Alexia's Views

Have You Experienced the Upside Down Rainbow?

2013-05-21T12:30:00-04:00

How does the old saying go? "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." It's kind of hard to taste the lemonade while you're holding a bag of lemons though. Say you take your lemons, wash them, cut them, squeeze them and add sugar and water to sweeten the lemon juice. After all of the labor, you have lemonade.

The same goes for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. You may have a terrible experience or a painful trial, but once you're through it, you see all the benefits that came from it. You may not see them right away, but if you wait and try, you can see them. Those benefits are nuggets of gold that fill the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Instead of it being a traditional rainbow that brings you the gold, the rainbow may be upside down, or a tough time, but you still get a pot of gold. In fact, if you look closely enough, the upside down rainbow is actually a smile!

I know we've all been through challenging times in life and there are more to come for sure as challenges are a natural part of life. In order to get the most out of the experience and often long after it has passed, you should write down the good things that came out of it.

I've learned what love is and what I really want as a result of surviving challenges. I've also learned that I can persevere and still have hope and desire to succeed in my heart. I've learned to love and respect myself, and I've finally started to realize and accept the things that I cannot control. Yes, I confess I'm a recovering control freak. I'm certain if I can find gold at the end of my upside down rainbow, you can to. Take time to acknowledge the positive things that came out of your trials because you can!

How to Release Your Pain

2013-05-16T12:00:00-04:00

A while back I wrote a post called "You Can Have It All." It was the first time I believed that life could be joyous and bountiful and not riddled with one drama after the other. I believed it but didn’t see it manifest for long periods of time in my life. After listening to The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I paid special attention to the chapter that talks about how we grow accustomed to attaching to our “pain body.” In other words we develop patterns in life and expect certain things to happen. I secretly believed that I always had to be dealing with one major drama and that life didn’t flow smoothly for extended periods for anyone or me.

Then I had an epiphany of awareness as many pieces of the puzzle came together for me. I realized that pains entered my life, as in times when I have been sick, lost a job or a relationship, all happened when everything was going smoothly. I remember having a drama occur in the fall, and the first thing I told my brother was, “It was like it knew I was happy.” Now I see that I am so used to associating with pain or drama in my life that I don’t know how to feel and act without one, so my subconscious responds and makes me sick or messes up some other part of my life to maintain drama in my life. It’s a form of self-abuse.

Now that I am able to be a witness of myself and tune into my intuition, I am finally learning to engage in the ongoing process of disassociating myself from a “pain body” and drama in my life. I can see from my past the many times I’ve chosen bad men to keep drama in my life. I’ve had years of job drama during the most recent recession, and I finally attracted a job to my life that I love, where I feel happy and content.

My health has been going well, and I’ve even learned separate from drama instigating doctors that choose to instill fear in you as a medicine. Now, that I know all things are in the right flow, and I’m more centered with self, my true self doesn’t really know how to react or respond because it has never felt separation from the outside, drama and the “pain body” before. Now. I’m experiencing it for the first time, and it’s like my subconscious is getting nauseous to keep me in a negative life pattern because it is all it knows.

I feel grateful to be able to recognize it, so I can embrace my life in all of its peace and beauty and bask in the wonderfulness of it. I can feel the growing essence of freedom entering my life. Life can be peaceful. You and I can have it all and not be punished for it either outwardly or inwardly.

Release attachment to your pain and free yourself because you can!

What is Your Hero's Journey?

2013-05-14T12:00:00-04:00

As you probably know, I wrote a book a few years ago called, Views from the 13th Floor: Conversations with My Mentor. The book was a non-fiction book based on my visits with Rhonda Shasteen, the Chief Marketing Officer (now retired) of Mary Kay. The entire experience was beautiful and got me hooked on writing. Now, I'm exploring writing a fiction book and decided to take some classes at Southern Methodist University in Dallas called The Writer's Path. It is an adult learning program that helps people who want to write books and learn their creative process byteaching them fundamental skills.

As part of the program, we spend a lot of time discussing character and plot development. We study an outline of stories called the hero's journey in a book by Christopher Vogler called The Writer's Journey. I found the hero's journey interesting because it simplified the writing process. It takes a lot of questions out of the high level process a character goes through in the story.

It begins with a call to adventure, a refusal of the call, acceptance, and engaging in the adventure by crossing the threshold. Then there are tests, enemies and allies, the ordeal and the elixir.

