Untangled

I had a dream last night that I was walking along the lake close to my boyfriend's house. And then suddenly there were 2 of me, and the other one started walking into the water- which startled me because this water is gross and I'm convinced if you swim in it your future children will come out with extra limbs. Anyway, I'm yelling at her-or myself- to come back, and then she- I mean I- turn around without a word, smile, and wave, and then continue walking into the water until I disappear under the surface... Leaving me alone.

Now what the heck is that supposed to mean?

Top 10 Things

Today's post is brought to you with the assistance of Jillian Walker, a young and ambitious mover and shaker from Calgary who I strongly admire. You can check out her blog: jillianwalker.wordpress.com . She posted this on her facebook, a letter written by Sherold Barr: The Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Turned 30.

"I am writing to tell you what helped me wake up to reality. What I know for sure is that external "things" do not make a meaningful or inspired life. I want to share what I've learned to help you experience more freedom and joy, and inspire you to help my generation save our living planet.

My Top 10:

1. Your body is your guidance system. Tuning into your body gives you rapid feedback. Your body communicates through emotions and energy. Move toward what gives you a spark, and move away from what leaves you feeling exhausted, and your body will lead you to your best life.

2. Thoughts are the cause of all suffering. If you stay in a job that deadens you, it's a thought that keeps you there. If you find yourself stuck, it's because of a story. Any thought that keeps you from being happy is a lie! If you want to feel freedom, question your thoughts. Change your thoughts, and you can transform your life.

3. Your inner lizard is pumping out lack and attack fears. Let's talk about how our brains are wired. All animal brains include reptilian cores. Martha Beck calls it our inner lizard. Its purpose is to pump out survival fears all day long. When we listen to it, we become anxious and fearful and this blocks our creativity and problem solving abilities. The solution? Become the watcher of your thoughts and notice those lack and attack thoughts. You don't have to listen to your inner lizard.

4. Screw the rules! Like the bumper sticker says, "Question Authority." Question all thoughts, beliefs, social and cultural conditioning, and dogma. Screw these rules! If you are living by someone else's rules, then you aren't following your own destiny. Learn this now, or you will wake up at midlife feeling trapped.

5. The world of work is changing. Internet guru Seth Godin says it well - today, the good jobs go to linchpins. He says, "Linchpins leverage something internal, not external, to create a position of power and value." Your own creativity and passion are your best work assets.

6. You and only you are responsible for your own happiness. Get this into your head right now. If you don't learn this now, you will learn it when you are my age. You will wake up and realize that you've lived someone else's life. It's up to you to edit out what doesn't give you fire, meaning, or happiness.

7. Dream your next big adventure. Envisioning what you want has real power. By setting intentions daily and managing your thoughts, you will reach your goals. This is called deliberate creation, and it is the only way to create the life you desire.

8. Be willing to suck at it! If you want to learn something new and get good at it, you have to be willing to suck at it. The key is to "be willing" and put your ego on the shelf while you are learning. So don't let fear stop you from learning something new. Just be willing to suck as you learn it.

9. The material world will not bring you true happiness. My generation was taught to think that happiness and success come from consumption. Materialism doesn't bring you happiness. The media keeps feeding our need to buy more (appealing to our inner lizard of lack) and then we end up in our 50s or 60s with too much stuff and chained to The Man. We ask ourselves, "Is this all there is?" I am not saying that having abundance is a bad thing. What I am saying is that it is not the answer to happiness. Try hearing your soul's answer to these questions:

-Who or what inspired me today?

-Where did I experience a sense of comfort, peace, and balance?

-What (not who) made me happy today?

10. The world needs our help. Paul Hawkins noted that your generation ".will have to figure out how to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating." We need your energy, passion, and commitment to help us save our living planet. We raised you to believe that you could accomplish your dreams. How can you harness your power and passion to save our planet?

The answer is to become aware. Eckhart Tolle says that humans have lost touch with the stillness inside and our connection to nature. We have forgotten what animals and plants still know - how to be. In stillness we can find what we need to save the planet.

That's what I wish I'd known before I was 30. I hope you can use these 10 things to start living better now. The world needs you.

If All You Wanted Was Me, Then I'd Give You Nothing Less

Jared Followill and I made eye contact at the kings of leon concert last night. I am 100% certain that by look in his eyes he thought: "I totally remember meeting this girl 5 years ago in a shoppers drug mart in Vancouver and I've dreamed of the day we'd meet again and now my wishes are finally true at last, and my heart and soul are finally complete."

