MONDAY MOTIVATION MINUTE – Navigating the perils of the black hole of grief.
The grief of losing someone can be like a black hole. You may find yourself circling it, coping with it during the waking hours. But as day fades into night, you will find yourself being pulled closer and closer to confronting the grief just as light is drawn to a black hole. Sometimes, the loss and grief it left are too great and you cannot keep it at bay; that is OK. Grieving is a process that takes time to work through and you cannot expect, nor do you want to, forgo that grief because that will minimize who that person was to you. But, as time helps you work through the process, you will find yourself coming out the other side and just as Sci-Fi has taught us, there is a whole new world on the other side of a black hole. What this new world is like without…
MONDAY MOTIVATION MINUTE – The equanimity of accepting the good and bad of life
Monday Motivational Minute is about understanding and accepting life and the peace that comes with that acceptance.
HAPPY FRIDAY – Time wasted doing what you truly love is not wasted time
Time…the most precious resource we have. That’s not a novel concept and we’ve all heard it uttered countless times. Most of us understand the meaning behind the phrase, but some still get caught up in the life-long habit of wasting it. Myself included! How do we break that habit and truly take the necessary steps to enjoy as many minutes of our life that we can? It’s actually easier than most think and you can start by claiming time one minute at a time. I have been on this personal transformation since I left a super stressful job about 2 years ago. This is a transformation that will continue as different factors contribute to my time requirements. But, as I transform, I am mindful of the sacrifice each change requires. This will forever be a give and take since we cannot obviously reclaim lost time nor create “new” time. So…
MONDAY MOTIVATION MINUTE – Be extremely careful of what you practice because you will undoubtedly become good at it!
When you want to get better at something, you practice. While it can be a hopeless endeavor to try for perfection, you can always strive to get better. There is a muscle memory that is developed through repetition. And repetition comes from practicing. I can remember standing in the gym shooting 100 free throws before practice and 100 free throws after practice. I wanted to be able to hit free throws when I’m cold right off the bench and when I was dead tired at the end of overtime. So I practiced. I wanted to hike the incredible peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and not be completely exhausted when I reached the summit, so I used to load up my backpack with weights and walk up and down my stairs to get ready for a backpacking trip. My muscles got stronger and my coordination better through repetition. The same…
MONDAY MOTIVATION MINUTE – All you have to do is just listen
It’s 2 am and I find myself staring across the room at the glowing blue numbers on the clock. I told myself I would sleep through the night but my circadian rhythms have me stirring while the rest of the house is snoozing. These are the times when my mind decides it can solve ALL my problems…or at least it can try! I know the routine so I climb out of bed and stumble my way out of the room. I don’t want to wake my wife who is sleeping peacefully next to the warm pillow I just left, so I am careful to step where I know I can avoid the creaks of an old house. As counterintuitive as it sounds, I make my ritualistic cup of coffee and settle in for my “creative time”. I take advantage of the brew time and sit down for a short meditation…
MONDAY MOTIVATION MINUTE – Nature is not a place to visit…It’s home!
The Pulitzer Prize winner and environmental activist, Gary Snyder said it perfectly. “Nature is not a place to visit. It’s home.” Put that way, it becomes easy to understand the reasons to need to tend to Nature. I have often talked about the importance of getting out to Nature and embracing the healing power from being there. And I’ve definitely talked of the importance of protecting Nature. Now is always the best time to start and to continue to care. It’s up to us to care enough about our home to do what we can when we can for as long as we can to make difference. Making a difference can be as easy as purchasing something from our store (Posied Wanderer). A portion of our sales goes to various nature-based charities. 5% of all sales from June will go towards The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy has been…
MONDAY MOTIVATION MINUTE: The Precipice of Change…are you willing?
Sometimes you have this compelling feeling something isn’t quite right but the reason why you have this feeling can often be hard to see or know. You can be walking into a meeting at work and have this impending doom feeling or find yourself having an uneasy feeling about going on another date with the same person you saw last week. Or even something as simple as that feeling of just waking up on the wrong side of the bed. When you have those feelings in these instances and don’t know why, something in your life can be out of balance. And when things are out of balance, they will eventually get to a tipping point and fall. These “not quite right” feelings are your mind’s way of saying something needs to change before things come tumbling down. You are on the precipice of change and most of the time,…
Monday Motivation Minute – There is immense beauty in the process so take the time to enjoy it
“Hurry…we’ve got 3 hours to get to the campground so we can enjoy the long weekend!” was routinely uttered as I tried to usher the family out the door and into the truck to start our long weekend camping trip. Keeping bathroom stops to a minimum allowed us to have an extra 15 minutes at the campground. An. Extra. Fifteen. Minutes. The reward of those 15 minutes was far outweighed by enough stress to shave 15 hours off my life! I told myself that almost every camping trip but I still could not slow down until I got to where I was going. (I was fortunate enough to have a family that knew what was coming and grinned and bared it.) That all changed when I started towing a travel trailer. I was forced to drive slower because I was towing a 32’ travel trailer. Not only was the travel…
Monday Motivation Minute – The Imperfect Beauty of Nature
Once you see it, it is nearly impossible to not be taken in by its beauty! This 277-mile scar in the high desert cut by the Colorado River is marveled at by millions of people every year. But a 6-inch scar across my face cut by a car windshield that was shattered in an accident is gawked at by beachgoers as I sit enjoying a peace the ocean brings. A tree defiantly standing after being struck by the intense flash of a lightning strike will stand strong for the world to see. But I hide my arms under long sleeves so the world will not see the scald marks left by a stern parent who taught me a lesson. People will marvel at a tree that had to adapt to grow while under the constant pressure of wind blowing across the meadow. But when I find ways to adapt to…
Monday Motivation Minute: Be the one who cares because there is no guarantee that anyone else will
Why is that our slogan at Poised Wanderer and where did it come from? The belief behind the slogan was originally targeted at nature conservation. We all need to make sure we follow the “Pack In, Pack Out” rule by taking everything with us that we “Packed In” to a trail or campsite. That’s caring to preserve other’s rights to enjoy the hiking trail or campsite without seeing our trash. But we need to do more than that; we need to care on a much larger scale to have a greater impact on conservation. We need to care about what others do because there is no guarantee they will. We can care more than what we can control by pooling resources to affect great change. At Poised Wanderer, we do that by donating a portion of our sales to various nature-based charities. There are so many different charities that work…