This past week was winter break.  It was also a week filled with record breaking low temperatures and periodic snow “events”.  As a result, we found ourselves spending way more time than usual cocooned in the warmth of our home by the fire.  In other words, we were mellow.  Over the week an interesting thing happened.  As the days went by and I had more time than usual to be quiet I started to become aware of things that I hadn’t noticed.  I realized how much of our daily lives were spent running from one place to the next as we went through each day full of activities.  From the moment we get up in the early morning we are busy getting ready for school and work, then to the bus stop and then drive quickly from there to get to work on time.  Work is non stop busy as it is for so many people and then it is race from work to get to the bus stop on time.  THEN begins the next part of the day – the after school timeframe – in the space of a few short hours there is homework to be done, dinner to be made, eaten and cleared and often a sport or club or other activity to be attended.  All this while being mindful of the importance of getting to bed at a time that allows for a solid night’s rest.  Our family schedule is actually mild compared to many people I know.

As I was organizing and updating my contacts I realized how many truly special and treasured people I am fortunate to have in my life.  As I went through the names thinking of each one it occurred to me that many of the conversations I have with each of them are actually very similar.  Does this sound familiar to anyone?…..

“Hi, it’s so great to talk to you!  How are you?  What have you been up to?”

“Oh same crazy!  I swear my life is insane!  We just are constantly running around.  Last night we didn’t get home until 10 and then still had to finish homework!

“I know, it’s the same thing here – we are gone every weekend with the travel team.”

“Listen, we REALLY have to get together and catch up!  Let’s definitely contact each other and set a date”

“Absolutely!  Let me check the scheduling calendar on the fridge and see what might work – maybe next month – I’ll text you”

The details may differ but the sentiment is the same.  Good friends who certainly love and miss each other but basically their contact with each other is to speak about how they are too busy to get together.  I remember growing up as a child and while my parents were certainly busy as they raised our family they regularly got together with their friends.  Most of the time these gatherings were not to go to big events or formal dinners but rather a group of friends who got together at each other’s homes for a casual dinner and to sit and talk and share their lives.  I watched how they all participated in each other’s lives.  If someone needed help or support there were always people available to assist.  Their regular, ongoing contact with each other allowed them to truly SHARE in each other’s daily lives.  My parents and their friends are in their 80s now and still are connected.  Their shared life journey is precious to all of them.

Life has taken on a much more frantic pace since our parents’ generation.  Technology has us “connected” all the time yet in many ways we are actually more disconnected.  We communicate in sound bites of texts rather than long conversations.  There is a pressure to “succeed” and often that is a belief that in order to do well in life it is important to start building a resume from infancy.  Winning and accomplishments are regularly posted to show how productive we are being.  Children are encouraged to participate in sports, the arts and other types of clubs and activities – not because it is something they are necessarily passionate about but because it is seen as an entry to scholarships or acceptances to the “right” colleges or other forms of achievement.  At some point there seems to have been a shift and many times people seem to wear their frantic and overwhelming schedules like a badge of honor.

This week’s slower pace gave me a wonderful gift of becoming aware of how when I fill my days with nonstop activities I miss out on so much in my life experience.  By not running at high speed through each day I felt more creative, peaceful, aware and definitely more engaged with people I interacted with.  I didn’t feel like I was “falling behind” – in fact in many ways I found myself more productive and completing projects that had been on my “to do” list for months but I could never get to because I was always running.

The culmination for me was on Saturday night when we got together with friends that we have known for years.  They live no more than 15 minutes from  us and yet it had been so long since we had actually made time to get together it was the first time they were meeting our 10 year old son!  We had a wonderful, relaxed, fun evening and it was the perfect period to the sentence of my week.  All the mini Ah-Ha’s I had been having during the week came together on Saturday when I realized that I can make a choice to not follow the belief that the more crazy busy my life the better.  Instead I am going to choose carefully what I fill my schedule with and be sure to leave empty spaces throughout for “recharging”.   Most importantly however, I am going to change the habit of having conversations that talk about how “busy” we are and let’s “try” to get together and create a new habit making the time to see my friends and experience the joy of truly sharing in each others’ lives.

