21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #21

21.  Finish what I begin.
ARG!  I have never been good at finishing... I avoid endings.  Relationships, assignments, jobs, sentences...I don't like full stops.  I avoid going to bed at night, my fridge is full of jars with the last bit still in them, my shelves are full of half read books and my life is driven by the next new challenge rather than finishing the one I am living at the time... I am a huge fan, you may have noticed, of the "..."  I like to leave things open, open to the possibility of continuation...
I was planning on finishing my 21 posts on inner beauty with a retrospective of the other 20 posts, under the them "learn from the past"...but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  I noticed I was avoiding it... And I realised - this typifies one of my great life challenges.  I love beginning, and avoid ending.
This has been a double edged sword.
In some situations it has brought me rewards - I have hung on, with patience and fortitude, and the rewards have been that things and people are still in my life that wouldn't have been otherwise...this blog is one example!
On the other side of the sword it has meant that I have left things unresolved, hung on too long, left doors open that should have been closed, been cowardly, and this has sometimes brought sadness and frustration to myself and other affected people.
And the big downside is the blow that it strikes to my sense of accomplishment in life.  I don't finish things - I get to the very last stage, and I lose momentum.  Diets, tasks, goals... so often just short of accomplished.  I am so often "going well" until I am not anymore.
I have spent many many hours, and a lot of therapy money, trying to work on this in myself.  What is my resistance to finishing?  Is it addiction to the joy of new beginnings, do I get bored, do I fear admitting that is "as good as it gets", do I feel inadequate and always hope for more time to meet expectations, was I never really committed to the outcome??...blah blah blah....I think its time to stop asking the question "why" and just start doing it.
So as I FINISH this challenge, I acknowledge that it was tempting to either never post the 21st post... or to keep going, to decide to go to 100..... but I wouldn't finish it and it would be another thing on my list of unfinished self challenges - so I won't.
I have enjoyed this, and I have learned from it, and now it is finished.  I do feel slightly more beautiful on the inside for undertaking this process... and I have reinvigorated my sense of commitment to self improvement.
My new self challenge... JFI.  "Just Finish It".

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #20

20.  Take the first little step.
So I have been feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work that I am having to face in the next three weeks. And I have been avoiding it... I fill my time with the hundred little issues that come through in emails...and I avoid the big bastards.  And the anxiety is building...
Last night I took a small step towards achieving... and it felt good.  And now, I am going to take another small step... and soon - I know - I will feel less paralysed and more engaged... and then, I will be in the swing.  Taking one small step can make a big difference.
This goes for everything in life - growing as a person, relationships, health, parenting, life goals... its all about taking the first step... and moving forward... trusting that these little steps will, indeed, sometimes make a big difference.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #19

19. Embracing age



I love this.  And I love being 40.  I am not so keen on life running out...but I love being older.  I love feeling like a grown up.  I love feeling worthy of respect and not fighting to overcome the stigma of youthful inexperience.  I love having a history.  I love looking back at all I have learned and how it has shaped who I have become.  I love not stressing about how I look any more, because I am more than that.
I am more than ok, for now, with ageing.
I am loving focussing on the inner beauty of who I am.

