BOREDOM is a CATALYST

i have always been intrigued by boredom. today i was with two 4 year olds and they claimed to be bored. i asked them what they wanted and that is where magic began. so often we turn to the TV, Video games, things OUTSIDE ourselves to entertain us, that we have forgotten our own innate possibilities. i know for me, when i feel "bored" i am missing a part of accessing something within myself. do i want to distract or feel? what is so wrong with feeling bored? in a way, it is a catalyst for me to begin to feel what it is i DO WANT to feel. it is a way of accessing more within myself- so it s not wrong or bad. it reminds me of my daughter on the airplane saying " i am bored" we were on a long flight and i could relate/empathize with her boredom of just "sitting there"- however when i shared with her that i was bored too...and maybe we could create something together her eyes lit up.
what was bored became an opportunity. this is why i teach play. for it is not childs play. boredom is not a childs word. i see it all the time. clients who come to me saying "i am just bored with my life- i do the same thing day to day, and i am just stuck and bored" and i say GREAT!!!!! cool place to be in. now what.
now what? what we DO with this feeling is what play is all about. two 4 years olds decided to play roller coaster with a laundry basket for almost 40 minutes. no other external "means" were needed. the interesting part is most people feel they just "dont have that" but i disagree. we have just been conditioned to fall back into OUTER means to "save us from our boredom"- yet do they encourage empowerment? do they encourage SELF reliance. it may sound harsh but when my daughter is bored i do not give her a TV show, i allow her to BE in it. i allow myself to BE in it. it feels uncomfy at first and then inspiration arises because i do not have distractions to veer me from FEELING it. i start writing or i realize i have more energy then i realize and i start moving my body, or whatever feels good in the moment.
as parents, too often we forget to just FEEL. we are so concerned in feeling it. we distract. and we teach our children to distract. whether we are parents or not, we have been conditioned to run from just being. just being may seem or feel boring but this space can be the catalyst for something magical to emerge. if only we would allow ourselves to feel it. i have been blessed to witness children and adults use their boredom as means for change. make mountains out of nothing and learn something NEW about life and themselves. it is a perspective.......when we feel bored it is a calling to notice. it is a calling to make choices.
to distract or create? how do you want to play?

i was emailed today from someone who asked ways to play with their kids. and i was inspired to share ways in which i have found to be fun and connecting. they are simple. one thing i have realized within myself is that we have all the resources to not only enjoy our lives, but to pass this on to our children. to demonstrate that time is not dictating for us,but we are the ones in charge of utilizing the time and making it COUNT for lifetimes.
play follow the leader. ask your child to be the leader. do what they do. all of the silliness. be in that. embrace it and notice how it feels to follow their lead. they dig this.why? because it gives them permission to be themselves and to see how you embrace THAT. turn off your cell phone. give yourself permission to unhook which immediately gives your children permission to as well. unhook from life's responsibilities and be in the moment of NOW. magic happens. nothing is holding you back and you are still okay. life goes on, and you have the moments to cherish with those you love.
all kids really want is presence. they do not need outside distractions, only those they love to BE WITH THEM in a way that is full and alive.
in a world that thrives and encourages distraction, to give yourself time to unhook.....is truly what keeps you alive and well. this is the best way to demonstrate wholeness and balance to those you love, especially your kids.
dance dance dance. put music on. who cares if you cant DANCE. it doesnt matter. what matters is connecting. laughing. embracing the simplicity of life with your children. there is no wrong in connecting. in fact, we are here to CONNECT to ourselves. our inner CHILD and not hide it. not mute it. but embrace it.
i triple dog dare you to embrace that part of you that just wants to sing out loud......

your kids will thank you....
for it sets them free. to be who they are..
and makes the world a more balanced and connected place to hang.

What I do know.....

this playground is full of surprises. just when we think we have built our sandcastles exactly who we should, something knocks it down or the sand begins to change. we think we are in control, yet i wonder if we fully are? what i do know is there is one constant- change. we can flow with it, or we can resist....either way, change keeps on a coming. which one feels good? too often we can get trapped in the resistance game. we play there for years. we invite new actors into our scene and repeat the same old play. and then we wonder "why am i so sad? why does this keep happening to me?"

nothing keeps happening TO you. all that life is offering is an opportunity for you to stop resisting change. to look at what it is you are creating and how you are playing within that.

are we always the victim? are we always losing? are we always hurt and sad?

this is not bad- it is what is. can we begin to harness flexibility in a time where things are not what they were? can we begin to harness surrender, at at time where life is changing at a speed of light. can we begin to harness love.

