Singing in the rain

I currently stay in Glasgow. It is a city where, in my opinion, too many people spend too much time moaning about the weather……

So yesterday it was absolutely pishing* down….. There’s just no other word that describes the way in which the water was coming from the clouds in the sky.

Somewhere in the afternoon there was a gap in the rain and the most beautiful rainbows appeared.

Ah, the wonderful beautiful planet that we live on.

Anyway, the rainbows inspired me to get on my runners and go for, what could loosely be termed, a run  – while it was dry….. Five minutes in and it started to rain, but I decided to keep going because skin is waterproof 🙂

Running in the rain, listening to great tunes and getting truly soaked made me feel utterly and completely alive. It was totally bloody exhilarating!!! I was practically skipping (yes I am still doing that, for those of you who have read earlier blogs) and I have to confess I was singing out loud too……

But here’s the thing. Running in the rain made me feel alive like I haven’t felt in a while. I was totally present in my body and in the moment and what a glorious moment it was.

By the time I got back home I literally had to prise my running stuff off my body. I was so wet it was almost sticking to me like glue.

However, what has stayed with me is the awareness that I want to feel like this for more of my wonderful life. To feel fully alive, connected and filled with joy and gratitude. To live a life of glorious technicolor in 3D, not a two dimensional fuzzy life.

Life is for living, not existing.

So here’s the question I want to leave you with because it is one that I will be asking myself this week……….

What could you do in your life today that would make you feel truly alive connected and full of joy?

*Pishing  is a Glasgow slang word with multiple uses – one of which being to describe really heavy rain :)))

This is me, who are you?

I KNOW that I am a powerful creator, capable of more than I could imagine in my wildest dreams. What I believe I will create.

I WISH that everyone could truly know and experience their awesomeness. That everyone could experience that life can be fun and expansive when we connect with our magic.

I DREAM of a world where we are all eager to get up and  go out and play in the world every day. How cool would that be?(I’d get up earlier!)

I NEVER settle. It’s simply not in my nature. I’m an adventurer an explorer and more is always possible. I want it all.

I BELIEVE that judgement crushes possibilities. We limit ourselves, we just do it unwittingly.

I THINK questions are the way to change our world. Conclusions stick our energy, questions create new possibilities and more choices.

I LOVE connection. I love connecting with the energy of the world around me: trees, people, animals. Everything has something to gift us when we are willing to receive it. Connection makes my heart sing, it makes me feel joy and alive and makes the energy course through my body so that every nerve ending tingles.

I HOPE you read this and it gets you thinking about what you would write if you were to put your words here instead of me 🙂

Kids v adults…. Who’s really teaching who?

There have been periods in my life when I haven’t felt good enough. Sort of like an imposter. When I’ve been in situations where perhaps I’ve have allowed myself to feel intimidated by others, although they probably were unaware of it!

I’ve never really been able to figure it out…… Recently it came up for me again and a random conversation with a dear friend made the whole thing clearer for me. (At this point I would like to say that this dear friend is a man of nearly 60, but he reminds me more of a teenage girl at heart. He’s a kindred free spirit.)

In sharing my ‘perceived plight’, he started to tell me he felt the same. The more we talked about it, the more clear it seemed to be that there are some of us on this planet who are taking ourselves very seriously (the adults) and others of us who just want to play and have fun (the kids).  I’m definitely in the latter category.

I’m a big kid at heart. It’s just that I’m a kid dressed up in an adult body. I want to have fun and play.

I think that life’s supposed to be fun and that we’re here to experience ourselves as the awesome creators we are. I don’t want to live in the adult world. It doesn’t feel like so much fun there to me.

But I think that often somewhere along the line we really forgot that and too many of us became really serious about fixing ourselves…..

But what if there were nothing to fix and just different choices to make? After all, ultimately everything’s energy and it is our intentions that begin the process of creating our physical realities.

What if being like a kid in the world is actually closer to our true nature? 

Kids dream and imagine. Adults plan and try and control.

Kids are engaged with what’s in front of them. They live in the moment. Adults mostly live in the past and the future.