21 inner beauty inspirations #18

18.  Stay inspired.  Stay focused.   Look at the big picture.  

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #17

17. On the importance of not being earnest.

So when I was a teenager I remember my mum turning to me in exasperation and saying "do you really need to be so honest?  Its ok not to be honest all the time!".
And I admit... its a bit of a theme for me.  I am compelled to speak the truth, and there have been many many times when I have regretted it.  Sometimes because people have been unnecessarily hurt, sometimes because you can't take it back once it is said, sometimes because the "truth" is a relative and unstable construct...and it changes... and again, you can't unsay it once it is said....
And yesterday I had another lesson in this.
Its pretty gross so if you are "delicate" then stop reading now...
So I was sitting on a stool (the chair type) in the toilet room while my daughter worked to deposit a stool (the non-chair type) in the said toilet.  We were having a chat, as we are wont to do to pass the time and keep things relaxed.  Its not been an easy journey to this point...but that would be digressing.
So we were talking about her pregnant teacher.  I have answered my angel's questions all about where she came from and how she was born...so she asked me "mummy, will the doctor cut open Teacher Lyn's tummy and take the baby out?"
And here is where I should have stopped myself and resorted to Santa Claus/Easter Bunny style babble.
Instead I said... "well maybe, but sometimes women don't have their tummies cut open, sometimes they push the baby out through their 'gina's, a bit like pushing out a really big poo...but its a baby that comes out, and its from your gina not your bottom."
And we moved on.
Later that night.... I was awakened by hysteria.  Nightmares.  Desperately trying to hold in her wee, shouting "no wee, don't come out!!" and refusing to go to the toilet, while wailing in misery.  Finally I, in total confusion, managed to persuade her to sit on the toilet...where-upon she started wailing again... and as she finally started to get the words together between the sobs...I heard "sob,noooooo waaa, baby... boooohooooooooo out...my gina! waaaaaaaaah"
And that is when I learned my lesson.
Think before you speak.  Honesty is not always wise, nor appropriate, nor kind.
And this is my inner beauty message for today.
Paradoxical - but true.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #16

16. Simplify and let go

So I openly admit it... I am a hoarder.  I over-consume, and I hate to get rid of things... I find it excruciating.  I live in fear of needing something that I don't have on hand.  If something has no conceivable usefulness then I can easily dump it, but if I can think of a way that it might be able to be used in the future its really hard to walk away.  I don't have one of things, I have three...just in case I lose or use one and break the other... or in case I meet someone who doesn't have one, and then I can help clutter their lives too.    I let things go off in the fridge, yummy expensive things, because I can't let myself eat them - because then I won't have them anymore and I may never be able to get more... so in fear I hoard the last one and hope it stays that forever....this tendency is exacerbated here in Fiji because its literally true that the shops get in a product once, and then never have it again...so I have to buy months worth, and then I can't let myself use them...
But I have to change this... I have to learn to not fear going without...I have to let go of the need to "have" and focus on the need to "be".
This is an example I want to set for my child, and the way that I know I will be happier...

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #15

15. 

For some people their inner beauty journey is about opening their minds to possible paths.  For me it is the opposite.  I have always been inundated with ideas, plans, hopes, choices... I see options and possibilities everywhere I look.  For me, my inner beauty will be about letting go of trying to do it all, and of suffering if I can't.  My inner beauty is about being calm, and accepting the limits of time and life.  I can always do more, certainly, but to be focussed and happy, to be centred and grounded, to have quality rather than quantity in myself - I will accept that my short life will not allow me to do everything, follow every possibility.  For me, I need to start to choose and let go.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #14

14.  Being my dream for my child

More than anything in the world I want my little girl to be happy.  This week for some reason I am acutely aware of how much she means to me... she is my everything...
And much more than my own happiness, I want her to be happy.  I don't want to live through her, but I want to teach her how to find a pathway to happiness.  I don't want to choose that path for her, but I want her to find it and confidently walk it, without faltering, without self sabotaging, without fear... I want her to stride into her happiness with her head held high.
And there is only one way that I can think of to teach her that... and that is by leading the way.  In a thousand obvious and invisible ways she is learning from me every day.  She is sucking in my way of thinking, living, believing and choosing.  She is imprinting her mind with the things I say and do...and of course, like every mother, I hear myself coming out of her mouth on a daily basis.
So this is my challenge... I need to teach her to find her inner beauty and let it guide her in choosing a path of happiness.  I need to show her how to do it.
And so I need to do it myself.  I need to find in me the confidence, the bravery, the trust and the commitment to stride forward towards happiness.  I need to take her with me on my journey inside myself to find my inner happiness.
I need to be the way I want her to be, and live the life I want for her.
I need to be happy.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #13

