FINE.

When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, 'My purpose is to__________ today. I am thankful for______________'

Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Talk to the deity of your choice (or your inner self/voice) about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to.

Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.

Try to make at least three people smile each day.  Forgive everyone for everything.  Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead, invest your energy in the present moment. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does. You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree. Don't compare your life to others; you have no idea what their journey is all about. What other people think of you is none of your business. Envy is a waste of time.

Your job won't take care of you when you are sick, but  your friends will, so stay in touch. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years, will this matter?'

God heals everything - but you have to ask.

Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements
"I am thankful for_________. Today, I accomplished______."


I'm reposting some of this list to bring its very important suggestions back to the front of my mind. The clear point of this list is that humility will make you happy. I think that may be true, because it is only when I humble myself that I am able to love others, and I believe that my ultimate purpose is to love others. (Frankly, I believe that it's everyone's ultimate purpose, but it's kind of arrogant to decide that for someone else, so I try to just stick it to myself.)

I'm so very very bad at loving others, I wish it wasn't my purpose. But I'm pretty sure it is. In the 90s I worked in a metaphysical bookstore. One of my coworkers was a karmic astrologer. I confess that I'm not sure how that's different from a regular astrologer, but she was. She did my chart and gave me a reading.

See, I have a pretty high opinion of my mind and my capacity, so I was excited to get this reading. It would look back over all my lives and tell me what I am here to do/learn/achieve "this time." I was stoked because what if it was something amazing? I was scared because what if what the universe was going to ask me to do was something difficult or painful? But I was sure it would lead to great acclaim and influence, because how could it not!?

The climax of this story is classically anti-climactic. Here is what she told me: The purpose of my life "this time" is to learn to "be in relationship." Not a relationship, just IN relationship. To learn how to be in relationship: to receive love from and to give love to others. I was so completely let down and pissed!

Fast forward only four short years from that time, and I, a lifelong atheist, go through a religious conversion in which I become a follower of Jesus, whose message for me is that I am here to learn how to be in relationship with the divine, and with others.

Where is my fame? Where is my influence and achievement? Where is the acclaim for the specialness that I am? How is my towering intellect not producing works of lasting import? Why am I only here to learn to receive and give love? That hardly seems fair.

But so it is.

B asked me why I don't write in this blog anymore, and I don't know. I have no good reason, because I sure have things I think about and talk about. He's kind to me, expressing that he wants me to share myself with others. And that, in combination with the knowledge that it's what the hell I'm supposed to be doing for chrissake (literally), makes me humble myself and write. It's hard to write here. It's embarrassing. As a fat girl, most of the time you hope you can just distract others enough so they don't really see you. As an insecure person, a lot of energy is required to maintain the bravado it takes to feel like it's okay that I'm saying what I think/feel. I wonder if that makes sense to anyone. Because that insecurity also produces an anxiety about the approval and acceptance I seek. Isn't that saying it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt? I like what little I've done here, but I'm not stretching, not growing, and not sharing myself. And honestly, maybe this place, in this manner, is one of the ways I'm meant to use to learn to receive and give love. So, I'll try again.

I imagine my journey to be a trip up a spiral staircase around a center pole. The pole contains the core issues of my life. Every turn of the spiral staircase takes me higher in understanding and ability, but the issues at the core also get more complex and difficult with every rise. All of the things that make me not want to write here or ANYWHERE are the very reasons I need to do it. And I know that. It's just kind of humiliating, because I'm exposing myself. And it's not the ridicule and derision I fear, I can take that -- I have before (from others) and do currently, mostly from myself. It's the so-called acceptance and love that's really hard to take. That, and to have my craziness on display and my wacky schemes and my big plans revealed to be empty endeavors because I'm too lazy/inept/LAZY to follow through. It's embarrassing that I'm not someone great, because I really thought I was supposed to be.

Hmmmm...I guess that needed to come on out.