Kids are spontaneous. Adults prefer structure.

Kids make up the rules as they go along. Adults stick to the rules.

Kids have a real strong knowing and can sense things intuitively with ease. Adults get stuck in their heads and try and ‘solve’ things with their minds.

Kids play. Adults don’t play enough.

Kids trust. Adults are suspicious.

Kids have fun. Adults want to tick their ‘to do’ lists and are engaged in the ‘serious’ business of living.

Kids are accepting. Adults judge themselves and everyone else.

Kids express themselves. Adults repress their emotions……

Maybe all the things we’re really looking for aren’t found in that job, house, relationship etc etc, maybe they’re to found by embracing the kid within each of us.

So kids v adults. Who’s really teaching who? Just saying.

How much are you really listening?

I know that the universe is talking to us all the time. But how much are you really listening?

Recently, I was buying my lovely Mum some flowers.

I went into the shop and immediately saw some big, cream chrysanthemums. But I didn’t like them. Wrong colour. Wrong flower. Nope, not these ones.

So, I wandered round the circular flower display, but none of them were really calling me. I found myself back in front of the big, cream chrysanthemums.

My thoughts were going like this. ‘I do not like these, I’m not buying them. No.’

Ok, look again Laura. So, once again I wandered round the flowers, more slowly and more determinedly this time. But nothing was really grabbing my attention, and again I found myself standing back in front of the big cream chrysanthemums.

And then I started to smile. Hmmmm was the universe trying to talk to me?

While I wasn’t loving these flowers, I somehow felt that they were the ones I was supposed to get.  So I did.

Now, here’s where it gets magical.

I gave them to my Mum and here’s what she said, ‘Laura, these were your Gran’s favourite flowers’ 🙂

I felt a shiver run through my body. Awesome!

I’m always telling my Mum that her Mum, my Gran, is always around her and her she was once again showing us that.

How utterly beautiful and magical. I was grinning, and for my Mum these were more than flowers.

So why am I sharing this simple story with you?

The flowers I didn’t like, turned out to the perfect flowers, and so much more than flowers.

So I guess this has made me more curious about what else could happen if  I dropped my judgements and listened more with my heart than my head?

I know, for me, it was a beautiful reminder of the magic that the universe is capable of when we listen to our hearts and follow these promptings.

These promptings always lead us to joy and love and is that not what this curious journey of living is really about?

So how much are you listening?

Do you live safe or live true?

I don’t know about you, but do you ever feel like you’ve got it all figured out and then, in the next moment, everything goes out of focus and you’ve become all entangled in one of your deeply held stories?

How do you know that you’re entangled?

Well, because you experience emotions that are difficult to hold, and these emotions are indicators that you’ve somehow gotten out of balance with yourself.

So I have a story which kinda goes like this….. I find it hard to be truly vulnerable. It seems that sometimes I want to protect myself more than I want to open up.

Living in a society where individuality is not always embraced, welcomed or accepted, it can feel hard to allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable with another. We fear judgement and rejection. We want to be ourselves, yet we want to be accepted.

So here I am on this curious journey of living. I’m aware that I have this story. But I want to change it, because it’s limiting me.

The more I tell myself I find it hard to be vulnerable, the more I’m reinforcing the story and creating it in my life. But what if this story is just an old story that no longer serves me? A story from my past, which will only stay alive if I keep directing energy to it.

And really – who I am running from? Hmmm, probably myself.

I don’t know what being vulnerable means to you, but for me……

Being vulnerable is about being truly authentic in front of another.

Being vulnerable means I show all of me.

Being vulnerable means I live in the flow of the moment and not the story in my head.

Being vulnerable means I speak from my heart without worrying about what will, or won’t, come back to me.

Being vulnerable means I fully engage in the experience, and with person, in front of me.

Being vulnerable means I act from a place of love, not a place of fear.

Being vulnerable mean choose to stay open, even when it feels scary, and I don’t shut down. 

