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These united states of CONFUSION – PART 2

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If you missed last week’s Unites States of Confusion, here it is… 

Let’s take it from there, shall we?

The only way to get someplace other than where you are… Is first to KNOW that you want to make the journey. I want to journey from this confusion… It is suffocating here. I can barely breathe. My throat dries up when I try to speak my truth. My legs feel too heavy to move and I feel stuck. So clearly this is NO place to be…Even though these feelings are familiar, it is still not a safe place.

But what is the first step?

The first step is to be gentle with myself… Not beat myself up for landing here yet again… Shit happens…Quite frequently… So what?

No beat-up-of-self allowed!

The next step is to know which areas of my life need some care and to use the road map (the 8 principles) to map my way into a different space. These are in my book available at http://indranislight.org/products-page/

Let’s focus of my physical body. I have become quite lazy with my exercise and training. I have used all kinds of lame excuses and have allowed myself to gain weight and had to buy bigger clothing.

No beat-up-of-self allowed!

So I must start on a program of physical health.

How do I feel about getting so off course? Kinda crummy…But my INTUITION has been whispering in my ear to pay attention and to FOCUS more on self-care.

I hear my intuition by making time for silence, prayer, meditation. I also hear it by noticing how my body feels. INTUITION speaks with energy in our physical bodies and instead of labeling the feelings with words like Anxiety, Panic attacks, etc… Try just describing the physical sensations as if you did not know how to label them. That takes you out of the trance of the labels.

The intuitions lead me to register for another marathon… Now the event will determine what my PLAN looks like.

I must run/ walk 26.2 miles next March. My training program when worked backwards will have me starting at 2 or 3 miles a few times per week and gently increasing each week. My PLAN will also include yoga, strength training and weekly massage to help me recover from my workouts.

I started on the plan already and surprised myself by walking faster than I have in a few years and not being winded. I cannot change the plan because my body still has to be reintroduced to the regimen of training.

So what is your plan? How can you work it backwards so that you can begin to take baby steps? Why baby steps? If my marathon were in 2 months, I would be going crazy and I would already have failed. I know that I cannot get ready to 26.2 miles in 60 days. 6 months is my absolute limit. Your end goal and where you are now will determine the time you need to be successful.

Here’s another hint… State the goal and halve it. Now create a timeline and place the end goal at the end, then the half goal at the…you got it…the halfway mark. Half that again and place that at the quarter mark and half again at the eight mark. Now look at how much time you have from the start to the eighth mark and begin to create the small steps to get there. You may decide to shorten the overall time or to lengthen it, your steps will be your guide.

My marathon steps would look like this:

26.2 miles March 2012

13.1 miles December 2011

6.5 miles October 2011

3.2 miles September

2 miles now until September

Now I would work the daily schedule that has me running each of those long distances only once a week, the rest of the week is for endurance, speed work and other disciplines like yoga and Pilates.

Then you have to kick your FOCUS into action. Everything, and I do mean everything you do has to have your goal be the guide post. If, for instance, I need to swim every day and I choose hotels without pools when I travel, then I have lost my focus. Or if I have room for 3 pairs of shoes but no room for my running shoes, then I have lost focus. So my GOAL is my GUIDE.

This whole process is painted with the INTENTION and the PLANNING brush. The whole event, from beginning to end has to be in clear FOCUS and your Intention, your daily Planning principle all over it and is guided by your Intuition and your Intention. Every step you take solidifies your Intention to make your goal your reality.

This could mean that your ENVIRONMENT has to be tweaked, so you can accomplish this goal. If I have to do long runs on Sundays, I cannot go bar hoping on Saturday nights because I have to rest, hydrate with water not booze and eat right the night before. So I may have to give up some of my drinking buddies until my race is over.

The CREATION Principle, begs deeper question…WHY do you care? In other words, why do you want to see this thru? What will you gain? Who will lose if you lose focus?

For me the answers are quite clear. I will lose ME. I will LOSE ME! There is nothing more precious than ME and I will lose that.

So what am I creating?A more powerful and positive me!

Why? Because half of who I am or can become is not acceptable.  I will not settle for less than ALL that I am!

