A Rampage of Appreciation for The Trees!

Hello

I'm feeling very happy this evening, this morning I did lots of paper work, and I thought about how unnatural it seemed to be shuffling about bits of paper and reading little black dots and lines and then I realised that it really didn't matter! It's just a part of my current human experience and I am very happy and grateful that I have so little of it to do!!

I feel inspired today and excited. I had insightful dreams last night and even though I didn't sleep that much I really do feel quite rested. I awoke twice in the night full of ideas for my blog, which felt pleasing, but today I am going on a rampage of appreciation. I was going to write it yesterday, but I have decided to go with the flow of feelings and ideas as they come each day with my blog, it seems more honest and fluid to me.

To keep myself on track with choosing good feeling thoughts it is important to me to go on as many rampages of appreciation as possible, they bring into focus for me just how fortunate I really am, firstly just to be having a human experience and secondly to be having such a juicy, joyful, creative, inspired, interesting, cosy, loving, happy one!!!! (I could go on here for quite some time). I like to remember to have at least one rampage of appreciation every day.

So here goes.....

Today, I am Thankful for the TREES! The joy that trees bring to me is immeasurable, I only have to look out of my bedroom window and I am delighted by the vision of several magnificent majestic old trees.
I love deciduous trees, I give thanks for the amazing variety of their forms. I give thanks for the gnarly Oak, I love the smoothness of the Ash bark, I adore the bright whiteness of the birch against the green of the woods. I love the dense spiky hawthorn and I relish the dark magical blackthorn. I am so thankful for the waxy deep green shine of the holly.


I give thanks for the bare branches of the winter trees, silhouetted against dark and bright skies, I love the stark beauty of the twigs against the sharp blue skies. 
I am so thankful for the buds in spring time, I love each new bud bursting with the promise of the show which is to come. I give thanks for the tress in the springtime when it finally is sprung, with a beautiful bright blaze of fresh green, I love their tender new leaves, I am so thankful for their velvety soft freshness. 


I give thanks for the verdant deep greens of the leaves in the summers. I give thanks for the thick canopies, I love the cool shade which moves with the sun as it crosses the sky, Thank you trees. 
I am so thankful for the glorious spectacle of autumn leaves, the colourful extravaganza of reds, oranges, yellows and browns provided for our eyes by those mighty sentient beings. I am so thankful for the leaves as they fall on the ground, I love walking through the rustling carpet of leaves which the trees so generously bestow upon the earth.
. 
And then I get to give thanks all over again as the seasons turn full circle and the beautiful trees begin again their magical cycle. 


I also give thanks for the evergreens. I love the colours they lend to the winter, I love their contrast when the snow is on the ground. I give thanks for the christmas trees which I bring into my house, I love the smell, the freshness and the warmth it brings to my home and my heart in the middle of winter. 


I am in awe of the wonderful services trees provide both to humans and to all manner of creatures. I give thanks for the constant cycling of carbon which trees provide. I give thanks for the oxygen which trees release, I give thanks for trees for my life, my breath. I give thanks for my home and for everything in it made from that beautiful material which comes from our friends the trees, thank you. 
I love the homes which trees provide for birds and beasts and minibeasts. I love trees. 


I love the way trees shape my landscape. I love the shape of the woods, I love the shape of the fields and hedgerows. I give thanks for every tree small and mighty. I give thanks for every tiny sapling and for every ancient mighty giant. I give thanks for the immense forests and the miniature copses and all the trees in between. 


I love the trees. Thank you trees, you fill my world with beauty and life. Thank you for the wood in winter which warms my hearth, my home and my heart. Thank you trees for giving your lives for me. I give thanks too for the ancient forest of ages past, buried beneath the earth which have turned to blackness, thank you for the coal which provides so much of our electric lives. 


OOOOOOOO I give thanks for paper too! I love paper, I love to draw and write and paint on paper. 


                                                        I LOVE TREES !!!!!!

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

love Klara

When The Rampage is a Savage!

Hello

Today is my fourteenth blogging session! A two week anniversary, which like yesterday didn't start so well. Late last night I experienced quite a lot of negative thoughts, but I put it down to tiredness and did my best to CHOOSE SOME BETTER FEELING THOUGHTS.

