Tag Archives: connection

The Awkward Truth About Valentine’s Day

Ah.  Valentine’s Day.

< awkward groan >

Look, I could write a heartfelt, academic post about this, considering all the research I did into it all, but I’m not feeling it.

So instead, I’ll just write what is awkward and at my core.

Y’see, Love is one of my Core Desired Feelings.

Yes.  I know.

It’s not so much because I’m a romantic at heart (romcoms and chick lit are torture for me!), but rather because it is one of the most transformative feelings that I have.

It literally changes everything in my life – not just how I feel, but also how I act, and how I perceive my life and my world.

It allows me to sit here and be entirely who and what I am.  It’s an expanding feeling that lets me ease into my space to begin with.  It allows me to approach people and life like a blank sheet – no prejudices, no stories, no attachments, just entirely open to what is.

It’s a kind of Freedom.

But don’t get me wrong.

I can’t and don’t feel like this 24/7, because I am human after all.  I react to my surroundings – people, landscape, news, books…- and I have other Core Desired Feelings that I want to feel (like Hope, and Dynamic).

And seriously, I can only imagine how smug and rose-tinted this all sounds.

It’s really difficult for me to write about this.  It’s so much easier for me to write about all the research I’ve done, and keep what I’m really feeling and experiencing at the periphery, at a distance.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth about Valentine’s Day:

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To Change Something, Take The First Step

I picked a fight with my man one morning this week.

I was tired – it’s been a gruelling week in a lot of ways – commuting 4 hours a day to a day job with a couple of difficult cases and earlier-than-usual starts, continuing a test-run of my upcoming Desire Map Workshops, and it’s early February – ever since I was in highschool, February has been the month I just collapse, physically and emotionally, no matter how well things are going or how upbeat everything truly is.  The winter just drags me after a while, y’know!  (Although I seem to be faring better this year than previous years with it).

Anyway.  I’m not a morning person at the best of times – I unfortunately am a Dragon first thing in the morning, because there are things to be done!  A day to start!  Full speed ahead!  Green light!  GO!  And I rarely feel I can relax until at least some of the stuff that needs to be done is done, “front-loaded”.

And one attempt by him at being helpful just felt throwaway and pithy and uncaring, and I just snapped.

We talked it out afterwards – all the niggling things that have rubbed each other the wrong way for a while.  And all the solutions we came up with require more effort.

MORE EFFORT?!  MORE WORK?!

RAHRRR!  Dragon smouldering inside!  Indignation rising!

I have to give more?!  I’m working a day job and building a business on the side, working on my commutes, sometimes in my lunch hours, into my evenings, at my weekends and I have to give even more when it feels like nothing is left?!

…in order to fix whatever is wrong, yes.

Past the indignation, the grievances and pain, yes.

I somewhat begrudgingly have been humbled and reminded of a cardinal life rule that I first learned properly just over a year ago:

If you want something to change, you have to take the first step.  You can’t rely on other people to take that step for you.

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