I was not born to live just half of my potential… I was created to live full out. I was created to live completely and to use all of my gifts. All day, every day.

The other Principles are the Ultimate and the You Principles and I will tell you more about those next week.

Come back won’t you?

What will you start today?

 

Love and light

Surrender

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Surrendering does not usually have positive connotations. Recently I had been traveling a lot, meetings, obligations, running here, running there. Just simply overwhelmed. I would lay in bed exhausted not able to even sleep well.

I decided to start looking at my obligations, my schedule to see what I could eliminate. I started thinking what would happen if I surrendered. Not give up, but give in. Give in to the my mind, body and spirit which needed time to rest, recharge, and be still.

If I kept my hectic schedule and burden load I would only be running myself down more.

What would others think if I postponed my appointments with them? I worried that they would think less of me.

What would my loved ones think if I chose to take time by myself and not rush home to them? I felt guilty wanting to indulge myself in rest and rejuvenation.

I decided to surrender to my body, mind and spirit to get the rest and develop the clarity needed.

Once I made the decision to surrender, to give in, the healing actually began at once.

What can you surrender to, that would be for your well being?

These united states of CONFUSION

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I find myself in one of the many STATES of CONFUSION.

In my piece of the world, these states can look like:

Lethargy

Over excitedness

Needing to shop

Wanting a drink… Real bad!

Needing to eat chocolate, or cake, or the whole loaf of bread

Deep sixing Self Care so that I become a wreck within a short while.

Well it’s been a few weeks and the Confusion persists. I have tried
many of the above coping mechanisms and must report that
THEY ARE NOT WORKING!

they are not working.

So what now?
Here is what I am not willing to do:

  • I will not become an alcoholic…that is just too big of a hole to crawl out of.
  • I will not eat myself out of house and home… Losing all that weight
  • I would gain would be an even deeper hole to crawl out of
  • I do not have the energy I used to have for over excitement… I get tired rather easily these days… Opps… there’s the lethargy!
  • BTW Lethargy is also out… I refuse to become the lazy slob I used to be before I found triathlons and marathons ( at 50 I transformed myself from a lazy slob and became a triathlete and marathoner).

So I will do what I know best… I will follow the simple steps I laid
out in my book, The Indrani Principle, Inhale Life Exhale Joy.

The system that I wrote about in my book, so many years ago, is one that I STUMBLED upon, while STUMBLING thru my life and challenges.

After morphing from couch potato extradordinaire to elite athlete and then to author, life coach, business owner yada yada yada, I find myself stumbling yet again. I seem to be tripping all over my decisions. I am accepting blame for all kinds of accusations. I am
even convincing myself that somehow I have not been ” good enough”.
AND THEN something glorious happened… I was yet again accused of something and I felt my eyes do some rapid fire blinking as if to say…

Wait!
What?

Then I woke up from the known trance of
“This TOO is your fault!”

Ummmm… nOOOOOOO…. I reject your hypothesis. I bear no fault here.

So let me quickly outline the formula that I stumbled upon, 8 simple principles… Simple does not mean easy.
U…Ultimate principle
I…Intuition principle
F…Focus principle
E… environment principle
I…Intention principle
C…Creation principle
P…Planning principle
Y…You principle.

Tune in next Saturday for a guided tour of how to use these simply powerful principles.

Until then… I will enjoy my current state of confusion, knowing well that there are some juicy lessons here for me. The bigger the
confusion the bigger the lesson.

 

Love and light from Indrani and her iPad!

(photo credit middleastpost.com)

Be an explorer

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The celebrated Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest in 1953. He faced bitter cold, difficulty in breathing at altitude, equipment challenges.

In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl sailed a reed raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands to test a theory that people traveled by using only the materials and technologies available during pre-columbian times. He faced ridicule by his peers for the concept, faced the weather of the Pacific and finally his raft struck a reef.

Amelia Earhart in 1937 attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe. She had two prior attempts which included mechanical failures, unfavorable weather patterns, and always the fear of reaching her fueling stations.

So you are thinking, yes all these people are great explorers, how could I possibly add my name to that list?

