Think Happy Thoughts

I'd have to climb 2,500 steps to burn off one pint of ice cream!

I discovered the concept of manifestation through the wonderful blog Clean, written by the creator and owner of LuSa Organics. I’ve learned a great many things about little ways to make life more meaningful through Rachel’s writings. She is an inspirational wife, mama, crafter, cook, and entrepreneur. Manifestation is about realizing that we really can have what we want and what we need in our lives if we focus on the feeling and emotion of having that particular something. In reality, we humans can’t just conjure something out of thin air simply by wishing for it, but we can realize that sometimes, we are our own greatest obstacles on the path to what we most desire in our lives. I’ll admit that the idea, at first, seemed much too new-age and even a little hokey for me. I imagined Aladdin with his golden lamp, seeking love, happiness, and wealth from the genie inside.

You mean, I can achieve something just by thinking about it? Well, in that case, I’m going to focus on having a million dollars!

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized just how much manifestation relates to other ways we’ve been taught to achieve goals in life. Everyone from Oprah to Weight Watchers to psychoanalysts utilize and preach concepts like visualization and story-boarding and sayings like “if you can dream it, you can achieve it”. The concept of manifestation reminds me of meditation or mindfulness where you focus intensely and intently on a particular thing in your mind’s eye. You visualize what it would be like to reach this goal; what will you feel like, what will you do with this new found thing in your life, what kind of person will you be with this thing you have achieved? How else would we work towards the things we wanted if we were unable to perceive of ourselves at the end of the journey as well as along the way?

I don’t view manifestation as a way to bring material objects into my life per se. Though, I have noticed that if I am really in want of something, it fulfills a need in my life, and has legitimate use-value, that it just may come into my life by the grace of god or the universe.

In these early days of 2011, I have fully recommitted myself to becoming a happier and healthier person; physically, spiritually, and mentally. To keep me motivated on the physical front, I’m working with a personal trainer two days per week. Given my past relationship with exercise, I knew that I was also going to need to look at something everyday that would remind me of my goals. I created a manifestation poster that I have hanging above my desk with bits and pieces of beauty and inspiration for those days when I’m inclined to be less than accountable for my actions.

Manifestation poster

Nothing fancy: just stiff card stock, some glue, and a few magazines that I cut to bits. I specifically made mine colorful and included a bright pink bloom that made me really happy every time I saw it on the Whole Living Magazine cover. Someday, I’ll have a whole manifestation board where I can add and remove pieces as the needs in my life change.

Reverb 10 for December 17 – LESSON LEARNED

December 17 – Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I have the tendency to be a very anxious person. Every academic year, without fail, I have a mid-semester breakdown over some assignment(s) that renders me paralyzed. Think writer’s block, but worse. At that point, I begin to procrastinate like it’s my job: I’ll clean my room, reorganize my closets, spy on everyone on my Facebook friends list, return the 20 emails I’ve been putting off for a week or two – anything to avoid the looming mountain of work. The thing is that the mountain is usually more like an anthill that I’ve drastically misinterpreted. This has been a yearly pattern since middle school and I never seem to be able to avoid it altogether.

This year, though, I learned that even when things downright suck, they really aren’t as terrible as they appear to be. The research paper will get done and I’ll probably have a bit of extra time to study for that test on the train to school. I’m much more resilient than I realized and can adapt fairly quickly to the changing tides of daily life. Earlier this fall, I was certain that the kidney trouble I was experiencing would derail my last semester of nursing school and I played out a most gruesome scenario in my head that ended with something like hemodialysis and my having to repeat the semester. In reality, here I am in December, having completed every assignment, graduated on time, and fairly healthy.

So what’s the moral of this story?

