Do you have a lot of ideas of how the world could be a better place?
Do you often wish others would behave differently?
Do you find this is a recipe for woe and a foundation for chronic disappointment?
One way to stop doing this, without lowering your standards, is to simplify to amplify. A coach taught me this years ago. And now I’m finally embracing it at a deeper level.
My simplified message is this: We get to dwell in a playful heart.
From this place, it’s natural to
Cherish connection.
Cultivate gratitude.
Count blessings.
When we reside here, relationships flourish, heal, and resource us. They also uplift the environment. We get to remember that relationships are the playground of the heart or the battleground of the ego.
We get to tend to what matters most and weed out the things we don’t want to grow, turn them into compost, and cultivate whole-hearted living.
The heart is the home of heaven or hell here on earth. Joy or misery lands here. Peaceful expansion or painful contraction create our realities.
Did you know that when we communicate there are actually up to 4 conversations going on — simultaneously?
1. The one you think in your head.
2. The one you actually say.
3. The one the other person(s) hear(s).
4. The one you wish you had said.
One thing I’m particularly grateful for is getting through my mom’s recent death and entering the holiday season strong with healthy communication with family of origin and my in-laws.
Sure, it’s work, but it’s so flippin’ rewarding. It’s freeing to feel the lack of energy drain. To feel resourced. To put my head to the pillow at night without rehashing what he said, what I should have said, and second guessing myself and/or judging others.
It’s truly liberating.
If you’d like some helpful tips (and lots of wonderful hyperlinks for resources), please check out this article by my fellow Imago colleague, Jeannie Ingram.
This past month has been an incredible opportunity for me to practice radical self-care even when I’m far from my paradise of Hawaii and the comfort of family and friends.
You see, there’s nothing quite like waiting for the last exhale of your mother.
Talk about anxiety-provoking. After bringing my mom home from the hospital with hospice care, there were times when I couldn’t sit still for more than 20 minutes.
I titrated my anxiety the best I could. I didn’t drink the bottles of wine. I didn’t binge on Netflix. I didn’t engage in the drama of old family stuff swirling around my ankles. Instead, I did laundry and ate a few bites of non-dairy ice cream and called it good. I honored my non-negotiable and took walks daily. And believe it or not, I slept. I wailed. I prayed. I created peace within my own tender heart as the only thing I felt I could do for my mom.
My point in sharing all this is that I didn’t abandon myself.
I trusted myself to take radically good care of myself while I waited for my mom to die. I leaned in to feel the feels and I backed off when it felt too much.
I cut myself some slack.
I released expectations.
I relinquished the idea that I would do it “right.”
This resulted in greater liberation.
When I taste liberation it’s often due to my daily commitment to trust myself to no longer abandon ANY aspect of myself. Including the anxiety. Including the grief.
And so my awareness of myself translates to greater curiosity of you: how is your heart? How are doing in this gig called life?
When have you abandoned aspects of your whole Self?
How do you get to show up to your life in a more generous and responsible manner?
Where can you be more free?
Where can you be more free?
Let’s connect and explore these questions, and more, in a few days.
(free) Distinctions of Extraordinary Living Masterclass Zoom Meeting
ZOOM INFORMATION
Time: Friday, November 19th, 2021
9 AM Hawaii/ 11 AM Seattle/ noon Denver/ 2 PM New York/ 8 PM Paris
Do you have “emotional safety zones” in your life?
Emotional safety zones are relationships where you can express difficult emotions without fear of rejection. You may have experienced this with close family members, tight-knit friends, or even communities like churches, sangha, or group therapy.
But perhaps the most important person you can share a safety zone with is your spouse or romantic partner. After all, they are the one person you must come home to at the end of the day — both physically and emotionally. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to interact in ways that make you and your partner feel anything but safe with each other.
Life feels pretty lifey right now so I focus on refueling my resilience reservoir. I’m seeing challenges as opportunities by refreshing trust, focus, repair skills and faith. My husband is leaving Tuesday to take Everett to the NE United States to look at colleges. And we just had a 2nd opinion with a surgeon about Everett’s liver tumor, the jury is still out on all of this.
How about you? If you’re anything like me, you could list a bunch of things that could potentially drain you. Yet, like me, you are more invested in responding to life’s challenges as an opportunity for greater tenderness and strength.
If you are looking to re-imagine greater resilience in all your relationships, join me next Tuesday, October 5th. Teaching refills my reservoir, so please attend live if you can. I’m teaching a 45-minute webinar on Re-imagining Resilience with the HeartWise Relationship Webinars: Tools for Thriving Together.
Below is a gift: a free link for you to check out my course and enjoy free access to the other 5 recorded courses.
From my tender heart to yours and with big love & tenderness,
Amy
p.s. A couple weeks ago, I attended Laurie Weiss’s webinar “What To Do When You Can’t Change Your Partner” and found it quite informative and profoundly simple. She offered a great way to reclaim your energy from triggering events.
Here’s the link again to sign up for all the live webinars and recordings (including Laurie’s):
There is so much suffering in the world. Sometimes it seems like there is more than in the past, but today is yesterday. Perhaps the difference is we are more aware of the amount of suffering squeezed into any given slice of time.
It is possible to step out of suffer.
Today’s message is intended to get you resourced with a veritable plethora of healing opportunities. Choose one and dig deep, or choose many and aim high.
Please pay special attention to the final offering, a special offering to work 1:1 with me through the end of the year (I have 2 spots left).
healing collective trauma
engaging with Aloha
seeking truth & beauty
opening new doors of perception
building foundations of loving presence
Healing Trauma
Collective Trauma Summit starts Sunday, September 19th. Experts freely share poetry, talks, research, music and more. The Collective Trauma Online Summit takes place in partnership with the Pocket Project, a nonprofit organization and global initiative that aims to restore the fragmentation in our communities and societies by addressing and supporting the integration of collective and intergenerational trauma.
Relationship Tools
HeartWise Academy offers weekly affordable webinars to enhance the quality of your primary relationship. My offering will be October 5th. Details as follows:
Are you finding yourself stuck in dissatisfying personal and relationship patterns? Join the HeartWise Community to gain fresh perspectives and learn helpful skills and tools.
HeartWise Relationship Webinars: Tools for Thriving Together: Season 2
Participate live or watch the recording at your leisure.
This series will be held on Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Mountain Time, and recorded via Zoom.
$22/couple per session or $100 for all 6 sessions
Anniversary Podcast
Give Your Life Some Love podcast from the founders of the HeartWise Academy featuring me and my husband, Marc, on our 17th anniversary (in 2019). We share simple ways they connect, strengthen and align, as a couple, with our children and extended family, in a transformative manner of deep respect and Aloha.
Learning Aloha
Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, Hawaiʻi lifeways stewardship studies is opening a new cohort, starting October 10, 2021.
Distinctions of Extraordinary Living Masterclass on Energy from August with Kekuhi Kealiikanakaole (the founder of above program, Hālau ʻŌhiʻa)
My live Calendly link to sign up for a free heart-storming session to discuss any of the above options or to explore working 1:1 with me at a special discounted rate through the end of the year.
