Your Life Nature

Connecting You With Nature, No Matter Where Your Feet Are

Tag: peace

The Power of Life, The Power of Love

November 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

 

Paris, France has been long known as “The City of Light”.  Nearly two weeks ago, a sudden darkness enveloped the city as terrorists struck at multiple locations where Parisians and others gathered, killing over 120 people and injuring several hundred more.I don’t have any easy answers or explanations for what happened, or any easy solutions to offer to end the cycle of violence and mayhem, either. What I sense, though, is that people who do not value and are willing to extinguish the lives of other human beings do not value their own lives as well.

It’s hard to tell where it all starts, this slippery slope of de-valuing people who do not believe, think, act, speak and look like themselves, to their willingness to denigrate and annihilate anyone and anything that represents what is threatening, which often means something they do not fully understand, nor wish to take the time and effort to better understand. How do people become so disconnected that they harm others and them selves? How do we do the same toward the environment in which we all live and depend upon?

We’re all complicit in this from time to time, casting for sound bite responses and solutions to complex issues, looking for the easy way out and to then move on with our busy lives, until the next crisis or misunderstanding arises. I would argue that until we start more compassionately connecting with others who are different from ourselves and the communities in which we live, not much will change, whether it is to reduce the conditions in which terrorism thrives worldwide, or to reduce the rate of global climate change that threatens our own and future generations.

Nature has and plays no favorites. There is no right or wrong, there are no favorites or rejects, their is no clear black or white. In nature, gray is o.k. Everything and everyone has a role to play and is of equal importance. We all belong-the question is “Can we all get along?”
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Spending more time in the natural world breaks down artificial barriers humans create to divide and separate themselves. More than half of the world’s population now lives in urban and suburban areas, belying the need for people to connect more consistently and deeply with nature, which is the foundation of our human and planetary community, no matter where our feet are.

Maybe it all starts with self-love, understanding, compassion and forgiveness first. Maybe there’s a healthy dose of humility thrown into this messy recipe as well. Maybe it also requires us to turn off the televisions. computers, radios, and mobile devices, to not text, read newspapers or magazines for a little while, and to spend time in person having difficult and challenging conversations with people in your own immediate circle rather than expecting to change the lives of others half a world away.

About a week ago at a networking meeting, a fellow entrepreneur said that often, challenging and difficult conversations and conflicts ultimately create an opportunity for greater connection between people. She went on to say that this often means really listening and understanding where others are coming from before expecting and demanding others to understand them first. It’s a two-way street yet nearly everyone is in a hurry, trying to pass others in a rat race that humans and their institutions have created over time. As Lily Tomlin commented, “Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat”.

The City of Light, as myriad other cities, towns, villages and hamlets around the world have done before, is slowly recovering and rebounding after a senseless attack that plunged them into a brief darkness.

Let us give thanks that this will always be the path we choose to take when our instincts are to lash out and exact retribution from those who have caused us harm. If we take an honest and compassionate look at our own lives, we can find and seize opportunities to better understand, accept, forgive and love not only others, but ourselves as well.

Thanksgiving is a natural time to pause, reflect, and shine brightly our appreciation and love for all of humanity, and to take our own baby steps to creating peace in our hearts and world. As Jimi Hendrix once said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace”.

Have a wonderful, peaceful and Happy Thanksgiving!

Celebrate Your Nature, Celebrate Pride!

June 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

MontanaPrideFlag June is Pride Month for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and questioning people (and their countless allies!) worldwide, and this year Pride Montana will be held in our beloved town of Missoula from June 19-21.

Here’s hoping you’ll join us in Missoula, or wherever your feet may be that weekend, to celebrate, acknowledge and express gratitude for the progress we have made over the past decade, and to acknowledge and energize for the remaining work necessary to achieve full equality for all LGBTQ families and individuals worldwide. The non-profit Pride Foundation inspires giving to expand opportunities to advance full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people (LGBTQ) across the U.S. Northwest, including the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. They envision a world in which all LGBTQ youth, adults and families enjoy the freedom to live openly, safely and genuinely.

To honor the vital work that Pride Foundation does, I will donate three dollars to them from every “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There: Four Fun and Easy Steps to Create Your Powerful Nature Connection Sit Spot, No Matter Where Your Feet Are” nature connection sit spot recording purchased between now through Montana Pride Weekend this Sunday, June 21, 2015.

