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Abundance

Acceleration, Re-entry and the Ever-Rising Bar

It was barely a month ago that I was on my way to the second annual World Domination Summit (WDS). Since then, my life has been a continuous whirlwind of a ride into one new realm after the next.

Actually this period of acceleration, exploration and rising intensity started more than a month ago. In the last six weeks I have journeyed through legions of virgin territory both literally and figuratively.

Acceleration

It began as my parents, siblings, in-laws and I successfully navigated our first adult whole-family vacation on the Outer Banks of North Carolina – virgin territory for all of us despite several who boast passports filled to overflowing. 20120618 kressf 056 300x199 Acceleration, Re entry and the Ever Rising Bar Since then I’ve windsurfed, bodysurfed, stand-up-paddle-boarded and built bonfires on the beach. I reconnected with seldom-seen cousins, nieces and nephews at all ages and life stages (even valiantly – and successfully – defeating breast cancer. Go Liz!).

One trip followed another as I jetted to Portland, Oregon for my inaugural WDS. The City of Roses in July was an unexpected gem and welcome change from my usual tropical paradise. The event itself (more on that in next week’s post – I’m still synthesizing this transformational experience) was filled to capacity with awe-inspiring unconventional people, heart-opening motivational speakers, and endless opportunities to make new friends and meet kindred spirits. I ate Voodoo doughnuts, ordered street-cart tacos (yum), drank craft beer, and savored the weekend farmers’ market. I walked the waterfront, rode the trams, and basically reveled in the amazing outdoor scene of the Pacific Northwest. (and hell yeah I’ll be back for WDS 2013).

After a one week stop home to welcome my daughter’s two teenage cousins from Mexico it was off to [click to continue…]

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Are You Open to Receiving?

5095091081 24d5e4422d Are You Open to Receiving?
photo credit: Theodore Scott

A Cautionary Tale

First, a little holiday story:

You’d have to be blind not to notice it was the largest present under the tree. He had wrapped it as best he could, but still the bright paper and gaudy bow made it stand out like a flashy hotel on the Vegas Strip compared to the other gifts.

She couldn’t help but wonder what it could be; wonder or dread, she wasn’t sure which was the more accurate feeling. He hadn’t been much of a gift giver in the past, at least not the recent past.

For a second, she fondly remembered the precious gifts of jewelry he’d given her in the early years of their marriage. Nothing extravagant (they couldn’t afford it), yet the sapphire earrings and matching bracelet had been thoughtfully selected, delicate and tasteful, wrapped in small pretty packages. She also recalled the silver and gold bracelet (a custom creation by one of her favorite artists that she wore almost daily) he’d surprised her with one Valentine’s Day after seeing her covet it in the shop window at Christmas.

It had been years since he’d given her anything like that.

This was clearly not jewelry, judging by the size of the box. She pictured small kitchen appliances that might fit the bill. Maybe it was a toaster oven, a slow-cooker, or an ice cream maker. In any case, ick, ick and ick.

She worried he spent too much money. Maybe after so much time away from gift shopping and giving he was now trying to redeem himself by over-compensating. Hmmm . . . if it was a big-ticket item, she wondered what kind of dent this might put in their vacation budget for the year . . .

Worse yet, it was probably something he thought she’d love but didn’t have the slightest need or desire for. Proof of how little he knew her now, or cared to.

She sighed, thinking this was the year their marriage might finally reach the last straw. Maybe she should just go ahead and file for divorce – get t over with and get on with her life before she was stuck for good in what (judging by the mounting evidence) seemed a passionless, lifeless relationship.

***

He watched her, eying his gift, with childlike anticipation. He couldn’t wait for her to open it, to see he was finally giving her what he’d so often held back but knew she always wanted.

A few months ago, after yet another long-haul business trip to Asia, he realized how withdrawn they’d both become from each other. His frequent travel was usually manageable, but the cumulative effect of so many years of it was now unmistakably taking its toll on not only her, but him.

