Tag: peace

The Difference Between Want and Need

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“Recognize what is simple. Keep what is essential.” – Lao Tzu

Yesterday morning, our first morning after returning from our road trip, I looked around the house and had a good laugh at the evidence of our settling in. I’d relished being home by sitting on my meditation cushion with all my meditation books around me. Five-year-old Mr. D played with all the sports equipment. And nine-year-old Miss O had gathered up all the materials and made slime.

It’s a defining act to travel. We pare down to essentials so that we can go on adventures. It forces us to know what’s vital to our health and sanity and pack accordingly. I’ve seen climbers who cut the pages out of a book because reading is important to them, but they don’t want to carry the whole weight.

Of course for our cushy road trip visiting friends who took great care of us, it’s not nearly as stark. But still, I couldn’t bring all my meditation books, D had to pare down to only some baseball gear, and Miss O could only bring a couple of stuffies.

But I love the way we better appreciate the luxury of all of our comfort when we come home. It feels as if part of traveling is helping us know what is essential for peace of mind wherever we go. We’ve come home a little wiser about the difference between what we want and what we need. Which is an important thing to know.

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast about collaboration – in our families, friendships, at work and in the world.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast, an author, creator and storytelling podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

Stop Hurrying and Worrying

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“I didn’t see one tree hurrying or worrying.” – Melody Beattie

I came to a full stop when I read the quote for this post. It was in a meditation book I’ve been reading in the mornings. Journey to the Heart: Daily Reflections by Melody Beattie. She was talking about visiting the redwoods in Northern California. Trees that have stood for hundreds of years growing steadily and weathering whatever came. “I didn’t see one tree hurrying or worrying.”

First, the beauty of one person being able to write something so powerful that it touches another. Isn’t that incredible we can do that?

Second, because I’ve felt unmoored in the last few weeks. The end of the school year came with so many opportunities to volunteer, amazing teachers to recognize, and fun to plan. Then we traveled to San Francisco for a family party. Upon our return, I landed in a week where the kids had vast amounts of free time and I struggled to get much done.

Too much fun, really. But I still felt like a boat without its keel in, being blown about by this and that without much ability to set my own direction.

And all that fun brought me to the third thing. I once heard an interview with Dr. Scott Peck  – I think it was with Oprah. He said something like, “People ask how I get so much done. I reply that I’m able to because I spend two hours a day doing nothing. I used to call it my thinking time but then people felt free to interrupt. So I changed to call it my praying time and it made all the difference.”

Nature knows that we don’t need to hurry, scurry, and worry. Thanks to that one line written by a wise observer, I remember now too.

Have you read or written one line that has brought you to a full stop lately?

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast about working better together – in our families, friendships, at work and in the world.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast, an author, creator and storytelling podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

Doing Nearly Nothing

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“Recognize what is simple. Keep what is essential.” – Lao Tzu

I spent some time this past weekend sitting on the porch of an AirBnB cabin on Whidbey Island doing nothing. Well, I was drinking tea so not technically nothing. I was going to say maybe more accurately, I was just doing that one thing so I wasn’t multi-tasking. But I was eating popcorn along with the tea so perhaps that is multi-tasking.

Okay, maybe we can agree I was doing nearly nothing. I was sitting on the porch with my tea and popcorn not doing anything else. I didn’t have my laptop open or my phone within reach. My kids were off at a playground with a friend, so it was just me and Cooper the dog, looking at the bay.

I knew the next thing I needed to do to get ready for dinner but I hadn’t moved yet. I was trying to extend the moment of doing nearly nothing for as long as possible. I found this to be extremely difficult – to drop the should and the oughts and just sit.

It reminded me of the question of whether finding inner peace will ruin our ability to get things done. I have both heard and thought myself, if I wasn’t so ________________, I wouldn’t be nearly as productive. Fill in the blank with ambitious, anxious, efficient, motivated, OCD or whatever else suits you. Sometimes it seems to me, with Buddhism especially, if I let it all go, what’s going to be left?

I live by a lot of rules that help me get stuff done. Rules like:

  • No tv after the kids go to bed.
  • If you notice something needs to be done, do it now. And really, with two kids, a dog, a cat, a job and a house – how hard is it to notice something that needs to be done?
  • If you pick something up, put it away properly so you only handle it once. This includes emails and work tasks.
  • Go to bed by 10:30 so you can get up by 5:30 to get sacred time and do it all again.

My structures help me but also limit me. They keep my head down so that I don’t notice other things.  When I let them go, even for just a short while, I’m happier because my head’s up.

In the few moments when I’ve been able to experience something akin to inner peace, here’s what I’ve noticed: that I’m able to float peacefully along with the stream instead of trying to constantly generate my own power. That the biggest effort is quieting the should and oughts in my head and then everything else flows rather nicely.

I’m so grateful I was able to practice doing nearly nothing this weekend. I need to do it more.

