A new group of pioneers, but instead of bumping along in covered wagons to new frontiers on land, we are forging new ground to find and follow our soul’s mission. 

The phone call that prompted this post is from another pioneer scared to “take the leap” and get in the covered wagon.  She is hearing the whisper, aware of the “nudge”.  The universe has downsized her job to just two days a week and she is sick with worry about making ends meet. “Can you view this as a gift from the universe?” I ask.  I remind her she has been telling me how dissatisfied she is in her current job.  “Perhaps the universe is doing for you what you could not do for yourself?”

There seems to be two levels of awareness surrounding this nudge to “taking the leap”.  The first level occurs when you realize at a deep level that your current life’s path is somehow not fulfilling a deeper calling.  Most often this is characterized by a “deadness” of spirit which in many cases is linked to a current job.  We feel unfulfilled and dead at work but do not yet know our soul’s true calling.  This is the group that is waiting, watching, still in the digging process. 

Where do you go if you are in this group?  Dead at your current job, knowing there must be more for you?  One suggestion is to pick up Barbara Sher’s inspiring book “I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was”.  This book was a powerful tool for me when I left corporate America 11 years ago.  It helped me begin the process of clarifying my soul’s mission.  With Sher’s encouragement, this journey of self-reflection brought to light some interesting awareness about my career choices.

The biggest awareness I received was the knowledge of a strong link between my choice of profession and the subconscious motivation that prompted that choice.  I became aware by doing one of Sher’s exercises that at a very subconscious level, my choice to enter the College of Science and pursue a degree in Mathematics was motivated, in part, by a strong desire to seek love and approval from my father.  WOW.  I became a math major, wrote term papers on UFOs (really?!) in a subconscious effort to get the love and approval of my father?  Powerful.  The truth is I am a much more creative, communicative spirit.  In fact, at my first job review,  in a highly technical statistics department in the pharmaceutical industry, my boss quickly noted “I can see you in sales or marketing.” This prompting served to move me to a career path closer to my soul’s mission, something I see now only in self-reflection thanks to Sher’s insightful book.

The second level of the “taking the leap” movement are the pioneers who are clear what is NOT their life’s purpose (or as clear as one can be at any moment) and who are letting go of the security and certainty (is there really anything like that?) of what is NOT, to explore and find what IS their soul’s mission. 

This is where I am today.  I detailed my journey in a recent post “Leaving A Job To Follow Your Passion – Courageous or Crazy?  It seems to be characteristic of this group to, one any given day, fluctuate between feeling strong and powerful, like true pioneers, or fearful and crazy like we have totally lost our minds. 

Today, I honestly don’t know where the universe is taking me.  Am I scared?  Sure, but guidance from a deeper knowing keeps me going.  I work to overcome the fear moment by moment by staying present and reminding myself I have an abundance of time, money and love in the present moment.  I look to trailblazers like Eckhart Tolle and Pema Chodron who remind me to sit in the fear and discomfort, surrender the story and just feel the feelings. This leap requires huge amounts of TRUST, in ourselves, in the universe, and in the bigger plan and picture. I get it.

TRUST.  Take time to slow down to hear.  Stop doing.  Stop running.  Feel the emptiness.  Feel the pain.  Embrace uncertainty.  Fall.  Trust the net will appear.  Get into the covered wagon.  Join us on our excavation across this beautiful planet to new frontiers.  This blog is the launch of our wagon – get your gear and get in – write and keep writing here about this incredible journey to follow your soul’s mission.  I wait to bear witness to what the universe has ahead for us on the trail.  Pioneers unite!

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WOW.  STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND GIVE YOURSELF THIS GIFT FOR 5 MINUTES TODAY.

This video took my breath away.  Its message is simple, beautiful and truthful. 

Thought it provided a good follow-up to my most recent post about my third week of  TV Detox – Confronting Loneliness.

It says it all.  Appreciate the reminders Tanya Davis provides:

Start Simple – embrace the easy stuff first. 

Be alone with yourself in the bathroom, a coffee shop, a library and then move to bigger things like meals and movies and finally the true test – go dancing all alone!

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone!

Lonely is a freedom!

Take silence and respect it!

How are you at being alone?  Where are you in the process of embracing or confronting your alone-ness?

Have you eaten a meal alone? Gone to the movies? Have no desire to explore being alone?