This morning I awoke feeling tired, but I also had an overwhelming sense of dread. I think it's probably completely normal to have a certain amount of negative thoughts emerging throughout the day, I believe it can take time to build new pathways in the brain for positive happy feeling thoughts to flow down, and I have definitely experienced quite a large change in the ease with which I move from what could be a negative train of thought to a happy life enhancing one, i.e. CHOOSING GOOD FEELING THOUGHTS has got much EASIER!

What I was experiencing this morning was different. The thoughts I was involuntarily having (and I mean not consciously generating) were dramatic and suffused with morbidity and fear. These thoughts were so unusual that I decided to take notice of them, I examined them for validity with the help of my partner.

After some time and some releasing of the excessive energy, I realised that these thoughts must be old emotional baggage surfacing to be cleared. At first I was disappointed, "Oh no" I said to myself, "I'm not superwoman after all!!!". You see, I wanted it all to be so simple, choose happy feeling thoughts and forget the past, ignore it, it will go away! Maybe that sounds naive, but I'm ok with that, there is something beautiful about naivety; I'm still childishly innocent.


So, now I have a new challenge!: To find a way to heal those old wounds which  have surfaced, without letting them overrun my life. I'm going to choose when it's appropriate to think about that stuff, at a time when I have head-space, resources and help  to deal with it, and the rest of the time I'm going to carry on choosing wonderful feeling thoughts. 


In the past this resurgence of negativity might have floored me, but now I have the tools to deal with it and I'm enormously grateful that I have been doing this work, and that I made a commitment to myself to keep trying no matter what I have to face.


Secondary to these old feelings, I think that my ego has a part to play in this negative episode. The ego keeps us safe, safety for the ego lies in familiarity, and all this positivity and joy is clearly too novel for mine!! Well, it's just going to have to change along with the rest of me; I'm not going back to the bad old days, when winter was dreadful for me and I was at the mercy of un-shepherded thoughts.


I am really enjoying my new life, it feels marvelous the majority of the time, I am recognising more and more each day what a fortunate being I am and I LOVE IT.
                                                  
                                                      I LOVE MYSELF


                                                    AND


                    I LOVE CHOOSING GREAT FEELING THOUGHTS






Today, I am Thankful for the insight of others
I am Thankful for the beautiful sunset
I am Thankful for fluffy clouds
I am Thankful for the breeze on my skin
I am Thankful for night swimming in the sea
I am Thankful for the bright full moon
I am Thankful for the astounding brilliance of a starry night sky
I am Thankful for rainbows around the moon
I am Thankful for swirling mists
I am Thankful for the mossy carpet in the woods.

Love Klara.

Is Your Glass Half Full?

Good Morning!

I want to say everything is wonderful, marvelous, spectacular, I'm thriving and full of the joys of a thought choosing rampage, but I really don't feel like that right now. I ate quite a lot of chocolate yesterday, I convinced myself somehow that it was fine to do so, and that it would not really affect my baby and that the other times I had eaten lots of chocolate it was probably just a coincidence that my baby was awake nearly all night. But surprise surprise, my baby was awake nearly all night, and she didn't really seem all that happy about it. I finally got some sleep just as it was getting light and then woke at nine-thirty this morning feeling very groggy.

It is a beautiful sunny day, I can see the hills in the distance and the birds flying by, but I'm still having trouble shifting into a positive frame of mind.
Doing this thought choosing work over the last seven weeks, and now the last twelve days of writing this blog, has brought some interesting new thoughts and inspirations to me. This morning when all else failed I tried the method my dad recommended years ago to me, its a very simple one: SMILE.  I felt dreadful, contrary, aggressive and even warlike this morning and so not knowing what else to do I smiled, and in that moment (while I held my probably slightly insane looking smile) it came to me! I had a eureka moment!

