Habits

Red Lipstick 2020

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I love how I feel when I’m wearing red lipstick. I feel empowered, I feel confident, I feel sexy. I feel like I can take on anything and come out on top. Wearing red lipstick is the equivalent of me slipping into my superhero’s cape or my power tie. It is all about power for me, and I absolutely love the feeling. When I had my first son and I was totally disoriented, lacking confidence, feeling totally broken, I would put on red lipstick to wear even around the house, and it instantly picked me up.

2020 is the year, and the decade, that I am stepping fully into my power and owning who I am in my fullest expression. I am turning my talents into resources, I am channeling from the highest power for the highest good, I am expressing, I am creating, I am sharing, I am serving. This year in particular calls for me to feel my best, brightest and strongest, and red lipstick is a symbol for me and will act as a reminder.

Wearing red lipstick, I cannot hide, I cannot shy away. Wearing red lipstick demands me to be present, be bold, be right there speaking my truth, being my absolutely best.

My commitment is that I will wear red lipstick every single day in 2020. I KNOW this is going to transform my life in ways that I cannot even imagine right now and I totally welcome the positive change.

2019 Was About Receiving Stability

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Receive. This was my chosen word of the year for 2019. I set the intention that I would be open to receiving and allowing this year, and my oh my it has been an incredible year.

In 2019…

We bought our very own house!

We Bought a House!

This is the very first time I’ve ever owned a house, and the sense of stability and permanence it has brought with me is incredible. Just to know that we don’t have to vacate in six months, or that we can change the house around and add nails into walls if we choose, and paint, has been so freeing. We bought a house that is within our means, with plenty of space, in a tight knit community, walking distance to school for my oldest son who is starting kindergarten, it’s a reasonable commute time for my husband to go into the office, and it has expansive views.

Citizenship is Granted

I was granted citizenship in Australia after being in the country for nine years and ten months, being married here, having children here, owning a business here, owning a home here, graduating from university here, essentially creating my entire world to be here in Australia. The day I shook hands with the Mayor and accepted my citizenship was full of joy and relief. I applied for my passport and received it a couple of weeks later, and I feel so official. Having the right to stay in the country where my life is based is beyond measure for a sense of security for me.

Stepping Up

This year I also gave a presentation about Customer Marketing to a Mums in Business Group and LOVED being up there guiding and sharing with the business women effective, easy ways to connect and appreciate their customers. That was a huge shift for me, and I would love to do more of that, be on stage with authority sharing something that benefits everyone so that we all rise together. I am such a supporter of women supporting women, and I feel so happy that I got to do it in such an influential way. Prior to that I had done stopped in with a few businesses and discussed marketing tactics that they might use and that felt great to use my problem solving skills, business knowledge, and pattern matching skills to help them, it was highly fun for me.

Appreciation and Self Love Habits

I kept a nightly appreciation journal all year which felt so good. At the end of each night I would take the time to write out a page of the highlights of my day, a little habit that makes a huge impact.

Earlier in the year I did a 40 day challenge with myself and two other women that involved a nightly mirror work session of saying “I Love You’ to myself, which also felt so nourishing.

Entertainment

Had the absolute pleasure of seeing Tash Sultana perform live and I LOVED dancing so freely!

Loved laughing at a Comedy Show with my good friend.

Travel

We enjoyed an awesome holiday at Jervis Bay with it’s crystal clear water and white sand. We also enjoyed a holiday in Ballina with the gentle Shaw’s Bay. We had our very first family solo camping trip in the South Coast of New South Wales in a tiny coastal village called Gerroa where Abraham looked under rocks for crabs and Ari monkey crawled all over!

Lots of Great Books!

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg was an eye opener for me. The understanding that we do so much of what we do without thinking about it, and reading that backed up with evidence was mind blowing.

Atomic Habits by James Clear was an excellent practical follow on from Duhigg’s book, and I appreciated the notion that it takes just one tiny step right now to create the change. I appreciated how he explained the cue/trigger, craving, routine, reward loop so well and that what is rewarded is repeated. To create change in habits make things obvious, attractive, and rewarded, and to minimise a habit make things obscure, unattractive, and without reward.

Influence by Robert Cialdini

 

 

 

Cleaning to Allow the New

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Being in a cluttered, messy environment makes me feel very uneasy. I get to a point at home where I cannot relax until the house is somewhat in order. It could be from my roots where this phobia comes from, or it could be that I don’t get overly attached to things, and all in all I’d rather not have a bunch of stuff around for stuff’s sake. Also having been a traveler, I came to Australia with hardly anything, so everything I have now, I’ve acquired in the last six years. I clean out my closet regularly and I try to donate or give away things that I don’t need and or use. The feeling after it’s gone, is so nice, and it makes it all worth it.

The idea that you cannot take anything else in your hands if they are full, totally resonates with me. If I let go of whatever I have in one of my hands, then I can receive something new and hopefully better. I can then upgrade my life piece by piece this way. I’m okay with that, since short of a big windfall of money, this is how I will make my way and help improve our lot in life as of now.