Living in our comfort zone may feel easier, but it can also make us feel like we’re not really living. Closing down from life means that we won’t experience all the awesome wonders and gifts that life has to offer us. It’s where the magic is.

I want to experience and live the magic. I want to live true, not safe.

That takes courage and practice. But courage is what I said in an earlier post will create the connection, inspiration and bliss that is on my menu for this year.

As I write this I smile, in itself this post is a step in the right direction.

So do you live safe or live true? What about you – when was the last time you allowed yourself to be truly vulnerable?

It’s a question of love…

I have a question………

You’ve probably been in love in your life. Maybe you are now, or maybe you have been in the past. Maybe you have thought you were and then realised you weren’t. I don’t know…..

But here’s my question.

What do you mean when you say to someone you’re dating ‘I love you’?

Here are some things I think it can mean, and have meant to me in the past.

I love you = ‘you make me happy’.

Except, ultimately we can only make ourselves happy. Putting our happiness outside ourselves is making someone else responsible for our happiness. It doesn’t work. If you’re unhappy before you’re ‘in love’, then love isn’t going to make you happy in the long term…… and then when it doesn’t we say we’ve ‘fallen out of love’.

And, if the other person changes their mind and leaves – Well, your world will pretty much feel like it has ended.

I love you = ‘I can’t live without you’.

Really? So, you need them. So your anchor for life is them? You need them to be ok? Not wise. You’ll always be trying to ‘get them’ and putting your energy into something you can’t control….. Are you not enough on your own?

Attachment feels heavy and neediness is rarely attractive…. And you’ll probably not recognise yourself, the more you twist and contort yourself into what you think they want you to be to ‘keep them’.

I love you = ‘you should know what I need’.

We cannot make someone else responsible for meeting our needs, they will always disappoint us. Our needs are our responsibilities.

I love you = ‘you should agree with me’

They should believe what we believe, think what we think. This resistance just creates tension. We see them as we want them to be, not as they are. You see your idea of who they are, not who they actually are. Generally speaking this creates arguments and we can become disillusioned.

If you loved me you wouldn’t have done x, y or z.  

And this one  ….. Is this not all about control? Control kills and stifles energy.  As Margaret Atwood said in the Edible Woman, ‘I love you. Is that a fact or a weapon?’

We use the words ‘I love you’ with ease and speed, and then often we unconsciously set about  changing the very thing that attracted us to the other. It’s madness!

We try (and fail) to label and name and identify ‘the thing’ and in doing so we constrict the energy. We quite literally kill it off because everything is energy and energy either grows and expands or contract and dies.

Or else we analyse it. When he/she said/did that what did they mean? Where are ‘we’ going?

This just limits the experience. It means that we are future focused and not actually in the experience.

All of what I have been talking about here feels heavy………..

None of this is love as I see it.

So what is love?

It’s allowing someone to be who they truly are. It’s about recognising and dropping judgements about the person standing in front of us. It is about seeing and appreciating the essence of who they really are.

It’s being in the moment. Letting the story unfold, and going on the adventure with curiosity.

It’s following the energy, knowing that no matter how awesome you think it could be, that the universe can always deliver something more amazing when we create the space for that to happen.

It’s gifting to the other, just because you can, with no expectation of anything in return. It’s about giving up the economics and transactional love that keeps count.

It’s freedom. Without definitions, labels and commitments. Like a dance that is just flowing with the energy. Knowing that whatever happens, you will both be enriched by the experience.

It’s connection. Connection that goes beyond words, because as beautiful as words are, they are inadequate.

It’s allowing the experience to be what it is without judgement or wondering where it is going. Being with it in each unfolding moment.

It’s really showing up. Being vulnerable, knowing that when we do that we create space for the other person to do the same.

What if, in the freedom of just allowing the experience to be what it is, instead of what we think it ‘should be’, we could have the security that many of us seem to be longing for? How awesome would that be????

Personally I think we should come up with a new word for love. Any suggestions?

So what does ‘I love you’ mean for you?

Are you using your wings to fly?

