Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an alternate reality. Sailing down a stream that split into two some time ago. Is there another me in a parallel universe who made a different decision?

Is she still in that house in Princes Street with the sea grass matting that smells of the previous tenant’s dog? Is her husband still drinking tall bottles of beer every night and calling her selfish. Has she given up on ever feeling special?

My heart breaks for her. She dreams of another life that she is too scared to go after.

In the back of my mind I worry my current experience is the one that isn’t real. What happens when I wake up and find myself back in the marriage, the job, and the self-loathing I walked away from? Surely I can’t deserve all this happiness …

But my musing are misguided. Even if I’d stayed locked in my obsession with achieving the perfect body, even if I had never kissed another man on New Year’s Eve, even if I’d never packed up my belongings and moved into the tiny flat overlooking the harbour, things would no longer be the same.

Life doesn’t stay the same. The stream constantly flows around rocks and branches and veers off in different directions.

Even if I hadn’t done any of the things I did, things would still be different. The past, as I imagine it, no longer exists. The only thing certain is change.

The other me is now living in a different reality too. One where things are better, or maybe they are worse.

I no longer believe that doing nothing in the midst of unhappiness means life will stay the same. One simple action, one small decision will spark a course correction that will launch you into a parallel life.

The question is … are you steering the boat or being swept along by the current? Is it your choice or the whim of the gods of change?

This is the only life you’ve got. Nothing stays the same. You can decide where you’re headed or just wait and see. Either way, the future is guaranteed to be a different reality to the one you have now. Which parallel life do YOU choose?

This weekend Duckfish and I went to Canberra and the National Gallery of Australia. We only intended to spend a few hours in the gallery and ended up spending all weekend there.

Seeing real art in front of you is amazing. It’s nothing like looking at a picture on the internet or in a book. It’s the difference between watching a ballet on TV and being in the front row of the theatre and seeing the sweat bead on the brows of the dancers.

Arthur Streeton – Golden Summer 1889

Art changes the way you look at the world. You see beauty where before you saw chaos. You see light and shadows playing together. And you experience the focus, talent and dedication of the person who put ever stroke of paint on the canvas.

Eugene Von Guérard- Ferntree Gully 1857

Arthur Streeton – McMahons Point Ferry 1890

When I turned one corner I was surprised to see the painting below – the original Magritte painting that inspired my video Suicide Widow.

René Magritte – The Lovers 1928

And on a road trip, you get to listen to great music on the radio.

Even songs about galleries …

There is so much to be done every day. All those things on your ‘To Do’ list — good things, important things, life changing things — but you’re always running out of time to get it all done.

I preach the gospel of taking action; of getting out of your head and into your life. But doesn’t everyone deserve a break once in a while?

And then there’s this other pressure to be calm, centred and connected to everything. The desire to be in the moment and live mindfully sometimes seems at odds with our need to get stuff done.

Doing or Being — which is the path to happiness (living a rich, full and meaningful life)? Can happiness be found in silence under the shade of a tree, or in rolling up our sleeves and interacting with the world?

The answer lies in the middle ground. (Doesn’t it always?) It’s not one or the other, it’s not either/or, it’s a balance between questing and resting.

Questing (the way of the West)

Goals, milestones, mission and purpose. Western society teaches us we are defined by our accomplishments.

As a woman endowed with perfectionism, having big dreams and struggling to make them come true has devoured years of my life. It comes as no surprise that after pushing myself to be more of everything I turned my back on all the ‘doing’. I read all the books and believed that simply ‘being’ was enough.

But I was wrong.

We create energy and vitality when we devote ourselves to forging relationships with people and things outside ourselves. Throwing ourselves fully into the pursuit of more knowledge, risking everything to be with those we love or abandoning ourselves to the passion of creativity is important. When we uncover goals that are aligned with our deepest values we come alive. We can call this Questing … it’s how we leave our mark on the world.

Resting (the way of the East)

If questing reminds us we are separate beings that thrive through our relationships with other people and things, resting gives us a chance to experience our ‘oneness’ with all things. When we allow ourselves to be in the moment, to connect with the world as part of ourselves, the work stops and magic happens.

When we rest, we let go of our desire to change and welcome things as they are. We stop struggling and striving to be better because we know who we are right now is enough. It is where we hand over control to the Universe while we pause to get our breath.

Too much is always too much

When we quest for too long we burn out. Like a warrior on the battlefield our sword arm eventually tires.

When we rest for too long we grow complacent and bored. Like a cloistered nun we long to return to excitement that lies outside the walls of the convent.

I’m guessing that both questing and resting have given you some trouble. Too much, not enough, one is right and the other wrong, no time for that, no need for this …

Maybe you’re longing for a rest but you think your quest is more important so you keep pushing…

Maybe you live in the moment but you feel lost without a quest to light a fire underneath you…

Questing and resting are two sides of the coin of happiness.