He was tired of feeling disconnected from – well, practically everything except his job – coming and going and popping in and out of what was supposed to be his life so often that there was now almost zero continuity to his relationships with family and friends. He could see that every time he left, his wife and two boys seemed to get by better and better without him. The boys were big enough to really help around the house now, even mowing the lawn and washing the cars once a week.

So right after Thanksgiving, rather than scouring the Black Friday sales for some luxury handbag she might like or getting her the usual spa gift card he robotically produced every year, he began preparing his new Christmas gift for his wife. He’d made his decision. This year, he would give her his whole heart, all his love, without holding back.

He gathered his love into a bright, shiny nebula of brilliance. He added a significant and steady amount of companionship in the form of long walks on the beach, a vacation without the kids, and weekly dinner dates alone. He blended a healthy dose of passion, sex and romance into the mix, and finally completed his creation with gratitude, appreciation, and respect – all the long-held feelings of his now open heart that he’d been meaning to share but found it so difficult to express. When he was done, his creation was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen – so beautiful he almost hated to have to box and wrap it.

Just thinking about it again brought tears to his eyes now as he caught her inquisitive gaze, clearly trying to figure out what was in the box.

* * *

To Give is Divine, but It’s Not the Whole Story

What little we know of life’s gifts. How limited we are to receive them. Yet, how much we need them and can flourish from them if only we could be truly open to receiving.

In this holiday season, so focused on giving and gifting, I say it’s high time we learn to receive.

Does that strike you as funny? That we have to [click to continue…]

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The Transformative Heart-Opening Power of Gratitude

50 Bamboo Grove 1024x768 The Transformative Heart Opening Power of Gratitude

This time of year, much of the northern hemisphere grows cold. Often the change in climate makes it easy for our hearts to grow cold too. We contract our bodies to stay warm, add extra layers to insulate ourselves. If we’re not mindful, our emotional bodies will mimic our physical bodies until we’re tucked tight in our cocoons, aptly-shelled until spring’s thaw.

For those of us living in the northern hemisphere, it’s certainly fitting that we celebrate heart-opening holidays like Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa during the darkest, coldest season of our year.

Then again, some of us get a free pass. Since I live in south Florida, this time of year marks the boundary between our wet and dry seasons, a welcome transition from balmy, moist sultry summers to cool, crisp delightfully sunny winters. It’s as if the season of heat gives birth to the season of light, both of which I resonate with and cherish deeply.

It Wasn’t Always This Way

Before seven years ago I lived in Chicago (“up north” as we call it down here). Back then this time of year felt [click to continue…]

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Before You Die

6329933346 a6cc4d94d2 Before You Die photo credit: Kazz.0

Much is being made of today’s date, 11-11-11. Elevens are not new to me, since for the past four to five years I’ve been seeing them all over the place – on digital clocks, parking spaces, hotel rooms I’m randomly assigned, phone numbers – you name it. I normally wake up at least once each night and it’s almost always at 2:11 or 3:11 or 1:22 or – you get the idea. I see 11’s when I glance at the digital clock on my iPhone, in my car, or on my alarm clock far more often as a percentage of the total times I look at the clock per hour than is normal, considering there are sixty numerals that could appear.

You can read more about the 11 phenomenon here, but for now suffice it to say today is as good a day as any, and probably a better day than most, for this post.

My last post expressed an unexpected but potent ethereal longing for a return to source – the place both beyond and from which our known world emanates. Today I’m inspired to express a longing quite the opposite, and hopefully, to inspire it in you.

There are times we all want to escape the day-to-day reality of our three dimensional experience, but most of these times are not a soul’s longing for source. Most of our escape fantasies are the result of a disconnect from the here and now rather than a deep connect with spirit. Most desires to opt-out occur because at the moment we have them, we’re not really living. We’re just going through the motions, killing time before we die. Many are, in fact, already dead and just don’t know it.

So before you really do die, I want you to really live.

Ask Yourself: When Do I Feel Most Alive?