I'm pretty intuitive, you know.

And then my friend Steve drove us home- and I'm specifically writing this because I know he reads my blog every day. Steve is a good friend because he's always there for me, and knows to turn the air conditioning down in the car because I get cold easily. And because he makes me laugh when he tells me Jared Followill was spotted downtown Toronto at my intersection looking for me.

Woop Woop Woop Woop Weep Weep Weep (the guitar chords, in Closer, by Kings of Leon)

It costs nothing to say something kind. Even less to shut up altogether

I'm going to see one of my favorite bands tonight for the 4th time... Kings Of Leon!!
Did you hear about the Kings of Leon show that got cancelled last week?

KOL were performing in St. Louis, and there happened to be an infestation of pigeons in the rafters above the stage. Both of the opening acts got bombed with bird poop, but the band figured it was too late to cancel the show, so they went on stage. They only got three songs in before Jared, the bassist (and my dream man), had a pigeon poop in his mouth/face.

Of course I understand, and I'm really annoyed at the critics that are saying that this was immature of the band. Do you realize this is a toxic hazard? Gross.

However, Jared is still a gorgeous man... Although the pigeon poop is quite the turn off.

Shelter

The best advice comes from my iphone when I accidentally shake it: "there is nothing to undo"

Another song that when you're in a relationship, makes you go "awwwww" cause it's everything you want to hear from your significant other.

Shelter- Hedley

Never Settle

Do you want more, or do you want less?
I want less but for longer.

My roommate, Tiffany, told me a piece of advice that her Dad always says:
"If you keep cutting corners, you're just going in circles"

I don't know what it is that has set me off track in the past few weeks, but I'm really looking forward to my vacation to have time for myself and get myself together again.

Focus on goals, not obstacles

Take It Easy, World

I received a fascinating response to my blog yesterday. And I guess it means I want to make some clarification about these baby steps I've been talking about.

I'm learning that with everything I'm striving for, I have to start with baby steps. And absolutely, when I'm ready, then ill start to walk faster, and run, and move mountains, whatever. But I've learned in the past few weeks that sometimes hitting the ground running sets me back more than I could handle.

But I love the ideas I got from this anonymous reader yesterday. Whoever you are, you're so right. Baby steps are limiting. But eventually that baby learns to crawl, and then walk with some support, and then walk on their own.

I loved their take on the six word story:
"Your six word story tells of something greater. It tells of the person that was not limited by baby steps but walked forward, made mistakes, enjoyed the park, met loads of people, and always arrived safely. And being a person of opportunity knew that 90% of the world were still baby stepping so he decided to make a profit and sell those shoes."

Amazing, anonymous. I love it, it made me smile really big.

Isn't it interesting... when a baby is born, their success is measured by how much they weigh, and as they get older it is measured by the small steps they take and the words they learn. But then as we get older the pressure increases significantly. Our successes are measured in society by our salaries, the size of our house, and the relationships we hold, etc.

Take it easy, world. Just smile.

If You've Got A Long Way Down, I'll Feel The Same

Part 2: continued from yesterday...

"Baby shoes. For sale. Never worn"
These 6 words actually tell a full story. Beginning, middle, and end.

Wherever you're going in life, whether you know your destination or not, you have to take baby steps to get there or you'll never get there.

Dreams feel real while we're in them. Its only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange

I saw inception last night, which I highly recommend. It got me thinking so much.

Why do we have dreams in the first place? Why is it that our brain plays out scenarios while we sleep? Is it to solve the problem we encounter in our wake? Is it to let us go quietly insane for a few hours a night? I suppose that's my guess. With all the things we deal with during the day, maybe our dreams are a release, or an escape. Last night before I went to bed I was thinking about everything in my life... which can be overwhelming to do when you're trying to sleep. But then when I woke up this morning all the stress automatically seems less and what I was worrying about before doesn't matter as much after a full night's sleep.

Anyway, I was wondering if I was on the right path in life, and wondering what I'm going to do with my life. I always have a lot going on and I like it like that, but then I thought, maybe I should just focus on one thing. Just stop putting energy into so many different things and just focus all my energy on one. But then I thought about my personality and realized I wouldn't like that very much. I'd always be looking for something more to do.

And then in the middle of thinking all this, my boyfriend, half asleep and not knowing what I was thinking about, said something, and I took it as a sign. He said:
"I'm going to tell you something. There was a man who was told: if you could write a story with only 6 words... What would it be?
And after thinking for a while he came back with this response:
'Baby shoes. For sale. Never worn'"

Ponder that. And respond with your thoughts.
And no, I'm not having a baby or buying shoes. Think deeper.