You need both.

How much of your life is a quest? How much is a rest? Could you build a life where both are equally important?

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. 

Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice . She didn’t read a book on how to let go. She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go.

She let go of all the memories that held her back. She let go of all the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.

No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go. There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.

~ Reverend Safire Rose

{photo by Kim Francois}

I used to have a problem … in fact I used to have a few. I think that’s why people used to read my blog  – I was a train crash.

Food – dieting, competing, bingeing, starving, hating myself and then hating the diet industry.

Sex – a sexless marriage, a sexy affair, internet dating, leaving one man and finding another.

Death – the death of a marriage, a husband, a career and an entire identity.

My problem is … I don’t have one

These days my biggest problem is I don’t have one. I have everything I ever dreamed of. I’ve never been happier.

I’m no longer angry. I don’t buy things to make me happy so our house is truly minimalist.  I’ve stopped trying to be perfect. Giving up smoking Becoming smoke-free (my last vice) was hard but far from traumatic.

The only downside is there’s not much juicy, dirty or shocking angst to write about any more. In a weird way, feeling good enough makes me feel not good enough.

It sucks to be me — not!

I’m weary of worrying that people think I’m ‘photoshopping’ my life and leaving out the bad bits. There are no bad bits.

Maybe I’ve had the bad bits and I’ve earned a rest?

Maybe this is the next stage of evolution and this is how life is meant to be?

Maybe tattoos, Pandora on leather, sterling silver, natural grey, astanga, bon jour, and high distinctions are just as important as blogs that get half a million page views a month?

Maybe I’m here to tell you pleasure is kind of effortless.

I don’t think about the bad things in my past … I only remember the sweetest memories and my survival instinct.

I don’t worry about the future … I only know there is nothing up ahead worse than what I’ve already been through.

I don’t take any of it for granted

Gratitude – for each breath I take, for each dawn and each full moon, for each kiss and for each idea that catches me by surprise – that’s my religion and my purpose.

Magic, joy, love and peace.

I bow to the Universe in gratitude.

This is a guest post from Shar Ray from Dahn Yoga.

{photo source}

Just about everyone experiences nagging thoughts from time to time they would rather not have. These thoughts are negative and seem to appear out of nowhere. While it may feel as though these negative thoughts are unavoidable, you have much more control over the direction of your thoughts than most would believe.

One way to gain a greater amount of mental control is to practice yoga. This exercise regimen is often associated with physical fitness and flexibility, but it provides just as many mental benefits. Joining a yoga class may help you sharpen your cognitive control and limit some of the unpleasant negative thoughts you experience during the day.

How yoga delivers mental benefits

The reason yoga is so effective is that it improves mindfulness. This term describes the degree to which a person is aware of their own thought patterns. When we get busy in our jobs or taking care of family responsibilities, we often lose our mindfulness. This is when those negative and unconscious thoughts tend to pop up.

However, yoga improves your ability to keep your thoughts focused on the present and makes you more aware of where each idea in your head comes from. This makes it easier to control the direction of thoughts.

Yoga accomplishes this by asking you to practice keeping your attention focused on the moment. During a typical session, you are instructed to focus your attention on how positions feel in certain areas of the body. By keeping thoughts trained on this narrow track, you prevent your mind wandering to extraneous concerns.

In this way, yoga is similar to meditation, which also requires you focus your attention on present matters, while releasing thoughts of the past or future.

The implications of improved present-focus

When you practice mindfulness through regular yoga classes over an extended period of time, present-focused thinking becomes second nature. The more you exist with your mind focused on the here and now, the less likely your mind is to slip into negative thoughts.

This can have many benefits for everyday life. Depression, which is one of the most common mental disorders, is characterised by dwelling on negative thoughts of the past. Anxiety, another common condition, involves worry about potentially negative future occurrences.

By keeping the mind focused on the present, it is possible to relieve these types of conditions. This frees the brain up to think only about the most important things, which are the things occurring in the present.

Yoga is one of the best ways to achieve these types of mental benefits. Numerous studies have shown people who practice yoga for extended periods of time are calm, free of unnecessary concerns and more capable of directing their thoughts where they wish.

If you consider yoga to be an exercise geared toward physical health you may want to reconsider. Yoga can help you stay in the moment and start to release negative thinking.

Dahn Yoga is one of the largest yoga and tai chi companies in the world with its own unique style and brand of yoga. Dahn Yoga is rooted in the rich history of an ancient Asian mind-body practice, Sun Do and in the wisdom of the Chun Bu Kyung.

Update:

This is the power of yoga and believing in yourself.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

{photo source}

My name is Katie. I am a nicotine junkie. I’ve been clean for 64 hours.

