I've got life!

Legendary singer and songwriter Nina Simone inspired me today!

Living in the heart of Athens, Greece, during this time of political chaos and social upheaval has proved to be both despairing and inspiring.

Needless to say, despair comes with realizing that millions of lives, hopes and dreams have been completely undermined and disdained, traded in for the force of greed, for the hunger of the few who need more and more to live in their version of peace! Despair is at the heart of moments like the ones of this past week, when hundreds of Greek citizens were hospitalized due to the brutal use of violence by the police force! Despair advances with seeing more and more educated and resourceful young men and women being laid off, not producing as their energy and fruitfulness allows them to, rather fleeing the country for a better tomorrow or giving up their dreams for a piece of bread!

Yet, at times like these, one cannot help but feel inspired! There is inspiration in the nation's biggest plateia (square), where hundreds of thousands have peacefully protested for over 25 days and nights, sharing their hope that tomorrow will be a better day and their dreams will not be derided. There is inspiration in knowing deep within, that from chaos, all great things are created! Inspiration also comes in returning to ourselves, looking within and painfully and bravely understanding that there is a reason why each and every one of us is involved in this massive muddle. Yet, the most pronounced inspiration is the remembrance that one doesn't need much to be happy or complete; because we have been given the greatest gift of all: our life!


Nina Simone inspired me today by reminding me to keep it simple and to be grateful for the generous present that is my life!

How much inspiration are you inviting into your own precious life?

If I were a rich man...

Today I was reminded of the unforgettably spectacular "Fiddler on the Roof" play, that tells the story of a Jewish family man who is going through his life dealing with changes. His daughters are growing and it's time to find them a husband, newcomers to the village are not welcome and amidst it all, Tevye, the main character, is dirt poor.

At one point, Tevye has a little conversation with God and here's how it goes:

This delightful video depicts Reb Tevye sharing his wish to be a wealthy man. We all have wishes. Some are as big as becoming wealthy while others are not as big, like wanting a new pair of sunglasses or a computer.

So how can we make our wishes come true? Reb Tevye chose to have a talk with the Big Man up there. If he will be heard or not is a different story, but I will share some tips on how to turn your wishes into reality.

The first step to attaining your wish is to stop seeing it as merely a wish and make it into your goal. What is the difference, one might ask, between a wish and a goal? Well, the difference is in the structure. A wish is like a dream, something that is nice to imagine but not much energy is put into actually attaining it. Do you still wish upon a star? Well, if you do, I'm going to have to be the one who will awaken you to the bitter fact that the star will do nothing to help your wish come true! Sorry if I burst your bubble! Life is cruel, I know!

Start acting by writing your goal down. Writing our goals down is the first step to making them achievable. It also gives us the opportunity to go back to them when we start drifting away! State your goal in the positive, as the brain does not make a distinction between positive and negative. For example, if you want to stop smoking, your written statement will not be "I will stop smoking". The brain will focus on "smoking" and that will make it all the more difficult to quit. A good way to write it down would be "I am smoke free" or "I am healthy". Notice too, I have written "I am..." instead of "I want to...". Expressing your goal in the present engages your brain in believing it is in that state.

Make your goal as specific as possible. Include details of how you want the goal to look like, smell, feel, etc. What exact outcome are you looking for or what is it exactly that you want to accomplish?

Also, make sure your goal is measurable. How will you know when you have achieved that goal if you are not able to quantify it, or to determine some sort of evidence that shows you have reached it?

Furthermore, take time to think if your goal is attainable. Is attaining that goal within your possibilities and does it only depend on you? I like to tell the story of how I once wanted to have "Madonna arms". I was living in the land of frustration, because obviously having "Madonna arms" was not within my possibilities as I did not have the time to work out so much nor did I have the right person next to me to guide me through it (a personal trainer for example). That kept me frozen, as I felt frustrated from the very beginning.

VIA Daily Mail

Make sure your goal is time bound. In other words, set a specific date for reaching that goal! That gives you a clear idea of when to start and a way to check your progress. Also, without a deadline, you think about the goal as something you will accomplish, someday, eventually, and that is not challenging enough for our task seeking brains.