13.  Just do it anyway... trust!

I notice today how often I mentally sabotage my own enjoyment... I agree to things, throw myself into ideas, organise things...and then in the moments that precede them I lose the joy.  In the minutes or hours before a social event, or an unusual activity, begins, even though I have previously been filled with enthusiasm, I lose my nerve, my joy in the idea... I resent it, kick myself or organising it, become attached to my homeostasis in the face of impending disruption.  And then I do it anyway, because I have committed, and I love it.
Sometimes I pull out and on those occasions I will never know if I would have loved it, but I do know that the times I don't pull out are almost always great.
Why do I doubt it?
Why do I doubt myself?
Why do I tell myself I don't want something that clearly has a stack of evidence behind the premise that I will enjoy it?  While  I am there, why do I also tell myself I don't want to exercise when the evidence is definitely in that I will feel better if I do...?
So my inner beauty inspiration for today is to keep encouraging myself to "just do it"...and forge my way through the last minute cold feet and into the promised land.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #12

12.  Remembering that under it all we are all the same, and we just want to be happy...even if we are a bit misguided about how we go about it.  So if someone upsets you or makes you angry...if they do wrong by you... remember - its just their poor stupid misguided attempt to find a little crumb of happiness - and forgive them...

Countering Stress and Depression
By HH Dalai Lama

At a fundamental level, as human beings, we are all the same; each one of us aspires to happiness and each one of us does not wish to suffer. This is why, whenever I have the opportunity, I try to draw people's attention to what as members of the human family we have in common and the deeply interconnected nature of our existence and welfare.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #11

11. Knowing the physical body will eventually be ash, but your legacy will remain...

Today's Inner Beauty Inspiration comes from the idea of letting go of the focus on outer beauty.  There was a photo posted on Facebook of a woman with very obvious facial hair... the rest speaks for itself.  And I applaud whole-heartedly...



Shout out to this truly fresh and fearless Kaur! After finding her picture posted in Reddit's "Funny" section under the title, "I'm not sure what to conclude from this", Balpreet Kaur responded: 

"...I'm a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body - it i

s a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn't reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. By crying 'mine, mine' and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating a seperateness between ourselves and the divinity within us. By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. So, to me, my face isn't important but the smile and the happiness that lie behind the face are..."

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #10

10.  Knowing that more is not necessarily better

 I am nursing a sore head... its not too bad, but its a hang over... I failed to learn from experience...and once again I thought it would be a great idea to have a second glass of that yummy wine.  All too recently I learned that two glasses makes me feel like crap the next day at the moment (cadbury's girl!).  For some reason I am not tolerating more than one glass and still being friends with my body the next day.
But the wine was yummy, and it had been a long day...so of course my mind told me "hey, you like it, you deserve it...have more!" and it was a slippery slope from there.
Because its all too easy to subscribe to the super-size culture of more-ism...
I think its a survival instinct - get while the going is good because you never know when a bear is going to eat your head... but of course these days we have evolved to the point where the instinct is redundant, and yet we continue to blindly follow it...
More is better, more is grand, a glass of wine in the mouth is better than one in the hand...
But its not true.
Moderation people, moderation!
Inner beauty comes is inspired by moderation...by stopping when you have had enough...by taking life slowly and not taking more than you need...by knowing when enough is enough and you are just being a little piggy who will regret it in the morning...
Tis sadly true, that more often means moans...not the well of endless happiness it promises.
Inner beauty requires one to be feeling balanced...and balance means M-o-d-e-r-a-t-i-o-n!
Sheesh.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #9

9.  Giving yourself a break
Sometimes its a night to just lay on the couch.  Sometimes its a night to drink not one, but two glasses of wine.  Sometimes its a night off - just because.
Breaks are necessary.  Breaks let us come back stronger and more motivated.
Sometimes we just need to give ourselves a night off.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #8

8. Appreciating natural beauty
Beauty is everywhere... in a leaf, a green tree against a blue sky, a cloud, a new shoot, a flower...
Taking a moment to appreciate a small thing of natural beauty, even if you see it so often you don't notice it any more, changes you in that moment.  In that moment I find I am transported out of my own messy brain and into a space of connectedness with the world around me.  Natural beauty is unfathomably mysterious and limitlessly wonderful.
Today my moment of appreciation was a frangipani tree laden with rich white flowers.  I only glimpsed it from the car as I drove past - but in that moment my mood shifted, I smiled, relaxed and was - for a moment - joyous.  And moments like these can change everything.
So today I remember that taking a tiny teeny moment to pause in appreciation of the wonderous beauty of nature inspires my inner beauty, makes me a better, happier, more grounded, more humble, more present, more open person.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #7

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7.  Not saying no just because...

