Author: Susan Minarik

Last night I was gazing up at the stars and, once more, I was struck by the realization that our amazing home is but one speck of rock circling one star among countless stars in one of an unknown number of galaxies. How small we are!

And yet, how incredible our minds, to be able to grasp the immensity of it all, to compute the distances, to be capable of wonder and to marvel at its mysteries, and order, and beauty.

How can we be asleep to that? How can we take it all for granted? Why, when we’re gifted not only with intelligence but with the capacity to love, is our little globe beset with such rancor and pain?

You know, there seems to be a trend afoot these days to pit us all against each other, to egg us into taking sides on every conceivable issue.

Tensions and conflicts engulf our homes and work places, our neighborhoods and countries. And this, despite the fact that all the overwhelming majority of humans want is simply to get along with each other and to live our lives in harmony and peace.

None of us has the power, individually, to change the course of world events. But we can have an influence in our immediate corners of the world.

I heard a suggestion this week that gave me pause for thought. Instead of getting entrapped in the blame game, it said, focus on seeking solutions. Ask yourself what you can do to make things better and be willing to give your ideas a try.

Sometimes that can mean having to admit you were less than kind, or thoughtful, or honest. None of us is at our best all the time. We get tired, and crabby, and selfish. It’s part of being human. But so is our ability to apologize, and to ask for time-outs, and to look for ways to make amends.

Sometimes making things better means stretching beyond our comfort zones and trying on less than familiar behaviors—holding our tongues when we would normally confront, forgiving hurts, deciding to overlook other’s foibles instead of falling into irritation or taking offense, looking for things to appreciate in those whose opinions contrast with our own.

What can I do to make things better? That’s the solution-focused question. How can I create more harmony? More understanding? More beauty?

Every time you choose peace in your own life, the world does indeed become a more peaceful place. One act, one person at a time.

Wishing you a week filled with excellent solutions.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Cheryl Holt from Pixabay}

I live in a rural area, in a valley surrounded by high wooded hills. No cable. No satellite. No TV. Painfully limited radio and cell reception. Without the Internet, my access to the wider world essentially vanishes.

So when my Internet crashed, I was hurled into a suddenly shrunken world and an entire change of routine.

What a gift!

I didn’t have to see it as a gift. But I internalized the “make lemonade from lemons” outlook long ago. When I broke my right arm a few years ago, for instance, I sat in the ER thinking about how this would give me a chance to develop new skills with my left one. And it did, too!

So when my Internet failed, I decided right away that I would treat the episode as a vacation, an opportunity to view life from a new and different perspective while I waited for the revival of my connection.

It was great, and the timing was perfect.

It didn’t have to be that way. None of us likes to have our life’s plans and patterns unexpectedly interrupted in a major way. I could have gone Full Grump, big time.

I’m not bragging about my cultivated optimism. I just want to share that it’s possible to look for the good in anything that happens to you.

Sometimes that’s not an easy challenge. Life can deal some heavy blows. It can throw seemingly insurmountable obstacles in our paths. It comes with storms and thorns, with pain and loss. For all of us. No growth comes without resistance. Struggle is part of the package.

I got to do some extra reading while I was offline, and for the first time in a long time, I encountered a new answer to the question, “Why are we here?” Want to know what it was? “To learn what to do and what not to do.” That’s amazingly deeper and more profound than it may seem at first glance. Play with it a little this week and see how it clarifies things for you.

One of the things I’m grateful for learning to do is to look for the good in every situation. It allows me to live with much greater ease, and I’m discovering that living with ease is a skill that all of us can aspire to developing. Optimism helps.

And even though in some cases it takes a while to see it, goodness is always present. But you have to look for it, and expect it, and to be willing to recognize and claim it when it appears.

I’ll leave you with that for this week – with the hope that you’ll look for the good in your life, and increase in your ability to know what to do and what not to do, all with great ease and joy.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Briam Cute from Pixabay}

With global tensions ratcheting up by the hour around the world, adding to the stresses that all of us face in our personal worlds, I thought I’d share with you a little two-minute practice that will return you to the present moment and let you experience an island of personal peace.

I learned it from Dr. Kirsten Neff’s talk on “Resilience and Self-Compassion” on YouTube where she demonstrates it. (https://youtu.be/xyjLKgfV7Sk) Here’s how it goes:

1. Hold your hands out in front of you and tightly clench your fists. Pay attention to the way you feel as you do this. Hold this gesture for a few seconds, allowing yourself really to feel it.

2. Now open your hands, relaxing them in an open position in front of you and notice how that feels. Again, give yourself the opportunity really to sink into the feeling.

3. Now spread your arms slightly and extend your hands, palms up. Again, allow yourself to fully feel how you feel now.

4. Finally, put one hand over the other and place them on the center of your chest, over your heart. You may want to close your eyes as you feel the gentle pressure and warmth. Maybe you’ll even become aware of the beating of your heart. Let yourself sink into what you’re feeling.

That’s all there is to it.