Finally, HAVE FUN WITH IT! A goal doesn't have to be something heavy looming on the back of your head! Find ways to play with it. Just like Reb Tevye, sing about it out loud! Make up a tune and sing it in the car or in the shower! Make a drawing of yourself having achieved that goal! What will you look like? What will your environment look like? Add in lots of colors, make it radiant!

I am certain that Reb Tevye would achieve his goal of becoming a rich man if he had some extra tips on goal setting. He was definitely on the right track! He could already envision himself and what he would do if he were a rich man!

What about you? What will you do or look like after you have achieved your next goal?

Afraid of the dark? Think again!

"It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us"
Marianne Williamson, "A Return to Love"

As a psychotherapist and life coach, I have encountered and worked with many individuals who very much fear what we often call "our inner darkness". Those characteristics, traits, behaviors that are often accompanied by terror when they choose to surface! We all have them, let's not kid ourselves! Those parts of ourselves that we don't know how to deal with or relate to. Understandably, this inability to handle these facets of our personality might lead us to dreading them.

What Marianne Williamson so insightfully shares with and invites us to understand is that above that fear of our inner darkness towers our fear of the light within!

VIA redbubble

This fear of our inner light is something we rarely pay attention to or even identify. Ironically, it is the sole roadblock stopping us from becoming the best version of ourselves! What is it that you REALLY want? What person do you most want to be? If you can close your eyes and envision your ideal self, how would it be? How would you be living?

Now close your eyes again and think of it actually happening! Think of yourself as being your ideal self, living the way you most want to live. What sensations do you feel in your body when you try this? Is your heart beating faster or did you get a lump in your stomach?

You will find that it is very scary to think of having all that you want, being all that you want or helping others as much as you want! Thoughts like: "I don't deserve it", "how can I have it while others can't" or "others will realize I am not that good" often cross our minds. Hence, our enormous fear of the light within!

Know that all that's stopping you from being the best you that you can ever be is merely your own fear. The good news is that if you consciously understand this and try to come in contact with this fear, one baby step at a time, you will see that getting in touch with the light within - that constant source of creativity, positivity and courage we all possess - is not only feasible but also fun! The fun lies in discovering yourself and pushing yourself and then discovering a bit more about yourself only to push yourself a bit further and discover another facet of yourself that will soon push you to want to discover a little more!

Discover and push forward! You will soon find you have impressively left that fear behind! You too can come in touch with that inner light and bring it out so it can lead the way to whatever it is you most want to shine it on.

Tip of the day!

OK, so being on top of it all is not always easy!
I haven't been able to write much this past month, so I decided to post a quote that I found inspiring and worth sharing!

"Not a single person is born in the world who has not a certain capacity which will make him proud, who is not pregnant with something to produce, to give birth to something new and beautiful, to make the existence richer. There is not a single person who has come into the world empty." Osho

Can you take a few minutes to think about one or two things that make you feel proud of yourself? What makes you think you have to wait for others to acknowledge your capacities?  Can you pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for them?  (I mean literally pat yourself on the back! Or kiss your shoulder, or blow yourself a kiss in front of the mirror! Who cares what you do, no one is watching!!)

You come to this world alone and you leave it alone still! Why not live in it feeding yourself with your own acknowledgment and admiration - you alone have the capacity to applaud yourself the most! Are you consciously and consistently doing that?

Today, remember to honor your inner child!

I found this in the net and was compelled to share it, 
In honor of the child that is in all of us BIG boys and girls:




5 Lessons We Can Learn From Children

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1) Children possess brilliance in their simplicity. They may not know much about the world, but in some ways this is their biggest strength. Growing up greatly expands our views of the world, but there are some basic and healthy values that we can forget with age. Here are a few of them…

2) We are born fear only two things: falling and loud noises. All other fears are instilled in us by the people we grow up around. Some of these fears are legitimate and necessary for living in a modernized world, like being hit by a car. Others are completely unnecessary and serve only to hinder us from being everything we can be. Consider for a moment which of your fears actually protect you from harm and which are illogical.

