

I thought that you might enjoy this Ted Talk that I watched.  I hope it is inspiring and encouraging.

I hope that you find some meaning in today.  I hope you find a way to enjoy yourself today – to connect with someone you love, to breathe in and breathe out a bit of goodness that is right in front of you.  For the past is only stored, and the future is only imagined.  Hold on loosely to them.  Yes, we remember.  Yes, we plan.  And yes, we need to remain open to the possibilities unfolding right here, right now.  Today I will go easy on myself.  I will breathe in and breathe out and know that I am ok in this moment right now.  I have what I need to get through this moment and I allow myself to experience pleasure and enjoyment in that.

I’m reading a book about forgiveness.  The author encourages confessing of flaws and weaknesses as a part of living a full life.  It sure is freeing to own our humanness.  To freely and openly admit our weaknesses, failings, and short-comings.  To embody all of these is to be perfectly human.  Denying and defending these things makes us sick.  It makes us hide with shame.  It makes us need to separate ourselves into “us and them”.  It makes us compare ourselves to others.  So here goes – as I intend to live in the wholeness and fullness of my human capacity – I still fall short in these and other areas:  jealousy, anger, unforgiveness, grouchiness, impatience, judgmentalness, pickiness, and stubborness.  I confess that I have caused harm to others through these and other short-comings.  I rejoice that if I am accused of these things – I can say “yes, you are right!”  I resolve not to manipulate, defend, or otherwise attempt to misdirect the responsibility for these things.  I am human!  And I am grateful that I am loved, appreciated, and cared for in spite of all of these things.  And I am grateful that I can also own and appreciate my patience, kindness, care for others, wisdom, and hardiness.  Being human is such as interesting journey, and I am constantly intrigued.  Try your hand at confessions today- maybe to your journal, maybe to another person.

Love.  It is a noun.  It is a verb.  It is a complete sentence.  This holiday season, I am happy to share the planet with so many loving people.  I look around and see love all over the place.  I see love in the faces of friends, family, and strangers.  I see kind gestures.  I see connections.  I see people sharing simple pleasures with one another.  And I thank each and every one of you for your contributions of love to our world.  There is no wound that love cannot heal.  There is no dark place too deep that love cannot reach.  There is no reason ever to doubt love’s power to make everything and everyone right and whole.  I believe! May each of your hearts be open to receiving the greatest gift there ever has been, is, or will be – love.  And my love I share with you all!

Crisis points, inflection points, points of major change.  They aren’t bad, even though they may be uncomfortable.  Often, they are uncomfortable.  Think of starting a new habit with your body – a stretch, jogging, or climbing a hill.  Your body is going to speak to you and let you know that this is out of character, and difficult.  Your body is going to warn you to check it out and make sure you want to go ahead with it.  And if you evaluate it, and decide that it has value and merit, you go ahead with it.  Sometimes we don’t get a choice about whether a change is coming – like in times of crisis.  We have to “climb the hill” – one way or another.  But we always a get a choice about how we climb.  How we choose to speak and think about it are in our control.  We can tell the story as if this is the worst hill that ever came along, and it will ruin our lives.  Or we can tell the story as if this hill is hard and difficult and painful, but we know we’ll get through it in a meaningful way.  We know that we will learn something and grow.  We have that capacity as adults.  If no one modeled that for us, then we didn’t have that capacity as children.  But life is always presenting us with opportunities to grow up those young parts of ourselves.  The crisis points and hills are redundancies built in to allow us to learn this time, what we may not have been able to learn before.  Today, I will find hope in the opportunity to grow to my fullest potential by courageously facing the hills.

If there is a way in which you are wanting to grow today, if there is progress or maturation that you are longing for, then be courageous and imagine yourself possessing that trait or quality.  See yourself living that growth you would like to have.  I was inspired by the story “Left To Tell” by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  After surviving the Rwandan Holocaust, she set her mind to finding a job.  She said, “I envisioned it, I dreamed it, I prayed for it, and now I had it!”.  Neuroscience backs her up.  When we envision something; for instance, being at the ocean – the same neural circuitry lights up as if we are actually staring at it!  So live big.  Your imagination is the limit.  Set your sights high.  Whether it is embodying patience with your children or learning to paint – allow the desire you feel for that to motivate you.  Then repeatedly imagine yourself engaging with life in that new way.  After some time and practice, you may be very pleasantly surprised.  I hope that you will.  Dream big with me today!

Did you ever have the ability, as a child, to get fully immersed in the activity at hand?  Throwing rocks in the creek, playing with dolls, riding a bike, playing with the dog, cops & robbers, etc…?  Most young children have that ability.  And then we adults, we start training them out of that as soon as we can – “put your shoes on now, stop playing it’s time to eat, I need you to focus on this now, don’t follow that bubble we have to go now”.  Well, and what are we supposed to do – that’s the way our world works.  I always knew, growing up, that work was more valued than play; but, I had never seen it more blatantly labeled in black and white than yesterday.  I was reading a children’s biography about a scientist.  One of the historical notes was that the Puritans believed that children needed their parents’ permission to play.  Seriousness was valued.  Harsh punishment for stepping out of the boundaries was encouraged.  It became so clear to me- in that instant.  Many of us Americans were raised, through generational transmission and a plethora of subtle cues, “people who are playful aren’t as valuable as those who work hard.  We loudly value performance and accomplishment.  If you have to play as a child, then fine.  But you had better start outgrowing it as soon as possible.  Get serious.  Get prepared.  Life is a lot of hard work and planning and preparing.  Then if you plan and prepare enough, one day you can relax.  Phew – I’m exhausted just thinking about it!  Fortunately for us who are living now, there is plenty of research that shows that happiness and playfulness are important factors for creativity and productivity.  Nurturing a couple of deep relationships and making time on a regular basis for activities for pure enjoyment go a long way toward living a healthy, productive, and spiritual life.  Today I will pick one thing and do it just for fun – just for the enjoyment.