Hot Time, Summer in the City

Summer is here in full swing.

We've gone through our round of graduation parties, including but not limited to my son's 5th grade graduation. No one warned me 5th grade grads were such a big deal. I'm guessing that means I should start saving for tuxes and limos now, because in 7 years time, I can only fathom how huge a deal it's going to be. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at all the pomp and circumstance attached to his ceremony last week. I'm surprised they didn't choose a class valedictorian.

Anyways, with that grad party and the obligatory PTA after-grad finished, it was on to my own Advancement of Excellence grad a couple of days later. Some of you may recall that I have been attending a seminar series these past several weeks/months and last Saturday was about celebrating our successes (whilst minimizing or eradicating our failures) and/or accomplished goals and tasks we set out to achieve all those many weeks ago.

Mine was about vitality, given that I've been feeling very sluggish (there's that word again) about my/our lot in life south of the border. Anyways, I decided to practice a little law of attraction stuff by changing the radio station from the country twang station (I can't get a job, I need to start getting pedicures with flowers to fit in, it's expensive here, and there ain't nothing on the home market available) to a more upbeat tune (God Bless America). OK, so maybe it wasn't so upbeat (I was actually singing God Bless My Underwear), but that's elementary, dear Watson. You sing America, I sing my underwear - potate toe, potat toe. My tune had changed and that was the important shift. And then I started saying a little affirmation statement to myself in the mirror. Check it out - I'm slim and trim and love the gym, je m'adore from core to limb.

I heart affirmation statements. It's like looking in the mirror and telling yourself that which is so not true but when delivering in such a way that you feel good believing the audacious lie, it brings a smile to one's face. So anyways, I started doing that because well, because I've never said nice things to myself before. I've never been narcissistic that way ~ admiring myself and murmuring, whoo, you are SOME hot...you should go out! So anyways, that's been fun. And I've been getting little notes from "The Universe" in my daily e-mail. On average, I get about 10 to 15 e-mails show up overnight but without fail, when I see that lone note from "The Universe" each morning, I feel compelled to click it open first. I mean, it's from the Universe. Universe trumps Target e-flyers and all the other junk that comes in. Just a tad. So that's been uber fun too...

Anything to keep my vibe away from radio goo goo, Radio ga ga, and tuned in, instead, to a more positive vibe like say Electric Avenue. I could have chosen REO Speedwagon but Beast Mom beat me to it.

Anyhoo, so back to my grad party. We all gathered in our small support groups and were ushered to the front of the room, group by group, to present our schtuff. Our group was introduced with Born to Be Wild blaring, because we were the RiCH Renegades (a team of individuals investing in Relationships, Career & Health), and our team action was a motorcycle rev. So here's a pic of us acting out a little silly dance choreography I orchestrated and somehow managed to talk everyone into following my lead to. Picture doing the hokey pokey in front of a crowd of perplexed and confused onlookers.

That's me - the shy, introvert, front and centre stage there.
















Thank God for red wine on an empty stomach, that's all I can say.

I bragged to everyone in the room about the amazing things I attracted - an amazing group of fellow Renegades for one. A 30-year all-time high exchange rate (or low, depending on which way you're transferring your dollars), a house I shall easily call home, and the biggie of all biggies, the final frontier of our green cards. So it would seem that my course focus - which was vitality - is now coming to me in droves because I live now on pure adrenaline, barely getting through the list of daunting tasks in front of me each day.

Blah blah, goo goo ga ga, it was a fun night in what has otherwise been a rather un-fun time.

I know, I know. I'm supposed to be excited (and I will soon, I promise) about house purchase, green cards, and this business of finally setting in - I've been blogging and lamenting about straddling the border for so long, a balancing act that has been relatively easy up til now, but wait until B&C Inc. put up the Great Barbed Wire Wall of America between the Canadian & US borders. Then you want to hear Electric Avenue. That's a brand of vitality I never wish to experience. Like the dudes coming across from Tijuana who were hiding out under the engine hood. Now that's a Darwin Award waiting to happen.

But back to vitality. My friend, Rahul, the lean, mean, trading machine featured in the above images, stage right, presented me with the coolest gift as part of a little gift exchange we did. He's a self-professed Holy Schmidt blog lurker but I don't mind because he has the good grace to admit he lurks. And so he combined elements of what I consider my blueprint for success - things like vitality, passion, pride & joy, and he attached them to images that speak to those (my) success elements, including one of my fave pics of my kids walking down a mountain 4 or 5 years back, and he made a t-shirt out of it. How. Cool. Is. That?! Rahul, you rock. Thank you again!
So anyways, that's about it. Busy finalizing the house deal still. The bank is now in a flurry because they can't decipher my Canadian social insurance number (SIN) from my fake SSN (I now have the IRS on my ass, don't I?) ~ which is a a temporary number called an ITIN which doesn't have credit info linked~ and thus, they may not be able to attach my name to the loan. I gave her a quick lesson in SIN vs. SSN but it was all Greek to her and frustrating as hell for me.