I’m no longer seeking the badge of honor for living the express track life and now I’m seeking the badge honor for living the truly engaged life!  Care to join me????

For many schools another quarter of the school year has just ended and once again there is a flurry of bumper stickers being mailed out and stuck on cars announcing that in the car is a parent who is proud of their child who is on the honor roll.  Many of you who know me are probably already smiling because you have heard me say how much this bothers me.

I think it is wonderful that parents are proud of their children.  I believe that it so affirming for children to know that their parents believe in them and celebrate their strengths.  My problem is that for some reason the focus that seems to be advertised on everyone’s cars and across social media in many cases  a pride solely connected to their child’s academic performance.

Part of what makes the world so fabulously wonderful and interesting is that not everyone is exactly the same.  We all have different strengths and talents and our own unique, important contributions to make to the world around us.  I firmly believe that there is not one area of talent that is more important or valuable than another.  They are all needed.  These bumper stickers send out a very subtle yet strong message to our children that being an honor roll student is the mark of what is truly important enough to make parents make a public announcement to the world about how proud they are.  My issue with this is that I have seen MANY children who are incredible individuals with truly special gifts and talents but not necessarily with grades that make the honor roll.  They have sat with me and cried over the fact that they are not “good enough” because they didn’t get the bumper sticker even though they tried.  I can’t tell you how sad this makes me feel.  How horrible that we are giving our children the message that they can only earn our pride through their grades.

Dr. Wayne Dyer www.waynedyer.com commented that when his children were young he used to have a bumper sticker on his car that said “Proud Parent…unconditionally”!  As soon as I read this I knew that was the perfect answer to my negative feelings about the honor roll stickers!  I began a personal campaign to try and change the society tradition of telling our children the way to a parent’s public pride is through their academic performance.  What a one dimensional, limited way to view a person’s accomplishments.  Instead, why not proclaim to the world that you are proud of your child with no conditions.  That allows you to be be acknowledging the child who creates beautiful artistic creations in music and art, who can take broken machines and instinctively know what to do to bring them back to working condition, who can brighten the spirits of everyone around them through their ability to make people laugh or any of the other multitude of ways that our children can make us proud every day of their lives!  What a powerful, positive message to give our children and believe me they will notice it!  Imagine what giving them a foundation of knowing that you are proud of them for the WHOLE person they are and not just the “ranking” they receive from an education system that is complex and in crisis right now.

Join me in the Positive Parenting movement!  Order your car magnet today!

Click here to order…..http://www.creatinglimitfreelives.com/proud-parent-car-magnets/

As I’ve said before, I didn’t always live a conscious, natural lifestyle.  I drank soda (lots of it), ate fast food, believed that if I got sick it would definitely require a prescription to “fix” and thought of meditation as something from the sixties.  Then came Eli….

He became my motivation for transformation even before his birth!  Our adoption journey was full of MANY, MANY emotional ups and downs and while we were on that crazy roller coaster we were guided to a CD of a presentation by Dr. Wayne Dyer  http://www.drwaynedyer.com called There Is A Spiritual Solution To Every Problem   http://www.hayhouse.com/there-s-a-spiritual-solution-to-every-problem.  This opened the door to my new journey.  The first change that happened for me was learning about meditation and both of us began meditating on a regular basis.  I definitely know that this created a positive energy shift in our lives in so many ways with the most important one being the birth of Eli!

Eli continued to be the motivator for change in our lives as we began the process that all new parents experience of trying to figure out how to raise this amazing blessing that has come into their lives with no instruction manual!!!  I firmly believe that the energy shift that meditation and spirituality brought into our lives continued to lead us to the further doors and paths that opened for us leading us more and more to living limit free lives!

Take a moment and think what your motivation was or could be for taking your first step toward creating a limit free life…then use it to take your first step toward a new life!

