Yes to Potential

What you need to know is that I stand at the edge as scared and hesitant as you. Waves of doubt lap at my feet also.

Oh I don’t doubt anything is possible or that I have everything I need to reach my heart-pounding, passionate destination. Rather, I don’t know if I can stay on track. Like you, I take comfort in what I’ve always known; I’m inclined to give my time and attention to wonderful people and excellent events that lure me off the path I want to take.

There is a place I see where I want to live my days. It’s not geographic… unless you know the landscape of my spirit. I too stand at the edge in tears of frustration because it feels like I need only reach out or take a slight step to the left and I would be there. Yet here I stand.

On this morning, before the sun has a chance to replace the stars, I’m thinking balance is no longer an ally. I want to tip my days, my energy, my thoughts, efforts, and time toward me. I want to remember what I seek to know and express in my Self has value and will feed every aspect of my life. I ask this new day to give me the courage to say “no” to the distractions and “yes” to my potential.

And so my mantra for today: “Yes”

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Potential

In letting go of how I imagined something would be or even should be, I know I give my self the opportunity to discover what can be. In releasing, I create an opportunity to embrace the gifts being offered.

My expectations are the energy I wrap around a circumstance or relationship. It’s not intended to constrict, but it will, over time and very surely, work like strips of fabric wrapping around a mummy. Expectations contain. They obscure and diminish.

As I sit here at Café Spirit considering my possibilities, I recognize I want to choose, at every turn, a way to unravel my expectations until the relationship or situation is free to be its potential. Rather than needing something from them, I would like to honor their particular path and time, finding a way to walk beside them even as I honor my own journey. Only then can we explore life together… rambunctiously, beautifully, and to the music of the moment.

And so my mantra for today: Release expectations. Embrace possibilities.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Love

As we find ourselves experiencing what we have been desiring and choosing, I think we empower and grow that experience by moving from ‘thinking’ and ‘wondering’ and ‘evaluating’ it to falling absolutely in love with it!

In this falling in love, we trust it is here to stay and give energy to having more of the same. In living it with joy, in assuming the change we manifested is now a very natural part of our flow and days, in being in the happiness of knowing we deserve… we are planting more seeds for more blossoms in our garden of delights.

And so my mantra for today: Love what I’ve created for myself and plant more seeds of joy.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Manifesting Change

I have come to Café Spirit to laugh at myself because I can see quite clearly how I am finding reasonable reasons and excellent excuses to avoid the very thing I dearly want to do.

I am ready to get back to my manuscript after a time of busy transitions. I’m more than ready. I am craving the satisfaction of doing what fills my heart. I yearn to get back to the rhythm. The characters are getting impatient. All the pieces are in place… and I am still caught in the familiar patterns of my recent past. I feel as caught as a caged, pacing lioness looking for the way out.

And yet I have learned there are two things I can do to break through the bars of my resistance and escape into the joyous freedom of spending time growing my passion.

I can change the flow of my day, in any way possible…. get up earlier, leave the dishes, or avoid my email. Each ‘usual’ that I drop will open time and energy for acting on my desire.

I can also I ask myself to go to my writing chair with my computer and cup of tea… and sit there for one hour. Not asking for results, but encouraging the possibility of action works every time. Something always happens. What intrigues is sure to elicit a response.

One thing is very clear to me. I can’t spend this morning or today in the same way I have spent previous days… or I cam going to have the same result.

And so my mantra for today: Do something, anything, to feed my desire.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Happiness and Choices

I often wish someone would hand me a map, something very clearly marked to show me the way to happiness. And yet, I have been given the very tool I need to get from here to there. It’s called delight.

Standing here at this corner of my life, knowing I want my future to bring me happiness, it seems very clear I will find that by following stepping stones of satisfaction. Each stone is a choice. Each step an opportunity. It’s now, today, in each moment that I shape the feeling of my future because out there is the result of each day, each choice getting there.

And sitting here at Café Spirit, with my Ginger Lemon tea, I know I am not befuddled by what brings me joy. That answer is easily found in what makes me smile, gives me energy, feels effortless and right. The challenge is in remembering I bring the best to each experience and relationship when I am true to myself.

When others know they can depend on me to give only what honors my truth, celebrates my spirit, and acknowledges my inner wisdom, we can begin walking on a path that encourages mutual exploration of those reliable, worthy allies. The foundation is laid to build present days and ever expanding futures that are about making our hearts sing.

And so my mantra for today: Choose what makes me smile.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Women, Choices, Abundance

Really, when it comes right down to it, I think abundance is being aware I have choices in every minute of every day and then using those choices to shape my experience.

On the surface, that seems a reasonable, natural thing to do, but I have come to Café Spirit to acknowledge it is a challenge of great dimension.

