The Art of Hartful Living
Celebrate Your Point of Enoughness
July 2, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
Americans seem to be on the treadmill of always striving and never arriving. The deal it, that you’ve got to know when you reach your point of “enoughness” so you know when you can celebrate your arrival. When do you really arrive? Where are you arriving? Have you taken time to actually know what you want to accomplish in order to know you’ve arrived? Once you’re there, do you move the finish line?
Some say that they’ll keep moving the finish line as long as it’s still fun to achieve. Some say they’ll never reach it, or else what’s the point after the finish line, death? Or retirement? What’s after retirement? What’s after death? Another finish line?
Having goals keeps up energized. It’s not even the fact that we reach a particular goal, it’s just having something just out of our grasp that we keep reaching for that keeps us motivated, excited and keeps us moving forward and also keeps our energy up. What are you looking forward to? Are you putting enough things into your life to look forward to? How do you know when you have reached your point of enoughness? Authors Vicki Robin and the late Joe Domenguez stated in their book Your Money or Your Life, that after your point of enoughness, there is a dimishing return of satisfaction and the way to fulfillment is through giving. Giving to your community, giving to others, giving of your knowledge, giving some of your share of the pie. How are you giving of yourself to keep yourself and other energized? Take stock of what you really need to energize your life and to be at your point of enoughness, then take the time to celebrate.
Time = Money = Life Energy
June 29, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
Forget the Euro, time is the currency of the new millennium. Unlike money, which can be earned back and recreated after it’s spent; time cannot be earned back once we spend it. So we need to spend it wisely and in alignment with our values, goals, wants and needs. Be purposeful about the use of your time and guard your time as you would guard your vault, it’s more precious.
We all know that time = money. But it also equals our life energy. When we spend time doing something, like work, we are exchanging our life energy for money. Being aware of how we are spending our life energy will help us decide whether or not we are making good choices with our time and with our life.
Rethink your spending habits of your time and your money. For instance – if you make $10 per hour and want an item that costs $100, then you would need to exchange at least 10 hours of your time for that item. Is that item really worth at least 10 hours of your life to have? In essence, you make far less than your official hourly wage, when you consider the time it takes to commute, buy lunch, buy work clothes, buy gas or subway tokens to get to work. It really boils down to maybe half of your official hourly rate, so that item for $100 realy is costing you about 17 hours of your life….is it worth it?
Make wise choices on how you spend your time and how you spend your money and you will reap richer rewards in the area of your life energy. Be very aware of your boundaries for your time and spend your time on the things and with the people that matter.
Your Transitions, Your Calling, Your Energy
June 28, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
In the past two weeks I’ve received a dozen phone calls and emails from others telling me of their life transitions and seeking a bridge from what they’ve been doing to what they want to be doing for the next phase of their life. Many have been doing what they think they ‘should’ have been doing, they either studied it in school, they were good at it, or they just got very comfortable, but now bored with it. Three of these people just quit their jobs and others told me they couldn’t believe how much energy they felt after their last day. It’s called FREEDOM. I just received an ezine that stated: employees commisserate and entrepreneurs brainstorm. Enough said on that one.
Note to self: just because you are good at something doesn’t meant you should be doing it as a career.
How do you know you are doing what you should be doing or to stop doing what you’ve been doing? It can be summed up from a passage from The Seat of the Soul:
“When the depest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what you were meant to be doing. The personality that is engaged in the work of it’s soul is bouyant. It is not burdened with negativity. It does not fear. It experiences purposefulness and meaning. It delights in its work and in others. It is fulifilled and fulfilling.”
As a person experiences “flow”, where their knowledge, skills, abilities and talents are met with the appropriate challenge, all time and space stand still – they are in the zone. That is when you know you are on the right path. When you take the Tingle Test – when you think about your profession and you get chills and tingles just thinking about a career move or an experience, you are on the right path. If the thought of that experience doesn’t move you or thrill you, then you are probably not moving towards your calling.
When you get antsy with your job, then start researching and journaling and finding the delicious intersection of what you love, what you’re good at and what the world needs and will pay for. When you’re on target, it will ignite your energy like you never dreamed.
Lighten Up: Your Energy, Your Light
June 25, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Continuing with this light theme and how your energy and light are intertwined, I found a passage from the book “>The Seat of the Soul that is paraphrased below.