Decluttering can seem like a monstrous task, and procrastination easily joins in on the ride. I still have issues with throwing out papers, even though I know I can scan them because I just haven’t fully gotten into that yet. I don’t throw away my journals for the same reason. I also have a hard time giving away, donating or even selling books that I think I will use. Almost everything else, I can let go of.

It’s interesting to see what I become attached to and what I can easily say good bye to. There was one stage in my life where I was so unattached to things that I gave away what I would consider now, to be very sentimental things that I cannot get back. Such things are a piece of art that my little sister made when she was in junior high. It was a copper twisted tree hanging onto a big stone, I left it with an old partner when I moved out. Another was a quilt my grandmother had sewn and gave to me that I left at my friends house, who thankfully kept it and now has it with her in California, so I know I’ll at least get that back. Strangely another is the award I won for the “Face of Voyeur” when I was a part of the Byron Fashion Show that I just left in a share house that I had been living in. I wish I would have kept these things. There are probably some others, but these come to mind quite a bit for me.

So now, when I am decluttering, letting things go, and just eliminating things from my life, I take a bit more care to keep things that I still am emotionally attached to. I don’t want to end up in the position of longing for something I can no longer have, it only takes up mental space. In general I don’t cling to the past. I am fine to move on and keep progressing in my life. I almost feel that it’s because I am easy to let things go that it is conversely also easy for me to keep moving.

Decluttering and cleaning house has profound effects. The cleaner and clearer the house, the cleaner and clearer the mind. It’s all a manifestation and if I can do one to influence the other, then so I shall.

Resistance and Steven Pressfield

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In “The War of Art” Steven Pressfield discusses Resistance with a capital R as the nemesis to actually doing and creating the work you are meant to create. I’m about half way through the book, which I mostly read after bub has gone to bed at night, or in the precious private moments I have in the bathroom. Funny that I would take a book that will obviously have a profound impact about how I create, into the loo. I have to laugh about this.

If I look at the bathroom as a metaphor, it is the place of letting go of what is no longer needed. How amazingly appropriate is it that I would be reading a book about overcoming, moving past, letting go of the resistance, the constipation, the delay of the next stage, in the bathroom, specifically on the toilet. This is incredibly amusing to me. It fits my life so well too.

He talks about how we will enlist people in our lives who are living out our unfulfilled lives as a way to not do the work ourselves. As I spoke to a dear friend of mine last night, she was telling me about a book she is writing along with the short stories she has submitted for recognition and money. She is taking a self publishing course, and has a writing coach. I could hear her enthusiasm and I felt happy that she was doing this, and I have full faith that he will do well with this. She is dedicated to the cause, she gets in there, and is a highly ambitious person. Her partner is also a creative guy and both hold regular hours in jobs that are meaningful for them.

As I was taking in what she was telling me, I immediately realised that she was living out an unlived life of mine. One that I have kept secret more or less, in the way that I don’t go about saying “I’m a writer” and “I’m writing a book”. Although when I returned from living in Brazil, I did say just that, but partly because my ego was so hurt and I felt like I needed to have something to say that I did. Honestly I was writing a lot in the form of journal entries or blog posts, but it never fully eventuated. Oh boy that feeling sucks. When you’ve then told people you are doing something and then it doesn’t happen for whatever reason, or doesn’t happen as fast as anyone thinks it will. I would like to avoid that feeling as much as possible, so I don’t say things like that now. Instead I quietly keep it to myself.

So I didn’t mention to my friend that I have been regularly posting on my blog again. I didn’t mention again that it’s a goal of mine to publish work that matters to me and I hope that will positively influence people in the world. I didn’t mention any of this. I did have fear arise. I thought what if she writes about my own personal life, she knows so much and my life is so rich.

This makes me baulk at the idea now, its’ still could happen, but I don’t think she would jeopardise our friendship like that by telling my story from her lens, or at least I hope she wouldn’t’. It did however, spur fear into me. Fear is another form of Resistance. Fear stops us from succeeding even before beginning. Fear is the bedfellow of failure and I recognised it straight away. So what am I to do?

The natural competitiveness in me started to rise, I could feel it. I then thought what if I also start writing short stories and submitting them for recognition and money. Then I felt bad, because I only know of the idea because of her. That is also fear, that is fear of success before it even happens. I must move past this and recognise that it is again Resistance in the form of Fear.

Next the fire inside of me started to burn and said, WRITE MORE! Get your story out. Keep writing, continue to make this a habit just as I have my meditation practice, just as I have made it a habit to have a pot of tea with my husband in the morning. Create the habit.

The point of all this is that I can see Resistance in so many areas of my life, and now that I can identify it, I can and will do something about it. Steven Pressfield then goes on to say that if you hold your regular hours of writing, and your muse will show up there. I have found that if I wait until late at night, I am too tired, so I need to make it in the morning while my husband looks after bub. The thing is if I commit to saying I will do this every single day no matter what and something arises, then I will have more Resistance. So for now, I will just continue to commit to writing as of I have lately and let Resistance lose its’ power.