Life Dreaming

I had plans for today – big plans.

There was a pile of Life Dreaming Expedition design and thinking work on the list.

A great big lovely list that just makes life look like there’s a vestige of control.

I had a plan to site quietly – looking at a candle flame and focusing on my breathing as monks chanted [obviously they're not in the cottage - although in my life anything's possible].

I sat looking at the candle as monks chanted – peace descended – I was one with whatever the universe is …. for exactly 3 minutes!

Coco dog decided I’d been quiet and still for far too long and came over to check I wasn’t dead … then she tried to climb on my lap to make extra sure.

Monks kept chanting … I blew out the candle.

I was drawn to one of my favourite places – the kitchen – and that’s where I got out of my head and found a modicum of peace.

There’s a herb and spice mix that I make from scratch because I love the way it connects me to my senses – to the scent of crushed spices – the look of all the colours – the smells and eventually – the tastes.

When I make the Berbere mix [it's an Ethiopian recipe] I concentrate on just the moment, on just the spice I am crushing and mixing.

And the monks sang on.

As you know I’m a time billionaire and cash challenged so all the food gets eaten.

I rummaged around the fridge and the vegetable bin and created a yummy mince and vege mix that started with a tablespoon of the berbere mix in oil and went from there. I even used the broccoli stalks in the mix and a few vege that were about to say goodbye – spinach, leeks and sweet peppers.

Very tasty.

In all this sensate bliss I went and checked my emails – bad idea. A 1 to 1 design client had messed something up and I will help to fix it. No big deal but I got really irritated because my peace had been disturbed.

Yup – I get the irony.

Decided it’s best just to take a breath and get on with it. I’ll deal with the clients problem and all will be well but I’m leaving the emails alone until later this afternoon when I decide to get back into my head.

I adore my brain and while it is one of my great strengths it is also my greatest weakness. It can crowd out my body, heart and intuition when they want to speak.

I have to consciously create time and space for the other parts of me to not only be heard but also to just exist.

I’m off now to wander the acre of garden that surrounds the cottage I have just moved to in Wicklow. It’s a wonderful space and I get to housesit here for 6 months – a great boon for a cash challenged woman. It’s also a fantastic space for a time billionaire as there are no shops or pubs or anything close by – so I can concentrate time, energy and enthusiasm on getting the Life Dreaming Expedition launched.

Speaking of the LD Expedition – I had a mug made for me and one for brother Marc. I like to have symbols of my dreams around me as I work to make them a reality and what better thing than a mug.

If you’d like the Berber mix recipe just click here.

How do you get out of your head and connect with the other parts of yourself?

Love to hear from you and if you Like this then click the button or Share it on Facebook or Tweet away.

In my last post I showed you the visual montage I created of my Life Dreaming for 2011.

I’ve had some lovely feedback from people and I love looking at it every time I open my computer and see it on the desktop.

It makes my LD’s visible.

Now my fabulous and truly wonderful readers … if that’s all I do with the montage then I’m wasting my time.

Yes … it helps me to see what I want to do and be.

Yes … it acts as an energiser for my ‘E’ factors.

Nope … by itself it sure ain’t going to make the dreams happen.

Now what?

Let me take one of the images as a real example of what I’ve been trying to do.

Restart Tai Chi

About 20 years ago I learnt tai chi 1 to 1 on a beach once a week for about 6 weeks.

Loved it.

On January 3 this year as part of an LD activity I listed a few things I wanted to reclaim from my younger years – tai chi was one of them.

So far so good.

I didn’t expect a tai chi instructor to turn up at my door [don't get me started on Luck] … I need to make it happen.

A few constraints  seriously hampered my search for a class:

• It needs to be in Dublin City centre so I can access it using public transport
• It needs to happen during the day [preferably morning] as I don’t want to travel after dark

I did a good old Google search and also left a note on my Facebook page asking people to recommend Tai Chi classes.

Guess what?

Most of them are at night and out in the suburbs.

Time to give up?

