Tick tock goes the clock

This past weekend, I was running (literally) to catch the train so I could go from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side in 45 minutes. I knew it was nearly impossible, but I had to try to be at work on time. The first train was fine, except it started to run local. Then after a few stops it ran express and my anxiety was relieved. Once I got to the station where I needed to change trains, the next train arrived at the platform. As I got on, I heard the conductor say, "This train will now run express". Ugh! I just needed to go two stops on the local. So, I get off the train. I'm fuming. I check my watch. I'm already five minutes late. I could feel the anxiety growing. Five minutes later, when the proper train arrives, I run on, and a big grin filled my face. On the train was this mom with a big 'ol Kermit the Frog knitted hat. We immediately started chatting and she said she had found one for her and one for her baby, but the baby often will say, "No Kermie!".  I showed her my dorky Kermit pictures and we shared Kermit stories. As I left, she said how nice it was to brighten someone's day. Once I saw her and started chatting, I realized, sometimes life is all about timing. If that earlier train had been one that I could have taken, I wouldn't have met that kind and cute woman who made my day.

“Patience is power.
Patience is not an absence of action;
rather it is "timing"
it waits on the right time to act,
for the right principles
and in the right way.”

-Fulton J. Sheen

 I know I need to chill out a bit more and just relax in all aspects of my life--work, love, friendships.
 I need to realize that when the timing is right, everything will work out as it is supposed to. 

“Your best work involves timing. If someone wrote the best hip hop song of all time in the Middle Ages, he had bad timing.” -Scott Adams

If the timing's right and the gods are with you, something special happens. -Rick Springfield

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.  -Octavia Butler

You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions.-Gary Ryan Blair

I love the idea of "the one" but I actually believe that there isn't a Miss Right. There are 12,000 Miss Rights out there and it's all timing. -Matthew Perry

Ask and you shall...

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it."
-Rabindranath Tagore

re·ceive/riˈsēv/

Verb:

Be given, presented with, or paid (something): "most businesses will receive a tax cut". Take delivery of (something sent or communicated): "he received fifty inquiries".

I've worked a lot on acceptance, and forgiveness, happiness, making myself happy, looking out for me, moving forward.....something I am still stuck on in certain parts of my life is receiving. I have such a difficult time being the recipient of "niceness". I like to give. I read this quote and totally related to it:

 From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it." -Erykah Badu

I know that is often what brings me the most happiness---giving. Whether it be cookies on my blissful block, a handshake and a smile as my wonderful boys enter the studio, or the cashier at the register that deserves a thank you--I love that external energy. 

However, it makes it a bit difficult when I sometimes also feel like this: 

There is a secret about human love that is commonly overlooked: Receiving it is much more scary and threatening than giving it. How many times in your life have you been unable to let in someone's love or even pushed it away? Much as we proclaim the wish to be truly loved, we are often afraid of that, and so find it difficult to open to love or let it all the way in. -John Welwood

For this Happy Tuesday, I'm working on the giving as well as the receiving. May you have a Tuesday filled with receiving all the beautiful things that life is offering to you....and take 'em darn it!

When you truly give up trying to be whole through others, you end up receiving what you always wanted from others. -Shakti Gawain

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need. -Kahlil Gibran

Just for a bit of fun:

Connect 4

con·nec·tion  (k-nkshn)

n.

1.

a. The act of connecting.

b. The state of being connected.

2. One that connects; a link: made a connection between the two pipes.

3. An association or relationship: There appeared to be no connection between the two crimes.

4. The logical or intelligible ordering of words or ideas; coherence.

5. Reference or relation to something else; context: In this connection, the agreement can be seen as a step toward peace.

6. A person, especially one of influence or importance, with whom one is associated, as by kinship or common interests: used her connections to land a job.

7. A conveyance or scheduled run providing continuing service between means of transportation: missed my connection in Atlanta.

8. A physical link, such as by wire or fiber-optic cable, between two or more points in a telecommunications system: established a connection to the Internet.

9. A means or channel of communication: couldn't hear due to the bad phone connection.

10. Slang

a. A drug dealer.

b. A purchase of illegal drugs.

I love to puzz. Puzzling is one of my favorite Winter activities. I love figuring out how all the pieces connect and you can start to look for the pieces that fit together (you even start dreaming in puzzles after a while...maybe that's just me!).  I'm finding that the puzzle pieces of my relationships are much more difficult that those Ravensburgers that I love so much.

As of late, my social and work calendars have been so packed--I feel like I'm short circuiting due to over-connecting. It doesn't help that I've lost my voice, yet once again, which doesn't allow for me to communicate and connect the way I like to. I'm still learning my lessons of connecting with disingenuous people and realizing that there are very few people in life who are honest, caring & have the capacity to have a genuine connection. Gotta keep listening to my instincts and sussing out who is genuine and who's just a jerkface. Whew. It's rough work. Maybe I'll just take a short hibernation....

