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…
Experiencing the Peaceful Realization in The True Strength of Flexibility
The strength of the palm tree is not in its ability to exert great force to move objects but in its ability to withstand great force and still grow tall and be amongst the first to feel the warmth of the sun. Sometimes, you find yourself fighting too hard to resist great forces trying to influence your life. It can be a worthwhile practice to step back and objectively look at what’s happening. Who knows, you might see a much easier path forward than fighting every challenge and obstacle with the greatest force you can muster. And when you can’t see an easier way, maybe just bend a little and let the force pass so you can raise up stronger than before. -Shay Be the one who cares because there is no guarantee that anyone else will.
Monday Motivation Minute – The Greatest Adventure of Life
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey If someone were to ask you, “are you living the life you dreamed of?” I think you would find that that’s a pretty complex question because, after all, don’t you have several dreams? Maybe it’s the dream of having a great job at a good company or the dream of owning your own company or the dream of working remotely and traveling the world. What about the dream of having a family or the dream of being independent? While some dreams are certainly better than others, can you say there is a “best dream”? Maybe… And dreams change so how can you say whether or not you’re living the life of your dreams? Some dreams may be fleeting and some dreams may be lasting and your dream life might be a moving target…
Experience The Incredible Rhythms Of Nature
When you are present in nature, you can feel the rhythms.