When you do the work to explore your inner self are you facing the unknown. It won’t make the cover of National Geographic but it takes courage, guts, fortitude to look inside and see your truth. There will be times where you cannot think of putting one foot in front of the other, as Sir Edmund Hillary must have thought as he climbed Everest.

You may be ridiculed as Thor Heyerdahl was, but it did not stop him because he believed in his vision, his project and his mission.

To navigate your heart and your life there will be failures, you may have to make several attempts like Amelia Earhart.

To explore you will be scared, you will feel fear, and so did these three explorers.

To explore your true self can be as steep a climb, as wide as an ocean, or as vast as the sky. You are an explorer in the truest sense of the word.

Add your name to the list!

OLD WORLD vs YOUR WORLD… how to straddle both and not break!

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Your world is a fine balance in the space between old cultural norms and new cultural norms. Not old cultural as in useless, but old as in ” the old country” and new as in “your adopted country”.

I have seen so many people who have moved here from someplace else and still try to live as though they were in their little village. They reject EVERYTHING American. They are afraid that their kids “FORGET’ where they came from so they make it almost impossible for their children to have normal friendships. They make it impossible for their children to find their own fine balance.

In the best of times, we all do a dance between what we want and what is expected of us by various people in our lives.

Recently I have met some women who have been brought to this country after marriage. All of these woman had arranged marriages. Their husbands went to the “old country” and married the best of the best. These women are highly educated, ambitious, courageous ( came to a new country away from their families) and eager to learn how to thrive in America.

What they did not know was that their husbands wanted to recreate an imagined old world village. In these villages, the daughters-in-law, never left the house. They prayed in the morning, then cooked ( new food every day) and then sat with folded hands and waited for the King to come home. Some of them even tried, they actually thought that they could “trick” themselves into becoming ancient and useless. They could not. As their powerful selves emerged, their husbands and in-laws absolutely lost their minds. They screamed, threatened, blamed, abused and even took their children and squirreled them away to a different country.

These women have had to dig deep and find strength and courage they did not know they possessed. Some of these men did not even renew their wives papers to be legal in this country and have left the women scrambling to find ways to stay here so they can be near their kids.

At this writing I know of 2 women who have had to leave their children behind because they could not a legal way to stay in their adopted country. Their hearts are broken!

These women are recreating themselves in their new country and doing it all alone. Is there a way to marry old and new? I think so, Yes, very definitely.

One of the first things that have to be addressed is “why did you leave your village and what did you hope to find in your new country?”

If you cannot answer these simple questions, then you will never know if and when you have found what you are looking for.

How can you tell what to keep and what to leave? Try a different combination from the old and the new. How about western clothes in a traditional ceremony?

Why do you do what you do? Does it bring JOY? Does it cement the pain?

Only YOU have the answers. Take some time to reflect on what  life you want to create. Find an ally and get some strength. If you do not then nothing will change.

Take a risk, your happiness is worth it!

The A B C’s of my Life… what’s yours?

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Lets borrow a page from our days of NOT KNOWING MUCH, even the ABC’s and get out from the DAZE of THINKING WE KNOW SO MUCH

lets re- learn our ABC’s

A/ASSERTIVE

B/BRAVE

C/CURIOUS

D/DYNAMIC

E/EMPATHETIC

F/FORGIVING

G/GENEROUS

H/HUMOROUS

I/INSPIRATIONAL

J/JOYFUL

K/KIND

L/LOVING

M/MINDFUL

N/NOURISHING

O/OPTIMISTIC

P/PASSIONATE

Q/QUESTIONING

R/REFLECTIVE

S/STEADY

T/TENACIOUS

U/UPLIFTING

V/VIBRANT

W/WISE

X/eXCITED

Y/non YELLING

Z/ZESTFUL

I invite you to CREATE YOUR OWN ABC BRAG LIST.

What would life look like if you only lived those traits and let go of the negative.

love and light

Indrani

Baby Elephants, Bottles and Blankets…one woman can change the world!

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I recently was in Kenya and had the great fortune to visit The Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi. The babies were saved from certain death when their mothers were either poached or otherwise could not care for their babies.

When the program first started, the mortality rate was very high and no one knew why.

