To be, or not to be…. Well.

What are your days like this winter?  Do you get up each day, tired and wondering if today you are going to get the office plague, have you spent the entire (albeit beautiful) Portland rainy winter hoping you don’t get H1N1?  Do you spend a good portion of your time working out various ways to avoid being ill and tired, avoiding digestive problems and other maladies?  How many of these problems do you have on a regular basis?

Here’s the real question:

How many of these health problems give you that niggly, squicky feeling in your head that there’s really something more serious going on?

Do you move toward health or away from illness?

Avoiding sickness holds a certain mindset.  It means expecting the illness and seeking only to move away from the pain and suffering it causes you. We continually worry that we may become sick and this worry undermines our immune systems.  We have to take time off of work to make emergency trips to our physician so that they can provide us with medications to alleviate our pain and problems, which again, undermine our purposes and goals.  Lost time at work and not being at our best, not to mention over use of antibiotics can really keep us from fully succeeding and living our lives to the fullest!

Your ideal health

What would it be like to seek health?  To continually look to the future and obtain a healthy body? A body that, in its natural state seeks homeostasis and ease?  What if you could lose the swings of good/bad and simply be amazing? What if the glass wasn’t half full or empty, but filled from a constant source of renewed health?

How would you think differently?  How would you act differently?  How would your life’s plans and goals change?

A winter full of health with no colds.  A life without the seasonal blah-blahs, no missed work, missed deadlines or missed goals.  A life where you are out of pain and have time to achieve your goals and still have time  for intimacy in your relationships.  What would happen then?

Your plans will change, your relationships will change, your life will change.  You’ll do something new, you will move toward and engage in, health.

All alternative medicine is based on seeking health, rather than running way from illness.  There is no glass half full or half empty, it is always being filled by a renewable source of life force and energy.  Chinese Medicine embraces and treats the  the whole body.  It succeeds in motivating you toward a whole new state of health.

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Tuina, cupping and nutritional counseling can all help you to start to look for and move toward ways to make your life better.  Acupuncture has been shown to boost immunity, relieve depression, relieve chronic pain, help you lose weight and give you an over all sense of well being.

To seek or to avoid?  One is open, full of possibility and future, one is reactive, constricting and full of fear.  Which are you?  Which will you choose for yourself this year?

Not sure about acupuncture just yet?  Read 5 Myths about Acupuncture

Picture is Marc Forrest’s via flickr

I have often thought about the various methods that can be used to find this life’s purpose or Will, and lo and behold, this morning I run across this great post from one of my favorite blogs, Dumb Little Man: Tips for Life.

I have always thought that what you love to do, what you enjoy learning and what you are compelled to fix are important aspects of what your purpose is.

What do people complement you on?  What sparks your creativity?

My favorite though is, What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?  This is great because oftentimes we stop, slip, slide and fall because we are unsure.  Our footing is light, tentative.  If you could walk with assurance in your Will, what would that look like?

A great place to start!

How do/did you discover your will and what is it?  Share with us in the comments!

Instead, I get to say, “I’m off to the Qi-mines” and wander off, on my own time to enjoy my entire day meeting amazing people and enjoying the fact that I help people feel better!

How long have you wanted to quit your job, go back to school, start a new art form, become a musician or generally make a major change in your life?

What is stopping you?

For me it began about 12 years ago when I first began to look at simplifying my life and trying to decide just what it was I was supposed to be doing.  At first it was all about figuring out how to make money, but over the years its become more about being happy and satisfied, than making money.

Today I realized that while I may not be in the income bracket that I am shooting for I am getting closer with each step.   I am, however happy. I’ve achieved an incredibly high level of personal satisfaction and happiness in my life.

What keeps you from simply jumping?

Sure, its scary and you have no idea what you will end up with half of the time, but think… you COULD plan it, couldn’t you?  A colleague of mine recently downsized her living situation and revamped her entire lifestyle so that she can take off six months and travel and spend that time figuring out what her future is about.  She’s clear that when she gets home, she’ll have a new plan.

Fear often keeps us from jumping.  What do you fear?  How can you alleviate those fears? Keep a journal and write down every single reason that you “shouldn’t” change.  Then one by one start smashing and removing those obstacles.  Or, if they aren’t movable, find a way to work with them and make them help you.

What did you end up with?

