A guest post from my friend and colleague Vicky White of The Spacious Life. 

“Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.” – Peace Pilgrim

Are your journals one of those things that have outlived their usefulness?

In a recent decluttering program the subject of journals came up.

For some, their journals were full of angst and depressing to read.

For some, they were morning pages, three pages each day of stream of consciousness writing – a blurt at the start of the day.

For others, journals were being saved for the day they started writing their memoirs.

For many, they held important shifts and breakthroughs along life’s rocky path.

Some had years of journals boxed up at the back of a closet. (Closets in Feng Shui represent secrets!)

Some women had held ritual journal burning ceremonies. Others were horrified by that idea.

There are no right or wrongs.

Are your journals clutter?

Do you love them? Do you use them? Do they raise your energy?

Whether you hold onto your journals or let them go, journaling is an important part of the clutter clearing process because whatever you’re holding onto has emotions keeping you tied to it. And tied to the past.

Journaling is a powerful tool to explore emotional ties: pain, fear, regret, sadness, and more.

Memories are often created when you’re feeling pain or fear or lack of some kind.

Why not choose to shine a light on these memories and examine what your truth really is, now you have some distance from the event?

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A guest post from my friend and colleague Vicky White of The Spacious Life. 

I used to believe I’d live near water when I was rich and famous. But four years ago I decided to find out what might be possible.

Almost immediately I started hearing about float homes, or houseboats. I read a magazine with an article about houseboats, I was looking online for B&Bs in Vancouver to hold a retreat and came across a B&B houseboat. Then a friend told me about a friend of hers who was selling one. All within one week. Houseboats were not something I had ever considered.

Before I knew it, I had sold my condo, bought a houseboat and I was living not near the water, but ON the water.

 I was living the life of the rich and famous! Or that’s how it felt.

Sometime after that, I was gazing at the vision board I had made several months before I even thought about moving, and almost fell off my chair. There in the bottom left corner was a picture of a houseboat with a dinghy tied up outside, with the word ‘relaxation’ underneath it.

Vision boards are so powerful because we intentionally or intuitively chose images that resonate with us. The energy of the image is in alignment with an energy we desire. The energy of these images speak to us.

What if I told you your home is a living vision board?

And even more powerful than the vision board you create on a piece of card.

Your life mirrors the energy in your home, and your home mirrors your life. Everything you have around you is both creating your life, and holding your energy in place.

Which means you have a powerful tool for transformation in your home.

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Sandra Pawula shares a timely reminder and a simple way to add meditation to a busy life. 

 We know that meditation is good for us.

• On a physical level, meditation can reduce your blood pressure, boost your immune system, diminish chronic pain, and that’s just for starts.
• Emotionally, meditation brings greater calm, a feeling of spaciousness and a sense of humor about the vagaries of life.
• Spiritually, meditation is the path to become truly human: loving, patient, understanding, forgiving, clear yet relaxed and playful.

Yet, we resist. We moan and groan, “There’s not enough time.”

We keep putting meditation off until tomorrow, next week, next month. Until illness or death arrives and we’re twisted by fear, wracked with regret.

How can we die peacefully if we haven’t tasted peace of mind in life?

There’s one simple and immediate solution to the problem of no time: Meditate Right Now.

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A guest post from Otiti Jasmine, radiant soul and visionary. Delighted to have her here sharing her joy and wisdom. 

When Sandi asked me if I wanted to write a guest post about my first eBook Shine at Your Fingertips, I jumped on it with an exuberant “YES!”

Truth be told I intended to ask her if I could but was still working up the nerve (yes, I was chicken and she called me on it.)

Writing your first eBook is like writing your first love letter. Nobody knows what it’ll look like, how it’ll feel, what it’ll say. It’s sharing a message that’s been plucking at your heart until you finally put pen to paper just to get it out there.

For me, I wanted to go beyond a single blog post. I wanted to explore my soul and see what she had to offer. I ached to feel my message blossom from a few hundred words to a few thousand.

I discovered the thrill and wonder of creation, the freedom to let the words flow through me and not have to force each one from empty air. I revelled in the exhilaration of creating something real beyond the confines of my blog and stretching my skill as a visionary writer.