5 Things I Wish For You Today

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“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do , Something you are, And something you give away.” – John Lennon

1. A moment where your heart touches the heart of another.

2. At least one belly laugh that, in the best case, makes it so you can’t breathe for a split second.

3. The calm feeling that you are okay right here and right now.

4. Something unexpected that creates a ripple of knowing that magic exists.

5. An experience where you notice the sun on your skin, the rain on your face, or the wind at your back.

I wrote this as a list of what I wished for my eight-year-old and four-year-old kids on Christmas day. Then I realized that it was what I wanted for myself on Christmas day. Finally, it dawned on me that this is a an everyone on every day kind of list.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Presently

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“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

This quote from the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, seems like an over-simplification to me but one that still makes me stop and consider. Thankfully we’ve come a long way since the 6th century BC in understanding that anxiety and depression have much deeper causes and roots than a simple tie to time-focus.

However, I take the point that what I’m prone to is living in the future and it robs me of some peace. I tend to march toward it with a single-minded determination that is at best, mindless, and at worst, anxiety-inducing. Getting out of this rut is the topic of my Wise & Shine post: Asking Questions When a Groove Becomes a Rut

(featured photo from Pexels)

Peace is Free

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“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.” – John Lennon

The other night I made the mistake of working on my taxes before bed. After a night of tossing a turning, mulling over finances, I blearily made my way down to the family room to meditate. As I lit the candles before settling down on the cushion, I thought “At least you have enough money to buy candles.”

None of this is new – not the worrying about money in January which I’ve done every year for the more than 20 years I’ve been in business so I know from the pattern that it all works out but still worry anyway. And not the thought “At least you have enough money to buy candles.”

However, this was the first time I realized the fuller meaning of that phrase. I have always assumed that it was a reflex reminding me how much I have. But I marveled on the morning in question that what my inner voice was also telling me that my path to find peace, meaning and joy is free. It doesn’t cost me anything to stop and meditate at any or every moment.

And it was telling me that I can do that anywhere or everywhere. I can still find the calm within when the life circumstances are hard. As the quote from John Lennon reminds me, it isn’t just wishing that creates peace but it is powerful and transferable sense worth working for.

It brings to mind an Oprah Soul Sunday podcast I heard where she talked about whispers (here it is on a video of Oprah’s lifeclass). That she’s found that God, the Universe, a Higher Power talks to us in whispers. And it’s only when we don’t listen, the voice gets more insistent, a pebble upside the head and then a brick, in Oprah parlance.

So for twenty years I’ve been sweating through January as I handle the not-so-fun tasks of getting my customers to pay their invoices and to nail down commitments for the next year. This is the first where I really listened to that inner voice and was able to find my internal peace while doing so.

I’m hopeful that I’ll remember that the price of peace is free next year. And also, not to do my taxes before bedtime.

Seeds of Faith

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“Believing is all a child does for a living.” – Kurtis Lamkin

The other day my 6-year-old daughter called for me. When I came into the room, she was holding her little brother because he’d tripped and fallen. When I took him from her and started checking for injuries, she huffed off.

When all was calm, I checked in with my daughter. She said that I loved her brother more than her. I told her how much I appreciated how independent and helpful she was. Then I listed all the ways we show our love and the privileges she gets because she is older. She nodded and said, “ At his age, you can see the love he gets better.”

Something more than the obvious sibling rivalry and jealousy struck me about that statement. After I sat with it some time, I’ve found such a precious seed of faith in that statement. Like if we could all trace back the roots of what we believe to the essential moments where we start to believe in what we can’t see we’d find seeds from moments like my daughter expressed. Faith in others, faith in love, faith in the Divine,

It’s as if I’ve been privy to watch her operate from within her God spot for all the years until now. She’s been operating from the natural trust that came with being so fresh from the Source. And now I’m witnessing her growth and awareness start to cover that over so that instead of operating without thought from her Seat of Unconscious, as I believe Jung would call it, my daughter is feeling out the ground on the other side.

While this leaves me with a sense of loss, I recognize it as a natural moving forward. Most of us cannot stay in a life free of ambition and embarrassment, fear and worry. We move away from that spot of grace that can bring so much peace and then have to work our way back, again and again.

But it strikes me that as she moves in and out of that unencumbered spot, the awareness is a gift of its own. It makes me conscious of my own God spot as well as hers and allows me to recognize when I need to help water and nurture her seed of faith — and my own.

The analogy of a tree that grows deep roots resonates with me. For my kids to stretch tall in their beliefs, their roots need to grow deep down. And I need to have faith that they will have faith.

(featured photo from Pexels)

A Meditation on Evenings or Evening Meditation

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“Wear your ego like a loose fitting garment.” – Buddha

We all have Covid (mild, thankfully) and are on day 99 (feels like) of quarantine. The one household member that doesn’t have Covid, the cat, is on a diet because a recent trip to the vet for her check-up revealed that she’d gained a lot of weight under all that fluffy fur. On top of that, she has to put up with us all home and as you can see in featured photo, my daughter trying to shoot her with a water gun. So, I think it’s fair to say that we’re all a little grumpy.