Either you choose it consciously, or you float into it by “accident” but you have chosen your life as you live it now.  Your house, partner, car, kids, bills, bike and happiness are all a result of an action or set of actions you took.  Its time to start doing these things with intention.  Each time you need to make a decision, even the little ones, it may help you to ask, “To what end?”  Does this action lead you to self support and toward the desired result?

Still too Scared to Jump?

• I couldn’t quit my job, I’d starve!
• I don’t know how to make that work!
• I have to pay the bills!
• I want to be X, but I don’t know that much about being X, maybe I’m too stupid!

First off, the starving, work and bills all have to do with input and output.  If you require less output, you need less input.  Obvious, I know, but prioritizing your life’s goals versus what makes you feel good right now for a while can get you to a place where you can make the jump toward doing that which you truley desire to do.

Not knowing enough about what you desire is actually one excuse I hear about often, but it is one you don’t see around the blogs much.  You want to go to school, but paperwork has kept you from applying for years.  You want to move to another city but are unsure how you’ll make new friends.  Its just a huge black hole of UNKNOWING, right?

Recently I was speaking with a woman who had been retired for a few years and had wanted her entire life, to take an around the world trip.  She had the money, she had the freedom, but she said, “It all just seems like a lot of details and I wouldn’t know where to start”.  She’s fairly young, free and would be otherwise worry free during her trip, yet the planning itself seemed too difficult to get her started.

Put one foot in front of the other

The first step is always the hardest.  Try poking into it a bit.  Look up some travel sites, call the school, get a book from the library, or take any other simple, first step and get started.  Once you get even just a little bit of knowledge, the rest comes easier.

Take a deep breath tonight before you fall asleep.  Take a few of them and really imagine what your body would feel like if it wasn’t on this constant trip of neverending stress that you put it through.

Take that persona off for just a day and see how it feels.  What could you achieve?  Who could you be?

More importantly, can you dare not to?

You see, here in Portland, we complain about the rain a fair bit, but we tend to get far too busy and frenetic in the summer. It’s like we simply aren’t quite sure what to do with all that sunlight.   Once the first chilled rain hits, everyone dons their favorite sweaters, urban walking shoes and the always present scarf and “settles in”. You can tell when this happens because they all have a smile on their faces, their shoulders are a few inches lower and they have a no-guilt look on their faces while they clutch their favorite coffee drink.  We all smile that familiar smile and say, “Rain!”

First Rain - Time to prepare for fall Photo by Morimur via Flickr

Yes, the dampness has arrived.  Oh sure, we’ll have a beautiful October before the cascading sheets of water descend upon us, but we know it in our bodies, it’s time to get ready for fall.

My office is in Northeast Portland in a quiet neighborhood that has many, many squirrels.  There’s a huge oak tree in the back yard and right about now the acorns are plummeting out of the trees.  A week back I sat in the back yard watching them fall only to realize that some of the squirrels were pitching them to the ground then running down and burying them or throwing them against the house, trying to break them!

For two weeks now my treatments have been punctuated by the “POP” and “BANG” of acorns being flung at the house and also of those falling from the huge old tree.

This makes me smile of course, but it also reminds me that it’s time to store things:

It’s time to store Qi for winter.

In the winter time, our bodies go into hibernation mode a bit and we get less energy from the world around us.  Our bodies will become cold, our minds more stagnant and for those of us who suffer from stomach and gastro-intestinal problems such as cramps, abdominal pain and low appetite caused by cold in the body, now is a GREAT time to store heat in the form of warm colored roots and soups.  It is time to eat mildly acrid and energetically warm foods that compensate for the onset of external cold, such as oats, millet, corn, rice, carrots, sweet potatoes, leeks, beef and lamb.  For when you feel very cold inside and feel something coming on, bring in garlic, cinnamon, chili, ginger and onions to stimulate Qi circulation and rapidly bring the defensive Qi to the surface of your body.

It’s time to think about our immune systems

Now is the time to get into your acupuncturists office and tell them to take care of your Wei Qi!  Wei Qi or Defensive-Qi is a kind of Qi which is produced by the combination of the air we breathe with the nutrients we absorb from food. The functions of defensive-Qi are warming and nourishing the body and protecting the body against pathogenic factors (germs, viruses and bacteria etc).   Your acupuncturist can use acupuncture and Chinese Herbs to help you gather Wei Qi and be ready for winter’s cold and flu season. Foods to supplement with to help stimulate Wei Qi: Chilis, curry, ginger and pepper, spiced teas and cauliflower, leeks, horseradish, onions and watercress.  Almonds and almond butter are good as well.