3) Until a child is told to “never talk to strangers!” they have no qualms about talking to random people. The “don’t talk to strangers” lesson seems to stick way past childhood which is a travesty! Strangers are wonderful and interesting people. Plus what is a friend before he/she is a friend but a stranger? I’ve written before about the oxymoron of social interaction but I even need a reminder sometimes. In short, why do we insist on making elevator rides supremely awkward? Who knows who you might meet or what you might learn by striking a small conversation with a stranger. Remember, we’re all human :)

4) When you’re a kid, any activity can be fun for hours and hours. Legos, playing ‘house,’ hide-and-go-seek and of course action figures were all sources of endless enjoyment. So what happened? As adults we can barely watch the same TV show for 30 minutes without looking for something better. During the last few days I’ve been attempting to re-live the wonder of childhood by viewing the world from a different perspective. I’ve found that if you really put forth the effort to find the beauty in small things (nature, architecture, art, the wonder of technology) it can be done! Take a second and look at something, really look at it! A basic example would the bark of a tree. If you can see the intricacy and beauty of the spirals of wood, you can apply that same perspective to bigger and even more fantastic things.

5) Children have no biases when it comes to love. If you smile at a child, he/she will beam a huge smile back at you for no reason other than your presence. Children do not love with expectation of something better in return, they just love. This is difficult to employ as adults but has some amazing benefits as I learned in my experiment with love. You can even love people that you would normally despise and it feels orgasmic in comparison. What’s more fun to do, smiling or frowning, punching or hugging? I think you get the idea.

It’s okay to be childish! Reaching a certain age does not mean we need to act that age all the time. Maturity is sometimes extremely overrated. Life shouldn’t be taken that seriously because do keep in mind, this is all transient and will all go up in smoke at some point. You might as well act like a kid sometimes and have fun living in the moment.

VIA High Existence


What is one thing you can do today to honor the child in you? 
Will you go ahead and do it?

Remember - It's not about you!

DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY, 
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY, 
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY!

This has been my mantra these days!

I am working on a new project and have tried contacting various companies for a possible collaboration.  Of course, this being Greece in 2011, immersed in one of the worst economic periods since the world and civil wars, most things work-related are either stagnant or evaluated with extreme caution.  I have recently had the fortunate experience of speaking to one (not so) probable collaborator who went to the extreme of viewing my intentions so suspiciously he actually treated me in an inappropriate manner. I say it was a fortunate experience because it reminded me of this valuable lesson I am humbly passing on to you today.

VIA Kitsap Sun

Being treated like a derelict was very upsetting and I felt my blood getting hot, hot, hotter as my reflexive desire was to tell that person to take a hike all the way where the sun don't shine! I didn't of course, but was not half as unperturbed as I wish I had been.


Of course, as with all lessons worth learning, I felt the hard blow to my stomach. I felt beaten both when I was being mistreated and later on, when I reflected on my own reactions and the guilt of not rising above it crept all over my body, like an unwanted vine, growing too fast to be properly trimmed. Guilt! Hmmmffff!!! More on this one on a later post!

DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY!

I once attended a very enriching 8 day group psychotherapy retreat called The Hoffman Quadrinity Process. I highly recommend it to anyone who could do with a different view to life, a new way of seeing him/herself and the world and is serious about welcoming some profound transformations! There was one particularly enlightening exercise which I always recall as it was invaluable in my understanding of why we should NEVER take things personally.

My intention is not to disclose what goes on in this remarkably life changing residential course of self discovery and personal evolution, so all I can say is that I understood how someone I disliked at first sight, only became a target of my disapproval due to my own history. See, the thing is, after closer (and very honest) inspection, I realized the person I "disliked" simply made me feel uncomfortable because she stared with intensely inquisitive blue eyes. Much like my mother stared at me when I was growing up and at times sensed I had done something wrong. Even though my own mother was not blessed with a pair like those swimming pool blue eyes I so disliked, just that similar prying look unconsciously took me back to days when I was small and defenseless and mom was tall and all knowing and her eyes never let me forget that!

Now, are you ready to see how much crazier it gets?

First, this information was tucked so deep within me, it took much work in a subconscious level to understand that one thing led to the other.  Relating the fact that the person I disliked had something in common with my mother was tremendously revealing in itself.