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Stupid

It’s difficult to avoid fear and anxiety since we humans are pre-programmed with that nifty ‘fight or flight’ response, but life is certainly more manageable when I don’t give in to my overactive imagination. Cliches like ‘rolling with the punches’ and other hackneyed sayings really do have a kernel of truth to them. That which does not kill you probably will make you a bit stronger for having had to overcome adversity in some way, whether molehill or mountain. In the new year, I’d like to remain cognizant of this fact when the going gets rough. I will remind myself that the anxiety isn’t a permanent state and that I am fully capable of achieving the tasks I before me. Change and challenges are good things, things that help move my life forward and encourage me to continue to develop myself into the person I really want to be.

An Essay for UPenn Nursing

I am not a fan of March. It is my least favorite month of the year. The air continues to have a noticeable chill to it, the streets are often lined with the blackened remnants of a February snowfall, and people are still feeling sluggish from the winter holidays. 

This particular year in March, however, was partly the same, but mostly different from the 21 instances of March that I had previously experienced. As usual, I was on a spring holiday from school and the weather was just beginning to show hints of change from one season to the next. Instead of wandering through the wind-whipped, gritty streets of Manhattan, though, I was midway through a trip along the Eastern coast of South Africa. Instead of being at the center of everything, I found myself on the outskirts of nowhere in a town called Storms River that is known only for two things: having the world’s oldest tree in one of the world’s oldest forests and having the world’s highest commercial bungee jump site.

On this particular day in March I learned a very important lesson about myself: fear is least often the hindrance in life that I assumed it to be. Rather, fear is most often a catalyst for change and growth. Let me preface anything further by saying that, since childhood, I had been a feet-firmly-planted-on-the-ground, levelheaded, ridiculously cautious kind of girl. I cross the street with the light and I color inside the lines. Most importantly, I don’t throw myself off of bridges in foreign countries. Except until now…

On the outskirts of nowhere, in a small town called Storms River that is known only for two things, I decided that the world’s oldest tree in one of the world’s oldest forests wasn’t going anywhere. I opted, instead, to wait atop the arch of the Bloukrans Bridge, between the shallow river below and the N2 highway above, until it was my turn.

I like to imagine that this decision was the result of a moment of temporary insanity or the Scottish tourists who plied me with the hackneyed “you only live once”. Most likely though, this particular March day was a breaking point; a day for breaking the rules, breaking out of the mold, breaking out of my shell. Always making the “safe” choice just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. I felt that I wasn’t carving my own path in life by continuing to follow the proverbial road most traveled.

The view from the Bloukrans Bridge when 708 feet in the air is spectacular and every other compelling adjective one can think of. On one side the India Ocean spreads itself out; a watery blue blanket that both hugs the rocky shoreline and stretches far beyond the horizon. On the other side, Nature’s Valley is a lush spread of peaked mountains, verdant trees and grasses, and the steady babbling of the Bloukrans River. The image is so postcard-perfect that I almost don’t realize that I am hurtling downwards at 50 mph with nothing but elastic attached to my ankles. When I come to rest after the bouncing and jostling and sway whichever way the wind dictates, I convince myself that I am still alive and open my eyes. Everything, even the fear I feel, is upside down and it rushes towards my head from the pit of my stomach as I wait for a tiny Zulu man – my rescue – to lower himself towards me on what looks like a window washing seat?! The ascent is actually worse than the throwing-yourself-off-a-bridge part – it is painfully slow and there is plenty of time for me to take in every inch of those 708 feet. Nothing, not even the feel of solid ground beneath my feet, is sweeter than the thrill of knowing I survived my first-ever daredevil stunt.

I have since come to look at a lot of things through the lens of my bungee jump experience. When I face something particularly challenging or frightening, I remember falling 708 feet off of a bridge in South Africa. I remember that I survived. I remember the rush of adrenaline and exhilaration afterwards. These thoughts push me through tunnels, up hills, around obstacles and inspire me to attempt feats in my life that I may not have tried before: learning a new skill, taking a class, meeting new people, traveling to new places, or deciding on a career path. I can’t say that I’ve bungee jumped since that day in March, but I can say that I have learned to take careful, calculated risks, to hurdle the hard parts in life. I am much less fearful and much more resilient than I ever gave myself credit for, and taking that oft quoted “road less traveled” really has made all the difference.