If you feel something coming on do the following:

1. CALL YOUR ACUPUNCTURIST!

• They can help you fight this off quickly!

2. Make a decoction of fresh ginger and green onions as follows:

• Simmer thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger and green onions in two cups of water for about ten minutes and drink while warm.
• This will help your defensive Qi to rise to the surface and fight the pathogen.

It’s time to think about our happiness

Photo by postcardsfromhome via Flickr

Are you happy?  Are you well in your life?  Do you really want to go through another winter unhappy?  Do you suffer from depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder? Tell your acupuncturist!  She can help you deal with these things now in preparation for the darker and longer days of winter.  There are many therapies that can help with Seasonal Affective Disorder as well as depression, including acupuncture, Chinese Herbs and light and heat therapies.   In addition, think about any changes you might like to make to your life.  Wouldn’t you rather be sitting in a warm house with a great cup of tea thinking about how happy you are, rather than ruminating on why it is so bad?

Here’s a great post by Leo Babauta on Happiness over at Zen Habits.  He’s a great writer and on the top of my “Read it every day” blog list.

Fall is a gorgeous time in our fair city!  Its one that should be celebrated and enjoyed.

Take ten minutes out of your day today and think about your plans this winter.  Educate yourself and decide how you plan to keep your Qi stores high and productive, charge up your immune system and reevaluate your levels of happiness and start making plans for change. Then get out your favorite sweaters, scarves and other cold damp items and get ready, our beloved rain will be back very shortly, giving you less distractions and a quiet place within which to do your Great Work!

I’ve been reading this blog for a while now.  Jeff is full of ideas about finding meaning in your life and living it well.

I particularly found his recent post intriguing because he really calls out those of us who tend to victimize ourselves.

Jeff says:

I acknowledge that bad things happen to good people.  I’ll also admit that these bad things create huge obstacles in our lives.  In addition, I’ll concede the point that we often don’t have any control over these happenings.

HOWEVER, and this is a big however, we choose our reaction to what happens to us.

In the moment when something bad happens to you, you are a victim, but that is over as soon as the event is over.  Let it go and make the best of the rest of your life!

Read the rest of his post here.

Are there areas where you are still letting something in the past control how you live now?  Is your job, your partner or your health causing you to not do that which you truly will to do?  Share in the comments!

When my son was very young, I started rising at what seemed like an extraordinarily early hour, 5am, so I could have some peace and quiet. This time became some “me time” and I just sat and drank my tea and watched the sunrise. This alone is an excellent reason for getting up early, but if you are wanting to make a bit more out of this time, it can be done.

Photo by Swami Stream via Flickr

The problem isn’t what to do with our time.

We are all so busy now that any amount of extra time we can find is good. The problem arises when we try and rise early. Its hard.

Steve Pavlina posted about rising early quite some time ago, and as a regular reader of his blog and someone who values being productive, I have to agree. This is one of the number one ways to take control of your life.

So, what can to do to make this much easier?

• Don’t make drastic changes. Your body is set to wake up at a certain time. Shocking it into a new state immediately may work for some, but for most of us, starting slowly, by waking just 15-30 minutes earlier than usual can make the difference between success and failure. Get used to this for a few days. Then cut back another 15 minutes. Do this gradually until you get to your goal time.
• Allow yourself to sleep earlier. Your body needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night to process. Your body undergoes an immense amount of activity while you are sleeping, cleaning your blood, oxygenating your system and rebuilding and re-energizing. You do not want to rob your health of the process it needs to stay happy. Try going to bed earlier slowly, just like waking. Once you are waking earlier, you will get tired earlier as well.
• Put your alarm clock far from you bed. If it’s right next to your bed, you’ll shut it off or hit snooze. Never hit snooze. Snoozing is a terrible habit that makes you more tired over the course of the day. Your body needs to wake up once, not multiple times per day. If it’s far from your bed, you have to get up out of bed to shut it off. By then, you’re up. Now you just have to stay up.
• Get out of the bedroom as soon as you shut off the alarm. Don’t allow yourself to rationalize going back to bed. Just force yourself to go out of the room.
• Do not rationalize. If you allow your brain to talk you out of getting up early, you’ll never do it. Don’t make getting back in bed an option. Just get up and get it done. Once you are up and moving, it will feel much better.
• Do allow yourself to sleep in once in a while. Give yourself one day a week to catch up and rest. Enjoy sitting in bed in the morning if that is something you find valuable, and just take it easy. It will be a great reward for all of the productive things you have done with the rest of your week!
• That being said, make waking up early a reward. Yes, it might seem at first that you’re forcing yourself to do something hard, but if you make it pleasurable, soon you will look forward to waking up early. Enjoy a early morning cup of some of the best coffee. Have a great breakfast. Spend some of your time watching the sunrise or meditating. You have time now!
• Take advantage of all that extra time. Don’t wake up an hour or two early just to read your blogs or surf the net. Get a jump start on your day! Lay out a major goal for the day the night before and once you are well fed and ready to go, get to work on it. Use this time to get ahead, take care of yourself and be more healthy, not less.
• Enjoy the sunrise! Pay attention to the colors, the birds and your surroundings.