I was angry at my partner, everything he was doing seemed to be wrong and worse than that antagonistic! But the moment I smiled it came to me: it was all in how I chose to view it, how I framed it. I realised he was not doing anything differently to the way he usually does things, the only thing that had change was ME! 
I was in a poor frame of mind, which meant that everything I encountered seemed poor; as if I were looking at the world through mud tinted glasses!
It probably shows that I'm feeling a lot better now! Writing this has helped me to see what was really occurring! So what I'm thinking is that it seems like it would be a good idea when faced with negative thoughts about myself, my day, my partner or anything else for that matter, to think to myself "Can I frame this another way?".
For example:

"Last night I had hardly any sleep"   versus   "I did get some sleep last night and it's a sunny day!"

"Oh no! my baby has woken up and I haven't finished my blog"   versus    "My baby has woken up, but my blog is nearly finished and there is still plenty of day left to get it done".

Yes, it's the glass half empty/ half full thing. Is your glass half full or half empty? I think its a profound question. For some reason, I always see a glass of milk when I think of this analogy (or is it a metaphor?) I guess it's not important really. What is important is that CHOOSING BETTER FEELING THOUGHTS means CHOOSING TO SEE THAT THE GLASS CAN ALWAYS BE HALF FULL!!!

It's all in the mind. I want to be fully conscious of how fortunate I am, all the time!! and ok I realise that sometimes things may seem tough and that life is full of challenge, but it is in my power to CHOOSE HOW I VIEW IT.
We are powerful beings and we can CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS. I like to think we can choose our experiences too, and in the immortal words of Ester Hicks and Abraham:

"The contrast of the bugs in the eye is a small price to pay for the exhilaration of that ride!"


Today, I am Thankful for contrast
 I am Thankful for the sunshine
 I am Thankful for my view of the hills
 I am Thankful for the birdsong outside my window
 I am Thankful for powerful smiling inspiration
 I am Thankful for the silhouette of trees against the sky
 I am Thankful for my friends near and far
 I am Thankful for the power of words
 I am Thankful for my full stomach
 I am Thankful for being such an incredibly fortunate being.

love Klara.

My Beautiful Mind Movie

Hello

I woke up feeling a bit flat this morning. I had a lovely evening last night, we watched a movie called "Ten Canoes" a beautiful aborigine story; and drifted off into a peaceful sleep. I slept quite well last night although I had very strange dreams, and this morning I feel haunted by the one (and only one) violent image in the whole movie. I know, I need to concentrate on some better feeling thoughts, more than that some beautiful thoughts.

I have suffered a lot in my life from nightmares, I remember having them as a child, and they almost always featured some horror or other that I had seen in 'Doctor Who'. If I were to go back now and watch one of the early Doctor Who episodes I'm sure its realness would be laughable, but I remember as a child being very frightened of the monsters. My mother was very strict about what we were allowed to watch on television, and for that I am grateful. We were allowed to watch an hour of kids TV before six and then friday or saturday, I can't remember which, we could watch 'Top of the Pops', 'Tomorrow's World' and a few random things like 'It's a Knock Out' and 'The Muppet Show'.

I once read, and I think it was connected to Steiner philosophy, that we remember everything we ever encounter, be it visual, audio or sensual, if not consciously then unconsciously.  To me that means its all there, everything I have ever watched, knocking about in my brain and please correct me if I'm wrong, but how does the brain discern between what is "real" and what is "staged" when both things enter through the senses? Film and TV does not generally have a "FAKE" filter pasted over the main feature, allowing the brain to continually recognise its pretend nature! Perhaps if it did it would not be quite so appealing.

The thing I have noticed about a lot of dramatic television and movies is the ubiquitous use of tension and PERIL. The starring characters are frequently subjected to varying amounts of peril, in the name of ENTERTAINMENT! Remember 'The Littlest Hobo', 'Lassie', 'Gentle Ben', 'Flipper' and 'Baywatch' to name a few are all entirely centered around rescuing helpless beings from danger, and as for 'Casualty' an entire program devoted to graphically dramatic portrayal of human accidents and suffering.
What on earth is going on???

It is well known that athletes use visualisation to practice their sports, through visualisation the body experiences at least a few or as much as all of the attendant feelings, and much of the body chemistry of participating in the actual experience, muscles have memory and can learn and improve performance without even actually leaving the armchair!

