#aloha

Ode to Joy

Posted on by Sandi Amorim 16 Conversations

I heard a Hawaiian phrase recently – malama pono – which means ‘take good care of yourself’ and I wondered, do you?

Do you take care of yourself the way you know you should or do you coast through life taking your health and well-being for granted?

heart shaped stone etched with word joy

I know I don’t always take the best care of myself, distracted by business, commitments to others and yes, I admit it – sometimes laziness.

What? A life coach admitting to laziness? Not too common I know, but hey I’m human and I’ve got my challenges just like you do!

It’s been four months since I first focused on self-care in the month-long homage. Four months during which time my focus has waxed and waned as reliably as the moon.

And it makes sense that I’m thinking of it again now as I’ve been in Maui the past two weeks and self-care has been effortless, creating a sense of well-being and joy I haven’t felt in a very long time.

This focus on self-care and joy was partly inspired by Andrea Olson’s recent post 100 Tiny Pulses along with Martha Beck’s Joy Diet, not new but an empowering menu of daily practices for a happier life. But more on that in a minute.

While here in Maui, this is what effortless has looked like.

Typical vacation day:

  • Up between 6-6:3oam
  • 15 minutes of meditation (sometimes watching the horizon for whales)
  • Breakfast of fresh fruit, yogurt, maca and nuts
  • An hour or two of writing
  • Day’s activity
  • Picnic lunch made with fresh local ingredients
  • Lots of walking and fresh air
  • Healthy dinner, usually grilled with fresh veggies
  • Asleep by 10:30pm

What’s important to note about this regime is this – it’s pretty simple, and more importantly it’s sustainable.

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Nothing to Be Done (a poem from the ocean)

Posted on by Sandi Amorim 4 Conversations

looking at Pacific Ocean from Kihei, Maui

I used to worry

I was too intense

or not good enough.

they sometimes got confused

flowing one into the other.

I used to wish I was kinder,

slimmer, nicer

more loving

less judgemental. . .

but how could I be

when I was not that for myself?

until one day

I looked out and

saw the ocean,

or perhaps the ocean saw me.

a vast

constant

perfect ocean.

and then a new thought

emerged,

washing away the old.

a vast

constant

perfect me.

exactly the way I am

exactly the way I am not.

the drop of rain that falls

the wave that rushes in.

I am that,

I am. . .all of it.

and for once

there was nothing

whatsoever

to be done.

 

Post Cards from Someday

Posted on by Sandi Amorim 5 Conversations

 

postcards from Maui

If someday sent you a postcard, what would be on it?

 

When I first saw the title of Andrea Olson’s guest post I had my doubts. I thought, “Doesn’t she know how I feel about someday?” But then I read the post and realized she does know and she’s got a unique spin on it that she shares in today’s guest post. 

When I was a teenager, I read a work of fiction re-imagining Charles Darwin’s journey to the Galapagos Islands. I tumbled so deeply into the story that I felt I was there; observing the wildlife, feeling the sweat run down my back under the heat of the equatorial sun, making notes in a battered leather notebook.

Upon finishing the book, I said to my mom, “Someday, I’m going to go to the Galapagos Islands.” She merely nodded and continued folding the laundry.

Fast-forward some twenty years. I’m standing before a large cardboard box that holds the contents of my career as a lawyer. Random papers. Chewed up pencils. A plaque that describes my many wonderful attributes as the employee of the month. A half-eaten Snickers bar.

I have just quit my job. After many fits and starts, I’ve finally admitted to myself that I do not want to practice law. I simply don’t like it and I’m not doing it again. Nope. Never.

Despite my resolve never to practice law again, I have no idea what I’m going to do next. Even more frightening, I have no idea what I want to do next. None what-so-ever.

That is when someday sweeps in to save me.

An oversized post card arrives in the mail describing a trip to the Galapagos Islands, leaving in two weeks.

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The Power of Focus (or How Happiness is Like Mountain Biking)

Posted on by Sandi Amorim 6 Conversations

mountain bike on red dirt road

Melissa Dinwiddie shares an excerpt from her e-book Creating Happiness: 9 Essential Secrets for Creative People (and Everybody Else). Melissa is one of the most creative people I know and I’m delighted to have her here while I’m on vacation. Aloha!

A trek up a mountain on a borrowed bike taught me a lot about how shifting focus, even just a fraction of an inch, can radically alter your ride through life.

A few years ago, I went mountain biking on Mount Tamalpais, a mountain east of the famous San Francisco Bay.

As it was my first time actually biking on anything other than pavement, I was fortunate to have a companion for the day who worked as a volunteer coach for a high school mountain bike team. He gave me a lot of tips on how to get up the mountain while staying vertical, and perhaps more importantly, how to get back down.

To any veteran mountain biker, our trail was such a novice one that it would be utterly boring. To me, who was a novice biker at the time, it seemed impossibly rocky. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, that the tip I remember most from that day was how to avoid those throw-you-off-your-bike stones that invariably seem to appear right where your wheel is aimed.

The secret?

Don’t look at the rock; look at the clear spot next to it.

How many times, I wondered, had I been toodling around the neighborhood on my bike, and ridden right over the thing—stone, pine cone, crack in the pavement—I was most wanting to avoid?

As my mountain bike coach explained, your wheel will automatically go where you look, so if you look at the rocks while riding, that’s exactly where you’ll go. If you shift your gaze an inch over to look at the clearing, however, you’ll “magically” avoid those nasty bike-tumbling rocks.

It’s not really magic, of course. And it’s an idea that you can apply to more than mountain biking.

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How Uncertainty Became My CEO

Posted on by Sandi Amorim 5 Conversations

 

The Aloha Guest Posts: While I’m away on vacation a few of my extraordinary friends will be keeping the fire stoked, sharing their wisdom and enthusiasm for living out loud. First up is Padma Maxwell of Get Your Thrive On who’s walking her talk, following her own dreams wherever they take her and as you’ll see she’s not always sure where that is!

 

Uncertainty consistently showed up at my door unexpected and uninvited. Yet, when I’d open the door, she didn’t say anything, she just stared at me. She was by far the most unsocial and unfriendly neighbor I had. I was always intimidated when I’d see her and unsure how to even hold a conversation with her.

She’d sit on her front porch watching the neighborhood go about their routines with a glare of “I told you so” in her eyes.

One afternoon, I was struggling with some heavy machinery in my garden and no one offered to help, except for Uncertainty. She came to my aid and devised an alternate solution to tilling my flowerbed. She was silent but offered her full attention and effort.

I had no idea how hard Uncertainty was willing to work to help out a stranger.

So, I invited her over for a home-cooked meal.  After a bottle of Cab Sauvignon, I shared with her my secret idea for a documentary project.

woman made of puzzle piecesI was a little embarrassed because it was after all, just an idea; a crazy one at that.

I knew nothing about films, cameras or managing a project.

She didn’t laugh or tell me how unrealistic it was going to be to pull it off.

Quite shockingly, her response were four words that changed my life. . .

“Let’s do this together.”

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