Packing up and heading to an entirely different coast is one of the most thrilling things a person of a certain age can do. There is nothing like starting your engine 3am one Sunday knowing that absolutely everything will be different when you land at the end of the week.
Luckily, I learned an important lesson – for about the thousandth time – during the first few hours of the journey.
Your mental game is the most crucial aspect of any undertaking.
Deb
As usual, for me, I just couldn't fall into a deep sleep. So I finally got up and on the road at 3:03 am. The drizzle of Seattle turned into the showers and dense fog of the mountains east of the city. My mind started telling me that we were tired already. The driving was difficult, the windows weren't defogging, the terrain wasn't conducive to setting the cruise control with all of the cars going 80 mph and the trucks going 30 mph. I could continue, but will spare you.
Because right now, I have a level of self-possession, that I didn't have at that moment. When the rush of thoughts around being completely unanchored in my life matched the most violent of white water rapids. Unable to process this emotion in the dead of night, my mind chose to obsess and find agony in each tiny aspect of my driving experience.
As it always does, the dawn broke. Driving into the gorgeous sunrise, I came back into control of my thoughts via the gentle urging of nature to just experience what was available to me to experience.
I was gifted this almost surreal image as I crested a hill and came upon a wind farm backlit by the most orange horizon imaginable. There were just a few seconds when the mountains and sunrise and the endless expanse of wind turbines transported me into an organic, geometrical fantasy landscape. Overly futzing with my cockpit controls might have taken this opportunity away from me.
Essentially, we have two choices as we go through our life. We can be led around by the rushing torrent of our thoughts or we can understand these unbalancing thoughts are just a passing fragment of our experience. And therefore we gain the option to chose, again and again, to be present to what actually unfolds around us and within us.
Being alive is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings, sensations.
Deb
The ability to return to the bedrock of Deb, without suffering, drama, or vast swatches of living on autopilot has been a lifelong quest. My capacity right now for feeling content in the midst of great life upheavals is due in large part to choosing to reach out to Shawn Quinlivan, C.Ht. for hypnosis when I found myself in a position that my mind was spinning out of my control.
I started with the very accessible method of listening to his guided meditations. Available here: http://shawnquinlivan.com/the-mountain-a-guided-meditation/
After a few weeks, of using the recordings, I was able to feel my loss, sadness, overwhelm, and concern about my future in appropriate ways that ebbed when I needed to flow back into a productive, action-generating state.
This was a result of choosing to practice mindfulness daily.
Here a few snippets from the composed part of my first day of driving:
~Who knew Idaho was so beautiful? The slice I could see from I90 through Coeur d'Alene convinced me that I'd be open to spending some more time in those environs.
~Helena, Montana is one lucky city.
Sarah Elkins' writing paints a very accurate picture of the person you get to hang out with in person. It feels so right that she would be the founder of the 'No Longer Virtual' conferences. I predict these events will become well-known as a very elite gathering where human relationships start, blossom, and create lasting support in many people's lives. Find out how to register for 2018 in Denver here : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-reasons-attend-longer-virtual-sarah-elkins
I felt like part of her family from the first moment I pulled up – hours early – and just camped in her backyard with my dog. We had a great talk as she made dinner and an even better discussion around the family dinner table. And then the cherry on top was that her husband, Bob, went out specially and brought back the city's finest Huckleberry ice cream. That is one tasty treat – certainly a contender for the best I've ever had.
It was so magical to spend the first overnight of my trip in Sarah's warm, inviting, and family-centric home. A very large part of the impetus behind this trip is that I have reached the time in my life when I know that putting other people at the center of my life is the core of what I need to do.
My always moving, never settling down, staunchly independent consultant lifestyle is no longer serving me. The undercurrent of each of the five days of thinking revealed this new theme in my life:
A loving and supportive family is crucial.
Deb
I arrived to a fabulous adopting family courtesy of Cyndi wilkins and I could not be more thrilled at how perfectly right this segment of my life feels to me. I am being cared for and challenged to care for almost complete strangers daily. I am at peace in today and I was just asked about my plans.
I was happy to say, thoughts of the indeterminate future have been absent from my mind.
This post is dedicated to Dory Louden. The best roommate a recovering hermit and her still-hermitage-preferring dog could ask for.
I am curious to hear stories from other people about a time when you might have realized that despite all the surface turmoil, you felt calmly and vibrantly alive in exactly the place you found yourself.
~~~
I am starting up a new line of business as a Soulpreneur Strategist using my technical consulting background and heart-centered communications skills to help the independent healers of the world run their businesses, create their websites, and maintain a social media presence without taking away from the time they need to devote to their clients. Find out more or buy one of my books on my virtual home > www.InsightsOccur.com