Sometimes I’d scribble furiously as one or more chapters filled the pages and formed right before my very eyes. Other times I’d write a sentence or two every other day and stare balefully at the stubbornly empty page. And of course, I always fought the ever-present fear that it simply wasn’t good enough and no one would read it and why should anyone care about it?

Well, that got me thinking.

What if no one did care? What if they felt they’d read it all before and I wasn’t bringing anything new to the table? What if *gasp* it sucked? I sucked?

So what?

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Tim Brownson is a fellow coach whose wise crackin’ sense of humour often has me snorting out loud; more importantly, he’s passionate about getting people unstuck. He’s sharing his wit and wisdom in today’s guest post which pretty much debunks the myth of willpower.

Imagine this scene. You want to get fit and you have joined your local gym with a view to setting up a fitness regime toot suite.

You have all the best intentions and just know that this time you really will follow through with the promises you have made to yourself!

Just to make especially sure though, you have even entered all your intended gym visits for the following month into your planner so as to remove your usual excuse of not having time.

And there’s no messing around because the first time you have scheduled is tomorrow immediately after work.

The only problem is you have no way of knowing how you will feel tomorrow after a long days work. You may feel great and pumped at the thought of pumping iron. Or indeed you may not. 

Then tomorrow comes and it’s an insanely hectic day with work. You have no time to even take lunch and your expected leaving time of 4:00pm becomes 5:30pm.

Not that that is a problem or reason to not go because you know your partner will happily start dinner in your absence. You have nothing to rush home for that can’t wait until you have had some much deserved ‘you time’.

What do you do?

If you’re like most people, here is the answer to that question.

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A guest post from Carol Hess, whose special genius has made a difference for me, both personally and professionally. 

Africa Cook Fires & Maine Cottages

Africa cast her spell on me twenty years before I saw her, heard her, smelled her, tasted her. Safe in my little girl bedroom with its four-poster bed and frilly white curtains, I dreamt about the smoky charcoal fires, the distant muffled drums, and the soft sibilant whispers of the African night.

When I met the real Africa for the first time, it was night, and the plane was quiet. I carefully pushed the window shade up so I wouldn’t disturb the sleeping passenger next to me. I looked down and saw far below the flickering of the village cook fires. I started to cry.

That’s the power of vision.

It can show you the way home.

Twenty years after my flight over Africa, I was driving down a country road and looked to my left. There was something about the curve of the driveway around the big northern pine and the woods beyond the far side of the house that my heart recognized. This was the place.

“I’ll take it,” I told the man twenty-four hours later.

“Carol,” my mother asked, “Don’t you even want to see the rest of the house?”

“No, Mom, I’ve seen enough. This is the place.”

My mother looked at the man and shrugged her shoulders. Bill smiled nervously and said, “Well, if you’re sure, then welcome to your new home.”

I told everyone it was my house. When my friends argued that I was just a renter and the house didn’t really belong to me, I replied, “That’s just a technicality. It’s my house.”

My friends didn’t know I had been seeing the house in my mind’s eye and writing about it for the past seven years. (more…)

In April 2011 I shared a force of nature known as Lola. That one post became a series where women shared their own experiences of Lola throughout the month. Included in that series was a guest post from Alycia Neighbours, an extraordinary woman who rediscovered her Lola in time to face the unexpected events to come. This week she launched Deciding to Dance, her story of the emptiness loss can bring but also the rise of unquestionable strength. 

In the beginning there were two doves.

They took up residence in a tree right outside my kitchen window in the house that I shared with Dan. We joked in the beginning about those two doves symbolizing our marriage. They were always together.

As our marriage spiraled out of control driven by his mental illness, we quit talking about the doves. They were always together right outside my window though and became a visual reminder of what I was losing.

Even after years and years of domestic violence, those two doves remained. Together.

We moved several times and I always hoped we would finally find a “happy home.” It never was, and even after our daughters were born, it was lost forever. Yet in each home, there was always a pair of doves residing nearby.

I began to hate doves.