Please share with us your thoughts on being alone.  We would love to hear your comments.

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Two and a half weeks into this 30 day TV Detox and I know this is “where the rubber meets the road”.  This week is full out pain.  I actually almost turned on the TV.  Gave up.  Quit.  I felt like I was going to jump out of my own skin.  The feelings were so intense.  I felt so alone and “icky” and TV watching or picking up one of the other ”escapes” I have given up: excessive eating, drinking, etc. was looking good. 

Bottom line – I needed OUT from these heavy emotions.  What were these emotions?  Nothing had changed in my life except that I had eliminated TV.  What does that mean that TV did for me?  On some level, I realize it is a place I sometimes go when I don’t feel like feeling.  However, this confrontation of emotional “stuff” is exactly what I set out to explore. Wasn’t it the whole point of my embarking on this journey?  What was the point?

In my original post, I wrote “in my quest for more consciousness in my life, I want to see what come up for me when I close the TV as an escape from myself and my reality”.  “I have watched enough of those Oprah shows on families giving up all of the “escapes” ie electronics, dinners in front of the TV, etc. and have witnessed the bonding and levels of intimacy that open up for them”. “One of the inspirations for me doing this is to increase the level of intimacy in my life with myself, my daughter and the world.”  

Be careful what you wish for.  I am certainly getting more intimate with myself, which is part of my goal, but who’d have known it would be this confronting?  I keep saying “it’s just TV!” Shutting off TV, however, is opening up space that was not present before.  A void. 

When my marriage broke up a little over a year ago, I realized the universe had stripped me of everything.  I had no job, no marriage and even my home was sold.  I literally had lost all of these things and my life looked like a crumbled pile of rubble. Thankfully for me, I had been on my self discovery journey long enough to know that this was just the next level of consciousness for me and that the universe would gracefully (or not so gracefully it feels at times!) guide me.  

With the TV off, the bigger questions in my life have more space to appear: Who am I without all of the stuff I always deemed important?  Today, I have no marriage, no real “career”, and I no longer own my own home.  Who am I at my core? What is my life’s purpose?  This is my journey.  I am being challenged with discovering who I am by slowing down, and closing off outside stimuli to create more consciousness.  I have often joked, as I strived for this inner knowing, “this could be serenity but it feels sad, lonely and boring”. Stillness brings up these emotions. 

Today, I got the message to journal in the “ick”.  Like a soldier going into battle, I sit pen in hand and decide to document what I am feeling in this familiar “ick” spot from which I so desperately want to run.  The pen angrily moves across the paper and the words appear.  “Loneliness.  A deep ache.  A dark place.  I don’t like it here.  Oh wait. I’m supposed to embrace this. ”We can’t heal what we can’t feel”.  Is it even loneliness?  Is it fear?  I keep calling it fear – fear I won’t have enough money, won’t find a job, won’t find love again…but the truth is I honestly am not afraid of these things.  So what is it?” I stop trying to figure it out and decide to simply feel.

In my eyes, tears begin to emerge. I feel like throwing up.  Literally.  Yet I sit and my pen writes as my mind observes each body part call out the sensation it is feeling like play by play of a good ball game: In my lungs, heaviness, in my heart, burning, in my belly, nausea, in my throat, constriction.  Literally, chin to pelvis, my entire torso feels heavy, as this unpleasant and unwanted energy abounds. 

I know why I run from this.  It does NOT feel good.  In fact, it feels terrifying.  Denise Linn in her best selling book Soul Coaching says about emotion, “It’s just energy and it’s just being released”.  Why am I so afraid to feel this “ick”?  My mind answers – I am afraid it won’t go away.  I am afraid I will become paralyzed and go into a deep, dark place from which I will never get out.  

Yet, today I strive for aliveness.  Isn’t this being fully alive?  Feeling all of my body’s sensations?  Yet, most of the time, I want only to feel the “good” feelings.  Where’s the brightness?  The light I so desire and love.  This is dark and heavy and my body wants to reject it – get rid of it.  Poison.  My system feels poisoned.  By what? An energy? An emotion? 