How often have you heard someone saying they are going to relax in front of the television? I know I have said it. I'm laughing now. Don't get me wrong, I love a good movie, I'm just questioning what actually constitutes a good movie. Surely something truly worth watching should be life enhancing, and in view of the massive incidence of depression in the world, it should be uplifting, joyous, heart warming and awe inspiring.

I used to laugh at movie certification, who are these people trying to tell me what is suitable for me, surely I should be allowed to decide for myself? When? After I have watched it? These days I am grateful for the warnings written on movies they do help me decide whether something is going to enhance my human experience or not.

These days I don't watch TV, I eradicated it from our house to try to enhance my family's creativity about six years ago (I think we had had it for about four years prior to that), my creativity was greatly enhanced and my determination not to go back was laid down in cement when I called TV licensing to let them know I no longer had the TV and they not only tried to suggest I was lying but said "What are you going to do in the evening then?" in a rather sarcastic tone!!!!!

I am a sensitive soul, as I believe all humans are, and I want to fill my days with beauty and love, I want to see the glory of the world, and if I'm stuck at home then there is this wonderful tool called the internet, which I am going to use to see all the MARVELOUS things that humans do. I'm going to CHOOSE to look for those YouTube films which wonderfully creative people make to help others to feel good, and to share the joy they find in life, those films that make me smile and laugh and help to fill my mind with GOOD FEELING THOUGHTS. Yes they are out there, those good feeling films for which I will say a  hearty THANK YOU!!!!

Today I am thankful for, Playing for Change (above) and the following links to my kind of TV:
I am thankful for Simon's Cat
I am thankful for Breast Feeding Flash Mob
I am thankful for Old Man Dance Off
I am thankful for Lady Re-Cycles
I am thankful for Still Got It
I am thankful for Laughing Babies
I am thankful for Free Hugs
I am thankful for Human Kindness
I am thankful for A Profound Question

Love Klara.

How Warm is You Heart?

Hello

It feels like I've only just finished writing yesterdays blog and now I'm back again, in reality about ten hours has gone by - I have been sleeping. Its a good thing that I'm thoroughly enjoying writing, I have had the occasional anxiety about what on earth I'm going to find to write about each day, but so far something occurs in my life each day that sparks up some train of thought that needs attention! The kind of attention I'm talking about is where good feeling thoughts must be chosen!

We stayed the night at my dad's house on saturday, and just before we set off he called to tell us to bring extra jumpers, he said that his house was cold but that it wasn't too bad, he said it was mainly that his partner was worried we would be cold. My alarm bells did not ring, I grew up in what I considered to be cold houses, you know the kind? Where you wear several layers and a warm jumper in the day and at night pyjamas and a hot water bottle is not unusual; just comfortable. Indeed I would go so far as to say that I dislike overly warm houses, I like wearing Jumpers in winter, and thick socks; I even relish those times when I snuggle in bed with a hot water bottle, my breath rising in plumes like a little dragon........

I spent ten years on and off living in caravans and vans, winter and summer, through all weathers and have very fond memories of it. Anyway you get the idea; I'm used to the cold.

When I look back on saturday night I almost laugh out loud! My dad's house is out on it's own, on a fairly high up very flat unsheltered bit of land. His central heating was out of oil and therefore inactive, however he did have an open fire in the sitting room, which was blazing merrily away when we arrived. We ate our dinner in the kitchen and dad put the oven on to warm the room. We had a nice evening and went to bed at about ten as our baby was a bit grumbly. Upstairs the house was so cold that we piled masses of blankets onto the bed and even wore hats! We had to put a tiny pair of red and white spotty tights on the baby's head as her hat was wet! 

I was so cold that in the end I started to lose my temper!!! Luckily for me and my dad, my partner again pointed out to me that I should be choosing better feeling thoughts! That was the only thing I really needed to do! As soon as we began to choose good feeling thoughts I started to relax and settled down to quite a restful nights sleep.

So what on earth was really going on here??? 

The only other times I remember being that cold before were when as a child my dad took us camping in winter and it snowed heavily in the night and I came out of the tent in the morning to a thick blanket of snow, or when we slept on my dad's narrow boat. There seems to be a bit of a theme here: my dad! 