Above this inspiration you can see the typing of a 3 year old... A three year old who sees her mummy sitting pressing buttons on a computer for too many hours doing "work"... A three year old who asked her mummy if she could please do some work on the 'puter too... and could mummy please leave her alone to do her work...
The natural answer to this would have been "NO"... you cannot sit alone pressing buttons on mummy's work computer... No, of course a three year old shouldn't be left alone with an expensive piece of technology...
No ... No... But.... then I thought about what she could do wrong in a few moments... could she delete the hard drive?  Unlikely.  Where there any liquids near by?  No...  Whats the worst that could happen?  Not sure...  probably nothing too dire...
So I said OK.  I didn't say No...
Too often in life I say No first, and think later.  I say No, just because...even when I am not entirely sure what comes after the because.  I say No because I think that's the better answer without stopping to really think about why, and what could really happen if I said Yes...
So I am inspiring my inner beauty today by saying Yes... instead of No.
And so I opened a blog window and I left her to it.  And she typed the letters above... apparently.
A new moments later I heard a computerised voice coming from the office... I came in quickly.  I have no idea how she did it, or how to do it again...but she was in a section of the control panel that was giving the button options out-loud one after the other... reading out the words on the buttons in a female GPS-style voice.  I had never known that my computer had a voice!
One day I might find it again, or I may not... but somehow she found it...
And see...if I had said "NO" I would never have discovered that my computer had a voice!
There must be some kind of metaphor in that.... 

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #6

6. Knowing I can always be and do more...

I can do much more than I think I can, and I can do much more than I do.  I can give more, I can think more, I can work more and play more, I can be more generous, more creative, more thoughtful, more healthy...  Being inspired means I know that I can be more and do more... I don't give in to "thats enough now" thinking...I am limitless.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #5

"Something happens to you when you start looking after yourself: You start to feel precious. You are happy, and it is infectious. People around you are happy too"



Today I found this and it summed up what I have been wanting to articulate.  I wanted to write something about how paradoxically I feel better when I am exercising, eating well, committing to my own health.  Its not just about the endorphins of exercise, its bigger than that.  While my mind tells me I am happier indulging in tasty desirable "unhealthy-ness", diving into chocolate and cheesecake and laying on the couch... my reality tells me that the opposite is paradoxically true.
What I know to be true is that I am happier, more optimistic, more empowered, more positive to others, more energised and more alive when I am "sacrificing" the treats and laziness and making the effort to look after myself.  I know that for some this is no longer an effort - they have committed to it enough that it feels natural rather than like a chore... I hope to get there some day...but in the mean time I will try to hold onto this inner beauty inspiration to encourage me to keep on being committed to health and well-being, and know this honouring of myself will positively infect all of my relationships and endeavours.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #4

So I missed a day... I missed a day because I have been struggling a bit.  I could have forced something, but my heart wasn't it in.  I go up and down at the moment and I have been on a bit of a down slope.  I have been thinking about my future - about the next step after this step.  I have been trying to focus on a goal, to have a sense of what I am working towards...and, for the life of me, I can't see a thing.  Its all fog.  I know I won't stay here much longer than another year (which is, lets face it, quite a long time) but I cannot see beyond here.  And that makes me feel disconnected, like I am standing at the top of a cliff... Its distractingly disconcerting.
And then I found this quote.  And it reminded me... I am so busy worrying about what comes next that I am not here.  I am not engaged.  I am not present.  I am also not achieving what I need to do, and I am not fully experiencing the now.
So I remind myself to stop, breath, be here.
When I am present I am engaged with life.
When I am engaged with life I am able to engage with others in a genuine and present way.
When I am present I am more able to be authentic, real, beautiful on the inside.
So...back to being present in the now.