Get Your Bloom On

From my Garden Arts photo shoot, April 2009, New Smyrna, FL

I was in a bit of a mood yesterday. Stressed. Overwhelmed. Cranky.

And I was feeling stuck in that mood for much of the day.

When I picked my daughter up from school, I ran into Paul, a parent friend of mine who is also in Future Thinking with me.

Paul asked how I was doing. I responded honestly how I was.

Wisely, he didn't ask more about my story or sympathize with me. Instead, drawing from our learning in Future Thinking, he asked what my core metaphor was. (Your core is your unique way of seeing and being in the world.)

"Flowers," I said.

"Well then," he said. "It's time to get your bloom on."

Oh, yeah. That's right.

A simple shift from the stuck place I was in to getting my bloom on.

Immediately, I could feel the tension release from my body as I connected with how I want to be in the world: a trusting flower, lovely in my unfolding, growing radiantly and effortlessly and perfect just the way I am. Having my bloom on in a big way.

It was such a great reminder about the power of a mindset shift — how you can change what you feel based on the story you are living in.

For me, I love life — and feel so centered — when I stand in my story of being like a flower. (Not so much when I'm in the story of being stuck in the mud of life and sinking in it!)

So today I've got my bloom on.

And it feels great.

Tell me, is your bloom on today?

Flowering Fridays: On Enough-ness

Iris by side of house, March 2009

There's something about this iris that looks to me like it's talking to me.

Yabbering, really. Incessantly. Yada. Yada. Yada, it blabs.

It reminds me sometimes of my self-talk about what is — and isn't — getting done in my life.

I've been struggling with the concept of "enough-ness" this week.

Then, yesterday, I read the timely and wise words of Superhero Andrea Scher on the topic, Good Enough, and it really helped to crystallize something for me: I don't really have a relationship with enoughness. (Yet!)

Now, "not-enough-ness" is something I know very well.

I have lists and lists of things to do and accomplish. I can fall into bed at 1 a.m. and feel like I haven't done enough for the day. I can replay a conversation (or re-hash something I wrote or deflect a compliment) and see where I could improve or do better.

But enough-ness is something I could use a new relationship, too.

Patty Jackson, a wonderful coach my husband and I work with, has a great inspirational CD called Mind-full of Miracles. On one of the tracks, she talks about how the "not-enough" program runs on and on until you choose to stop it.

So, today, I'm choosing to end my relationship with not-enough-ness and start celebrating my own enough-ness.

For me, flowers are great teachers about enough-ness.

Looking at this iris, all I see is its perfection.

With flowers they simply are…beautiful, blooming, growing, evolving. There is a sufficiency with flowers.

I mean, could you or I really do anything to improve a flower? (I didn't think so.)

Just being a flower is enough. Nothing additional is needed. And I believe it's that way with us humans, too.

Me just being Shannon is enough. You being you is enough.

Anything beyond that is just gravy.

I intend to stand in the truth and power of own my own sufficiency: I am enough. I have done enough. It is enough. It will be enough.

And I intend to look at what enough looks like for me. Maybe it's stopping work at 8 p.m. Maybe it's knowing that everyday I did my best in the moment and that is enough.

Whatever it is I decide, I trust that it will — really and truly — be enough.

And know that you, too, are enough. Always. In all ways.

Tell me, what does enough look like for you? Can you trust that you are truly enough in the moment? Comment below to proclaim your enough-ness.

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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.

Today's Wishes

Tulip, taken in March 2009

To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, "Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?"
- John Archibald Wheeler

Today I send you wishes to…

be in the dance of life and revel in it.

open to the possibilities that are around you each moment.

bloom into the radiant bigness that you are.

trust that everything is unfolding as it should.

know that you are loved, special and your gifts are so needed by this planet.

Have a great Thursday everyone!

Tell me, what wishes do you want to send out to the world today?