I will be glad to finally get a SSN this fall because the hoopla of trying to be taken seriously in this country without one is staggering. Fighting to have a bank account and in fact, I still can't have a picture on my debit card because I don't have a SSN. Thank God for Safeway and Blockbuster and Starbucks cards, otherwise I wouldn't have any credible ID in this nation. :)

Changing the subject ~ (I know, that's so not like me) ~ we're going to the Mariners vs. Blue Jays game tonight with some friends who are coming down from Canada to catch the game.

I'm hoping to be able to stand up and sing the Canadian national anthem. If you've been reading my blogs for the past couple years (if so, God bless you, you're tenacious and perhaps slightly twisted and clearly have the patience of Job to endure my run-on sentences and nonsensical ramblings - there will be a spot reserved for you in Holy Heaven) - you know that one of the first things that struck me as odd when I moved here is that no one sings the national anthem at games here. (Hey, I'm from hockey territory, remember?) They stand with hands upon hearts and look up to the sky (wth? - looking for God, perhaps?). Whereas we Canadians take great karaokean pride in bumbling like drunken idiots at sporting events through our changed-lyrics anthem. So if you're watched the game on TV tonight, look for us way up in the nosebleeds, alternating between waving our Mariners fingers and root, root, rooting for the home team, and half-ass cheering on our primordial national home team. I'm not a Blue Jays fan - I'm from the west - 'nuff said, but this is Canada Day weekend, after all, so it will be any excuse to show my national pride.

On that note, I'm off to get ready for a Canadiana weekend with all things red & white - drinking red and white wine, bbq'ing both red & white meat, eating red & white potato salad, and enjoying desserts of raspberries & cream and even saskatoon pie (had to get some blue in there somewhere). We will honour Canada's 140th b-day on Sunday but we'll be celebrating a day early with our friends in town and our son off to boy scout camp on the Sunday.

So if you hear national news reports of people shooting off fireworks nauseatingly early (ie. Saturday), don't be alarmed - it's just us crazy Canucks, making up for the fact that fireworks are illegal where we come from.

And heh, don't go blaming me for my oppressed pyromaniac tendencies - blame Canada.

ParticipAction & the Law of Attraction

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

That thought came to me as I woke up and wiped the sleep gunk out of my eyes. It's not an original thought, but it is for me insofar as I tend to awake, most mornings, with a sense of fight or flight panic, dread, resistance, and/or all of the above.

But this morning I woke up, walked over to the mirror stretched my arms and said to myself, you are a chrysalis in the transformative process of becoming a beautiful butterfly.

Sounds hokey, but if you knew what I normally mumble to myself in the mirror when I awake, you, too, would opt for the hokey.

This first day on a journey paradigm has newfound meaning for me quite simply because while on a course I'm auditing this weekend, it came to me, as we were identifying our driving needs (things you absolutely have to have in life apart from basic needs) and how those needs manifest themselves negatively/destructively, that my driving need for newness and adventure has been behind my compulsion to move every couple of years. It was a bit of an epiphany to realize that instead of uprooting us every couple of years, I can actual manifest this same restless energy and drive for adventure in smaller, more productive ways. Like a holiday or a new, adventurous hobby, for example. :)

Even though I'd been there, done that with this course before, I think it took me being in my 40s and knowing myself a wee bit better than I did at age 29, to dig deeper into what really makes me tick. Fast forward ten+ years for my next insight.

ParticipAction
The program I'm auditing is called Advancement of Excellence (see "course" link above for details). It's an 8-10-week program designed to advance graduates of the previous two programs (Pursuit of Excellence and The Wall) to the praxis level, where theory meets practice. I use the term "graduate" because that's their lingo. I still think of "they" as being Context Associated, a San Francisco based organization now focused exclusively on leadership training, although Context has since closed their branch offices throughout Western US and Canada and have opted to franchise the intellectual property and rights instead.

Quite literally, this course work transformed my life back in the early to mid-90s. I know so because I can even remember the hotel locale and room of when I attended my first introductory seminar. This from the gal who has a hard time remembering what she did the day, week and month previous.

So anyways, long story short, I took the first two, and then Hubby was so intrigued with my positive changes (ie. less nagging), that he followed suit. And then we took the Advancement together.

But much has changed since those days. An overseas move, starting my own business, having two kids, moving cities, finding my birth family, and last but not least, realizing my long-term vision goal (first formulated at The Wall session on Orcas Island in December of 1993) of us living on the west coast with our two kids (who weren't even in the making at that stage).

And lo and behold, our west coast dream came true. The only thing missing is the timber frame home and water view but alas, we are still house hunting.

Anyhoo here I am, back in The Advancement 13 years later to the month, working on my schtuff. And it is mostly the same schtuff, although I have worked my way up the self-actualization ladder a tad since then and am not as preoccupied about career concerns as I was back then. But it' s refreshing to know that I have realized many of the dreams and goals I listed 13 years ago (go to university, have kids, travel overseas, etc).

