tea time no. 74: Why am I not____?

Drinking: water

Listening to: Heartbeats – Jose Gonzales

I have been having chest pains – most likely from stress. I’m going to the doctor today, but my first reaction to this is to feel a bit cheated because I have certainly been through infinitely more stressful times than these, so what gives? Sure, I’m juggling a lot of stuff, but I love each aspect of my jobs and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It seems with me, my body seems to know things that I don’t, so I am trying to listen to it and figure it out. This post is for me, really, as I search for quiet and guidance.

 I have three email accounts: one is personal, one is for the photography business and one is for my law practice.  Ultimately, things stay more organized if I can compartmentalize a bit. Regardless if it’s one account or three, it’s a flood. When sifting through the in-boxes, I saw an email from Oprah asking “What makes you happy?” Isn’t that a great way to start the day? I clicked through the links of the email found this gem  from Marcus Buckingham:

“The bottom line is that women are harder on themselves than men, so if you asked men, “Which do you think will help you be more successful in life, building on your strengths or fixing your weaknesses,” 50 percent of men say “strength,” and 50 percent say “fix my weaknesses.” Women are at 27/73; 73 percent of women say, “I need to fix my weaknesses,” and 27 percent of women say, “Build on my strengths.”

In general, women are spending an awful lot of time thinking, “Who am I not?” instead of thinking “What strong moments can I find in my life?” When you spend a lot of time doing that, you are spending your life thinking about what you don’t have. That is a recipe for unhappiness.” -Marcus Buckingham

Along the same lines, I love this lecture from Eckhart Tolle and his thoughts about creativity:

“{when} you can create without self-seeking, then you create very differently.  Because when you create with self-seeking, you create a negative energy field: ‘I need. I want, I must have. Without that, I’m nobody. Oh, I musn’t lose that’. And then there’s competition in it. ‘I need to fight him or her because he might get there before I do’. All those things that create our civilization. Goals. 

{when creating without self-seeking } … the power of conciousness itself flows through you. It loves to create. So it will create who knows what. You don’t need to know it now. Let it flow.”

What I should probably do is skip the doctor, learn to surrender more, create more freely, cut myself some slack and meditate. If meditation is the “m” word in your house or something that evokes eye-rolling, check out this quick intro to meditation. I love it when he gets tickled.