A while back I posted about Simplicity and organization and talked about mental debt and keeping the mind free and open.

While having systems such as to do lists and calendars in place to put the things that come to our minds, the reminders, the constant nag that you have something to do, safely away, I realize that doing that is not enough. We need to have a mind that flows and a mind that seamlessly is integrated into our body, keeping it calm and free of stress. A mind that flows with movement, that can be calm but powerful when need be. It occurred to me that we need to have a “Mind Like Water” state.

Letting go - Having a mind like water

A much famous quote from Bruce Lee:

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”

The common way of thinking about this is that organizational or productivity system is the path or goal and the Mind Like Water is the destination. Having this fluid organizational system becomes something to attain.

The possession of anything begins in the mind
-Bruce Lee

To obtain anything, we need to possess it, own it and begin the process of integrating it into our minds and bodies.

I believe Bruce is right: possession of a mind like water begins in the mind. It’s not productivity first, mind like water second. It’s the other way around.

Find your calm places, find things to do that encourage peace and calm, rather than anxiety and anger. Empty your mind of the thoughts of busy and do not latch onto actions and interactions that cause unrest and turmoil.

A calm and adaptable body and mind are essential for health. Find yours.

In our society today, many adults, and tragically, kids as well find themselves lost in their lives when it comes to having a simple, straightforward life. I’d like to address two topics that I believe are important when trying to find ways to make stress less of a part of your life and to begin to take control of what your purpose in life really is.

Organization and Simplicity.

Both of these topics have been high on the list of buzz topics in the last few years. Everyone is into life hacks. In fact, one of my favorite blogs is Lifehacker, a website devoted to giving you easier ways to do things, better ways to live and simpler ways of being productive. There’s a reason these types of blogs are gaining in popularity. We’re all working ourselves to the bone, one job, and two jobs; sometimes three, to keep things running, but I often wonder how smoothly they really are running. We’ve complicated our working lives, our social circles and our health to the point of disease.

First of all, what is organization? My friends, family and colleagues often say I am organized, and one recently asked me, “You know, you are so incredibly organized and you talk about simplifying your life, but it’s never been my experience that being organized is simple, it’s always a mess of complicated things you need to do to make your life WORK.”
Organization really IS quite simple.

• Downsize
• The Home principle
• Mental Debt

Downsize

This is often the hardest part. You have to get rid of everything you do not want, need, or use. Those piles of boxes? They take up a lot of room that you “needed” so you got a bigger apartment. That bigger apartment costs more to keep at a stable temperature, takes more time to clean and keep neat and the sheer amount of things in it keep your mental debt high just thinking of them.

Simplifying your life can reap incredible benefits. A few years ago I began following this Simplicity Checklist. I looked at one thing a week and worked to accomplish that item all week if it applied to me. I’m now down to the bottom of the list and I can honestly say that this checklist alone changed my life in incredible ways. Check it out. If you’ve been wanting to clean up and make your life more manageable, this is it. While you are at it, check out the other great suggestions and productivity tips at Zen Habits

The Home principle

The home principle is very simple. Once you only have the things in your home and life that you need, make sure they have a home in your life. Go into each room and make sure every single item in your house has a place it’s supposed to “live” when not in use. This way, you completely eliminate the hard part of cleaning, “Where am I going to put all of this stuff?” Have a home for your Inbox, which is mail, paper items that come into the house that need to be taken care of, have a home for keys, toothpaste and shoes. Have a home for your extra candles, your watering can, your recycling. If you use items in more than one place, have one in each place. For example, I brush my teeth at night at the sink, so I have toothpaste and a brush there, but I like to brush my teeth in the shower in the morning, so I also have a set there. I have lubricating eye drop in no less than three places in my home. Every action has an item, and every item has a home. Cleaning then becomes easy. Just put everything away where it lives.