what i do know is that love is not just a hallmark statement. love is not something that can be defined or limited to just one thing. love is the glue that keeps our playground intact, yet so often we resist it. we cant see the love because we are so busy trying to control. we cant feel the love because we are disconnected from our truest selves and others. we are addicted to winning, status, agendas and doing that our play becomes a mouse on a wheel. repeating the same old dance, just different times.

in this time of great change, we have an opportunity to open up to it. to drop down our barriers of control and fear and realize that it is us that has invited this change in, whether we are aware of it or not. IT IS here.

can we be curious on new ways to love. love the change that life is. love the not knowing and the uncomfy feeling this presents. love the players in our scene that gift us with looking more at what we prefer and not prefer without judgment.

can we be curious about our innate and limitless way to love.

what i do know is when i choose love- and drop down my need to control others and life, i am at peace. i play with life more. i allow it to guide me, not control me. i laugh more. i love deeper and i find that this playground is not a battleground....but a joy to be a part of.

when i was a little girl....

when i was a little girl...i hung out in my playroom...well it was my closet transformed into my playroom. my dad hung cabbage patch wallpaper and i resided in that room for hours each day. i imagined it was a castle....and i was the queen. it was my sacred place where imagination was precedent, and where i could be anything i wanted. i always think of this place when i get lost in the humdrums of this thing we call life. i remember the feel of closing the closet door and entering into my own world....where anything was possible. anything.

when i was a little girl...i craved love. not the love from a hallmark card, but the love that said "you can be who you are..."

and now, here i am...36 years young, remembering the potency of this... how much i knew at that time, yet was taught that this was just "fairytale land"

we live in pretend nation. we play pretend each day. yet, it is not the pretend like my closet back in the day. our pretend means nothing is possible. people live for fridays- people live for their iphones or blackberries or the latest episode of "something on TV"-

we are disconnected. from ourselves. from each other. we have lost our innate belief that anything is possible. this is not childs play...its LIFE play.

why are we disconnected? why do we feel that our purpose lies in an object, person or title?

because we are taught this. we stand in line. we check off the boxes...yet we CRAVE for possibility. we elect presidents to give us this...yet sit on the sidelines of our own plays...hoping.

hope is not life.

it can be a component. but life is about living. about showing up. about embracing the possibility that maybe, just maybe...

we are writing it.

that maybe just maybe if we put down our agendas...our ideals...our egos...our attachments..we may just find..the space between.

in this space lies connection.

the inner voice...that was the little boy..

the little girl

that wants to play in the possibility that we...

are bigger than what we have ever imagined.

that life is more then just "same s.... different day"

that love means connection.

not words without action.

or words without....true humanness...

where are we choosing to go?

into the land of doing....the land of surviving

or into the land of endless possibility?

where we are loved..for who we are..not what we are

where we allow ourselves to be seen

not live in a nation of pretend?

why are so scared of being seen? why do we mute ourselves......

our children desire their nation to stand up....to stand into the endless potential WE ARE as a human race.

yet we teach them to get it right. fit in. mute. hide....

out of fear that if our children PLAY in potential..in possibility that we may in fact

be reminded that we are not...

what is sustainable?

love

keep on hanging on

"set me free why dont you babe...but you keep me hanging on"

remember this tune? it reminds me of something i experienced today, and other times in my life. things i choose to hang on to tightly for dear life....that truly dont keep me moving forward. that keep my body stagnant, or keep me STUCK in a particular place. a familiar place...i suppose.

i was at a coffee shop- writing proposals. writing about interdependence and play.....and a woman struck up a convo with me. she was in her mid 60's and seemed eager to know what i was so engrossed in with my computer. "i am writing a book" i shared. "oh, what kind of book?" she asked. " a book about life coming from the inside out. depending on our own compass to guide us and not hook into our jobs, people and things to complete us.....but to view them as expressions of our own play" i answered.

silence.

i rarely talk to people about my book, but for some reason, unbeknownst to be ...i shared.

she reminded me of me at times in my life. at first i just wanted to close my computer and say i had to go, and then i chose to sit, close my computer and listen. i have been there, and certainly GET what it feels like to want to be heard. i have listened countless times to women and men talk about pain, and anger.....and i myself have experienced those times as well.

so i listened. i told her that her stories inspire me to write about it and she said "go ahead"-

and i heard more. she had been divorced from her husband for 25 years to the day. and she still hated him. she still talked about him like it was yesterday. she blamed him for all of the wrong in her life. she blamed him for all the wrong that "might" happen in her life. she blamed him for the weather, the job she lost....you name it, it was his fault. she kept hanging on to that....

and i listened. she continued to share that she wants me to write about this because noone ever does. that its time for people to get out of their anger and live, yet she did not know HOW.

she shared that her ex husband moved on- got married, yet disliked her the same amount. their exchanges were always with an ill will tone.

and i listened.

we talked....then. we talked about hanging on. for this is not about divorce. for this is not about right or wrong. consequence and vindictiveness. it is about what we choose to hang on and what we choose to let go of.