I label it loneliness  Alone-ness. Why the need to label? Why the need to create a story?  Who cares.  It’s a place I know well and I am determined to get comfortable here.  I am reminded of Pema Chodron’s words in her book Taking the Leap that we must “Learn to stay.”  I am feeling this discomfort physically and emotionally and I am dropping the need to label it or explain it, I am just staying present.  Jill Bolte Taylor in her captivating book My Stroke of Insight sights scientific research that reveals true emotion last about 90 seconds.  So I continue to be totally present with the sensations these feelings cause in my body and guess what?  They subside.  Honestly.  I bring my big looking glass of awareness to the “ick” and it dies.  Dissolves. I actually feel better. Pretty Cool.

Bringing my full attention and awareness to this deep emotion causes a shift.  I wouldn’t believe it if I actually hadn’t experienced it myself.  Miraculously, after documenting my body’s sensations and fully experiencing these unwanted emotions I instantly feel lighter. 

As I write this post a few days later I am still in awe of the experience and the knowledge I now have about sitting in the discomfort.  By deeply observing my body and what was happening without creating a story or searching for a reason for my feelings, I was able to quickly release the emotion.  I closed off another “escape” and have survived confronting the emotion that boils up.  This is a huge gift of surrendering the TV. I have definitely achieved one of my goals of becoming more intimate with myself.  I love the acronym for intimacy which is “Into Myself I See”.  Deeply.  Made possible all by turning off the TV!  Incredible.

How about you? Have you ever given up an activity that wasn’t serving you and come face to face with the “ick”?  Have you been able to be,  as Eckhart Tolle says, “the watcher”,  and simply observe your thoughts and emotions?  I would love to hear your comments. 

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Way back in my early corporate America days, I remember attending a sales training and being awed by this video which is a visual demonstration by Stephen Covey called “Big Rocks, Little Rocks” from his best selling book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.  The point of this video is to demonstrate that you need to  schedule your important “big rocks” first and then the rest of your life will fold around the “big rocks”.  If you’ve never seen the video, do yourself a favor and watch.  It’s message is humorous, real and timeless. 

The really important things in our lives – time with friends, family, self care, pursuing our passions - these are the “big rocks” which Covey says need to be scheduled first.  He demonstrates this by putting some ”big rocks” in a bucket and then pouring “little rocks” in, showing how they fill in around the “big rocks” as needed.  Just like in life.  In Covey’s next book, First Things First, he expands on this concept by challenging us to live in “Quadrant 2″ taking care of the “important but not urgent” first and trusting that the “urgent but not important”  that we are always pulled to do first, will get done, may not warrant our immediate attention or may just go away altogether.

Taking care of the important things in our lives first.  Why is it so hard to make time for the big things in our lives? Making time for family, friends and the things that make our heart sing, our passions.  Today, my creative spirit is yearning to write yet I am struggling with creating time for this passion.  Writing is a luxury left to independently wealthy artists or at least people with other sources of income to earn a living.  I am a single parent launching a new business.  Should I bother writing if it can’t support me?  Shouldn’t my energy and time be spent pursuing and growing my coaching business?  How will  I support myself and my 8 year old daughter if I am off “writing”? 

My logical, thinking mind (which graduated with a degree in Mathematics!) screams….Writing….are you crazy?  But it’s the voice I hear when I am still.  It is also a talent others often point out to me – “you should write a book”, “I love reading the way you write”, “your blog posts are thought provoking”.  Aren’t these ”nudges” from the universe that I am training myself to listen to? 

Deep down, where I know all my answers reside, I ask “Do I want to write?” ”Yes” is the answer I hear, so it should be a no brainer, right?  Wrong.  The next question which quickly follows is “Where’s the beef?”  Ahh, there it is -  the green-eyed monster – “show me the money!!!”  If I can’t earn money doing it, is it worth my investment of my precious resources of time and energy?  If there’s no immediate payoff should I pursue it?

So, now the question with an “important” thing like a calling or passion becomes, how do we create time for our passions which are not fruitful in terms of producing measurable results? – which for me often equates to money – the dreaded killer of the soul. 

Today, I am committed to making time for what’s important.  Listening to the messages from my soul.  The visit to my aunt is a step.  Turning the TV off another.    Follow my passion? Now the stakes are a bit higher.  As I detailed in my post Leaving A Job To Follow Your Passion – Courageous or Crazy, I am taking money out of the equation, tapping into a small retirement fund and trying an experiment with my life.  I am testing the “follow your passion and the money will follow”.  Follow me along and let me know if you have too have the courage to “throw caution to the wind” and follow your heart. 