When I read the hero's journey for a fictional character, I saw how it could often be applied to my own life. I have many times been presented with a challenge that I did not want to face, but eventually did. It often presented tough times, and friends who supported me. Then at the end of it all, I've learned many lessons and often feel that I'm a better person. This is the elixir in it all.

If you haven't read my personal story of perseverance and overcoming, it falls right into a hero's journey, only I didn't choose to take the call to adventure. The call chose me, and at the end there is still an elixir. I can't change the past, but I will always be glad to have the knowledge and wisdom I gained as a result of my journey.

I hope you can find the journeys in your life, too, because you can!

Do You Live in the Past, Future, or in the Now?

2013-05-09T12:00:00-04:00

I am an avid book listener. I like to read fiction and listen to non-fiction. I read when I ride the stationary bike at the gym, listen while I run and when I'm walking around. I am a compulsive multi-tasker trying to make the most of my time, and I'm also trying to learn to live in the now.

My latest listening adventure has brought me to The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I'll be honest. Someone recommended this book to me a year or so ago, and when I listened to it then, it was too esoteric for me. I wasn't in a place to understand the message, so I was surprised when I awoke one morning with a desire to revisit the book. After a few days of the nagging voice of my intuition, I decided to go for it.

After all I've learned over the last year about choosing to be happy and using meditation as a tool to create awareness and make new choices, I was delighted to see I was in a place to use the message in The Power of Now to build on all of the learning.

In his book, Eckhart Tolle, explores how we use the past experiences and future fears to build pain centers in our lives. We focus on the pains of the past and the fears of the futures to motivate our action and consume our energy, rather than focusing on this moment in time. He explains that if you can separate yourself from your past and the future and focus on right now, then you will become a witness of yourself and feel greater peace and joy in your existence.

The book offers many questions and answers that attempt to challenge his theories. He admits there is value in facing your emotions and learning from the past, so long as you use them to be present rather than live in the past.

I must confess, I'm experienced in not being honest with myself, dwelling in the past and using my painful experiences to prevent me from moving forward in many areas of life. I never thought it was entirely possible to extract yourself from the past and the fears and emotions that controlled me. Now, through the power of meditation, I'm growing in my presence of mind and awareness, and I am encouraged through The Power of Now to continue growing the experience.

I encourage you to live in the now too because you can!

The Power of Rest

2013-05-07T12:00:00-04:00

I'll be the first to confess I'm not very good at resting. I love to stay busy and productive. I even label myself a producer (a title I snagged from my amazingly productive mentor, Rhonda Shasteen). I feel good when I have things to show for my work at the end of my day. So, I don't like to lie around that much and rest, that is, unless the objective of my time is to do nothing but rest. I've written about R&R before, but find it valuable to revisit the subject from time to time since it is so easy to forget.

I devour non-fiction books on personal growth, business, faith, foreign language, or anything that is teaching me something. I almost feel guilty reading fiction;however, in the many non-fiction books I read, I've come across a recurring theme...REST.

There is so much value in taking a day to rest from all things you consider to be work. It can be your job, your side job, or your exercise routine. This advice hit me so much to my core that I decided to try a new approach and take one day of the week as a dedicated a resting day. Christianity and Judaism call it the Sabbath. Regardless of your belief system, a 24-hour period to allow yourself time to recuperate and recharge will allow you a more productive week. There are even studies that show people who rest one day a week are more productive the other six days than someone who works without resting.

Now that I carve out one day, I don't have to wait for a day that just isn't busy, to rest. If I wait for a slow day, it will never come because I love staying busy. On my day off, I read fiction, watch TV and sleep more. I hang out with friends and spend time outside if the weather is permitting. All of these things enrich my being without necessarily producing anything other than a well-rounded, recharged, whole person, and that is worth far more than any one product from the rest of the workweek.

Find time to rest because you can!

A Daily Meditation Mantra Practice

2013-05-02T12:00:00-04:00

When I first learned The Secret a year ago, I was encouraged to begin a daily meditation practice. I had never meditated, so I started with just three minutes a day. I didn't know how to meditate, so I began by taking a suggestion made in The Secret. The book recommends repeating a mantra that goes as follows, "I am whole, perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious, and happy."

As I focused on these words for a few minutes a day, I thought closely to what each one of them means. I want to share them in case they are helpful to you. In fact, I begin my meditation practice daily with this mantra and try to expand on the words each time so they are meaningful to me.