Well folks, that depends on how much this LD means to me … and it appears  it means a lot. Nothing like a teeny bit of adversity to test whether something is really important in my life.

I did another search tonight and found a woman who is running a 6 week course in Dublin city centre at 10am … perfect says you … not totally says I.

It’s on Sunday’s and starts this week.

My inner self talk starts going like this ….

” Lizzy Lizzy … Sunday is your lolling day  … Sunday is too hard … it’s too soon … where will I get the 80 euro … what will I wear … wait until there’s a course starting later … blah blah blah blah”

I decided it was time to GOYA [get off your arse] and make a commitment to action …to  fulfil the promise I made to myself to connect with activities that I loved doing years ago.

I emailed the contact person and booked myself in … and for the next 6 weeks I’ll be getting up at around 8am on Sundays and reconnecting with taichi … reconnecting to the joy I used to feel when I did the different taichi movements and felt time flow in different ways … felt my spirit and body and mind and heart all just relax and ease into a kind of bliss.

It’ll be worth getting up early to feel that good … it’ll be worth the money … it’ll be worth the effort … it’ll be worth the commitment.

Dear reader … living the life you want to live means making yourself act … taking the necessary steps [and stumbles] to make the dream a reality.

I took a reasonably easy LD and I’ve made it a reality … and that gives me the resolve and confidence to tackle the biggies … moving to Bali and launching the Life Dreaming Expedition.

I feel really happy  because I’m keeping promises I made to myself … I’m not just talking … I’m doing.

Life Dreaming Activity

Is there a reasonably simple LD that you have made and can make a reality before the end of January? What’s the next step … information … research … action?

Resolve and commit to taking the next step.

If you found this useful then Share away with your friends by pressing the Like button. I’d also love to hear what your next step might be … leave a comment.

Liz is moving house at the moment, so I thought I’d jot down a quick thought while she was away.

How’s life for you? I bet you’re busy.

No… really. If life was a roulette wheel, I suspect it’d have 36 slots marked “busy” and one marked “totally nothing going on over here”. I think putting my money on you being busy is a fairly safe bet.

I was thinking about my own back-log over the weekend, and the fact that I haven’t felt ahead of the game for perhaps the past five years. There’s just always so much to do. My email currently shows 78 unread messages. The list of to-do projects that runs along the side of my calendar is extensive, and some of them are still there, unstarted, since this time last year. I have hundreds of hours of music in my iTunes that I haven’t listened to, and a backlog of movies and television in a roll of disks on my desk that would take me months to watch if I did nothing else. I rip things out of the newspaper that I intend to use, and now I have shopping bags full of newspaper clippings and no idea what’s in them.

Information, and I think life itself, is just flowing so incredibly fast, that I think we’ve all been caught on the hop in developing our coping mechanisms.

I used one of my favorites on Saturday. I took a nap, and then I finished a good book I’ve been reading.

You probably don’t think that’s helpful, but there’s science behind it. At least, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Scientists have been exploring The Neuroscience of Time, and they’ve found that when you’re hyped up time really does speed up for you and when you’re relaxed time really does slow down:

“Your internal clock is just like that digital watch in some ways. It measures time in what scientists call pulses. Those pulses are accumulated, then stored in your memory as a time interval. Now, here’s where things get weird. Your biological clock can be sped up or slowed down anything from drugs to the way you pay attention. If it takes you 60 seconds to cross the street, your internal clock might register that as 50 pulses if you’re feeling sleepy. But it might last 100 pulses if you’ve just drunk an espresso. That’s because stimulants literally speed up the clock in your brain (more on that later). When your brain stores those two memories of the objective minute it took to cross the street, it winds up with memories of two different time intervals.”

I know you’re all busy, and the oncoming festive season probably isn’t helping. But don’t forget to take some time out to relax and reset the clock, OK? Science says it’s good for you.

=)  Marc

ps… I’m curious. How do you cope with all this busy-ness? Have you got a trick you use to bring the pulse-rate down?