Ode to Joy

Posted on February 28, 2012August 11, 2014 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?

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

Posted on February 23, 2012October 23, 2012 by Sandi Amorim 6 Conversations

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 February 17, 2012October 23, 2012 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.

I 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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Creativity Unleashed

Posted on January 5, 2012April 16, 2014 by Sandi Amorim 24 Conversations

Today’s spotlight shines on a very special person. She’s someone I connected with about a year ago, but it’s only in the past couple of months that we really clicked, and I’m so glad we did because she is magical. She is Cigdem Kobu and she’s just launched an extraordinary project called A Year with Myself.

You may remember her from the month of self-care; her contribution The First 66 Days of Taking Better Care of Yourself was not only a very popular piece but she generously shared a free workbook to help you on this path.

My first conversation with C.A. left me inspired, energized and buzzing with ideas. She calls herself a creative alchemist and project midwife, and that was certainly my experience of her. She’s also an idea generator!

But she’s so much more. She’s one of the most generous people I’ve met; sharing her gifts with others, showing up as a resource and bringing people together in ways that instantly work. Could be that alchemy she speaks of!

Can you tell? I’ve got a serious friend crush on this woman!

She is up to some extraordinary things and I’m delighted to have her here in the spotlight.

Enjoy!

1. Why are you here?

I’m here to serve my kind. That means serving courageous and wild women who want to grow, create and change their world. These are women who have entrepreneurial spirits. They are venturesome and fertile in heart and in mind.

I want to hold their hands and make it easy to rediscover their wholeness and their powers, to reconnect with themselves, and to translate their authentic gifts into fulfilling and change-making feats.

I want to wake them up and help them flourish.

{Note from me: You can see why I’m crushing over here, can’t you?}

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Threads of Creativity

Posted on December 24, 2011April 16, 2014 by Sandi Amorim 7 Conversations

Day 24 – Creativity

If you think of your life as a tapestry, what are the threads that have been with you as long as you can remember?

My primary thread has been creativity. The colour of the thread nay have changed over the years as I moved from painting and printmaking to photography and now writing, but the thread has been consistent.

It’s how I express myself, and what feels most natural to me.

elderly Hispanic woman creating ceramics at Jackalope, New Mexico

Like this woman I came upon at a market in Santa Fe last year, I’m positive I will still be expressing my creativity as I get older. It’s part of who I am.

But how about you?

Do you own and acknowledge your creative gifts?

Or do you believe you are not creative?

Maybe you were told as a child that you were no good at drawing, writing, painting. . .fill in the blank.

It’s sad when that happens, when an adult says something that damages a child’s belief in themselves.

What if that adult was wrong?

cre·a·tiv·i·ty

– characterized by originality of thought; having or showing imagination: a creative mind

We are all creative in some way and just because you can’t draw a stick figure to save your life doesn’t make you less so.

Picasso said, “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”

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The ABC’s of Back-to-School

Posted on August 16, 2010March 14, 2014 by Sandi Amorim 13 Conversations

I have always loved back-to-school energy. I was a keener when I was young and loved everything about this time of year: new clothes, new teachers and yes, new school supplies!

The energy of starting fresh was a high, and I couldn’t wait to get back and get going.

I’m an adult now, and guess what? Not much has changed!

What if we had access to that kind of energy more consistently in life?

What if that energy could fuel our dreams?

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