As I sit, I begin to think I am whole. I am complete. I am united. I am one.
I am perfect. I am perfect today, yesterday and tomorrow. I am in a constant state of perfection in every moment in time.
Then I continue with I am strong. I am strong in my mind, emotions, body, and spirit.
I am powerful in mind and body. I am powerful to choose my own happiness and make my own decisions that are the best for me.
I am loving towards myself and my neighbor. I show honor and respect to myself and the people around me.
I am harmonious in my mind, body and spirit. I am harmonious with the people around me and the nature around me each day.
I am healthy. My mind and body grow and heal and develop naturally so my body can continue to heal itself. I added this one because I believe we all strive for perfect health.
I am happy. I choose to be happy in this moment and in the future. I practice the art of allowing and choose to be happy regardless of my circumstances. If I feel resistance towards anything, I can turn the other way and make a new choice.

I listen to these words daily and they help me connect with my inner-self more closely so I can hear the voice of my intuition and spirit speaking me. I've learned and continue to learn and hear this voice more strongly each day as it guides me to greater stages of perfection and more heightened awareness.

I encourage you to have or grow your meditation practice for all of its fruitful benefits because you can!

You Are Responsible for Your Own Happiness

2013-04-30T12:00:00-04:00

Are you happy? Do you want to be happy or feel happier? I think most of us just want to be happy and spend our lives figuring out what makes us happy and why. I'll confess that I spent most of my life people pleasing and believing I was responsible for other people's happiness. Believing I could make others happy, in turn, made me believe others were responsible for my happiness.

Life ended up leaving me feeling let down and frustrated as I learned I couldn't make another person happy and they often wouldn't make me happy. We can influence other people's happiness, but the root of happiness comes from within. That's why I wrote about how to be happy now! I finally learned that joy is my job.

Happiness is a choice, and I realized I was responsible for my own happiness, I saw that others were responsible for their happiness. All of a sudden, it was like a huge weight of the world was lifted from me as I finally released the responsibility I had put upon myself to make everyone happy because it's something I have absolutely no control over.

Now, I am free to focus on my happiness and develop it through self-love and continuing to work on developing a healthy self-esteem and sense of self worth every day.

Each one of us is in a constant state of evolution on our path to expansion and personal growth. The greatest gift we have as people is the ability to change and grow. I encourage you to nurture your happiness today because you can!

Create New Decision Pathways

2013-04-25T12:00:00-04:00

For the last year, I've been on a path of discovery centered on learning the true meaning of self-love and choosing happiness and joy. I've made many posts about this journey including several about trusting your intuition and practicing the art of allowing.

Understanding these things was just one layer of the onion. After recognizing that I needed to love myself, make new choice, and allow things to happen, I had to take the next, more challenging step to actually do those things.

I remember the first times I stood up for myself and made decisions that were in my best interest, rather than making a decision that I thought would simply please another person. These long patterns of making decisions of sacrifice resulted in me having a poor sense of self-worth. When I finally made the choice to respect myself, be honest with myself, and finally speak up about what I really think and feel, I cried. I cried buckets, but they were the most empowering tears of all. The next time I stood up for myself, and other times since then, I grew stronger and didn't need to cry anymore.

As I try to make new choices and create new pathways through practicing the art of allowing, I'm still very challenged by impatience. I have a big long-term vision and I want everything to happen now without "stopping to smell the roses" and enjoy the experience as I'm going through it. It's like eating your meal too fast without stopping to actually taste the food. Patience is hard for me, but with a little awareness and presence of mind, I learned I could choose it.

For example, I traveled the last couple of weeks for my job. Last week, my flight was cancelled which was going to make me miss a writing class I had signed up to take. I had worked hard and was upset to lose the time and money I had invested in the class. I confess that I lost my patience and my temper about a situation that was entirely out of my control. I replayed the incident in my mind going through each step with a kind attitude and patience.

This week, I got to try again. Amidst downpours, my flights home to make it to my class were all delayed, and my hopes of getting there at all were shattered. Rather than choosing to fight a situation I couldn't change, I decided to start working on a solution. I adjusted my travel plans, re-booked my hotel for an extra night and made arrangements to attend my class with Face Time.

Little did I know that technology would fail me, and despite my and my classmate's best efforts, we could not connect. So, I could not even attend my class virtually. Again, I had to make a choice to get upset over something I could not control, or work on a solution. I decided to choose patience and calmness and email the program director about my options. I asked if I could drop the class and retake it in the next session without having to pay the fee again, and she quickly replied that it was okay.