Rules Of Love

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want

Relationship advice tidbit of the day:

I've been reading this book called "The Rules of Love" which my mom recently bought for me. Now that I'm in the solid-est relationship of my life, she's suggesting all these books like "The Rules Of Love" and "Who To Marry". And of course I'll take her suggestions because someday, I hope that my marriage will be as wonderful as my parents'.

I highly suggest "The Rules Of Love" to anybody. Whether you're single, in a relationship, married, or breaking up. The book goes over 100 different rules that you should live by in a relationship. A lot of them are common sense things that you know, or may have forgotten, and go into detail to reinforce them in your life.

One I learned last night that I wanted to share:

Put Each Other First
Put your significant other's happiness before your own. This is essential to a good strong relationship. If you have chosen your partner well, they will be doing the same thing. That's why it works:

You can afford to ignore your own wants and needs, because your partner will be giving them priority.

Wrapped In Piano Strings

People are trying to outdo each other with being pretty. It is sunny, and the fortune cookies have been promising great things. I invented new drinks at a party and walked the long way home in the middle of the night.

It's an interesting concept; to break down walls that you didn't know were there. The reason we put walls up are to guard ourselves from others, when sometimes what we really need is just to let them in.

I called home this morning because it was my grandparent's 55th wedding anniversary yesterday. If you know me, you'd know that my Baba and Gido mean the world to me and that I wear a locket with their picture in it. Today on the phone, my gido was too emotional to speak. So we kind of just cried for a moment. And then said "I'll see you soon".

I have never been homesick in my life until now.

You Oughta Know...

I had a funny conversation with my teacher today about his kids and his family and life, and somehow from that, the conversation turned into him teaching me geography, and he drew me this map of the world and named so many countries and their capitals off by heart.

What an artist

You Shine So Bright It's Insane, You Put The Sun To Shame.

Sometimes I wonder if I should be making movies, not writing stories. Movies can have the charm of short stories and the breadth of novels, the combination of visual, musical, performance and writing elements is compelling, and movies have an audience.
I need to devote a day to reading my whole blog and picking out tidbits and one-liners and paragraphs and compiling them into a word document. In the pursuit of writing a novel of short stories, I've gone over the last few pages of my blog and found there are a few ideas. It may take me a while to go through 7 months-worth of writing every day. WOW It's been 7 months already. I'm not sure if I expected to actually write every day for 7 months when I had started this. I had told myself that it would be cool if I sat down for a certain amount of time every day to just write... and look where we are now!

I am exactly one month away from being on vacation. Not sure exactly WHERE I'll be on vacation, but I'm looking forward to it very much.

When Life Gives You Wheelchair, Make Lemonade

Oprah is searching for someone who deserves to have a talk show, and this boy is making headway. His name is Zach Anner, and he has cerebral palsy ("the sexiest of the palsies"), and he pitches a travel show “designed to inspire people who never thought they could travel”. It's sweet and inspiring and he's very charming and funny. Take a look:


Zach's oprah deal from Zach Anner on Vimeo.

Waking Up With Less Anxiety

Bad advice: you're young. You'll figure it out

It doesn't matter what age you are- the decisions you'll make throughout your life affect everything

"I wish that when I was younger I could have met my current self. We would have sat down at a coffee shop so that I could explain life to young me in terms that only we would understand. It would have saved me a lot of hardship.

You can listen to all the sage wisdom you want, but things only make sense when you can explain them to yourself in your own words. Other truths I know now that I can explain them: that I'm not missing any crucial information and that poker really isn't all that fun; that heartbreaks do fade but they take about a year longer than you expect and by the time they do you really don't care about it enough to notice; and above all else, life is simpler than you think.

I used to think that life was an intricate series of levers and pulleys, buttons and switches, Mexican standoffs and hostage negotiations. As I get older I realize that life is more Netherlands minimalist than Jackson Pollock. The problems don't get fewer, and in fact they grow in number, but the way I index them in the database is different. More problems get filed under fewer category headers.

