A note from the universe

Every morning my inbox surprises me with a note from the universe. No, I’m not making this up. I actually get a personalized email from the universe delivered to me every day. Though this particular one comes courtesy of www.tut.com, I actually have it that we’re always getting notes from the universe. It’s just sometimes, they are not always this clear.

Back in May, I woke up to this note:

At first, Roxanne, we thought it would be really cool if only your “positive” thoughts became the things and events of your life.

But then we couldn’t think of any things or events that wouldn’t eventually be considered “positive,” so we decided to just leave you “turned on” all the time.

B-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z…
The Universe

And it really stuck. I thought about the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and what happens when we try and erase memories that are too painful. Because when we try and cut out a part of our memory, we actually cut out a part of our growth. For all those events and things in my life the pain was always positive, I just didn’t see it that way at the time. And now, as my perspective has changed, so has my interpretation. If it weren’t for that struggle, I wouldn’t be who and where I am now. And I am whole, complete and perfect as and where I am right now. And all the events in my life — well, they are all whole, complete and perfect too.

The Power of Vulnerability

This is always a favorite, and no matter how many times I watch it and how many times I share it with others, the impact is still powerful.

What would the world be like if we raised our children to believe “you are wired for struggle, you are imperfect and you are worthy of love and belonging”? What would the world be like if we chose to believe that interpretation for ourselves? What would be available to you, right now?

What do you think you are worthy of? What are you afraid of?

Hitting the bullseye

I was watching Downton Abbey the other day [side note: if you have not yet watched this, watch it], and I heard one of the characters say something that struck me. He said, no one ever hits the bullseye on their first shot, and it really got me thinking.

If we’ve never been an archer before, when we want to hit the bullseye, what do we do? We start to aim and shoot, aim and shoot. And we keep our focus on what we want and we learn, each time we shoot, where our arrow goes. Maybe our aim always goes left so we adjust to the right. Maybe the wind is stronger and affects our arrow, so we learn to notice it more and make adjustments.

What happens when we start looking at the person next to us, also practicing and hoping to hit the bullseye? Our aim goes way off, because we’ve taken our eyes off of our own bullseye. And what’s more, we don’t give up after our first shot, we keep trying. We keep on raising the bow and drawing. We know we will hit the bullseye and we understand that it is practice that will get us there.

Because, what is the alternative? To stand still and only shoot when we know we will hit the red dot. How is that going to go? When will we know we know without being in action and practicing? How long will we just stand there and wait, hoping that we’ll be as accurate as the person next to us who keeps on shooting?

photo by happy via, available under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Embracing all of ourselves

Welcome to my new website!

I’m so happy to have you here and look forward to sharing my thoughts, musings, experiences and challenges here with you.

Working with a diverse array of clients, and being an avid hound for knowledge, I’m always coming up with new and interesting ways of understanding the world and the way in which we are all a part of it.  I’ve recently been getting into Debbie Ford, and am excited to have just purchased her new book (that was co-written with Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson, wow) called The Shadow Effect.  Here is an excerpt from the book [incidentally, the first paragraph]:

“The conflict between who we are and who we want to be is at the core of the human struggle. Duality, in fact, lies at the very center of the human experience. Life and death, good and evil, hope and resignation coexist in every person and exert their force in every facet of our lives. If we know courage, it is because we have also experienced fear; if we can recognize honesty, it is because we have encountered deceit. And yet most of us deny or ignore our dualistic nature.”

I love thinking about this, about how it is only in our struggle that we are able to transform ourselves and that we must embrace the dark and the fear in order to let our light fully shine.  Without the dark, we wouldn’t know the light.  So let’s embrace it and love it for what it is — an access point to our higher selves.