One of the coolest things about the program is that anyone who goes through the programs (course fees range from about $700 and go up incrementally a couple hundred from there), may audit the programs free of charge for the rest of their lives. So the investment we made way back in the day has repaid itself a few times over.

We've had the privilege of "auditing" Pursuit programs as well as assisting as logistical support team members for Pursuit and The Wall. And now the audit privilege pays off hugely because the value of Advancement is truly priceless. There's a tremendous amount of what they call "space scrubbing" that goes on in the two months of AOE so that participants can rocket through their various life "to-do" and task lists - both big and small - and work at completing "incomplete" and things that have been weighing on them.

For me, those things include getting my Canadian taxes done (capital Y yuck for dread but capital V in vitality for relief), finally writing my Washington State driver's test, purging closets and organizing a garage sale, to name but a few.

Each participant goes in with an area of focus. I've chosen Vitality, which is a necessary benchmark for me in knowing if my life is working or not. If I don't have a feeling of vitality, then basically, life sucks for me.

So I'll be working on kick-starting my vitality again by focusing on my physical health and getting at all those incomplete tasks in my life, which have been weighing most heavily on my psyche.

Growing up in Canada in the 70s, I and others of my generation learned all we needed to know about physical achievement and physical health from the good folks at Health Canada because of our mandatory participation in a school program called Participaction. I don't remember the entire drill, but essentially, every kid - short/tall, big/small - had to go through a mini-circuit training drill which included chin-ups, sprints, push-ups, sit-ups, etc. and depending on how fast one went or many one did, each kid would be awarded a bronze, silver or gold embroidery medal. I remember that I only ever earned bronzes - never a Silver or Gold - I hated chin-ups more than anything on earth in those days.

Looking back, it was pretty cool stuff - I'm glad to see it's been resurrected and I sort of wish they did it here. Kids here only have to attend gym once a week for 40 minutes. Whenever I peek in on gym class, I only ever see them skooting around on weird little but skooters or some other lame non-active activity. How pathetic is that? It's why I'm starting a jump rope and hoops club at our local school. After-school sports aside, kids today do not get as much exercise, especially proportionate to today's high-fat dietary realities.

And surprise, surprise - neither am I getting enough exercise. My chin-up dread has stayed with me. I still hate working out. It's bound up in a deep-seated belief I have that I am strong. So whenever I do anything that jeopardizes that belief, I stop doing it (weight-lifting, jogging, squats, lunges, etc.). I just give up.

Not this time though. It's the last area of my spiritual triad (Mind, Body, Spirit), I have yet to work on and gosh dang it, I'm determined to make this work.

Our course leader reminded us this weekend that it is the little steps taken over a long period of time that produce results. For those of us impatient types who except big results now, that's a profound paradigm shift.

So baby steps and slow and steady it is then. I am a tenacious ninja turtle.

And this time, I'm going for gold.

Law of Attraction

Needless to say, I'm excited, once again, about this program. It's cool to be auditing it post-Secret hooplah. Naturally, all personal development training seminars have capitalized on the law of attraction buzz and absolutely all of them - from Anthony Robbins to Joe Schmoe, will assert that they were teaching this stuff long before Rhonda Byrne clued in down under.

Case in point, one of the first notions we were introduced to in Pursuit was this concept of attraction - ie. I attract to me that which occurs. This statement is not about right or wrong, good or bad - it is simply a workable position from which empowerment and reactive choice can foster.

So I can choose to get caught up in fault and blame in a series of bad-luck car accidents, and go into oh-woe is me, victim mode, which is what I've noticed a certain awol blogger doing, or I can look at it and go, OK, so I attracted this into my life, what am I going to do accept this and move on, or deny and stay stuck? It's trickier still when issues like abuse, serious illness, and death , factor in, but tremendous empowerment can come from using the law of attraction to work through these obviously-unwanted incidents.

We discussed the Law of Attraction quite a bit this weekend and were even provided a great little book (way better than The Secret people, check it out!), called none other than The Law of Attraction. It's written by Michael J. Losier, a Context graduate in Victoria, BC, and he takes all the best elements first revealed mainstream by the likes of Ernest Holmes, Jerry & Esther Hicks, et al, and repackages them into an engaging yet simple and practical format.

Losier defines the law of attraction as, "I attract to myself whatever I give my attention, energy and focus to, whether wanted or unwanted." Case in point, I have been busily cyber-shopping for a home and I have been singularly focused on building a list of things I don't want in a house - I don't want a split entry (we call them bi-levels back home), I don't want an ugly kitchen, I don't want a house that needs a ton of renovation, etc. You get the point. And guess what seems to have flooded the market in our area and price-range? Yup, heaps of tired, fixer-uppers. Methinks it's time to change my mental language.

Anyways, through some agreement Losier has cooked up with Excellence Seminars, all of us participants got a free copy of his books. It was almost like being on the Oprah show ~ (well OK, minus the Armani handbag and free car).

All that said, I have a good vibe about this chemical marriage between attraction and participAction. Thinking good thoughts is one thing - putting my time, money, energy where my abundant and harmonic wealth thoughts are is quite another.

Stay tuned for updates!