APRIL INSPIRE-LETTER

Be ignited, or be gone.
- Mary Oliver

Hello Precious Souls!

My current (most fabulous!) Soul Coaching Group is right near the end of "Fire Week" as I write this. Fire Week in the 28-Day Soul Coaching Program I offer is a big, scary, powerful and combustible kind of week… It's about embracing your darkness, it's about confronting your fears, taking risks, sexuality, death, and burning through any blocks that keep you connecting to the true essence of who you are. I love Fire Week - not only because I'm such a natural-born drama queen ; ), but because I thoroughly enjoy cheering my "coachees" through such an utterly transformative week…safely from the sidelines. Well, I didn't get off the hook so easy this time around…

I was in the middle of a pleasant Skype call the weekend before with a beloved fellow Soul Coach sister -- Amanda from Greenland (but now living in Denmark: www.whiteswanholistic.com) -- when this highly intuitive shaman-like woman in her somewhat terse English suddenly pronounced out of nowhere "When your next group enters Fire Week, you must go with them!" Hmmm, lucky me…my "next" group was about to start Fire Week two days later.

So, I've thrown myself into the potent energy of Fire Week - doing all the daily individual exercises right along with my group -- from taking risks around my fears to dancing my dark qualities to irreverently saying "So WHAT?!" to the skeletons in my closet. It's the Rocking Chair Test, however, on our "Confronting Your Death/Embracing Your Life" day that really hit home.

The exercise goes a little something like this: Pretend you are at the end of your days and you're sitting back in your rocking chair and looking back on your life. You know you don't have a lot more time and as you rock back and forth, you ask these questions: 

1. Are you ready to die? 
2. Do you feel complete and at peace with your life? 
3. If not, what would you have liked to have done differently in your life? 
4. What would you have done less of and what would you have done more of?

We all have something called a "probability pattern": if you keep living life the way you have been living it, you will most likely continue to get pretty similar results. So, according to the life trajectory you're on right now today (and not on the "Well, in a few years I'll spend some time figuring out the "happiness" portion of my life" trajectory) would you be happy with the life you've lived? The answer for me was "no". Granted, it wasn't a big resounding "NO!" -- I've come a long way in trying to live my best life in the past 10 years -- but this exercise helped me realize I'd gotten a little off-course and that the way I've been living my days in the last couple of months isn't creating the overall life I want to look back on from that rocking chair. 

You see, I'm not going to look back and say I'm glad I met all those deadlines or didn't offend too many people or managed not to lose too much. I want to look back and say things like "I connected deeply with the world and shared a lot of hugs", "I unequivocally took a stand for what I believed in", "I fully experienced the sensual pleasures this life has to offer", "I loved and I was loved!" With this reminder of my true life values, I've immediately started making shifts to align my minute-to-minute life with how I wanted my overall life to look. So... anybody want a hug?

This too can be your wake-up call to change the trajectory of your life starting TODAY. Just choose one small action to take this day that reflects the life you aspire to live. If you want a life of more purpose, post an issue that you are passionate about on Facebook. If you aspire to live a life of more serenity, take 5 minutes right now to just sit and pay attention to your out-breath. If you want a life of more adventure and fun, do something unpredictable in a meeting today. You may think 'How the hell is this little action going to change my life?', but just remember that life is defined...by a bunch of little actions. 

So, start igniting your life right here, right now, so that at the end of your days you can sit in that rocking chair, smile and say, "Yep, I did that up right". ; )

Big Hugs, 

10 WAYS TO GET IGNITED TODAY:

1. Put on a high-octane song and DANCE!

2. Meditate concentrating on a flame -- envision breathing in the power of fire

3. Commit an anonymous act of kindness.  ie. Draw on someone's dirty windshield "You are loved".

4. Take your work OUTSIDE today.

5. Speak your truth about something you believe in - in-person, online, by phone or letter.

6. Get creative -- take a piece of paper and draw what you're feeling right now.  Better yet....do hand-painting and get messy!

7. Introduce yourself to a neighbour you've never talked to before.

8. Do something physical: run, drum, swim, stretch -- something that will let your energy move through you.

9. Tickle someone.

10. Think of one of the things that frightens you the most right now and then choose a risk to fly in the face of it.