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I adore the first sensory sensations of spring, don’t you?
Texas affords me the chance to see and feel and hear Mother Natures’s awakening much sooner than did all those years in Missouri. Around here, the Bradford Pear and Redbud trees have blossomed, tulips are in full bloom and I saw my first patch of bluebonnets the other day.
More than the sights of spring, I am addicted to the renewal of spring, to the symbolic meanings of hope, re-birth and do-overs.
During this time of year, all things are once again possible because all things are brand new again.
Another cycle of life is spinning. Out of the drab season of winter when everything from plants and animals to thoughts and ideas lay dormant, comes the regeneration of all things beautiful.
Soon–right around Easter–my own beautiful dream will spring forth, representing decades of hopeful anticipation.
I knew that I would one day be a professional writer; in fact, I achieved that status years ago with my first published articles in trade publications. But with the relaunch of B Here Today, I feel like I am that person I’ve waited to become.
Why did I wait? I firmly believe that our choices create our circumstances which become the definition we wrap around our lives.
I chose circumstances that created safety for myself for many, many years. I believed I was happy, but the problem with safety is that it confines. My dreams never grew; they remained buried in winter and eventually became the winter of my discontent.
Then, quite suddenly, I changed my mind. Those circumstances were no longer acceptable to me. I knew I needed a new life-defining wrap, something that still provided a bit of safety but also held me loosely enough so that the growth of my dreams could sprout through.
Now, I am definitely bursting out!
I want you to have a similar spring-like experience!
So my question to you is three-fold:
1) Are you making good choices for yourself today? Is today–Thursday, March 8, 2012–filled with heart-centered decisions that you, and no one else, has made for yourself? If not, then it’s time to take charge of your day because this day is the only day that is guaranteed.
2) Are you satisfied with your circumstances or are you wildly excited about them? Please, please, please don’t ever settle for anything less than the very best for the circumstances of your life. Enough said.
3) Is the wrap around you–the definition of your life–too tight, too loose or just right? I know, it sounds like The Three Bears story, but seriously, sometimes we need to check our life garments to see whether they need resizing. If you need a bigger size, go shopping for something that is beautifully just right!
And one more question: In this 2012 spring season, are you ready to burst out in bloom? If not, get ready, my friends! There is no time like the present!
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I am constantly gifted with choices.
I’m not talking about external choices like deciding between two movies or between different restaurants or even what clothes to wear today.
I’m referring to my conscious choices as they relate to my thoughts.
How often do I allow my mind to tumble and fumble along the path of today? How often are my thoughts like a person scared to get on the long and curvy slide at the water park? Like the ride, when I’ve made a choice to be afraid of anything, I am tense and my body slams against each twist and turn of the journey.
However, when I choose to relax and enjoy the thrill of the ride, my body no longer resists the water’s flow and I glide through all the curves.
Choosing my thoughts is a similar process.
When I become aware of how my thoughts create a smooth flow of circumstances or a wild, frantic ride, I am better equipped to change them.
Case in point: Conversations that involve politics or the federal government. Yesterday, I realized that there are times when my sweetie and I should steer clear of these topics. Our basic viewpoints are too different and more often than not, one of us comes away from the conversation with our hackles raised.
So, I’m making a conscious choice to limit these topics of conversation. They aren’t productive, they usually are not positive and they invoke a winner/loser outcome. Plus, I don’t know enough to soundly present my case so I grow frustrated and irritated with myself.
So I choose to step away from those conversations, or at least not initiate them.
They nearly never garner peace, love or joy which are my three conscious attributes for living these days.
When I have peace, love and joy in my life, politics and the federal government lose their appeal.
I can choose to listen to the subjects without responding.
I can choose to not get whipped into a frenzy around divisive issues.
They just don’t matter to me. Peace, love and joy matter.
Today, I choose the latter matter.
For this Mindful Monday, please enjoy these five quotes about choosing your thoughts.
B Well & Choose Your Thoughts Well!