You are a system of light and the frequency of your light depends upon your consciousness. When you shift the level of consciousness, you shift the frequency of your light: negative feelings bring on a different frequency of light than positive feelings. Emotions are energy in motion and are currents of energy with differnt frequencies. When you choose to replace a lower-frequency current of energy such as anger with a higher-frequency current of energy such as forgiveness, you raise the frequency of your light.
When you choose to feel negative feelings, despair, worry, or other lower-freqency emotions, then your body feels physically depleted because it has merged with an energy current of lower frequency. Whereas a joyous person abounds with energy, feels bouyant and is running with a higher-frequency current of energy pulsing through their system.
Your thoughts create different emotions, thus different energy and a different light through you. Lower-frequency system pull energy from higher-frequency systems. If you are unaware of your emotions and your thoughts, your frequency will be lowered by and you will lose energy to a system of lower frequency than your own. By choosing your thoughts and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your light. You determine the affects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life.
Light represents consciousness – are you walking around unconscious or fully aware? Are you on auto pilot, commuting to the same work day after day and not feeling that it matters or that it’s not making a difference. Or are you completely conscious of your energy, your activities and the meaning behind them? Are you consciously attracting the things you want into your life and giving thanks for them with your attitude of gratitude, or are you just showing up for life each day? What kind of light is radiating from you? What are you doing to illuminate more in your life? What would it take for your light to shine brighter?
You Make the Call – Gruntled or Disgruntled
June 24, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
We always have a choice – a choice to be an energy radiator or an energy drain. We also have a choice to either accept or reject somebody else’s energy they are projecting onto us. We have a choice to take it personally, or to mirror back their energy, or to let our own light shine onto them whether it will be connected to their own bright light or overshadow their dark light. When we let our own light shine on, we increase our resilience and cast a light on others.
Light opens up darker spaces, so I choose to let my light shine into some of the shadows that may come into my life. For instance, I once spent a blissful holiday in Santa Fe at a B & B that fell a little short of the expectations for the room, but the breakfasts were aaaaaahmazing. Their chef on the first day was simply charming, had incredible food and was a delight to be around. It set the tone for a perfectly heavenly day with divine company on a glorious sunny day in their courtyard. Her light shown onto her food, her guests, and you could feel it in the air.
The next day a different chef put a decidedly negative flair to the whole affair. Her demeanor was much more of one who had to be there for her job, rather than one who delighted in serving her artistic creations to others and bask in their delight. Her edgy, prickly attitude tried to sneak into my deliriously happy day and get me cranky.
We have choices to be either gruntled or disgruntled, to live our life and invite work into our life we are leading anyway, or to make work out of life. One chef shared her love of life through her cooking and the other just worked at it, and it showed that she had to be there to pick up a pay check.
When you have a choice, why not choose between being happy and deliriously happy instead of happy or grumpy. We don’t always have control over what comes to us (in fact, very little control over what comes to us.) but we do have a choice in how we react to it. How are your reactions lately? What do you choose to be… gruntled or disgruntled…it’s up to you. You can make the call and you decide on your energy level and what to do with it and how others affect it. You can mirror back their light or let yours outshine the darkness. Focusing on shining your light will boost your resilience when you decide to be gruntled.
What Can You Edit in Your Life?
June 18, 2007 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I was at a trade show recently when my coach walked by my booth and told me I needed to edit my banner and my business card. She said it was too busy. That’s pretty much how I’ve gone through life with as much activity, information, and stuff crammed into time and space that I could muster. I’m realizing that I need to edit some things out of my life, edit the noise and distractions, edit the things that don’t bring me joy any more.
To that end, I’m editing out my monthly ezine, Live Wire, which I’ve been writing and publishing for 10 years. It’s time to move everything to the blog…and by the way I’m working on a new website/blog combination to make things easier for everybody. I will publish just one more Live Wire announcing the big change, then there will only be archives of some of them on my website. I’ve noticed that it didn’t bring me joy to sit down and write it any more, it became more of an obligation and once it doesn’t make me happy, it’s outta here.
I’m working on my new banner and biz cards as we speak and I’ve jettisoned even more stuff from my garage. I’ve decided to take on new business strategies that will allow me more time for the things that matter and allow me to have more control and balance on my timeline vs. somebody else’s timeline. New strategies and ways of moving through the world that are streamlined and purposeful to who I am today, not who I was years ago when I first created them.
