Day 7-Today we acknowledge ourselves. Yay!!!
Take a moment to consider how great you are. See how quickly you will release the past and rise out of hopelessness. As you affirm your gifts and strengths, your confidence will increase and the future will be brighter.
What do you value about yourself?.. the courageous actions you have taken, the things you have accomplished...
Go decade by decade and literally make a list, when you get the last few years go month by month.
Ask your friends and family what they love most about you and what they will remember about you when you die.
Approach this process as though you were building up the self esteem of your sad 11 year old child.
This is alot of work, you should be so busy today thinking about all of your success, gifts, and contrubutions that you have no time to think about anything else.
Instead of talking about how great I am, and all of my accomplishments, I'll tell a little story about the person who started me on this journey.
Her name is Saraswati.
No, that's not her real name. Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge, she represents the free flow of wisdom. It is so perfect for her.
She came into the gym I was a trainer at, and before she hired me, she wanted to "interview" me. She didn't want a blonde ditzy trainer in a sports bra, Saraswati needed a real human being, with depth and understanding, someone that could help her crawl out of bed and get to the gym. (of course I didn't know any of this until after the interview, so I was just being myself.)
She told me about the tragic loss of her father, her frustrating relationship with her childlike mother and the three months she spent in a tent on the beach at an ashram in the Bahamas becoming a yoga teacher.
I'm like woah, wait, hold your horses-what? where? what's an Ashram?
She was like... y'know, haven't you read Eat, Pray, Love?
Me Again...No, What? Read a book? Oh my goodness.......(**heart races with excitement**)
And then in my first successful taste of the law of attraction and the power of intention, I said the following....
"I know we don't know anything about each other but you will be taking me there someday."
ooooooohhhhhh........goosebumps, I know.
So our relationship grew, I read Eat, Pray, Love as though I was reading a story that I had written from the future. We trained for a year and then she had to go back to Ontario for university. When she left in September, it wasn't a goodbye as I knew I had a friend for life.
Six months later, I met her at the Toronto airport for my first trip to the yoga ashram. She let me see it through my own eyes. We loved the yoga part of it. I didn't enjoy the meditiation, instead I went jogging on the beach and usually ended up at the next resort drinking contraban starbucks. We went to satsang, which is basically chanting words I had no idea the meaning behind, but there was drumming, tambourines and swaying to and fro so I chanted blissfully like it was brownie camp. Plus we were doing this all on a beach watching the sunrise.....I mean, come on!!!!
She took away my self help books I was reading, "You Can Heal Your Life" and a few Wayne Dyer favorites. She calmy reminded me, "you're immersed in help right here, put your books away".
The food is vegan, no flavor, no caffeine, no stimulants of any kind. She told me the food would be amazing... She was right, homemade bread, guava jelly, handmade granola and tofu in many interesting configurations. I was so nourished, relaxed and intoxicated with happiness.
It was indeed a life changing experience. We didn't take in any programs or lectures, instead we wandered the beaches for hours, swam and snorkeled, snuck down for coffees and treats everyday, laughed so incredibly hard it hurt. We skipped yoga for the hammocks, and Saraswati had suggested having a spa treatment, like she did when she was here. Spa treatment? At a yoga ashram.......in a tent on the beach, with an ayervedic practitoner....well...um...sure, I could use a massage I guess.
Ok -so by "spa treatment", they mean take a good hard look at your life and leave there sobbing promising yourself things will be different from this point on. It should be renamed "awakening treatment".
The practicioner "called the angels" to be present with us as she released the toxins and tensions that are in this body. She was horrified at the state of my mangled fingernails, gasped at the amount of toxicity and stress I had in my body and demanded a blood cleanse. I agreed to look into it. She asked why I was here, I told her I came with a friend to learn about yoga. She asked where my husband and kids were, you know small talk. She ended the "spa" treatment with a heartfelt statement. She said "beloved, I have been in your shoes. It is a very lonely existance. Soon you will grow tired, and you will realize people never change and it is easier to just start over."
I thanked her, got dressed and took my list of blood cleansing pills to purchase, left the tent and stepped into the worst release of sadness I had ever experienced. It was the kind of cry that gives you a migraine, where there aren't enough kleenex on the tiny island to mop up the tears and snot that were coming from the mess I call my life.
So from there, I had a peace surround me that I had never experienced. I know it sounds a bit cliche, the calm after the storm, but it was so much more than that. It was the knowing what I had to do with my life.
The years of searching for the answer brought me to a place where indeed answers are found.
So when you meet someone, and have an instant connection, you know this person will be a great teacher like Saraswati is to me.
This story is my story of courage. Be brave enough to meet people, invite them into your world, ask why they are here, for they come bearing gifts. Be vulnerable, love too much, give too much, let them in too far, trust that they will take care of your needs. Trust that they've walked through your door for a higher purpose...and wait and watch for it all to unfold.
Your worth is celebrated by all. You are the hero in someone's story. You are extroardinary.