Click here to purchase your portable, fun Nature Connection Sit Spot Recording:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UAPNXKL2RA5NY

to bring home more nature into your own life and those of others you care about, and know that three dollars from your $13.97 purchase amount is going to a phenomenally important cause. The world is full of stories from people for whom nature has changed, inspired or turned their lives around, and you really never know how important nature connection is to you and your own one wild precious life until you need it most.

Enjoy more nature in your home and work setting, and best of all share it with others.This portable, adaptable, and fun nature connection tool and recording powerfully supports and serves so many people in consistently creating, envisioning and allowing a nature sit spot to enhance our lives.

“You know they say that if you imagine peace and calm, your body experiences it. Well, Hobie’s audio course, “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!” really brought me to a space of balance and calmness. And best yet? I was sitting at my desk. No need to go anywhere, and most importantly, do anything but breathe”.      -Maureen Calamia, St. James, New York

Pride Foundation is the only non-profit organization I am selecting to support in 2015 through a percentage of PayPal sales, so now is the golden moment to support them through your love of nature and its amazing diversity of all life forms. Take home your own copy of “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There” (and buy a copy for other nature lovers) and support Pride Foundation, too!

Here’s that PayPal link again:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UAPNXKL2RA5NY

For more info on Pride Foundation and the vital work they do please visit http://www.pridefoundation.org

What Do You Need to (Naturally) Thrive?

November 6, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Take a few moments to think about a particular tree close to where you live or work that really stands out for you.

What in particular attracts you to this tree? Are you drawn to Its height, its age, its resilience, its beauty? Are you attracted by Its tranquility, its power, its ability to put down roots and thrive right where it is?

Imagine sitting leisurely beside or beneath the tree that calls to you, The ground is dry and supports you very comfortably, and an ever so slight, cool breeze is blowing. Your cell phone’s turned off, your to-do list is put away. You don’t have to be anywhere anytime soon. Your senses are heightened, your sense of time is unhurried and has slowed way, way down.

Tap into all of your senses and recall how it looks, smells, feels, and sounds What else do you sense or intuit from spending time with your tree?
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Make a point of consistently visiting and noticing your tree at different times of the day and week, and during different seasons. Take time to imagine what’s happening beneath or inside the tree-it may be approaching winter and things appear rather dormant now, but there’s always something going on that may not be immediately visible or noticeable…

Can you create “tree time” for yourself every day, even when you cannot be outside?

Interacting with and observing trees and other aspects of nature can provide a powerful, personalized road map to life. It can show us how to live in harmony, balance and flow with natural elements such as metal, water, fire, wood and earth- no matter where our feet are.

Incorporating these elements into physical spaces enhances our environment and lives. It’s not only aesthetically pleasing and peaceful-it also provides a solid foundation for greater personal effectiveness, optimum order and better flow in all we do and all we are.

Creating a workspace with a balance of these five elements helps you create a container, structure and order that supports your work.

But are you incorporating other elements, such as water, into other life areas to create balance?

Are you taking time and space for fluidity and ease, rest and play in your life?

What Do You Need To Thrive?

Nature connection is a vital self-care tool, and nature connection can help energize your day!.

People worldwide seek balance and harmony between work, home and family. Many are burnt out and overextended from the time and energy invested in being caregivers to others, going above and beyond in their businesses and families. Their own self-care keeps falling off the to do list, or it never made it on to the list in the first place.

As a special offer to our community here at Your Life Nature, I invite you to learn how to create a nature connection sit spot, to help make you and your self-care a consistent life priority.

In my “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!” audio course you’ll learn how to create a consistent place and space to connect with nature to enhance and empower your life in myriad ways.

Through this 35-minute recording, you will use all of your senses, and connect more deeply with the healing and transformational powers of water in particular.

My intention is that this recording not only supports your deeper, more consistent connection with the natural world, and with your own authentic nature, but also that it’ll be an evergreen, go-to-gift for yourself, so you may continue practicing and experimenting with what works best for you, and become more comfortable with sitting still and allowing nature to work its magic with you, too!

You can purchase, receive and enjoy this MP3 recording for an affordable $13.97 click on the Paypal button below, and you’re then on your way to an energizing and inspiring experience where you’ll learn four easy, fun and replicable steps to create your powerful nature connection sit spot, no matter where your feet are.