Here's to a Tuesday of connection--with your self, your community, your friends, your favorite book...Happy Tuesday!

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. 

-Albert Schweitzer

Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected with others. Instead, we often contract, fear intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of separation. We crave love, and yet we are lonely. Our delusion of being separate from one another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives rise to all of this pain. -Sharon Salzberg

Only through our connectedness to other can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.

 -Harriet Goldhor Lerner

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect. -E.M. Forster

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Own own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller,  and we increase our capacity for connection--or compassionate action. -Daniel Goleman

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.... A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

- Rachel Naomi Remen

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.

- Herman Melville

Be Fearless

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

-Louisa May Alcott

Last weekend I went to a Haunted House. They had the attendees fill out a card before entering the event. The card asked what you were most afraid of. After hearing other people's answers of: the dark, spiders, bugs...I realized my answer of, "being unloved", was really not what they might have been looking for. There goes my honesty getting me into trouble again!

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed. 

-Michael Pritchard

I've been terrified lately. I've been so filled with fear that I think I've been making myself sick! This week, after receiving my fortune cookie that said, "Don't Panic", I thought it was time to just face my fears head on. Here's to being fearless and embracing those things that terrify you. Happy Tuesday. Be fearless! I'm gonna keep my little ship sailing along as I greet those fears every day.

He who fears to suffer, suffers from fear.  ~French Proverb

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light. 
-Dorothy Thompson

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them. -Marilyn Ferguson

Fear is my good friend, it shows me the way to nowhere; I choose another way. 
-Yossi Ghinsberg

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
-Marianne Williamson

Be good to you

I don't like myself, I'm crazy about myself -Mae West

Last week, I had the opportunity to go with one of my favorite neighbor peeps, Lisa, to her weekly yoga class at East Yoga. The class was great (not the same as my favorite Tglaz at Abhaya in Dumbo...) and she had us focus on a person we loved and something we wanted to give that person. I chose one of the most loved people in my life and chose love of self. We spent the hour and fifteen minutes devoting our practice to them, and fast forward, at the end of class the teacher says, "...and you chose this quality for your person because it's actually what you need for yourself". Bazaam! Totes.

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. -Budddha

I think I'm really good at loving other people. I'm good at taking care of them. Making their favorite treat to surprise them. Finding the perfect little thing to suit them. Listening when they need to talk. But, I'm not the best at taking care of myself. I hate cooking for myself. I'd rather listen than blabber on about my problems. I'll make a flour filled dessert before a mediocre gluten free treat that I could have myself....

So, this week's Happy Tuesday is about taking care of yourself and being good to yourself. Take some time today and do something for you that you would normally do for someone you love. Love who you are today and take care of that beautiful person.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance” -Oscar Wilde

If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself. -Barbara De Angelis

People who do not love themselves can adore others, because adoration is making someone else big and ourselves small. They can desire others, because desire comes out of a sense of inner incompleteness, which demands to be filled. But they can not love others, because love is an affirmation of the living growing being in all of us. If you don't have it, you can't give it. 
-Andrew Matthews

It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship. -Norman Vincent Peale

Instinct

Let your heart guide you. It whispers, so listen carefully. -Littlefoot's mother


There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.-Malcolm Gladwell

It's not easy to trust your own instincts. It's so easy to second guess ourselves and try to rely on logic. Something I learned about myself this summer was that I typically have really good instincts, the Tamstinct I like to call it. Here's to a Tuesday of following your heart, your own gut, your true instincts.

in·stinct  

n.

1. An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli: the spawning instinct in salmon; altruistic instincts in social animals.

2. A powerful motivation or impulse.

3. An innate capability or aptitude: an instinct for tact and diplomacy.

Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

-Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason. -Stanley Baldwin

In art as in love, instinct is enough. -Anatole France

Look within

This summer has offered me the luxury of spending lots of time alone. It's been wonderful...for the most part. I was recently spending a lovely Sunday afternoon doing my weekly snail mail ritual and came upon this quote on a card:

"Look Within. You are the world". -J. Krishnamurti 

 
For some reason, it really struck me and I realized that I've been spending the summer expanding my horizons, widening my friend circle, taking on new challenges, and in a sense, making my world a bigger place. Even though my outer world is expanding, I've also been building the little world that is me. Sometimes I don't like what I find. Sometimes I want to leave my world and travel to another. Sometimes I just give in and say, this is me, and I try to just love every little branch, every stream, and every pile of trash that's in that planet.

Phew. It's not easy people. Here's to expanding your world. Your self. You.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you'll discover will be wonderful.  What you'll discover is yourself.  ~Alan Alda

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.  ~Alice Walker

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there.  They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.  

~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.  ~Buddha