In the first step, many people say the gesture evoked feelings of anger, tension, or the feelings of self-criticism. Imagine you’re wrapping any negative emotion in your fists—any pain or disappointment or frustration. Clench your fists hard, allowing yourself to feel the full depth of what you’re suffering, the tightness of it.

In step two, experience letting go, as if everything your fists were holding is simply floating away, evaporating. People in Neff’s audience said this step let them feel a sense of openness and relaxation, a sense that they could stop fighting and breathe.

Next, when you open your arms and extend your hands upward, you’re likely to feel a sense of acceptance or welcoming. Or perhaps a sense of receiving whatever the moment is offering to you.

Then, when you place your hands over your heart and feel the warmth, you are allowing yourself to feel the soothing, the kindness, the comfort of self-compassion, of being completely okay, just as you are, and with life, just as it is.

This little two-minute peace break is worth memorizing. Do it a few times, then keep it in your pocket as a handy stress reliever any time you need it. After you have done it several times, you can even do it mentally when you’re in a public situation where you can’t physically move your hands.

Sometimes all it takes is a little break like this to restore your peace and perspective, opening you to renewed composure, confidence, and the ability to see new solutions.

Share it with a friend or family member if you like. You could even practice it together and share with each other the way it makes each of you feel. Not only will you be reinforcing the power of it for yourself, but you’ll have given a fine gift of instant relief to your friend. Self-compassion, after all, flows naturally to having more compassion for everyone. Cool how that works, huh?

You can find several more self-compassion exercises at Dr. Neff’s website, https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-practices/ .
Pop over there and bookmark it. Visit it from time to time. It will unfailingly remind you that hey, you’re a human, and you deserve to hold yourself in caring and understanding.

Wishing you inner peace, no matter what.

Warmly,
Susan

susan@notesfromthewoods.com

^{Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay}

Every Monday, three friends and I get together for a chat, catching each other up on the happenings of the previous week. We’ve been doing this now for nearly 18 years.

It all began as a Master Mind group focused on self-development and having, as I recall, a dozen or so original members. Over time, interests changed, life took people in new directions and our group dwindled down to us four. We met via conference call for many years. Now we meet on Zoom and love seeing each other’s faces..

Last week I found some notes I’d made after a call from a decade ago. We were talking about how each of us tends to think of our own life as ordinary. Mundane. Pretty routine. Boring, even. But then we realized that we found each other’s lives fascinating. We keep calling every week, after all, just to find out what happened next.

It turns out that what happened next usually wasn’t some great achievement or adventure (although we’ve had our share of those), but instead it was maybe a new insight or observation, a way of looking at the familiar from a slightly different vantage point.

We had been talking at the time about ways we could become more aware of the stories we tell ourselves, of the habitual labels and judgments that we slap on our experiences, and how becoming aware of that helps us break free of them and lets us experience things with greater freshness and joy.

So I got to thinking about the way we label our lives as ordinary and deem that to be a negative thing, as if life held zest only if it was filled with new and exciting events.

What if, I wondered, we chose to see the routines of our lives as a pleasure? What if we awakened to the comfort they gave us?

What if our stretches of boredom were simply the result of not paying attention? Ta-dah! There’s a little eureka moment for you!

Then, mid-week, I was doing some random surfing on the Web and I stumbled on one of those “photos of the day” sites that offers glimpses into the way people around the globe are spending their time. There’s a lot of celebration and achievement going on out there! But there’s a lot of pain and conflict and suffering, too. And the photos showed the whole range.

The photos that struck me most were one of a woman feeding her infant a spoonful of soup inside a tent in a refugee camp, and one of a father holding rolled razor wire up with a stick so his five year old daughter could crawl under it toward the relative safety that waited on the other side.

And I’m going to complain that my life is routine and ordinary? I could be one of the firefighters battling flames. Or one of those whose homes were burning. I could be digging through mud with a stick, trying to find any belongings the flood may have left behind.

May I be grateful for the ordinariness of my life!

Yesterday, I went in search of insights into the benefits of ordinariness from other people. The first one I found brought the photos back to mind:

“How we take it for granted – those trivial conversations; those mundane moments that we think hold no meaning. We never realize how much we rely on the ordinariness of everyday life. When love is gone – when our entire world is gone – only then do we understand those moments are what we live for.”

― Dianna Hardy, in Cry Of The Wolf

And then there was this one, echoing my own realization that awareness is the key:

“I thought: This is what the living do. And I swooned at the ordinary nature of the task and myself, at my chapped hands and square palms, at the way my wrists bent and fingers flexed inside this living body.”

― Dee Williams

The ordinary s the stuff of the good life, the day to day conversations and routines. In the end, the ordinary things are the ones that give our lives meaning. The key is to see them for the treasures they are, to be aware in them, and grateful.

Here’s a poem little from a guy who gets it. I’ll leave it with you as my parting gift for today:

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

― William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Wishing you a gloriously ordinary week!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Pexels from Pixabay}