Life seems to cause us to put limits on what we do, who we think we should be, and how we live our lives. Reality? WE are the ones who impose those limits on ourselves. A wise man in my life whom I asked for advice once said, "You need to make the best decision for you Jolene. If you decide X, people will judge you. If you decide Y, people will still judge you. So do what's right for you." And I do. And he was right. And people still judge me. It's not that I don't care, I just don't have any control over it so I choose not to focus on it or expend any energy on it. And it serves me very well. There's a type of freedom I can't explain that comes from living your life this way. Not selfishness. As they say in the airlines "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others." So that's what I do because you can't help someone else with something that you can't or don't already do for yourself. You might ask, "How do you 'just do that' Jolene"? Well, it takes practice, patience and persistence just as anything may. But more formally I follow the practice of mindfullness. It's also referred to as mindful meditation. Still curious? Learn more here: My thoughts for this post first arrived last weekend as I was sitting on the end of a dock on Burntside Lake near the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. Admiring pure, somewhat untouched nature. Seemingly no boundaries. That same day I fell asleep in the warm sun on that dock for what felt like hours and I came to realize was only 20 minutes. But the impact it had was priceless. In eight days, Jason and I move to Denver with some certainty that we may never move back to Minnesota. But based on my above thoughts, nothing in life is certain. We're looking forward to exploring the world with our wild curiosity and no boundaries. We have an apartment in the city. I'll telecommute and still travel for work. He has a shop space a few miles away wherre he'll work. And for now, those are the only "knowns." The rest has no boundaries.
2 Comments
Jolene Clark
9/26/2013 02:32:25 am
A muse for today's blog: http://youtu.be/Lu0fTmHsDqE
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Jolene Clark
9/26/2013 02:36:20 am
I will admit that my verbal thoughts on this topic have been met with frequent doubt. "But I'm a mom" "but I'm a single parent" "but I have no money" "but I have no time" (first off, please review previous blog posts) and second, anyone can do this, it's a choice. I received my motivation to start from a colleague, working professional mother of two and wife who discover mindfulness mediation early on in her life and said she doesn't know of any other way to live and it has served her well through what may have seemed like all of her life's tragedies. And trust me, after spending significant time with her, she has had her fair share of tragedy in life to say the least.
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