I noticed that although the fire was on in the sitting room on saturday night, it was just a small blaze which one needed to sit right next to in order to get warm, I would have been inclined to build it up but my dad was content with the way it was. My younger brother is currently living with my dad and I asked him the next morning how he feels about the temperature; he replied that he once built up a really good hot blaze in the fire and dad complained that it was too hot!!!

This experience really took me to thinking about how we think about temperature. How is it that my dad is so resistant to cold? I believe that we learn our attitudes to the temperature around us and that each person feels the cold or heat in a different way. Have you ever noticed that small children are forever running around in the middle of winter in just shorts and t-shirt and have to be told by their parents that they are cold?

"Put your coat on" gets said a lot in my house. My ten year old daughter would very happily go out in winter in just jeans and a t-shirt, oddly though, if its snowy outside, she puts on several pairs of trousers, several jumpers and a thick coat, gloves and mittens and a couple of hats AND scarves and goes out looking (and probably feeling) a bit like the abominable snowman!!!! Why she does this is a mystery to me when she is normally so warm. Can a couple of degrees really make that much difference to her? Or is it that she has been told that snow is cold, and seeing the evidence out there on the ground she takes it on and dresses accordingly?

My dad is nearly seventy and according to statistics and government reports he really ought to be feeling the cold, but clearly he doesn't. My dad spends a lot of time outside, he is a gardener and as such he clearly gets warm outside, as he doesn't wear that many layers (as far as I have observed). Could it be that feeling the cold is all in the mind? Could we just choose warm feeling thoughts, or just calm, comfortable ones and no longer suffer from warmth or heat?

Last year I watched a documentary on a man called "The Ice Man", it brought to mind a lot of eighties super heros for me and really wasn't that far off! Wim Hof aka 'The Iceman' is able to submerge himself in freezing water and lie around in snowdrifts, in short he is able to withstand and even thrive in temperature which would kill your average human rather quickly. and his body doesn't even get cold. Forty-eight year old Hof suffers not from frostbite or hypothermia! His grand finale in the film I watched about him was to run a half marathon barefoot in shorts one hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle!!!! His explanation is that he very much enjoys the feelings his freezing activities produce in his body and that basically he prepares mentally and that he believes its all in the mind.

What is really going on here on earth? We get 'educated' in all these so called 'facts' and 'truths'  (generally in school, and later by the media) but whose truths and facts are they really? Again it seems I'm back to science and scientific fact, that old chestnut where some boffin (and I certainly do not mean to discredit or malign all the brilliant work scientists have painstakingly done on our behalf) "PROOVES" a hypothesis, and then we all believe in it and live our lives according to that fact! It seems almost constantly that old scientific facts are being found to be incorrect and are being re-described with a new 'FACT' for us to put our faith in and re- limit our paradigm. For many years, the earth was FLAT and you had to be careful at sea lest you fall off the edge!!!

I'm going to do my best to open up my PARADIGM, I have had enough of the limitations inherent in living according to other peoples truths and beliefs! Living my life in the way I am now, I am constantly choosing better and better feeling thoughts and I am really experiencing happiness, joy and peace, despite difficult and sometimes downright unpleasant circumstances. 

If we drop all the beliefs we have about 'life' and 'how things are'   WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT???????

I THINK IT WILL BE VERY EXCITING!

Today I am thankful for people who step out in the world and work outside the beliefs of the masses

I am thankful for adventurers

I am thankful for the wisdom of children

I am thankful for all my senses

I am thankful for the beautiful birdsong

I am thankful for my baby's chatter

I am thankful for my children singing

I am thankful for my wonderful brain

I am thankful for the fire that warms the body, heart and mind

I am thankful for the bitter cold of a winters day and the promise of the sun on the horizon 

love Klara

Chocolate Covered Car Rides.

Hello

I'm very excited, I have had a really lovely weekend. We went to visit relatives; we all bundled into the car, when I say bundled its not just an expression, we have a small car, and there are five of us. It's quite a long way to my mums house, a journey which should take about two and a half hours usually takes us about four! We keep having to stop, swap places, find toilets, breast feed, play games and constantly re-fuel the children. Oh, I hear you say, that sounds quite normal for a family car journey, and I'd be inclined to agree, if it weren't for my family's peculiar set of car habits.