Get Your Sit Spot Recording Here:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UAPNXKL2RA5NY

The Courage To Change The Things You Can

July 22, 2014 / / 0 Comments

The Serenity Prayer goes something like this:

Please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference

The natural world’s abundant in wisdom that helps us to discern that difference, and take emboldened, courageous action to experience what we desire most in our lives.

Especially if we slow down and pay closer attention. If we stop multi-tasking. If we put the kibbosh on expecting something to happen 24/7 or in a certain way when nature has its own ideas as to when the timing’s right, or how things will unfold.

A few personal examples from nature follow.

For the last five years. we could count on cherries ripening on our tree in the backyard around the 14th of June. Not so this year. We had a pretty dry spring following a wet and cold winter, with very little moisture falling our way until the last two weeks of June.

This year the cherries ripened at the very beginning of July, and they were even more abundant (and sweeter and more delicious!) than in previous years. We had gotten accustomed to things being a certain way at a certain time, but nature had its own time frame and ideas as to what was best.

This spring I also decided to try growing tomatoes from seeds instead of starts, something I had done easily and successfully in both Virginia and in Thailand.

Perhaps I got a late start toward this endeavor. We went east to visit family and friends in mid-May, so I waited until returning home to plant tomato seeds, thinking we might still have a frost in town that would kill them all, and also not wanting to bother a neighbor with watering plants who was already looking after our cat for 12 days. So I planted the seeds on June 1, and nurtured and tended to them diligently.

Last weekend, as temperatures hovered near 100 F, I gave up my dream to grow tomatoes from seed in this part of Montana and see if it could be done.

It probably can be done, but not by going it alone, not without support, not without learning from mistakes, and definitely not this year, given where we are now in the growing season.

Next year, I’ll invest in some healthy, solid tomato starts and plant them after the risk of last spring frost. I’ll save on labor, watering, weeding and grief in the process and support someone else in the community financially by doing so. I’ll focus on what I do best and enlist, hire and pay others to be in their own area of brilliance.

In the meantime, this summer I’ll savor and enjoy the harvests of fellow gardeners by buying their fresh tomatoes and other produce at local farmers’ markets.

I was mighty stubborn surrendering this vision to grow edible, delicious tomatoes from seed in less than 120 days, especially given my blazing track record over the previous four summers.

I saw only failure at first, and the disappointing prospect of not using our own tomatoes in canning special salsas for Thanksgiving and Winter Solstice celebrations.

Over the past five weeks, Erik has non-judgmentally watched me tend to the soil, and weed and water the ground diligently, and heard me mutter and agonize whether anything was to come from all this activity, time, expense and effort.

Ironically and perhaps serendipitously, the neighboring raspberries have sprouted like kudzu during the same time frame, and they are also the juiciest and most abundant they’ve been in years!

The natural world is not at our beck and call, as the above two anecdotes illustrate, but neither is the so-called “real world” for that matter. Neither world operates the way we demand or command it to do at times, in contrast to how we expect hotel room service to function!

Instead, when we open ourselves to notice what’s going on in nature, and to detach from our personal ideas about what’s best, we reconnect with our soul’s deeper desires. We witness unforeseen outcomes and results that are often better and different than what we expected, too!

We open ourselves to experiencing and receiving miracles on a daily basis, and to a deepening connection and reverence for all of life. We empower and encourage and embolden others to do the same. As more people connect with the healing and inspiration nature freely provides, everyone prospers and experiences greater peace.

As the tomatoes from seeds story illustrates, we don’t have to go it all alone. We don’t have to have all the answers. We don’t have to force things, to struggle, to take things personally.

The natural world constantly reminds us that we are supported and provided for, no matter what.

That’s what nature does-without expectation, without judging, without micro-managing, without blame, without worry, fear, regret or impatience.

In nature, we’re all equal and worthy. We all belong. We’re all deserving.

Yet we also experience faster, lasting results when we receive support and accountability, and participate in an encouraging, welcoming community.

We’re all human and perfectly imperfect. We are not meant to live our lives alone, disconnected from other human beings and the natural world that sustains us all.

We are all heroes to others. Others are waiting to hear your story as to how you courageously changed and bettered not only your life, but the lives of those you’ve touched.

What is it in your life that you most want to change?

Courageously take action on that-don’t wait or waste another day, and tell and share your inspiring story with others!

