ALOooo Ha!

Hi! I'm back from Hawaii. There is so much to tell and I've been up for so many hours that I just wanted to check in with the blogosphere. Hawaii is beautiful and it was sooooo nice to see my family, faces that I know, people who have known my face for over two years. Yay family!

Bodywork

I've been talking about bodywork a lot lately. It's because I had a truly convincing experience of the power movement has to transform all aspects of myself. It all started with this free online class. I didn't finish the class, but I did the exercise from the first week consistently. All I did was bend over in the touching-your-toes position, and hold my elbows with my hands for 5 minutes. After this uber simple stretch, I walked differently, perceived differently and felt differently. It was amazing. What Erich Schiffmann said in Yoga about how moving your body differently makes your life different didn't seem esoteric after that experience. Try it for yourself. Here are two experiments you can do:

1. Go on a walk. Notice what you notice. Do the stretch I mentioned above for 5 minutes a day for a week. Go on a walk. Notice what you notice.

2. (This one requires a friend.) Both of you look at something, a picture or a view, and notice what you notice. Then you follow the other person on a 12 minute or longer walk. Walk behind them but at an angle so you can notice what they are looking at. Walk exactly like they are walking, hold your body in the posture they hold their body in, look at what they look at, touch what they touch. Be just like them. Come back to the picture or view you looked at before and notice what you notice. Switch roles and repeat. The effect of this exercise is especially noticeable if you partner with someone who is a lot different than you are.

If you do either of these exercises, you will learn a lot about how you perceive and how you can alter your perceptions. If you do exercise number 2, you will also learn a lot about your partner. Let me know what you find out!

Categories | Well Being

Get ready to get teary

Oh, Augustine is back, and she has some touching words about the recent killings in England, and about people who are between life and death everywhere.

Success Teams

You can take the girl out of HPT, but you can't take the human performance technology out of the girl. (And why would you want to? :) I myself can not write about it or read about it, so I'm going to talk all about me, me, me! (I can see now why the pop culture became very fluffy in times of war.)

So, I have this new job. I'm still in training. Tuesday will probably be my first day leading my own tour. I don't believe in the product. Some people really like it, so I'm not putting down the product, just saying. At any rate, they are good at setting up an effective system at my new job.

Here is what I like: Your results are very clear. You know when you are doing well. It is not a secret when you are doing well. You are rewarded for doing well. Everybody claps for you when you do well. They continue training you after the initial training is over. Your bosses want you to make MORE money, as they clearly see how you are benefiting the company. (Contrast that with jobs where your salary is counted as a loss.) It's amazing really.

Compare that to jobs where you have no idea what you are saposed to do. There is no clear tie between contribution and salary. Even if you wanted to learn how to make more money, you would have no idea who to ask to be your mentor as everyone's salary is a secret. Your bosses want your salary to be a secret because they want to pay you as little as they possibly can. People are often annoyed when you achieve more and do not clap for you. There is something refreshingly clear cut about how this sales job is set up.

Plus, my people, (the people I trained with,) are all trying to help each other out. (My success doesn't endanger anyone else's success. YAY!) It's like we have our own little success team. Today I found myself spontaneously wanting to ask my group what their long term goals are. What do they really want? I want to help them get that.

Today I wish you the sense and the skills to set up your own environment to optimize your success.

Plans...

Remember when I was going to tell you all about my plans for my Summer of Inner Transformation? I had actually already written down a complete plan, but instead of my plans, tonight I'll tell you about my synchronicities.

I was offered 10 free sessions of Somatic bodywork (I don't know what it is either) from a classmate in one of my NIA classes. Tonight in NIA, our teacher ended the class with Feldenkrais exercises. I felt so different as I started walking after the excercises, lighter but heavier- more connected to the floor. Then our teacher mentioned that she teaches a class in a neighborhood near mine. It's only $10 a class. I'm going to do it. Tonight I got a haircut which is outer transformation, but ya'll know it's inner transformation too. I have CURLY hair and the last (EXPENSIVE) hair cut I got was a mess. I got this haircut as a trade. Rock on, craigslist.

I finished my CD! It took several hours of work for several days in the recording studio and it has 5 songs and totals 12 minutes! Phew! It was fun. Now I've restrung my guitar and am waiting for the strings to settle in. Woo! :) I heard about a group starting the Artist's Way journey and I jumped on the bandwagon. I think it's just what I need. I've been a slacker on my Morning Pages for the last couple of days. How do all you working parents do it?

Categories | My Life, Well Being, Health, Beauty, Links

Heigh ho, heigh ho!

It's off to work I go! Wow. Today is just my second day and already I have lots of mixed feelings and new impressions and... I told my roommates part of my negative impression last night, and then I realized that if I didn't focus on succeeding and seeing the good, then I would want to quit this job right away. They were very gracious and let me wipe the slate clean. I don't know how long I'll be at my new job, but I want to be successful and of one positive mind about it while I'm there. I also want to act with integrity. It will be easy to act with integrity on this job, but a couple war metaphors were used yesterday in training that bothered me. I officially reject war metaphors! I don't think they are useful and I think the metaphors we use to think about the world dramatically affect how we act and what we percieve. Think about that! That's my thought of the day for you: What metaphors do you live by and how does it affect your life?

Happy 4th!
Happy B-day, K!

System failure

The whole system has broken down. I don't know why. I have a firewall. Norton anti-virus doesn't detect anything wrong. However, something is definitely buggy. ACHCHCHCHCHH!!! (Inner scream of frustration.) I can't send any images via email, I can't even pull images into my paint program from a file. My outlook add-in stopped working and now my pop email will not go to outlook. The newest thing- today I tried to upload an image to my blog and my computer is acting like it's never done that before. "What are you talking about??! I don't do that!" So, no more images for you for awhile. I am not feeling like much of a sport. And there goes my weekly rating boost.