As I write this I can feel the energy pulsing through my body. I feel alive, alert and connected.  It’s been a magical day of planned and unplanned pleasures, treasures and surprises and the day’s not over yet!

However, it’s not always been this way for me. There were many years that I was asleep in my body and in my life.  Where life felt really hard. Where it felt like I couldn’t fit, nor could I find the contentment and peace I was looking for.

Everything felt like a struggle. Therefore everything was a struggle. I was always looking to the future, in the hope that somehow it would be better. It wasn’t.

I looked for stuff to validate me and to make me feel better about myself. It didn’t.

I worried about everything and was always trying to figure things out. I found it hard to commit to anything – home, people, jobs……..It always felt that something better was possible. I just couldn’t quite get it.

Maybe this sounds familiar to you? Maybe it’s the life you’re living just now?

If you are, then stop it. Right now.

Stop trying to live other people’s versions of you. You’ll never be able to do it and it’ll never bring you the happiness you’re looking for.

It’s like having a beautiful voice and never singing or a beautiful bird and you tie it’s wings and never let it fly.

Why would you do that to yourself?

Why do you do that to yourself?

Trust yourself. Trust your knowing.

Stop thinking the world is out to get you. It’s not, unless you think it is…..

Stop doing the ‘right’ thing. There is no right thing, there is only what is right for you in this moment.

Listen to your heart, it will never let you down. The more you listen to it the louder it will sing.

So no matter where you are in your life, with what challenges you are facing things can change……

You can choose something different.

Choose You. But better.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make your something else is the greatest accomplishment.’

Go on, I dare you!

London. The friendliest city in the world

When we find fun in what we perceive as ‘the mundane’, life can become so much more of an adventure.

Take this morning….. I was meeting one of my very, very, very favourite people early at Heathrow, as she just happened to passing through London and this was the only time we could get together.

I have to confess as much as I wanted to see her, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the prospect of travelling on the tube in rush hour. So, in order to make the journey more fun, I playfully asked a friend how many people did he think I could get to smile at me on the tube.

What a ridiculous idea. Everyone knows that London’s not a friendly place.

Really? Is that true or is that just a story we tell ourselves? And in the telling ourselves the story do we close ourselves off to the possibilities that exist all around us all the time?

15 he said. 15??? Yip 15. Ok, I am always up for a challenge, especially when it feels fun. It was definitely making me feel different about my tube journey. Although 15 did feel like quite a lot. Not that I told him that!

As I set off I thought ok, if I try to do this it won’t work. I just need to be open and curious and follow the energy.

I had a couple of quick wins, which tickled me. I liked this game. Some people looked at me like I had just showed up from a different planet. Some people really connected openly and warmly. Some people were really shy, almost checking that it was them I was smiling at.

I did have a fair number of knock backs – but actually somehow that felt funny too.

My best one was 5 smiles all at once! I moved to allow a group of women to all be able to sit together and they all smiled at me together! Honestly, I was almost floating!

I’ve forgotten to mention that throughout the journey I was listening to my iPod. I have over 500 songs on my iPod and I was listening to them on shuffle…… (I like surprises!) Anyway, after my 5 smile victory the next song came on……. ‘Smile like you mean it’ by the Killers. Honestly I thought I was going to fall off my seat laughing……. Ok universe you are sooooo funny.

So did I meet the challenge??  Of course I did – that was never in doubt. 21 in total.

I’m beginning to think that London’s the friendliest city in the world!

Imagine if everyone travelling on the tube played that game…. Who knows what could happen? The very thought makes me laugh out loud!

So where can you create fun and connection and possibilities in your life?

 

The sheer bliss of connection

I was sitting outside in the sunshine the other day having coffee with a friend. Walking back to his flat we were saying how cold we were from sitting outside, when, out of the corner of my eye, I happened to see an old lady with gloves on in her garden. She’s got the right idea with her gloves I thought.

We made eye contact, and I smiled and said hello. It turned out that my friend knew her, so we stopped to chat to her and her daughter.

I was really drawn to this old lady and her lovely energy pulled me in. Despite never having met there was an instant connection. I could feel the warmth and sparkle and playfulness in her spirit, even though she spoke of a body that couldn’t do so much anymore.