In just a few short weeks, I can start over with a clean slate and no extra money out of my pocket. It only cost me a little time, but I did do some good writing and work on my second book in the meantime. I was challenged to think, and most importantly, I learned that I really could make a new choice, allow things that are out of my control to happen, and crate a new pathway with a positive attitude and a happy disposition.

This isn't easy for me, and I don't expect it to be easy for anyone. It isn't a habit yet, and although I'm doing better, it will take some time and practice to be my true nature. I know these small changes add up to big results. I encourage you to create new pathways when you need to because you can!

Why Does Healing Come So Painfully?

2013-04-23T12:30:00-04:00

Each day we wake up and go about our lives. Some days go by easily and others you wish never happened. For the easy days, we should remain grateful and enjoy them, while we brace ourselves for the almost always-unexpected tough times.

Hard times in life will happen to in two different ways. They occur as 1) consequences of your own bad decisions, and 2) completely and utterly out of your control. Those are the things that happen "to" you. Some things that happen as a result of your bad decisions could be destroying your life for drugs or alcohol. As a result you can end up losing your job, your family, and quite possibly your home. The things that happen out of your control will show up in the form of illness, accidents, unexpected deaths, and natural disasters. Many go to the doctor for a check up and leave knowing they have cancer. Spouses are lost tragically in car accidents, and victims of natural and terrorist disasters leave family behind to grieve.

When you've screwed up somehow and are trying to put the pieces of your life together, it's at least somewhat easier to get to the root of the problem and put the pieces together about how you got where you are. Other times you've been practicing developing a bad habit for ten years, and it takes something more shocking to jolt you into reality and self-awareness of your missteps.

When things happen to you, you feel completely helpless. You can exhaust yourself beyond words trying to understand why something terrible happened to you. I can't begin to understand what most people have gone through in their lives and losses. I know what I went through almost ten years ago when blood vessels ruptured in my brain leading to emergency brain surgery and a rough couple of years. With all that I went through, I realize I'm lucky to be alive and fully functioning. Those years of recovery were refining and molding and the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I just sat up one day and knew to my core that I was going to be OK. Although I couldn't see it then, I had an opportunity. Now I have a story to tell.

In that moment I accepted what had happened to me, understood it was not going to be easy or fun, and embraced the challenge to conquer life's curve ball. Therein lies the reason that healing comes painfully. It happens when you take your arms and your mind and fully wrap yourself in the situation. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and with that acceptance comes a release. That release allows you to begin to heal from a tough situation.

The same logic applies to tough times that happen as a result of your decisions, only its more challenging to get to that moment of self-awareness, which allows you to embrace the situation. Once you do you will experience a good pain that will lead to peace later on. With time your heart, mind, body and soul will recover. You can!

Do You Make Life Happen, or Does Life Happen to You?

2013-04-18T12:00:00-04:00

Do you make life happen, or does life happen to you? This is a classic question of "what came first the chicken or the egg?" Do we make life happen through our decisions, motivations and actions, or does it just happen to us?

I think we all know from experience that it is a blend of the two. You'll find schools of thought that believe everything is driven from decisions, while there are others that tell you that you magnetize all that comes into your life. I think if you choose to drink too much or take drugs and bad things happen to you like losing a job or car accidents because of an impaired mind, they would be a result of the choices you are making in your life. If you work hard, are dedicated and proactive and receive a promotion, that is also life happening as a result of your decisions.

On the other hand, if you are a runner in the 2013 Boston Marathon when the bombing happened, then that is clearly something that happened to you. I have a hard time believing all those people attracted disaster into their lives because they were on the wrong frequency. Sometimes, bad things happen to you in order to help you learn and expand as a person. We don't always like the experience, but we can become better people as a result. At the same time delightful things may happen to you like someone letting you pass in traffic or winning a prize.

If you approach challenges with the right attitude, time will help process the wounds. Most of us who have experienced a major tragedy, find some way to be grateful for it, or parts of it, in the long run. I know I don't wish them and try to avoid challenges by making quality decisions. In the event of uninvited challenges and tragedy, I hope people have the love, help and support to see them through. It is essential to healing and brings the power of love to life in all of its exuberance.

I encourage you to choose life and love every step of the way because you can!