Beth
By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your Light. You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life. ~ Gary Zukav
Thoughts are boomerangs, returning with precision to their source. Choose wisely which ones you throw. ~ Author Unknown
Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive, because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny. ~ Gandhi
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I can hardly contain my excitement because B Here Today is fixin’ (as we say in Texas) to bust out in a big and beautiful way.
Watch out Universe!
BHT began nearly two years ago with the idea of helping folks create balance between their inner and outer worlds. Our initial messages were directed toward the recovery community before we quickly learned what those of us in recovery know: our principles are universal.
Our humble beginning now goes much deeper that finding balance. What do you do with balance once you find it?
Now we’re going to take all the stuff of the inner and outer worlds–all the painful, gloppy stuff as well as the joyous, beautiful stuff–and learn to B with it.
We’ll learn to breathe and feel compassion for the stuff that seizes us when we least expect it.
As we sit with whatever the stuff is, more and more practicing being in the moment, we grow in our ability to accept the pain (or whatever the seizing positive or negative emotion) and eventually learn to see it as our guide.
Please, take what you need and leave the rest. I’ll continue to share my experience, strength and hope and invite you to sit in these B Here moments and watch our community grow.
Interact. Comment. Offer your brand of support. Let me know if you’d like to guest-post.
It is my prayer that our community will grow infinitely as we B Here in Compassion, B Here in Courage, Be Here in Audacity, In Worthiness, In Dignity, and of course, In Love.
Welcome to the space we’re holding for the re-launch of B Here Today. In many ways, this feels like the most important work we’ll ever do as we learn how to B Together.
Our universe is having a tough time right now. Far too many people live their lives overloaded with misery and pain. Rather than feel pity for them, rather than feel better than them for growing past our own pain (and do we ever, really?), let’s work together to see us all as one. Hold each other’s traumas and breathe out peace for ourselves and others.
The 12 Steps would ask, Are these extravagent promises?
We definitely think not!
Peace is our birthright!
I once wrote that my purpose is to be an open channel for peace, love and joy.
Keep your eyes peeled because those channels are expanding . . .
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I’m reading Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times.
Sometimes things do fall apart. Best-laid plans and all that stuff.
It’s easy to mouth the words, “everything happens for a reason,” but much harder to accept the truth behind the words.
The truth is that sometimes things must fall apart in order for the pieces to reconnect. Something needs to break down because it’s not working right.
Is the answer to simply throw the thing away? I don’t believe so. Might we try first to investigate why it broke down?
Or maybe the why isn’t important. Maybe we just accept that it isn’t working the way it is and then choose to see if it will work differently.
When something falls apart for me, it generally involves a relationship of some kind. The “thing” is a product of a relationship with myself, with a situation (like at work) or with another person.
Sometimes the thing that is broken can’t be fixed. Try as we might, the trying turns into a form of insanity as we continue to do the same things over and over expecting different results.
I feel crazy, truly crazy sometimes and all I want is to claim peace in my life. I’m learning that affirming peace is code for asking for love because love is the return to sanity.
Here’s a question I’m asking myself today: In the midst of things falling apart, can I respond with love? Can I be love in every situation and circumstance?
More questions: What does love look like in my life? Self-love and love of others? Love of God?
When things fall apart, I want to run and hide. I want to do anything except be with the pain as it crumbles.
Are you like me? Do you tend to stay stuck in the pain or have you figured out how to traverse its rocky rapids?
Just for today, I’ve decided that I no longer want to stay stuck so I’m jumping into the pain. I’m going to see what lessons are lurking in the rapids’ depths.
It will be necessary to slow down–to be mindful–so as not to miss the lessons.
Of utmost importance: the lessons are for me and not anyone else. Where am I erring? This exercise isn’t about beating up on myself but about learning how I contribute to things falling apart.
Even with a cracked heart, love lets me believe that I can do better. I can be better. I am better because I am love.