Then one day I met Lola and I forgot all about what the pair of doves symbolized as I walked out. I found my moment of strength and decided to rebuild my nest for my children.

Months of horrific moments passed as I awaited the divorce and then his suicide.

Lost, I felt like I was spiraling into the worst nightmare.

Every time I walked past a mirror, I looked.

I held the gaze of a broken with guilt woman looking back and challenged her to “make it count.”

I had been given the rare opportunity through a series of painful events to choose to live again and so I challenged myself to make it count.

So everyday, I issued the challenge.

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Guest post from the fabulous Jenny Bones! 

Sooo. . .you want to build a world-changing business?

That’s quite a feat but you totally got this. Trust me. As long as that world-changing thing happens one perfect person at a time.

Who Are Our Perfect People?

Simply put, our perfect people are those who have us running to the computer every morning, jumping out of our skin just to get started working with them.

They are people who have similar values, cohesive beliefs and a sense of humor that has you laughing your ass off every time you speak with them. (Sandi, you know who you are.)

Your Perfect People are the ones who will keep you nourished, physically, emotionally and spiritually, while you grow your business.

The Old Ways

It never ceases to amaze me how often I come across someone who’s studied marketing for years and yet fails to see how the old paradigms simply don’t fit in today’s online marketplace.

Ya see, back in the old days (you know, before the turn of this century), there existed tried-and-true methods of advertising and marketing.

I often use the analogy of opening a shop that sells purple panties and, well, if it ain’t broke why fix it? So let’s talk panties:

Let’s pretend it’s 10 years ago and you want to open a purple panties shop. You hire a marketing consultant who comes in and selects the demographics with which you’ll define your target market.

Things like age, gender, geographical location are all used to compile a mailing list for you to direct-mail market your new business. This is done so you don’t waste your marketing budget sending advertisements to fraternity houses and convents.

Questions like, “Are these people Dr. Who fans?” or “How do they feel about genetically modified food?” would never, ever come up.

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I started reading and following today’s contributor a short couple of months ago. The guy caught my attention and I have to admit I’ve been kind of mesmerized ever since (is that a ninja trick?) I’m delighted to have the 30 Year Old Ninja here sharing his passion, and when you read his thoughts on someday, you’ll understand why he’s here! 

If I Can Quit My Job To Become A Ninja, Why Can’t You Change Your Life?  

“I hate this job”

“How did I get here?”

“What did I do wrong?”

“I just want to be happy”

These are the thoughts that overburdened my mind not too long ago.

I was unhappy, burnt out, filled with anxiety, depressed. . .all the labels you don’t want to be.

Of course, the outside world didn’t know this. They thought I was ambitious, moving up the ladder, successful, “making things happen”.

They were wrong.

Isn’t there more to life than this?

Over the course of 3 years I developed and followed through on a plan that many people said “is not possible”.

The Joke

It started as a joke “If you are no longer going to be a teacher, what do you want to do?” I smiled at my friends question.

“I want to be a ninja!”

We both laughed and the conversation moved forward.

But that darn voice wouldn’t stop. The more I said it, the more I started to believe it.

“I want to be a ninja.”

At some point, I realized. . .it wasn’t a joke.

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Charlotte Rains-Dixon is in the house to share her creative wisdom! 

Maybe this looks like you, most days: 

–You schedule a time for your creativity and follow through with it.

–You get right to the page (or canvas), without pausing to surf the Internet or check email.

–You write in flow, not second-guessing yourself, not stopping to correct, just gloriously writing.

Or does this look more like you? 

–You write a time for your creativity session on the calendar, but somehow when the time comes mopping the kitchen floor becomes urgent.

–You force yourself to the page, but when you get there you do anything but write—you check email, Facebook, decide to research the origin of cement.

–Finally, with a few minutes left, you start writing. But that first sentence doesn’t look so good. So you go back and tinker with it.  By the time your writing session is over, you’ve gotten no words on the page at all.

The first examples illustrate authentic creativity, which I believe is an expression of self-love.

The second examples illustrate procrastination, which shows us what a lack of self-love looks like.

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