 One of my daughters makes it her business to annoy her sister in as many different ways as she can think of. Her sister has a penchant for loosing her temper, with spectacular style and volume, this might not be so bad, if the baby seat could be placed between them as a sort of iron curtain or, if we had a limousine. To make matters worse, my car/parenting habit usually starts to kick in after about thirty miles, I become increasingly agitated at my children's behavior, and eventually I  join in. The journey up was not so bad once the main event was over, every body settled down and got on with being with each other and in a small car.

So what's this all about? Two of my children are quite old, they have been behaving like this for as long as they can talk and interact with each other, surely they should have grown out of it by now? I think it might be the case that the opposite is true, each time they do it, they are strengthening their car habit together. What do I mean? My partner and I watched "The Royal Institute Christmas Lectures" on the brain a couple of weeks ago, the way I understand it, as we grow from baby-hood and learn about the world around us, structures called dendrites grow in our brains; they are the pathways that thoughts travel along. So the more frequently the thought is thunk, the more established becomes the pathway.

In my mind I like to imagine that the little used dendrites are like public footpaths for thoughts; they meander gradually into the blue bell woods and the more we use the paths the wider they get, eventually someone decides to ride along them on a horse and soon it becomes muddy, with all the thought traffic the path gets wider still, so we decide to concrete it. All of a sudden its practically an A-road, and yes you know whats coming next; if we think the thought enough it ends up being a motorway!! 

This would be fine if we are choosing good feeling thoughts however, in my experince it seems to be bad feeling thoughts that drive fifty metre long road-trains down my motorways of the mind.

DON'T PANIC!! here's the good news, just like real roads if dendrites are no longer used nature reclaims them and they shrivel up and disappear! and even more good news it's really easy to make new ones, all you need to do is choose good feeling thoughts and practice thinking them.

 I am currently in the process of creating a whole network of good feeling thought pathways, and just like road building it takes time. Rome was not built in a day as they say. 

So what has really been happening in my car? My partner sussed it out this weekend and thanks to him, we had a rather pleasant journey home. Child A, the one who finds herself annoying, and child B who ends up shouting, are triggered by getting into the car.

Their brains take the cue and get into the familiar old dendrite groove, and then my road train joins in. All these unpleasant feeling thoughts and reactions trigger chemical and hormonal substances to be released into our bodies (think fight or flight adrenalin response) apparently we become addicted to our own personal chemical cocktails and this can contribute to the seemingly difficult nature of changing our thought patterns and habits.

On the way home my partner pointed out to child B (the shouting one) that we could skip her inevitable outburst and move straight to the resolution part avoiding the unpleasant feeling chemical dump into her blood stream. Astonishingly child  B agreed, and with the help of a chocolate covered ginger-bread we set off with no further ructions. Child A (the annoyer) still attempted to goad Child B into a reaction but to no avail. I am not sure weather or not this interaction would have been so easy to change if the participants had been adults, or if we had not had chocolate covered gingerbread. I guess we will never know?

What has changed for me is that with the help and collusion of my partner, children and friends, is that now, seven weeks into my thought choosing adventure I have actually started to be able to see my own patterns and thought habits and change the way that I respond to my own cues for bad feeling thoughts. I AM WINNING! I am growing new pathways, my grooves for happy feeling thoughts are getting deeper! Give me another seven weeks and I'll practically be surfing down them. you might even want to share a long car journey with me and my family. 

Today I am thankful for my family

I am thankful for chocolate covered gingerbread

I am thankful for my beautiful children

I am thankful for metaphors

I am thankful for bluebell woods

I am thankful for laughter

I am thankful for photographs to help me remember my loved ones the way they were today

I am thankful for my magnificent brain

I am thankful for my little car

I am thankful for fantastic feasts with fabulous family

love Klara

Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

Hello
I'm sitting in bed, I've been here all day! and today I am being Kind to myself. I'm not just being ordinarily kind, I'm being Uber kind! The kind of Kindness needed when one is sleep deprived from caring all night for ill people for several days in a row. The kind of kindness needed when one has already enjoyed writing a whole blog post and somehow its got lost in cyberspace and has to be written again!