Finding Peace In Nature

June 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

In A Course In Miracles, author Marianne Williamson shared that peace is being in the present moment without judgment.

That can be mighty hard to do at times, but I had plenty of practice doing so while visiting my Dad a few weeks back in Virginia.

My Dad has likely been living with Alzheimer’s for about six years now, though he wasn’t officially diagnosed until 2011. We could all tell that he was slipping here and there since the early 2000s, but largely attributed it to him having “senior moments”. We did our best in allowing him to remain as independent as possible.

It really sucks to see someone who was once so vital, vigorous become hugely dependent upon the care and watchful eyes of others. He no longer drives, but keeps a car in hopes that one day he will regain his freedom.

He’s maddening and demeaning and belittling at times, as my sisters and sister-in-law can attest to, they having borne the brunt of his hurtful behavior.

Many in our family limit their interactions and visiting times to protect themselves emotionally.  One sibling, though, feels relentless, crushing, seemingly never-ending guilt colliding with her sense of duty and meaning of family in trying to decide and do what’s best for him.

In a nutshell, my Dad does not want to be is assisted living-he wants to go home to die. He says he is not happy where he is and that everything is awful, but over the course of spending time with him over several visits while being back in Virginia, his actions and interactions showed me something profoundly different. He has a second family there, and he’s part of an at-times feisty community.

My Dad got to see Erik again and meet his mom as well on this visit, but the following few times we got together it was just the two of us. He asked how both Erik and his mom were doing and had ideas about places for them to visit in Richmond. He was thrilled that we came to visit and that we brought warmer weather with us, as it had been a cold and slow start to spring following a long for Virginia standards winter.

Each visit, he caught me up to speed on how the Yankees were doing as compared to the Mets and Pirates. A fellow  resident and baseball fanatic printed out the stats from each Yankees game to share with my Dad, and they would lively debate who either saved or blew the game.

I joined my Dad for lunch one day in the cafeteria, where we joined a group of five men, more or less his age, for soup, salad, sandwiches, and sugar-free dessert.. We sat directly across from someone in his mid- to late-90s (my Dad will be 88 in November).

Dad shouted out to him, “Now that guy is really old!”, and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when the other man shouted back to him, “Shut up, Bud, that’s no way to treat your elders!”.

Another person at the table had a grown son a little older than me who had at one time played on my Dad’s baseball team, and he was happy to be hanging with someone who was hanging with his Dad.

We can all have challenging memories and stories about how we were raised and how we were treated growing up, and it can be astonishing when different parents and siblings have conflicting memories and lingering feelings as to what those times were like.

It might have been Wayne Dyer who said that the past is about as significant as old dishwater, but when you’re grappling with how to best support someone entering one  of their last chapters in life, we all slosh around in this choppy ocean a little differently.

I learned so much from my Dad this trip by doing my best to be fully present in the moment with him, without judgment. Even when things got rocky or testy, I chose to keep only the love and the lessons learned, and to let go of the rest.

A friend who we visited who had recently lost her mother, and who also knows my Dad, said it best:

They all once had careers, families and full lives. They all loved someone and were loved as well. They did their best. They remember and savor these moments in life because it helps them feel and remember what it means to be fully alive. They still have their dignity, they still have their souls and their spirits. Their bodies and minds might be faltering, but they once had lives like we do, and they want to be treated with love, patience, compassion, non-judgement and respect. .
Solo walks in nature (as well as with Erik and his Mom)  helped me gain clarity as to how I could be more present and at peace in the moment when visiting with my Dad, as well as with family members who found it hard to spend  time with him.

Before flying home to Montana, Erik and his Mom and I traveled to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a few days following a week of visiting and catching up with my side of the family.

A rough-and-tumble ocean and towering dunes of sand was the perfect salve. Wave after ocean wave massaged,  released and healed pent-up and unresolved feelings, memories and stories that never really served me.

Into the sea they went, into the sea they all dissolved.

Gentle breezes, children playing and laughing, and pelicans gliding above the Atlantic Ocean gifted me tremendous calm, bliss and peace with what was unfolding in life, helping me to surrender to all that was beyond any one person’s control. Which is just about everything!

From the sea we once came, and to the sea we will once again return eventually.

In the meantime, I’m eternally grateful to have been able to see and be with my Dad in a different light.

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