Choosing for Self rather than family asks me to release a time-honored belief that giving away pieces of me fills the hearts and makes the world better for those I love when, by experience and witnessing others, I have seen the empowering beauty that comes when each person in a relationship nurtures their inner world and then shares that journey with those close to them.

Choosing to take action with a plan in mind while remembering to let the flow outside and beyond my awareness guide the occasion insists on my letting go of control. It eliminates the comfort my routines. It reminds me there are much greater forces than my will and good intentions.

Choosing a different direction for my future than I had planned or imagined or assumed, is the stuff of daring-do. It asks me to believe in my possibilities.

Yes, abundance is found in my choices and choosing for me outside old expectations is the stuff of Wonder Woman.

And so my mantra for today: Look for the choices that honor my spirit.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Manifesting Potential

Feelings are the thread of our manifesting potential. They transforms our desires into a tapestry of reality.

Putting my desire into a time frame, I take it out of the astounding way that dimension curls inside-out. I constrict the endless possibilities.

Holding a particular image close to my heart, I add layers of complexities to the outcome. I hold myself to what I already know, rather than trust an adventure in unknown territory.

Which isn’t to say time and images aren’t awesome tools. Connecting to the sensation of being fully in my desire in a particular moment can feed feelings making my desire a reality. Seeing a picture that fits my feelings can increase their intensity and empower manifestation. Any instant I can utterly, clearly, passionately, delightfully feel my self experiencing what I desire is magic.

But, if I let go of how my desire will look and connect to what I want to feel, I can be sure it will show up in my life and, most likely, sooner than later.

And so my mantra for today: I empower manifestation when I feel my desire with openness to the outcome.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Change and Persistence

The value of persistence is one of those universal truths I just have to challenge. I won’t deny it is a choice that can often serve me and lead to the very thing I am trying to reach, but there are times when it should be set aside in favor of letting go, giving up, and admitting momentary defeat.

Persistence, carried as a badge, has found me looking for just the right airline ticket long past my bedtime when letting go and returning when I’m rested provides a much smoother transaction. Giving up would have been the better path when the weeds at my Big Island house returned to one spot as quickly as I completed another. Then I wouldn’t have twisted my knee in a way that still reminds me of that unrelenting labor. And often, when I admit defeat and return to the task sometime later, I find the problem diminished, effortless, or even gone. Time allows forces beyond me to become my allies.

As I sit at Café Spirit, I wonder how I can know when staying steady is serving me and when I have stretched it too far until it has transformed into willful frustration. I think, perhaps, it is the moment I feel compelled to complete rather than engaged by purpose. If I sense I can not walk away. It is time to do just that.

And so my mantra for today: Pacing my self with awareness allows the Universe to feed my purpose.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Dreams and Answers

I went to bed last night with two ponderings. They weren’t problems or worries, just questions I wanted answered to grow my creativity. I thought the quiet time between wakefulness and sleep would envelope me in that kind of time when insight comes to sit beside me.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The headache I carried from my afternoon’s computer work kept it’s vigil for my attention. My husband’s quiet, careful work with the television and attachments on the other side of the wall bumped me with mouse-like noises. The heat kept coming on, requiring adjustments with the blankets.

And all the time, I kept trying to focus on one question or another. It felt like I was getting in my car for a road trip, heading down the road, moving forward in spirit miles and then finding myself in the next town, going no further. As many times as I got back in that car with my question and seemed to be on my way, I kept ending up in the same town, the same place with no more insight… except that my answer was not available at this time, in this circumstance.

I gave it up and fell asleep, waking up with both answers served to me like scones on a breakfast tray at Café Spirit.

I was reminded sleep is one of the powerful vehicles for traveling to answers. Dreams are too. In the night time, when distractions cease and internal chatter comes to a close, I am very susceptible to solutions. And to make this happen, I need only connect to my questions with full heart, attention, and clarity.

And so my mantra for today: Turn to my sleep and dreams for answers.

Notes along the way… Jeanne

Friends With My Self

Like all dream directions, the path of thriving was barely marked. It was a light imprint in dewy grass… a little to the left. To explore this trail with question marks littered like pebbles, I had to let go.

Relief rained on me as the journey began. Once I loosened my tight hold on the security I had created with routine days, hope and optimism grew like flowers in spring showers. Yet, when nighttime fell on my new path, fear showed up.

I laid in the darkness and listened to what it had to say. It nudged me to return to what I was trying to leave, but I challenged my droning companion. “There are always, always! as many pleasant surprises awaiting us as there are hard times. And don’t forget fireflies flutter in the shadows to light the way as often as mosquitoes bite. I know I might stumble on the roots growing over the path and even feel lost along the way, but there will be wildflowers coloring the landscape.”

And then the rising sun took the night away I said goodbye to my fears. I had an adventure waiting for me.

Notes along the way… Jeanne