What important things are you doing?  Are you able to ignore the urgent and prioritize the really important things in your life?  Comment and let me know your thoughts.

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So, how was my first week without TV? Do you want the good news first or the bad? Ok, since I can’t hear you I will give you what I always choose – bad first. Always good to end on a positive note. Bad news – a lot of this first week I felt lost and, even uglier, I discovered I am a LIAR. There you have it. I actually realized I watch more TV than I thought.

In my original post, I said “I don’t even watch TV that much. Just an hour or so after my daughter goes to bed”. LIAR. I think I was in denial about my TV watching. Fits with the acronym I love for denial: Don’t Even Know I Am Lying…to myself mostly. Isn’t that the way it is with most things we are addicted to?

I honestly “forgot” about other times I typically watch TV. For example, I usually watch TV after I eat my lunch for about a half hour. About a year ago, when I began my quest to stop multitasking and to instead do one thing at a time, I decided to stop reading or watching TV while eating. To help alleviate the pain of this disconnection, I allowed myself to still watch a half hour of TV, just not while I was eating. My routine is I eat by myself at my kitchen table and then I watch TV for a half hour. I didn’t remember this when I wrote my original post…somehow it didn’t count! So lunch has been hard. Breakfast and dinner I have Katie as a companion. Meals alone are hard. I didn’t realize how much I looked forward to watching a little TV after lunch. Curbs the loneliness?

What have I done with my new found half hour? At first I was “filling the time”, making phone calls, just going back to work earlier, checking email…then I sat and thought about what could I do here that would stimulate me and help me get ready to go back to work? Curious? You’ll have to wait for the “good news” section to find the answer.

The other time that I watch TV that I conveniently “forgot” is when Katie watches TV for an hour or so either before or after dinner. When she watches TV, I typically disappear and do the same on the upstairs TV. I did note in my original post that what prompted this detox was noticing that I was watching TV upstairs while Katie was downstairs watching her show. So, now I find that she still wants to watch TV during this time (she wants NO part of this TV detox!) and I am left to walk around my house trying to find something to do. I am lost.

I know this feeling. I have felt it before when I surrendered other “escapes”. The feeling is the same uncomfortable one like I am crawling out of my skin and need a “fix”. Last night, I just walked around my house looking for things to do. It really hit me as I opened my food pantry and stared in longingly. Geez, that’s the last thing I want to do, go back to one compulsion as I give up another. So, I remind myself what helped me when I was giving up excess food, alcohol, etc.

During those times when I wanted to “blow it” and dive into my “thing” I did two important things that served me:

1) Make a list of things to do instead of “watch TV”. In the past, I would say “Eating/drinking/shopping, (you can substitute your own word here) is not an option, NOW WHAT?” When I was giving up excess eating, I needed a list of things to do instead of eat. This list included EVERYTHING I might ever consider doing: Take a walk, call a friend, nap, read, organize photos, scrapbook, jizsaw puzzle, make a pot of coffee (decaf now of course!), drink a glass of water, exercise…blah, blah, blah. It was long and full.

The point of the list was to create a pause between the impulse to eat, or in this case turn on the TV, to allow for time for me to remember that I do have more in my life that I could do besides what I am used to doing. Not easy to fight against in those moments when my mind is screaming “but your missing your favorite shows”, “the world is passing you by” and ultimately “LOSER!” That’s really it. I am left feeling empty without my usual fillup. Uncomfortable.

Which brings me to point number 2) Find other things that comfort me. One of the greatest lessons I have gotten in surrendering things that no longer serve me is the ability to learn to sit in the discomfort. This has been hard. I so want to feel good all the time but that is not REAL. Real life is sad, lonely, joyful and grand. All of it. If I can’t feel the yucky, I can’t feel the divine. So, for comfort, I know I love hot baths, a cup of tea, phone call to a friend, etc. A friend of mine simply throws her pjs in the dryer, sometimes that’s all I am looking for – some warmth to soothe the discomfort.

So the bad news is this TV detox is harder than I thought (no surprise I guess) and I have that same old familiar “icky” feeling of discomfort to confront.

Now for the good news…surrendering TV has opened up space in my life for more LIVING!! Yes! During this last week I did things that I wouldn’t have done had I been watching TV. For example I:

1) Took Walks. Katie and I walked almost every night. Truth is because I am watching less TV so is she.