After chatting for some time about life, people, seeing the good in everything, being grateful and how we are all on a journey (not your typical conversation for someone you’ve only met 5 minutes earlier) it was time to go.  As we were leaving I said to her, ‘I’d really love to give you a hug.’

She smiled at me, opened her little arms wide, stepped forward and we hugged. Really hugged. Properly hugged. A hug that felt warm and filled with love and connection and that seemed to last for ages.

I walked away smiling on the inside, feeling bliss from the connection.

There are people I’ve known for years in my life whom I’ve never experienced that kind of connection with.

So why am I sharing this?

Well that brief encounter felt really significant for me.

Life is what we make it. Experiences can harden us, or we can choose to keep our hearts soft and open.

It reminded me that when I am open with life, then life is open with me and magic and unexpected treasures can show up.

That connection is one of the most wonderful experiences of being human on this planet. The possibility of connection is all around us, when we slow down enough to be truly present with ourselves and others. We just need to pay attention and have open hearts and seize the opportunities.

While writing this article I came across this 3 minute clip – check it out. It will make your heart smile. Free hugs

Hugging is great. It makes us feel connected and we all need to feel connected.

Imagine a world filled with hugging. How cool would that be?

Who do you need to be hugging more in your world?

Are you following the signs?

Do you ever do something, just because it feels right?

More and more I can say yes to this.

I feel right now, that the universe is helping me get better at following the signs….. You know these quiet promptings that you feel compelled to act on, that don’t always make sense?

So here’s an example. I’m housesitting for a friend just now. I was wondering whether to go to a talk on the evening of the day I arrived. The talk was in another part of London and I couldn’t really figure out how to get there, (I wanted to take the bus) and so just decided I wouldn’t bother. Having made my decision I left the flat to go to the local shops. I got to the end of the street, turned onto the main road and started to laugh….. The bus in front of me said ‘South Kensington’ – it was going to where the talk was taking place! I laughed out loud and said, ‘Ok I’m going’……Then, at the supermarket the person who served me was called Agnes – not a name you see around much these days – but for me really significant. It’s the name of my aunt, who is now dead, but really significant for me on my spiritual journey…… Again I laughed…. Ok, I’m definitely going ……And I did.

Feels like the past few days have been filled with more and more of this.

The old contact I met for dinner, who said I can stay at his place in London for the odd night if I need to…. Perfect, I’ve been looking for a space to stay in.

The walk I took, with random left and right turns (just because it was a nice day). I turn down a road and there’s a quote on a board outside a shop. ‘No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.’ Ah, I think, I like that. It talked to me, felt like it was saying that everything happens in it’s perfect timing. I’m smiling…. As I get nearer, I see it’s by a guy called Hal Borland! I laugh out loud. I never see anyone with my surname. I have goosebumps….

The guy I met, a friend of friend, and with whom I had the most amazing conversation about consciousness, connection, energy, synchronicity and life at large. I left feeling really energised and inspired. The phrase that kept going round and round in my head after I left him was, ‘I can truly be, do and have anything my heart desires’….. I felt like it was really sinking into every fibre of my being on a much deeper level than ever before.

When we drop the masks and the roles and be our authentic selves, we can really connect with another. When we do this we’re really connecting with ourselves, and in doing so the universe can more easily connect with us.

But here’s the thing that I feel like I’m learning….. slowly.  I’ve realised that in the past I was often looking for, and following, signs because I was trying to get to my ‘pot of gold’ at the end of the rainbow.

However, I now feel like I’m beginning to follow the signs with less expectation of where they will lead me. I guess I’m more up for the journey, whatever that is, as opposed to what I think it should be. And I think that makes all the difference.

I’m opening more and more to the magic of the universe and not limiting it with my stories. It’s that shift again from my head to my heart.

How is the universe talking to you? Are you paying attention?

And if you truly, truly knew that you could be, do and have anything your heart desired – what would you choose? And share with me, I’d love to hear from you ♥