You are your own greatest love. I pray you believe those words today. If you don’t believe me, focus on these lines from Pema’s book:
Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize.
We can meet our match with a poodle or with a raging guard dog, but the interesting question is–what happens next?
We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.
It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.
B Love,
Beth
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I stumbled across a writing entry from my first days sober and realized that one can substitute any other unmanageable situation for the words “sober” and “sobriety.”
For this Thursday Thread, I share these words in the spirit of hope and as a boost for those who may struggle with “keeping on keeping on.”
A sudden removal of alcohol (insert any other destructive behavior) from an alcoholic’s life is traumatic. It alters one’s mind chemically and has the added pain of mental and physical obsession, not to mention how it causes one to behave like either a raging bear or a sniveling four-year-old.
My mistake in early sobriety was in thinking I could simply stop drinking. Remove alcohol and all my troubles would vanish as well. My life would emerge from behind a magician’s cape in a whoosh of presto, chango, all is perfect.
The hard facts would slowly emerge in my foggy mind that alcohol was not my problem. I was my problem.
Fifteen years of continual drinking, of drowning my emotions, of hiding from uncomfortable or confrontational situations, did not prepare me for life without alcohol. I had no clue how to deal with anything. Oh, I was functional. I was practically always functional; in fact, that was a huge stumbling block for me in admitting I had the disease of alcoholism. I nearly always went to work after a big night of drinking; albeit a little tardy and extremely hungover.
My work environment enabled my drinking. It was not uncommon to venture out to lunch and return after three or four cocktails with my bosses. I was in my early twenties with a lunchtime bartender who brought me “the usual” when I walked in the door!
By the time I quit drinking, some eight years after those thrilling three-hour lunches, I was losing track of a lot of time. Time began to rearrange itself without my permission. My car began to move itself with increasing frequency. There was often no explanation for how I reached my destination.
In May of 1991, during one of my final drunks, I drove home from Topeka, Kan., a distance of about 75 miles, in a blackout. I have no memory of the trip.
It was Mother’s Day and I was at a work function. By God’s grace, I lived to see my mother.
One of the many ironies I encountered in those early days and months sober was the life I thought I was handling so well covered nothing but an insecure and emotional mess of a person. Take the alcohol away and I was a sober, insecure and emotional mess of a person. Worse, I was shaky, defenseless and angry that others could do what I apparently could not.
I instinctively knew I was drowning, although I wasn’t aware that the sea of my despair was filled with self-loathing, self-pity and self-disregard.
Just as instinctively, I knew that I needed help. With a few phone calls, I found a voice who became a friend and sponsor and said, “I’ve been there and you’re going to be alright.”
We began a relationship of her offering suggestions and me taking them. Over the years, I’ve asked myself a million times how it was I came to follow the advice of a total stranger, then joined a group of people who were just like her.
They were deadly serious about this condition I learned was a disease, yet they were also jovial and funloving. Much, much later, I learned the answer to my question of why I fit in.
My answer had nothing to do with the similiaries of our financial conditions, our stature in life or any of our preferences.
The answer was the one thing that gave me hope that I could stay sober and it is the answer that has worked for 7,581 sober days.
It was Shirley’s heart speaking to mine. Then it was Jerry and Karen and Gabbie and Pat and Suzanne. They were the first people in my home group who on the outside were nothing like me. But on the inside–where we draw our balance and where we B–the language of our hearts enunciated perfectly that we were all going to be okay.
Hearts of hope. I pray you are connected with similar hearts that bring you hope that if your days are dark, they can be brighter again. Hold on and you’ll find freedom from your particular bondage.
Namaste, my friends. Click to continue reading >>
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In July of 2009, I had an epiphany. For about a month prior, I was emotionally distraught, increasingly depressed and having serious thoughts of drinking again (after 18 years of sobriety).
I struggled to wrap my arms around what could possibly be wrong with me. I had all the trappings of a good life, one others would love to emulate--great job, dream house, traveling for a living, a life mate . . . the list goes on. 