2) Re-learned to play Battleship. Loved that game as a kid and Katie got it for her birthday in January and we’ve never opened it. She killed me and enjoyed that immensely.

3) Read More. Katie and I are reading together for an hour each night. It feels good.

4) Danced More. Oh yeah, wondering what I do with my new found half hour during lunch? I am dancing. Yep, I put a few catchy tunes on my ipod and dance. This stimulates my creative juices and gives me energy. Woo Hoo!

5) Slept More. Lights out by 9:30 – sleeping like a baby.

So there you have it. The good, the bad and the ugly of my first week without the boob tube. Week two should be interesting since Katie is with her dad Thursday – Sunday and I have lots of “me” time which I often spend, you guessed it, watching TV. I look forward to once again confronting it all. Anyone else been shutting off the TV? I would love to hear your comments on this eye-opening journey.

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It is the greatest paradox of life you’ve got to slow down to get more done! 

Trust me on this – it’s the greatest misconception – work more to produce more – WRONG.  Creativity blooms out of rest and play, not more effort. 

 Now, those of you who have been following me for a while know, I am quite the extrovert.  I love to talk, to write, and to present.  Communication is my thing.  Slowing down and getting silent has been a long process, something I work on daily.  Meditation is the entry way into silence, sitting still on a cushion, in a chair, in bed,  even in your car and just doing nothing.  It has been key for me to begin to understand what it means to “be present” and “quiet the mind”.  

 As I’ve detailed many times, I started meditating with 2 minutes on the oven timer.  During those two minutes I talked to myself, berated myself and counted the ceiling tiles until the buzzer finally sprung me back to sanity. Whew, glad that was over! It was a slow progression to 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes and it happened over months and even years of starting and stopping. 

Silence and meditation are the tools I use daily to help me train my mind to stay present.  Silence can come in many forms.  I  encourage you to just begin where you are.  If sitting still for even 2 minutes on the oven timer feels overwhelming right now, perhaps you can begin by just turning off the car radio and driving in silence.  Begin to notice when you put the radio or TV on just to have noise.  For what? Distraction from self.  What’s so bad about this? Nothing except that it is our inner self that provides our best guidance.  To receive your best guidance you need to be able to hear from within and, for me,  this only happens during times I am silent. 

Today, I am happy to say I regularly meditate 15-20 minutes a day without fail.  Meditation is as important to me as showering or brushing my teeth – I wouldn’t leave home without doing it.   It provides a deeper sense of knowing and takes me below the level of “stuff” my mind is caring about, connecting me to a deeper dimension of myself.   For me, this is the key to my life’s work – being present in my life moment to moment. 

After my daily meditation practice and longer periods of silence, I often come away feeling refreshed and with new energy and ideas.  This doesn’t happen right away and it rarely happens in the silence itself.   Silence can be very confronting.  The mind starts talking “this is stupid, boring, lonely”.  My mind wants stuff to do.  As Pema Chodron, one of my favorite authors, reminds us “the heart beats, the lungs breathe, and the mind thinks”.  Our mind will always think.  It’s automatic and it is the mind’s sole purpose.  Meditation is simply training the mind so we have some control over it’s thinking.  We train the mind during meditation to focus on an image, a word, the breath, or my favorite one – sound.  I meditate with my window open (even in winter I open it just a crack and get that crisp winter air in) and listen to the sounds.  

During a 15 min meditation practice I am probably full present and listening to the sounds, (truly “meditating”)  for less than half that time.  Each time I notice my mind thinking  I just gently bring it back.  I often say “thinking” when I notice I am lost once again in thought.  Pema suggested saying “oops” and simply refocusing on breath, the word, whatever vehicle works best for you.  Again, you will never stop the mind from thinking.  The purpose of meditation is to train the mind so YOU have more ability to recognize when you are lost in thoughts.  This practice of noticing the “thinking” makes it easier to recognize when you are getting swept away by the mind outside of meditation.

I recently expanded my practice, after reading Anne D. LeClair’s insightful book Listening Below The Noise, to include full days of silence once every four to six weeks.  LeClaire documents her 17 years of taking every other Monday in silence and her progression of going “within”.  I was amazed as she detailed how with a busy career, kids and a husband she routinely took every other Monday in silence – what a pioneer.