“Really living” is a relative term, of course, meaning different things to different people. For the cyber-junkie spending 12 hours a day in front of a screen, “really living” might mean having a social face-to-face interaction with a live human being that does not involve technology. To the workaholic, it could mean an afternoon spent playing with the kids. To the busy mom, continually fulfilling her family’s needs often at the expense of her own, it might mean a spa day or a night out with friends.

But what if “really living” were as easy and uncomplicated as deciding, every day, to actually DO the simple things that bring you joy – like taking a walk on the beach or spending an hour reading at your favorite coffee shop – that we all excuse away because there are constant, seemingly greater demands staring us in the face? And to not do these things as a means of procrastination (that’s easy enough) but to consciously include them in our lives as a way to remain connected to our happiness? How often do you dream about those little nurturing moments and never get around to them?

(If you’re struggling with that, my new Seven Simple Steps Into Happiness guidebook can help. It’s free. Download it at right)

In my own case, I’ve learned to stop [click to continue…]

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Does Every Silver Lining Need a Cloud?

photo credit: BruceTurner

After recently reading this post by Empowered Soul Andrea Hess, I’ve been reflecting on just how prevalent our sense of deservedness figures into getting what we want. It’s as if we feel the need to qualify our desires almost before we can admit having them, and certainly before allowing ourselves to pursue them.

So let’s talk about desire, which often gets a bad rap and is confused with greed, gluttony, or other characteristics generally lumped into a category beginning with “The 7 Deadly . .”

The Nature of Desire

Desire is natural. Many physical desires – like hunger, thirst, sleep and sex – are hard-wired into us instinctively to ensure both our individual and collective survival. Take a look at just about any other living thing, plant or animal, and the desire for food, water, rest and reproduction is pretty obvious.

Human desire, however, goes beyond survival instinct. Many of our creative or intellectually-driven desires are what take us beyond subsistence into abundance. When these desires are motivated by or result in material abundance – of money, possessions, or experiences – they are oft-criticized.

I prefer to think of desire in all its forms as positive vs. negative in the sense that it spurs the forward flow of energy. I see its primary benefit being not what it yields for the individual having the desire, but what its residual effects are along the journey toward its expression.

As Charles Fillmore states in his book Prosperity, “desire is the onward impulse of the ever evolving soul.” And as Edwene Gaines writes about that in The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity, “It stands to reason then that if we are evolving souls (and I believe that we are) then our desires – the longings of our hearts – are what propel us forward into the life experiences required for an evolution of consciousness”.

I happen to agree.

I also agree with what Andrea wrote, that our divine gifts and talents in life are what come naturally to us. Yes, that which you naturally love and excel at is the “work” you are meant to do, the way you are meant to serve others and yourself in this lifetime.

So it seems both sad and paradoxical to me that so often we [click to continue…]

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The Secret to Getting Anywhere: Feel Your Way

I’m on a quick business trip to New York for the umpteenth time over the past twenty years to teach a marketing seminar I’ve been leading for the past ten. Truth be told, I’m in New York an average of three visits a year. That probably makes for close to sixty or seventy trips in my lifetime. After so long these jaunts have become pretty routine and with so many under my belt, they all blur together. When held in New York, my seminar is always booked at the same location in Midtown Manhattan, so I end up spending a lot of time there specifically, without venturing uptown or downtown much or elsewhere in New York.

Still, with that many visits to the same place I’ve had ample opportunity to explore the city in bits and pieces, often working in a Broadway show, trip to a SOHO restaurant or Upper East Side boutique, a visit to a museum or, after September 11, 2001, even a ride down to where the World Trade Center had once stood majestically anchoring the south end of the island.

When I first started traveling for business two decades ago, every destination was a new realm to be explored. That’s the kind of traveler I am – leave no stone unturned, get off the beaten path, find the hidden gems and soak up every moment of experience through total immersion. Given the choice between lounging, resting and eating or squeezing-in one more new sight or experience, I opt for the squeeze-in every time. Each moment of a journey to a new or favorite destination is a treasured one since, as a traveler, I’m always journeying with the knowledge and awareness that “this time could be the last time” I’m at a particular destination, so I’d better make it count.

But in the past year or two I’ve [click to continue…]

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