I know you’ve heard this all before. This is my third attempt to give up smoking. Once I gave up with patches, once I gave up with Champix and this time I’ve done it cold turkey.

The main thing that has kept me smoke-free these past three days is that if I have a cigarette, I go back to square-one and have to go through this discomfort all over again. Unlike some people who can give up at any time without any effort, it’s not easy for me. So I never want to do this again.

Like an alcoholic who can’t have a drink, I can’t have nicotine in my system. If I don’t get free now, I never will. I’ll end up that wrinkled old woman with grey skin hooked up to an IV trolley, with only one lung, outside in the hospital car park lighting up a cigarette.

[As an aside -- I don't think it's acceptable to call smokers 'filthy and disgusting' because of their addiction. Believe me, almost every smoker wishes she never started. Instead of showing us clogged arteries, blood spotted tissues and oxygen masks on TV, instead of taking the moral high ground and judging us, maybe love instead of hate might help more people get free...]

The thing with cigarettes is although they seem to offer relief and soothe the craving, the cigarette is actually the cause of the craving. The anxiousness needing relief is the body’s reaction to the level of nicotine in the body subsiding. The nicotine in the cigarette makes the problem worse by introducing the addictive substance in the first place and then topping up the supply. No cigarette = no nicotine craving (once it’s completely left your system). The price of freedom is discomfort.

Cigarettes = Counting Calories

It reminds me of dieting (for normal weight women without medical or psychological conditions). When you eat too much because you’re hungry or missing your favourite food you gain a little weight and start to feel uncomfortable. To relieve the discomfort you embark on a diet, eat clean or eliminate treats. It feels like it works. You lose a bit of weight and feel better … for a while … until you find yourself eating too much at your friend’s party, on mother’s day or when you’re too tired to cook. You’re overeating again, you’re feeling uncomfortable again and you head straight for the same old dieting behaviour again and again.

Dieting causes overeating

Listen carefully. In the same way that cigarettes cause nicotine cravings, dieting causes overeating.

By restricting your food intake you trigger feelings of physical, emotional and/or psychological deprivation that simply make you want to eat more. To fix the problem of overeating you decide to diet. The medicine doesn’t cure the problem, it just makes it worse.

The price of freedom is discomfort

Here’s the hard part.  Not many people are brave enough to put up with the discomfort of never dieting again like a smoker or an alcoholic has to with their particular drug. It’s no fun wanting a cigarette or wanting a drink and not having one.

And it’s no fun feeling heavy, soft and fat when you look in the mirror. Not many women can deal with it. Most women instead get back on the wagon, pull themselves into line, start paddling upstream or spout some other annoying bullshit term that means they are regimenting their food and exercise. Dieting is a quick and easy way to feel better … sadly though, it just makes it worse.

Stop with the diet already

Stop dieting and expect to feel shitty for a while. Your brain will tell you you’re fat and lazy, your ‘fitness friends’ will tell you you’ve let yourself go and you’ll doubt for a long time that it will even work.

But sooner than you think, you won’t overeat at all — not ever. Not when you’re stressed, not at a party, not at Easter or Christmas, not even when you give up smoking. You’ll be free.

When you look in the mirror you won’t think you look fat and soft any more, you’ll see how beautiful you are with a few more curves. You might not even notice your food choices are gravitating towards being healthy without conscious thought until your clothes start getting too big. In fact, you won’t think about food much at all.

You’ll be at peace with food just like those naturally thin women who’ve never been on a diet.

You won’t think about smoking just like those people who’ve never lit up a cigarette.

They’re free … we can be too … but the cost of an exit ticket from an addiction is discomfort.

→ Are you up for it??

{photo source}

I admit that the responses to my last two posts (here and here) about having more sex in your relationship have made me think. I’ve not known how to reply to comments telling me that sexual desire isn’t the most important thing in a relationship and that sexy time is a low priority for some of you. I guess I fell into the trap of thinking everyone feels the same way I do.

I’m not a marriage counsellor or therapist so anything I write here can only be based on my experience. I had a relationship that was dysfunctional and, as a result, sexless. At the time the lack of sex was a blessing rather than a problem.

But I’ve experienced first-hand what it means to be with a man who I love emotionally, mentally and physically and there is no way I will ever settle for anything less. Maybe we’re still in the honeymoon period or maybe I don’t have the stress other people have, but after two years we are still like crazy teenagers. Of course it’s easier to keep passion alive rather than re-ignite it when it’s faded or resuscitate feelings that have long since died.

My list of actions men can take to rekindle your attraction to him are the things Duckfish does that my husband didn’t. He showed me what passion really means. As time goes on, I ask him to do some of them if he forgets, I make sure I notice and appreciate him when he does them and some things, I do for him first and watch him follow. Your man is not to blame for the absence of passion, but he is the one you can encourage to heat things up with just a few simple changes.