Things are getting simpler, and it's making life better. Here's the cheat sheet:

People want to be liked. We all crave attention and affection and we all reject shame. When we get embarrassed we send a thug version of ourselves to the forefront to do our fighting for us. We're at the top of the food chain just under fear.  We don't want to be in a relationship to hear the words "I love you," we want to be in a relationship to say the words "I love you." We want to feel needed, and exceptional and we hate feeling insignificant. We want to ace a hearing test. We are binary creatures; if we're the plaintiff, we want to win every dollar. If we're the defendant, we want guard every penny. We want to make more money than last year. We don't want to get cancer or die in our cars and we want the same for our loved ones. We go out on weekends to try and have sex while trying not to get punched in the face. We drink so we can be ourselves and not mind it so much. We're desperate to be understood. We want to know someone else has felt it, too. We hate being judged unfairly. We want to make the person we heard wasn't all that into us change their minds and admit they had us wrong. We want sunny skies with a chance of killer tornadoes, just to keep music sounding good. We take hours upon hours to admit to self consciousness. We don't know exactly how to pleasure each other. We just want love. In any and every form.

See? It's simple. :)"

God Bless My Monsters And Their Teeth

The thing about Lady Gaga is...
on top of being the most talented and unique performer of the century, she is the most genuinely kind celebrity I've ever met. And she doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks. She makes her fans feel accepted no matter what. They can all be accepted because they're all different, no matter what degree of strangeness or uniqueness. She leads by example.
"I don't care that my fans love me, I care that my fans love themselves"

After meeting Lady Gaga yesterday, the picture I took with her went viral on the internet within an hour!!! Crazy, especially because I hadn't posted it anywhere myself other than facebook (which is strongly protected)!

I Wanna Wake Up Where You Are

Sex and rules and feelings really suck to talk about. I'm glad those things never come up in monogamous relationships.


oh WAIT.
 
When I was younger I always said that I would one day walk down the aisle to the song "Black Balloon" by Goo Goo Dolls. I recently found out that this song is about a girl with a drug addiction. Therefore, my plans are crushed.

I challenge you to find me a song more romantic than "Dont wanna miss a thing" by Aerosmith. Please, I really want to hear other suggestions for most romantic songs. I don't think it gets any better than this :)

Ask Me Where I'm Going... Who Knows? Ahead.

I got some really good advice yesterday.
She said:
"Don't borrow trouble. Don't worry about tomorrow, because it isn't here yet"

It was exactly what I needed to hear, even if its something that I've heard, read, or been told several times already. Sometimes just saying something in a different order of words makes it click and then you really understand.

I always think that if the present-me could talk to the past-me, I would tell myself not to worry about everything that I worried about, because it all sorts itself out and turns out to be better than I could have imagined. I can predict the future-me telling the present-me the exact same thing. But its always easier said than done.

Shakeology

My new business has gotten me into such a healthy lifestyle. It hasn't even been a month but the results have been drastic.
Wake up, Work out, Shakeology.

The only thing we share is the same sky

If you haven't heard, Beyonce escaped death yesterday.

Her near death experience happened when she opened her car door and a taxi cab flew by, ripping off the car door and missing her by a few inches.

Now it made me think of all the celebrities and artists that would I would be affected by when they pass away. Just as millions of people were affected when Michael Jackson died last year, think of all the famous people in the media that you admire, and would be upset by when they die?

For me:
Ellen DeGeneres, Lady Gaga, Bono, Sandra Bullock, Chalene Johnson, Barack Obama

No Place Like Home

You know when you're upset about something and someone asks what's wrong or says something to remind you that you're upset? Man I hate that.

My mom left Toronto today and I took it a lot harder than I thought I would.

I haven't been home for almost 6 months and I think this is the first time in my life I've felt homesick.

All I Want Is An Indefinitely Long Blank Book And Forever

All you need is love plus and instruction manual for what to do with it once you've found it.

"Imagine yourself in old age for a moment. You're sitting in the sunshine next to your partner (who is also your best friend, confidant(e) and lover) and you're surrounded by family and friends. Children are playing on the grass around you and everywhere is the sound of laughter and happy voices. Yes I know, it sounds like the ending of the most unwatchable sugary film ever. But deep down, wouldn't you like to feel you were heading for moments like that?"

World Peace II

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember, that's where you will find success. -Thomas J. Watson

My mother has been in Toronto for the last few days. She's sleeping on my couch and cleaning my house and taking me shopping. She met my boyfriend for the first time, loved him, and then proceeded to plan a tropical vacation for us in August. Thanks mom.

I had a dream last night that gave me a trillion ideas for short stories. I think in between owning a business, finishing school full time, and achieving world peace, I will write a book.

"Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together."

"Franz Kafka is Dead

He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children's hair. They took off their hats and raised them to the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees , Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind.

That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children wake up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone.

They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It's said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.