Mental debt

This is a huge problem for me. I’m a multi-tasker by nature and used to go on and on to my friends about how I enjoyed doing more than one thing at a time, even before the concept was in common usage. However, doing so requires that I keep everything in my head all at once. To do this, I need space in there. The concept is like freeing up RAM in your computer so that it is more capable to process. If your mind is always over loaded with when your next dentist appointment is, how you are going to organize that next work party and whether or not you want to take that new job, its pros and cons, it won’t have space to process the creative impulses it naturally gets. Worry, rumination, remembering, considering, reminding and daydreaming all take up space in your head and are considered mental debt. The key is to find ways to removing these things from your head, and keeping them somewhere safe, that you trust.

Some ways I use to keep mental debt out of my head

Google Calendar – For keeping track of things such as appointments, schedules, menus (what foods we’ll be eating on what day, also reminds me to take things out of the freezer), my monthly cycles and related reproductive information, ritual schedules and the like. I review my calendar weekly to make sure it is up to date and then never worry about when and where again.

Remember The Milk – Now I am a huge fan of this service. It’s not for everyone, but it is so highly customizable that I have been in to do list love with my “Cow” as I call it since these guys were still in beta. It’s a free service that you can use to set reminders of all types, keep lists, birth day reminders, housecleaning reminders and your to do items split up by lists, categories and priorities. My lists include my yearly goals and are things like:

• Health – Goals and reminders for my health.
• Housework – Simple reminder to clean various rooms on various days. I do one room a day, based on Feng Shui.
• Family and Friends – Reminders to schedule lunches with my son, potluck shared dinners with my closest friends and date nights with my honey.
• Esoteric Studies – I set out a curriculum for myself yearly as to what I want to learn and accomplish and this reminds me what topic I am learning today and to stay on track.
• Tensegrity Health To Do list – My work, insurance reminders, birthday reminders, inventory, scheduling, meetings for lunch with doctors to grow my network, everything.
• Event organizing – I volunteer and organize a lot of events as a part of my duties. This reminds me to make announcements, get volunteers and follow up with people on items.
• Wedding – We’re getting married in May and this has the to do items such as buy wedding rings, make dress and send out announcements.
• Personal To Do – Things such as journaling daily, record my cycles etc are here in daily reminders.
• Volunteering – Other miscellaneous items in regards to my volunteer work. I have other lists I use here as well.
• And many others

My cell phone – I use my phone to remember things when I am away from the computer. I have voice notes, but you can also just send yourself a voice mail. “Remember to put that dinner with David on your calendar when you get home.”, “Remember to schedule that lunch with Joseph”. Etc.

Email – Now I use Gmail, and I love it. Threaded conversations make older email clients seem useless. The spam filters alone mean that I never have to spend time in my head wondering/worrying and figuring out how to get Viagra ads out of my personal space. I consider it a huge part of my healthy lifestyle. It also allows me to keep in touch with my family and keep organized.
Chinese Medicine and Organization
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, all things have correspondences and all things must be in balance for health to occur. Each organ relates to each other organ. All of the systems are interwoven to feed, nurture and control each other.

A lifestyle that balances out the various aspects of your life so they too can feed, nurture and control each other is essential. You must eat nutritious, healthy foods. Exercise and move your body. Have fun; enjoy your friends, your family and your loved ones. Work hard and well.

All of these things are much easier to put into place when your basic needs are well taken care of, balanced and organized. Have a clean living environment in which to do your life’s work and you will find that the space you’ve made will then be able to be filled with all of those things you’ve been putting off, but which your heart has been yearning to do.

Start a new career. Learn a musical instrument. Travel around the world. What is stopping you today? What are you using as excuses?

Look around you now and see if your world view is cluttered and messy. Spend just a few minutes today thinking about ways that you can clear your vision, make room for your real purpose and get to work.