During these larger blocks of silence,  I often find that I journal a lot, cry often and sleep plenty.  In fact, during my first silent retreat, I slept more of the 24 hours than I was awake.  The facilitator reminded us that that’s really the point – to slow down and recharge – our bodies and our minds need it.    We were told during the silence that our bodies, minds and spirits will take us where we need to go – mine sure did – off to dream land I went for the majority of this retreat.  Powerful. Often we are so sleep deprived and we don’t even know it (more evidence for embracing those afternoon naps!). 

After attending my second silent retreat at Omega Institute during a workshop lead by Pema, I was reminded why I take these periods of silence.  Life often feels fuller and brighter after these confronting periods of silence.  Now, I am ready to try one a bit longer – 3 or 4 days or, dare I say, a week in silence?  At my last retreat women were talking about 3 week and 3 month silent retreats – you’ve got to be kidding – I do have a life!  Yet, I know this is what I said to my original 2 minutes on the oven timer,  so today I know never say never.  You just never know where the universe is directing you until you quiet down enough to really listen.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

This short video shows how one lone spirit inspires others.  It was posted today to facebook by my friend Denise Linn author of the book Soul Coaching.  I love it!  It inspires me to continue to walk to my own drummer and to embrace those that are joining the movement – may our spirits all continue to dance!

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Now, let me just say that there is nothing wrong with watching a little TV for enjoyment.  I really am not even a big TV watcher.  I tape a few shows I like and watch about an hour or so in the evening after my daughter goes to bed.  Now that baseball season is in full swing, I do tape and watch the Phillies pretty faithfully. 

I actually stopped watching all news programs about 5 years ago.  The only news show I watch is Daily News Live the local sports news at 5Pm on ComcastSportsnet.  Believe it or not, this is my favorite show on TV and for me will be the most difficult to let go.  It gives me the news of the day in sports and has great commentators.  I am sure we all have our personal favorite shows that are hard to “give up” – Glee, Grey’s Anatomy, anything on HBO!  

So why let go of TV watching for a period of time?  As a fellow pioneer on this quest for more consciousness in my life,  I want to see what come up for me when I close the TV as an escape from myself and my reality.   I have watched enough of those Oprah shows on families giving up all of the “escapes” ie electronics, dinners in front of the TV, etc. and have witnessed the bonding and levels of intimacy that open up for them.  

One of the inspirations for me doing this is to increase the level of intimacy in my life with myself, my daughter and the world.  Recently, I noticed that my daughter was downstairs watching her shows and I was upstairs watching mine.  It reminded me of times in my marriage (I am now divorced), where my husband and I would do that same thing.  I often joked that he and I would land on the exact opposite channels – our tastes in TV were that different.  I want to open up intimacy with  my daughter and spend more time with her.  I am going to shut off the TV and see what happens. 

In Julia Cameron’s best selling book The Artist’s Way, she has you go on a 7 day reading detox.  “It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually filling the well.  Without distraction, we are once again thrust into the sensory world…Reading deprivation casts us into our inner silence.  We often cannot hear our own inner voice, the voice of our artist’s inspiration, above the static.”  This is what I am looking for – a deeper connection to my inner creativity, life, artist. 

I will also tell you that the “nudge” I am getting next will be far bigger and harder – give up my computer for 30 days? Can this even be done? I may soon find out.  So, this motivates me to “enjoy” this 30 days.  I am certainly watch less TV than I use the computer so this month should be a breeze.

Would you like to join me on this 30 day TV detox?  Do you think this “presence” thing has just gone too far and I am crazy? Feel free to comment below and share your thoughts!  I welcome all opinions!

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Every time I take the bold step to give up caffeine I wake up earlier and more effortlessly. 

 This is the second time I have chosen to give up my best friend, caffeinated coffee.  Truth is I LOVE my coffee and over time, like many great love affairs, this love turns into obsession.  Slowly over a period of time I notice that I move from having coffee just in the morning to drinking it all day long.  The pattern is the same, I start with a “normal” cup or two in the AM and before you know it, after a few months I need a pot to start my day.  Then on days I need some “extra” energy I start with a cup or two in mid afternoon and before I know it, I am making pots all day long. 