What can you edit from your life to make room for more energy. When you get rid of old, tired energy, you make room for more energy. Freeing up time, energy, space and emotional room, creates space for new things to come into your life. Pick a lane and go with the flow of your intentions. If you feel overwhelm, you haven’t yet made a decision. If you are dancing between ambivelance and action, move towards action and watch what happens. Go ahead and actively edit some of the things that don’t fit your lifestyle any more. Change things up and see what good comes of it and see what newfound energy arrives at your feet.
Flipping the Switch: Fast Gear vs. Nepali Time
June 16, 2007 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Bouncing back and forth between high-octane conferences in fast-paced cities and then returning to my home in an “active adult community” – read retirement resort; it strikes me that there must be a balance between living life in 6th gear and going in reverse.My ‘hood is not nearly active, or young enough for me – hence my move to the mountains with vital, active, outdoor adventurous types, but I’m feeling I don’t fit in with the uber pace of those I left in Washington DC. It reminds me of trekking through Nepal with my buddies and our pack of Sherpas carrying our load. We had just flown in from our home in Germany – still a slower pace than the US, and we were on European time on the hiking trail. Our Sherpas would fix us lunch and then we would lounge for an hour or two and then quit hiking around 2 or 3 to lounge some more.
At first we were a little aggitated that we were burning daylight and we wanted to hike further down the trail and not waste time sitting around. That thinking lasted only a couple days until we settled in to their rhythm of life and began to relax and bask in the lounging amidst the Himalayan peaks surrounding us. We played campfire games, showed our Sherpas skits from our camp days and taught them how to do shadow puppets on the tent walls by firelight. We had time to create, laugh, lounge and just be.
Now I’m feeling that schleping suitcases through airports umpteen times a month and chasing airplanes isn’t the pace I want or need any more. Security lines aren’t as fun as they used to be and so I’m making major changes to my life to support more of the Nepali Time and allow more free time. I’m setting up business systems, hiring Virtual Assistants and other life support to free up my time for more play with the people that matter. I’m feeling more energized by the mere thought of not continuing the pace I’ve lead for a decade and anticipate with eagerness the slower pace of the mountains…although not so slow as my retirement community. Maybe I’ll gear down to 3rd or 4th….I don’t want to hit reverse just yet.
On our recent cruise, my mom (who has never napped in her 80 years) decided to take the slower pace and nap twice a day and bypass the poolside festivities. It was a respite from the drunken masses and the sweet escape felt sinfully delicious.What is your pace? Is it serving you well? Is your pace energizing you, boring you, or irritating you? How does it settle with you and does a slower pace invite relaxing or aggitation? Take a high-level look at your pace and your life and see what you can see. And see what you can change for the better. Take stock of your pace – maybe it’s time to switch gears to something that suits your better for this time of your life. Now I’m going to go play squeakie with my dog, Madison….
Clearing Internal & External Clutter
May 31, 2007 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Have you ever noticed how much your clutter can weigh you down? There’s a physical negative energy dragging you down with your clutter. It weighs on your mind and it fills up your life space so that new energy cannot enter into your life. I’ve been in major purge mode lately, from the physical clutter in my life to the mental clutter and other noise and distractions. It’s such a freeing feeling to let go of things and stuff that are just not working for you any more. Get clear on what to do and what do drop, then take action and move forward to get things moving in your life.
If you’re feeling stuck, then change something in your life to get things moving. Having moved at least 15 times in the past 25 years, I’m getting good at letting go of what’s not bringing me joy in more and what I don’t absolutely need. I also don’t want to pay to move stuff. Just think about how much money your stuff is costing you in larger homes, storage fees, moving fees etc. Is your stuff really worth all the financial or emotional cost?
I’ve found that once you make a decision to take action, the rest falls in to place, it’s the hemming and hawing and miring yourself in the decision making that takes time. It’s the DECISION that’s the turning point. Once you DECIDE that something is no longer offering personal or professional growth, it may be time to move on. What is weighing you down in your life? What can you purge to get your energy unstuck? What isn’t serving you any more? What is your internal or external clutter costing you? External clutter is the stuff you can trip over, give to charity, or give to the dumpster and internal clutter is the stuff in your mind, your old belief systems, old ways of doing things or other behaviors that don’t serve you any more. What else can you clear out of your life that is holding you back to unclear the bad energy? Decide to take action and see what happens!