In the midst of this, I’ve noticed something interesting. We do pretty well until right around 6pm. Then it turns into a scrum unless I can find a way to redirect the energy.

What I find fascinating is that corresponds with about the same time of day that the voice in my head turns self-critical. The other night I was getting ready for bed and thinking about a proposal that I needed to do the next day when my inner narrator popped up with “There’s no value you can add for them that they can’t already do themselves.”

What?? The voice was talking about what I have done for 20 years that I do day in and day out and I know based on my track record of doing it for happy clients that keep me employed that I do it very well.

This reminds me of the preface to Dan Harris’ book 10 Percent Happier in which he said the working title for his book was “The Voice in My Head is an Asshole.” My voice doesn’t usually stoop to that level until after about 6pm. And then it is always a JERK!

I am a congenital optimist. For example, when I gain weight, it usually makes me think, “Well, at least I don’t have one of those hard-to-detect cases on cancer where the primary symptom is unexpected weight loss.” There is nothing I have knowingly done to foster this optimism but life has largely worked out for me – or maybe it hasn’t and I just think it has because I’m an optimist?

That’s the problem with the voices in our heads, right? They are completely subjective, often influenced by food and sleep and given how much they change in a day, totally unreliable. But I like my optimistic voice, just not the self-critical voice that kicks in for the evenings.

This is where meditation has saved me by creating an awareness that these voices are not me. That if I sit with ideas, actions and my path for a little while, a way that rises above the fickle swings presents itself. As the quote from Buddha above suggests, wearing the ego like a loose fitting garment helps remove it more easily. Just a moment’s space between thought and speaking or action can allow peace to prevail.

This gives me an idea for the rest of our quarantine. Maybe tonight I’ll try to get the kids to sit and meditate with me after dinner and we’ll have a completely peaceful and cooperative transition to bed. As you can probably tell, I’m writing this in the morning when my optimist voice is strong…. 🙂

Christmas Wish

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“The most effective medicine here on this Earth is unconditional love.” – unknown

I woke up this morning thinking of two types of people working on Christmas Eve. Healthcare workers and pastors. The former must be so discouraged to see the Omicron fears and anticipate the number of people who might overflow their beds.

And the latter must be so disappointed to see the Omicron fears, knowing that it’ll keep people away from services and reduce the number of people in their pews on Christmas Eve.

Growing up in a pastor’s house, Christmas Eve was a big deal. It was a chance to celebrate with the congregation and whoever else came along the hope, peace and magic of a story. It was a chance to hear silence because regardless of anyone’s particular beliefs, it is a day we close our stores and change our schedules.

It makes me wish on this day where our bodies might not be able to go where we want to be, that at least our hearts can be in the right place. May the spirit of Christmas with its hope, peace and generosity fill us wherever we are!

Happy Families

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“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou

My mom told me that one of her friends from her retirement community keeps asking her about my kids. He’s 98 years-old, never married and has no kids, and he asks repeatedly about how I conceived them as a single mom and what I tell them about their parentage. As she was telling me this, I thought “Given that they didn’t even invent invitro-fertilization until he was in his 60’s, I can’t imagine what he thinks.” But in this most recent conversation they had, he started telling her about the traumatic childhood he had — his father’s abuse of his sisters, his mother’s nervous breakdown when she discovered the abuse and his mother’s instruction to him to make sure he never left his younger sister alone with his dad. At the end of relating the story he simply said to my mom, “I would have been a lot better off without a dad.”

This makes me so sad. First of all because I had a great dad. Nothing about what I’ve done is a commentary on dads in general. It was simply a matter of not having the right one for my kids and running out of time.

Secondly because of the shame he still seems to carry. The answer to his question about what I tell my kids is that I tell them whatever they ask but I don’t complicate it with more than they want to know at the time. The first time my daughter asked she said, “Did I have a dad when I was born?” and I said “no” and then she followed up with “Did I have a dog when I was born?” and I thought “that’s where you’re going with this?” and answered “yes”. We’ve had more in-depth conversations since then about me going to the doctor to become pregnant and a little about sperm donors but she’s not all that interested yet. I have no way of knowing how she or her brother will come to feel about this (and it’ll probably be many things) but whatever it is, I will do my best to make sure it isn’t shame. My primary tool to combat that is not to have any secrets about their origins.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a Tolstoy quote I recently came across, “Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Given that Tolstoy lived long before invitro fertilization and also gay marriage, I’d say maybe in his time happy families were all alike. But they can look pretty different these days.

But I think Tolstoy was right that unhappy families have many possible reasons that can echo for a long time. I hope that we see my mom’s friend again soon and somewhere in the telling of his story and the grace of being interested in my happy children since he never had any of his own, he finds peace for his inner child.