The babies were being fed regularly and the formula was nutritious and correct. But they would not drink the milk and died within a few days.

One day ( so the story goes) the laundry was drying on the lines on the compound and one of the babies wandered under the laundry and for some reason the keeper/caretaker followed the baby with the bottle and the baby drank it all! It seemed to be a miracle. Long story short, the caretakers surmised that the babies were not drinking because they did not feel protected because they would normally be covered by the mothers body and therefore felt safe.

From that day, the babies were covered with blankets when they were being fed and they began to thrive and grow and were successfully reintroduced into the wild at 2 years of age. The story is one of fortitude and passion that one woman felt for these majestic creatures.

This was but one of the miracles that I witnessed in Africa. Every day, the miracles were all around me:

How the Zebra could communicate to the wildebeests that it was “time” to embark on the Mara River crossing?  How did all the rest of the herd know that the first Zebra had decided it was “time” to make the journey?

How did the animals in the way back of the line know it was time to start running like crazy to make the journey?

How did the Zebra mom, who had made it all the way across, know that her baby was stuck on the other side and was brave enough to go back, find the baby and cross again! That mom, made 3 crossings. She knew no fear for her own safety when she KNEW that her baby was still on the other shore.

The miracle that the 2 large crocs in the water did not kill any of the animals on the crossing we saw.

What did I learn from Africa?

Life is meant to be lived every single day.

We only have the present, lets stop wishing it away. We cannot “fix” the past and the future is an illusion.

The animals were always present, they were not in “yesterdays’ lost opportunities” or “tomorrow’s buried treasure.”

I invite you to create some space in your hurried lives to experience the PRESENT, regardless of of the pain/enjoyment factor.

Make some miracles of your own

love and light

Indrani

A tip from BP and the Gulf Disaster… talking is not enough…

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In the newspaper this morning, I was reading about the BP exec who will step down on OCT 1st as a direct result of how he handled the oil spill in the Gulf. I am not any sort of engineer nor do I like science very much so I did not really expect to get any “personal lessons” from the article. THEN, bingo, there it was. ” We had endless conversations about safety but not a lot about execution.”

WOW, what a great lesson for all of us, not about safety but about dreams, goals, personal investments… and this is how it looks.

I met someone last week so said, ” I would love to travel and see the world but I do not ever have any money.” My mind flashed back to a conversation with this same person just a few weeks ago who had spent ” thousands on fireworks for 4th of July” and a few years ago who said ” I go to Las Vegas about twice per year and spend a minimum of $5,000.00.”

Ok, lets do the very simple math. In just one year, $10,000 PLUS $2,000… ummm $12,000!  This is not counting airfare and hotel room or food!

I was curious about costs to travel to lets say Paris this year so I checked on line. Air about $8000.00/ hotels were all over the map on pricing. From previous trips to France I know that the “metro”, the subway is dirt cheap. I also know that people watching at a little sidewalk cafe is free except for the price of a ” cafe au lait and an exquisite croissant.”

How can we all learn a lesson from that simple sentence in the paper about BP? Here is how!

Stop talking about what your plans are and start making concrete plans to EXECUTE! Yea, you heard me, stop blowing smoke or oil or whatever you want to call it and take responsibility for making your dreams come true….

If you have no clue how to stop the endless cycle of “talk” and start the new ” get it done” behaviors, here is a place to start.

GO PUBLIC. Tell a whole bunch of people that you want to be held accountable for doing something different with your life. Tell them to STOP you when you begin to blow smoke and ask you this simple question.

“So what ARE you going to do about it?”

It is a big leap from “just talk” to “personal responsibility”. It’s got to start somewhere right? Start TODAY.

Taking positive steps to your better life is the best way to LOVE YOURSELF!

love and light

Indrani

What’s Right With Me

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Indrani Goradia meditationWELCOME TO INDRANI’S LIGHT.

At Indrani’s light, we give you the tools and skills to step out of any shadow under which you are living. We empower you to live a brave and courageous life.

Get a head start by signing up for 5 Minutes to Happiness at the right side of this page.
Stay tuned for our Manifesto and Promise to you.

Here’s to shining a light on your dreams

Indrani