What is Reiki?  Reiki is a Japanese word that means spiritually guided life force energy.  It is the energy that is found in and around all living things.  It is natural, gentle and non-invasive.  It is a hands on energy work that promotes relaxation and stress reduction.  Reiki clears and heals the energy pathways which allows the life force energy to flow in a healthy and natural way.  Reiki can be used with any medical  regimen without changing or negatively impacting the treatment.  There are no drug interactions or negative side effects.

Reiki is important in stress management because it is so calming it encourages the relaxation response.  A relaxed body heals faster and has a stronger immune system.

Reiki is not a religion and is not based on any particular belief.  It empowers the natural ability of the body to heal itself and compliments and supports all medical and other health care treatments with no negative side effects/risks.

Reiki has become an invaluable part of my family’s life.  My 10 year old son, Eli, has grown up with experiencing  Reiki and will be the first to come to me and ask for Reiki for a variety of reasons including an upset belly, an injury or feeling anxious or stressed.  He is eagerly waiting to get trained to practice it himself.

Dr. Oz is a big advocate of Reiki – “Reiki is the most important alternative medicine of all!”  He also stated that his wife is a Reiki Master who treats their children and himself with Reiki.  He explains that alternative medicines deal with the body’s energy – something that traditional Western medicine generally does not.  “We’re beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true but we could never measure.  As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier in medicine is energy medicine”

See Dr. Oz talk about Reiki:

Give Reiki a try and experience it for yourself!

So often people tell me that they couldn’t lead a “natural” or “holistic” life because it is too extreme or too difficult and they don’t have the time.  The most important thing I have come to learn is that in life it doesn’t have to be “all or nothing” in order to experience the benefits of something.  Small changes and baby steps can both create big, positive results.  When I began living in ways that supported a limit free life I started with one or two simple changes.  As I saw the results of those changes I began to build a momentum that led me to try other changes and it kept building in that way.  If I had believed that I had to do everything all at once I know that I would have felt completely intimidated and overwhelmed and instead rationalized why it would be better to stay with my old habits and lifestyle.

What is most important to you right now?  Is it exercise, nutrition, stress reduction, improving your general health?  Pick ONE area and decide on one or two changes that you could commit to making that would bring you in the direction of your desired goal in that part of your life.  Follow through with that commitment and observe the result it has in your life.  That small act will start to create an energy shift for yourself that can be the opening to your limit free life.  It’s that simple!!!

10 years ago I was blessed with the birth of my son. Like any parent I wanted to do all the “right” things to help him grow to be healthy and happy. I learned quickly that there was no exact guide to how to accomplish this and that there were many paths and interpretations as to what exactly defined healthy and happy. I decided that instead of trying to follow someone else’s path I would observe, learn and create my own. Through the years as my path has and continues to evolve, I have experienced the positive results in the lives of myself and my family. I began to be approached by others who were intrigued by our family’s lifestyle and wanted to learn more about it.

I began offering seminars and workshops to share with others and also developed a private practice to be able to work with people individually. I am not offering a step by step rigid guide on to “how to live”. What I believe is that there are many “right” paths to healthy and happy living. As I explored my definition of what made a life healthy and happy I found it in a phrase I learned in my studies of the work of Dr. Wayne Dyer www.waynedyer.com. He wrote about being a No Limit Person. This concept resonated with me. I have always embraced the concept of individuality. The more that I thought it I realized that, for me, when I am being true to myself and living from my center, following my inner wisdom and using the tools from my personal toolbox (more on that idea to come!) that is when I truly feel that I am living healthy and happy!

Creating Limit Free Lives is a place for helping others on their journey to discovering the specific path that takes them to their own personal healthy and happy life. I believe everyone has a personal toolbox that they can fill with a variety of resources that will help them in their creating and living healthy and happy lives. The specific “tools” each person chooses may differ but the result will support them in achieving their own personal Limit Free Life of healthy and happy.  My intention is to share some of the tools that I have and continue to learn about so that you will be able to explore them and see which might be useful in YOUR life toolbox!

Thank you for joining me on the journey!