Sleep deprivation is a funny thing, no not funny ha ha, but funny peculiar. I have of course decided to view it as a challenge, and so far I have had varying success. I'm in a strange state and no it's not Kansas, Kansas? Why Kansas? In the night after a short sleep I hallucinated the yellow brick road, I'd like to say that Dorothy was there and the Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tin Man and Toto, although I doubt they would have all fitted in my bedroom. I'm feeling surprisingly good, despite my night time activities, but it is mostly due to my partners continual reminders to listen to my own advice and keep choosing better feeling thoughts.


Last year I did a twelve week course from a fantastic, life changing book called "The Artists Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self" by Julia Cameron, aside from teaching me how to get out of my own way and actually allow myself to be creative it also taught me about being kind to myself, Julia Cameron suggests the use of a mantra: "treating myself like a precious object will make me strong" I had never really viewed myself as a precious object up to that point, precious objects to me were things that cluttered up my house, things to which I had formed sentimental attachment. Friends and family have often commented on my extraordinary ability to hold on to possessions a bit like a barnacle on a rock in a stormy sea.

"Oh no!" I hear you cry, "this woman is a hoarder!" and perhaps I might have been had I not had the good fortune to have moved over sixty times since my late teens! So thankfully my hoarding has been minimal. I once visited the home of a close family friend who really was hoarder, his house was stuffed to the gunwales mostly with books and we had to squeeze through little avenues between the piles. I grew up in a house with literally thousands of books, (if you excuse the pun) so my friends home didn't seem that unusual to me, and anyway I was more interested in the pet shark!

I may not be a hoarder, but I had formed an attachment to all manner of stuff, and really I knew in my heart that it was not the stuff itself, but the memory it evoked which was the real treasure. I even kept things which had unhappy associations with them simply because I didn't know what else to do with them. What was I up to?

I finished the artists way around this time last year and with the help of my partner I seriously edited my belongings, or rather he did, I just sat and sobbed on my sofa. I was crying with gladness that the tyrannical reign of tat was finally over.

The real treasure is inside me, some of that being my happy memories of people and places which had been before, I am a precious object and one of my jobs is to treat myself as such.
The Artists Way introduced me to a range of ways of cherishing myself, the practices that I have kept include:

Abandoning perfectionism; perfectionism is a form of critical self torture, it prevented me from even trying new creative ventures; I longed to be the best before I had even started, and any adventure into a new creative realm would alert my inner critic, who would enthusiastically point out to me in no uncertain terms that I would never be good enough/ had no talent/ should stick to what I know/ should be more realistic/ stop wasting my time. Does this sound familiar to you? I hope not. Anyway I learnt to give myself a break, I can now aim to paint like Michaelangelo when he first held a pen, not when he had just painted the Sistine chapel - this means anything I paint or draw is a pleasant surprise.

Treating myself to nice things like flowers - I now buy myself flowers whenever I think about it. I have always loved them and I don't even know why I thought I should wait for someone else to bring them???

Artists dates - I take myself out, all alone. I visit places and go for walks all alone and revel in my own company, I laugh at my own jokes - after all they are by far the funniest, and I please my self.

I nurture my self with good food, long soaks in the bath, and inspirational company.

But most of all its in the way I talk to myself, I am my own best friend and I certainly wouldn't criticise, berate, mock, chastise or ridicule my best friend (she'd probably cry and then tell me to clear off) or for that matter anyone else, so why would I do it to myself?
I love me, I deserve kindness and gentleness, and I deserve to give myself a break (and several cups of tea) even when I haven't been up all night following the yellow brick road. I'm planning to go to sleep now, I have a vision of a sweet dream in my cosy bed, there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home. 

Today...
 I am grateful for my sense of humour,
 I am grateful for bright bouquets of wild flowers,
 I am grateful for the richness of other peoples knowledge,
 I am grateful for the joy that sharing brings,
 I am grateful for all the precious objects in my mind and in my house,
 I am grateful for my cozy bed,
 I am grateful for my loving partner who has helped to keep my tired mind choosing good feeling thoughts,
 I am grateful for ruby slippers,
 I am grateful for Toto,
 I am grateful for the kindness of strangers and friends.

love Klara