Remember – I believe women need to feel loved to feel sexy and men need sex to feel loved.

+++

What your momma never told you about women
(for the boys)

Small acts of kindness

It doesn’t have to be big, expensive or a theatrical production. Women appreciate small acts of kindness. Take out the rubbish, buy her a single rose (once a week for twelve weeks instead of twelve all at once), make the bed, do the laundry, buy her a card, leave a love note in her handbag, text her during the day, run her a bath and light candles.

Take control

Instead of asking all the time, take control and tell her what you’ve decided. (If she says ‘no’, don’t try to talk her into it, just ask another time.) Demonstrating masculine energy attracts your woman’s feminine energy. Take the lead. (A little bit of bad-boy goes a long way!)

“Be ready to go out to dinner in thirty minutes. I’ll see you in the car.”

“It’s time to get off the computer and come and sit with me on the couch.”

“Come here — I need to kiss you.”

“Tonight I’m going to start kissing you at your toes, slowly move up your body and then …”

Words of love

Tell her she is beautiful, capable, smart and funny. Thank her for all the things she does for you and the kids. Tell her you love something specific about her. Every single day.

Listen

When she talks to you, stop what you’re doing and look into her eyes. Practice total silence. Just let her talk without interrupting or giving advice. Give her your full attention.

Touch her

Give her a ten second kiss when you leave in the morning and when you get home at night. Not as a prelude to anything — just for the kiss itself. Be present and breathe in her energy as she breathes out.

Hold hands when you’re walking together or sitting on the couch. Play footsies under the table. Hug often. Press into her as you move past her in the kitchen.

Look your best

Shave, shower and smell nice. Wear smart clothes at home sometimes instead of those baggy track suit pants. Go to the gym, cycle, run or walk and invite her to come too (get sweaty together outside the bedroom). Cut back on the booze.

Be a good lover

Learn what turns her on. Change things up – vary positions, intensity, length, time of day and location. Talk about what she likes and would like to try. Initiate sex more often without acting crazy if she turns you down. Have non-penetrative kiss sex (snogging/pashing in bed without pressure to go all the way.) Tell her why she turns you on so much. Always go to bed naked.

Be the man she fell for

Do anything else you used to do when you started dating. Woo her and court her. Be playful and a bit goofy. Imagine you’re in a long distance relationship and today is the last day you have together …

Remember…

Be the man she needs to make her blood run hot and her heart race. It only takes a few small things.

It appears my last post stirred up some disagreement. To get to the point I was making in that post, today I’m going to step back and discuss the different types of love in a relationship. I didn’t invent this stuff, it comes from a study published in the Psychological Review by Robert J Sternberg from Yale University called A Triangular Theory of Love.

The Triangle of Love

There are three components that form a triangle.

Intimacy (the top of the triangle), passion (the left hand side of the triangle) and decision/commitment (the right hand side of the triangle. Each of these terms can be used in many different ways so let’s define them.

► Intimacy refers to feeling close, connected and bonded in a loving relationship.

► Passion refers to romance, physical attraction and sexual consummation.

► Commitment is a decision to love someone and maintain love over the long term. This is a cognitive (mental) choice we make with our intelligence rather than our feelings.

The Trinity of Bliss

There are many different combinations of these factors that only involve one or two components:

• intimacy = liking
• passion = infatuation
• commitment = empty love
• intimacy + passion = romantic love
• intimacy + commitment = companion love
• passion + commitment = fatuous love

{photo by Edward Dimsdale}

I‘ve been thinking a lot about sex lately. Seriously, since my last post I’ve been reading and researching why women end up with a lack of sexual desire in a relationship and how to fix it.

If you’re one of those women who loves their boyfriend or husband — he’s a good friend, father and provider — but that ache for him has long since gone …

Here’s the bad news …

You can’t fix it.

If you’re a women who has no sexual desire for your boyfriend or husband, there’s no magic pill, no morning affirmation, no five simple steps that will fix it. You can’t change the way you feel about someone just because you want to.

Sexual desire is an emotional urge to connect physically with someone who attracts you. If the attraction isn’t there any more, I can’t help you get it back.

It sucks. Hard.

It breaks my heart.

The only person who can make you fall in love again is your partner. Your feelings are totally dependent on what he says, does and how he looks.

So to all my women readers, I’m sorry. He has to change [or go back to the person he used to be when you first met] for it to work.

For the handful of men who read this blog, I have so much I want to say. Curiously, it comes back to your head, your heart and your health. There are so many things your mother never taught you about women … but let’s save that for another time…

For now, I’m interested in what the ladies think.

Ladies … what’s the one thing you wished your partner did differently that would make you unable to keep your hands off him? Let me know in the comments (anonymously if you wish).

Part Two – A Triangular Theory of Love