"it is so hard to let go of this. this man did all this things to me. this man does not like me. this man......etc" she said.

and we both began to cry. an hour later, here we are in a coffee shop....crying.

i understand that there are times in our play, where we are hurt. it is a part of ourexperience and i am not going to be "rosy" about it. it sucks. its painful. its hard. it is layered withour own beliefs and our own anger..... we are not taught in our society to feel things and release them. we are taught to feel things and hang on to them. and then.....we feel if we blame others, that THEY will pay for it. but the person who ends up paying the HIGH price is ourselves. our bodies began to fester illness....our minds begin to protect our hearts. we end up walking around with a prison around us, thinking that THIS is okay.

after crying with this woman. i shared with her that it is okay to not have this story anymore.

that if she chooses to let it go, she does not "lose anything"

it does not say"what you did is okay "- what it DOES SAY is "i love myself enough to not hurt me anymore with this story about you"

it does not say "i will take abuse" what it DOES SAY is " i have my own back and set clear boundaries based on love"

we have a belief in our society that forgiveness means we have lost something. that we are not justified if we choose to let our story and all we have wrapped up around it go. that in order to win, justify or make someone else "pay" we need to hold on tight to the rope and fight. retaliate. cling. resist and say the same old story day in and day out about what we feel THEY or IT is.

my question to her was simple

"how does this feel for you to live like this?"

"horrible" she said.

it does feel horrible. and feeling horrible for so many years is not living....its dying.

what keeps us hanging on? why do so many people still "dislike" their ex's after 30 years? why do so many people dislike their bosses, etc for so many years? is this comfort? or have we gotten used to clinging to blame. shifting our focus to livelihood to victimhood.

i get it. its a part of being human. but we can create a way of being human that involves no harm to ourselves. no harm.

and understand that those who we perceive as hurting us....did it. and its done.

its what we DO with it.....

thank you my coffee house friend...for choosing to let it go, and love yourself and your life more.

that is our play, my friends.

friends WITH life

i am big fan of byron katie. i have read her work for many years, but it hasnt been until recently where i am truly GETTING it. too often we want to run away from life. maybe it feels yucky. maybe it is hard. maybe it is sad. i have found that it is in these moments in particular that i am choosing to be friends with life. what are you showing me friend? what am i going to learn from this? what does it FEEL like to just FEEL it? uncomfortable? YEP. do i want to escape it at times? YEP.

but life is our friend. its asking us to play with it, not against it. to love IT unconditionally- which means especially in the "hard" times. this is the practice of being alive. for loving life unconditionally, means we are loving ourselves. we are friends with all of life, and we are friends with all of our experiences/feelings.

i notice that when times get tough, our world either wants to point blame, take sides, or escape in some way or another. i understand why. at that time, it seems "easier"- if we blame, then we are in charge. if we escape then we are not responsible.

i am curious about what happens if we choose another way. our own way.

to step into life. to step into the unknown. to accept WHAT IS and take another step from there?

i am curious....are you?

Hide and Seek

I am always hanging out with kids. It is quite obvious, that they get the underlying THEME here .....

to explore. to experience. to not hang on to. to play.

recently i was playing a game of hide and seek with a 4 year old. every time i "found" her she was SOOOOOO excited. she jumped up and said "lets do that again...you go out there and i will hide!"

she hid in the same place for most of the game, which i thought was so cute, but more then that.....it was the act of discovering her....and celebrating her upon discovery that really brought her joy.

so i wonder, as i always do. is this a game "just for kids" or are kids trying to show us something....

i believe that we are just kids at heart pretending to be grown ups. we use bigger words maybe and dress in costumes to look more "professional" - but what i continue to observe in my life and others is that we CRAVE to play. sometimes we dont want to share. sometimes other people are mean to us. sometimes we act out. sometimes we say things we dont really mean. all in all, we are kids at heart and at soul.

we have just conformed to what adult really means...i suppose.

maybe we just want to be found. maybe we just LOVE the idea that someone wants to find us? maybe we even DIG the possibility that if and when we are discovered that WE ARE CELEBRATED.

just food for thought....

too often we hide. we hide ourselves. we quiet our own truths. for fear we may be judged or not celebrated.

i am wondering what it would look like in our play....if we chose differently. if we remained ourselves and open. if we chose to be found, and chose to be celebrated AS IS.

instead of hiding out of fear..we hide out of wonder of the finding ....

we hide with the anticipation that when we are found...

we will be loved...celebrated....and want to play again.