I work  from home so coffee almost seems like a necessity to work.  I remember Julia Cameron in her bestselling book  The Artist’s Way, articulating her fears after having to stop drinking.  She was afraid it was the alcohol that actually helped her write creatively and she feared that giving up alcohol she might never again be creative.  “Drinking and writing went together like, well, scotch and soda” she wrote.  That’s how I feel about my coffee and my “work”.  If I let it go will I have the energy to work  during the day?  If I don’t have caffeine in the afternoon, how will I have energy for homework, baths, and dinner at night? 

The truth is I begin my journey into drinking excess caffeine by ignoring my body.  I want to override the signs and signals my body is sending me to slow down, rest or god forbid – STOP.  Don’t you know I have deadlines to meet, projects to complete, meals to prepare, games to play (mom’s have to be really creative with 8 year olds who aren’t allowed to watch TV during the school week!).  I must accomplish and caffeine becomes my partner in crime.  The crime of ignoring my body in pursuit of getting things done.   Ah, but at what price?  There is always a price.  Today, I am grateful that it doesn’t take a call from the doctor saying I have an ulcer to get my attention.  Having been through this once before, I just knew it was time – this time I heard the universe’s “whisper” instead of having to “wait for the brick on the head” – bottom line, my caffeine addiction must be addressed. WHAAA!!

I got the nudge (don’t you hate those nudges!!) that my coffee drinking was getting out of hand.  I was actually finding myself late for appointments because I couldn’t go without a fresh cup of coffee in hand, fidgeting in places when I didn’t have my “fix” .  So, I have decided to try and ween myself off of coffee again.  I have been  at this place before - flashback about 5 years ago and I was diagnosed with an ulcer and told to cut my coffee drinking down to a cup or two a day – don’t have to give it up mind you just cut back.   A cup or two a day? I am at 2 pots plus per day….what is the saying “Some are sicker than others”.

But thankfully I know this can be done.  I was off caffeine for a good 2-3 years.  The truth is that once it is out of my system I really don’t “need” it.  To my surprise, I did start to feel better, rise earlier and actually got the next “nudge” to start a daily exercise program.  My experience is caffeine,  like any other drug,  blocks me from hearing what my my body really needs.  Instead of honoring my body I use caffeine to override it.  Tired throughout the day,  get a cup of coffee.  Bored at waiting for your kid to finish lessons, grab a cup of coffee to pass the time.   I get this weird association thing like the commercials count on that my “Foldgers in my cup” (or in my case Starbucks) will actually give me that relaxed feeling and ability to be at peace with the world and definitely more creative.  Oh and let’s not even talk about the money – they don’t call it StarBUCKS for no reason!  When you are as deep into your habit as I am, it is a small fortune each month – I buy it out and buy it in bulk for my coffee maker at home. CHUH CHING! 

So my journey to surrendering another,  albeit minor,  addiction really isn’t pretty.  I will caution you to do it slow and gradually.  Doctors recommend cutting out a cup a week to let your body adjust.  Never a patient girl I usually do it in bigger clumps than that.  This past Monday I stopped all coffee after my AM pot.  I took Motrin for four days each afternoon but eventually my body got used to the loss of caffeine. 

By the way folks I did say “after my AM POT”.  12 delicious cups that equate to four barrel size mugs - speaking of coffee mugs – that’s a whole other post – how important is the “right mug” for your coffee?  My sister and I crack up at people’s love of their mugs – my dad (a chemist by profession) will tell you you need a totally clear mug to keep the coffee hot.  It also can’t have writing on it cause that diffuses the heat somehow too.  My dad has driven my mom crazy because he has used the same old scratched mug for over 10 years – she is dying to throw it out.  Us kids have even given dad new all glass mugs to upgrade and update the old favorite – to no avail.  He will not part with his beloved mug. Me – as I mentioned I love big, fat mugs that hold a lot of coffee – I don’t like to keep getting up to refill!

So, I digress – back to the giving up coffee journey – there is a point here I promise.  I am an early riser.  Been that way since a little girl but the truth is without caffeine I am an even earlier riser!! It never ceases to amaze me.    Have you allowed your body to dictate its own natural rhythms? You might be as surprised as I am each time I realize I actually have more energy without caffeine and if not, my body let’s me know it’s usually exercise or rest that it wants NOT CAFFEINE.   Have you had a similar experience?  Would you like support as you try and learn your bodies real rhythm? Feel free to comment and let me know.  I may be asleep when you respond but I will be resting comfortably knowing I am honoring my body and my wallet!!

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