Then, even when I did understand why I disliked that person, which was not because of who she was, what she represented or believed in, but about MY own inner mismatch, it still took me a long many years to realize that maybe my mother's eyes weren't prying at all. Maybe, just maybe, her look was simply intense, or it could be she was so far lost in her own thoughts that she stared at me in what seemed to me an intense way. Or, yet maybe, I was so scared of being caught red handed by that tall and corpulent mother of mine, that my short, little body and brain interpreted her look to be prying.

Literally, whatever another person thinks of you is his own business.

Can you see why from my example?

I'll take it a step further: Think of someone you have a problem with (dislike, can't communicate, feel nervous around, want to punch the living daylights out of).
Now think of a way in which this person might remind you of something or someone in your past. Could be through physical similarities, maybe a smell or tone of voice. Could be something as irrational as the shape of his head or the way she holds her pen! The link could be anywhere!  Just beam your awareness, invite your inner voice to guide you and you will soon find why this person annoys the heck out of you!

When (not if) you are fortunate enough to find the connection, I guarantee your negative thoughts and emotions towards this person will, if nothing else, seem lighter and milder. It will take you one step closer to realizing that you, and only you, have the power to make or break your day!

Are you still going to take it personally?!

Make New Friends But keep the Old Ones

via treehugger

When I was a young girl I was a brownie (girl scout)! I can't even remember how far back that was (as I have lately started thinking of it, if it's been more than ten years back, it's been TEN years back!!!) What was being a brownie all about? I recall we got badges when we did "good deeds" and we were always encouraged to do good deeds! I am not sure what happened when we did "bad" deeds. I guess that if I had continued being a brownie during my teenage years, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble, but of course, everything happens for a reason! I was not a brownie and I got in a lot of trouble, but let's leave this part for another time!

The one thing that NEVER, EVER leaves my mind about brownies, for some reason, is the song we used to sing. It goes something like this:

"Make new friends, but keep the oooold, one is silver and the other is gold!"

Today I remembered this song after seeing an old friend! Not that my friend is old (again, if it's been more than ten years, it's been ten years!!!!) but we used to hang out when we were young and very innocent. We used to have a special fondness then and I realized, seeing her after so many years, that the special fondness is still there! Our body language was that of connection and acceptance. We held hands as we spoke and were eager to know about each other's endeavors in the five minutes we spoke next to the bar door (I was leaving the bar).

Seeing old friends always makes me nostalgic as I think of days gone by, of how careless and carefree we once were and how life has changed and become more complex. I have recently lost an "old" friend as she didn't approve of the way I chose to live my life and decided to cut me off. That cost me a great deal and I kept wanting to sing to her: "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold". My "old" friend had made new friends and wasn't really interested if I (was I the silver or gold?) left her life or not. That hurt! It took some time to lick my wounds, like a growing dog that has been left helpless on the side of the road because its owners can't handle the idea of it not being a puppy anymore.

The hard truth is that probably everyone has "ended a friendship" at one point or another. I know I have! I was 15 when I moved to a new school and the one girl eager to speak to me was the only one who was...let's say...a little emotionally impaired! She came from a religiously fanatic family and ended up under medical care after we graduated. She is one friend I did not keep, although looking back, if I could change the way I avoided her after I made "new" friends, I would!

Everything new comes with excitement! New friends are always exciting as they present endless possibilities. We imagine the new activities we can establish with them and so many other new friends we can make, their old friends becoming our new friends! New buddies show us the world in an original way, bring new ideas into our heads and don't come with the heavy load that might accompany an old buddy. Oh, but how wonderful it is to have an old friend! That homey feeling you sometimes get when encountering that long time chum, that almost automatically takes you back to when you were 16, wore braces and had zits all over your face, but that one loved you still the same!


The universe, in its ever knowing synchronicity, never ceases to amaze and play with me. As I was writing these lines I got a Skype call from an old, gold mate. We talked about our lives (we live in different countries and haven't seen each other in years) and how things that once were are not anymore. His call gave me a magical reassurance that yes, it is important to make an effort to keep old friends who bring with them the memory of who we once were. They are the opportunity to keep us anchored, to remind ourselves of where we came from, regardless of where we have chosen to be at the present moment.

via The Daily P.O.P

Different friends can add different spices into our lives, and seeing this is the secret to appreciating those around us. One friend can be the listener, the one to call in times of trouble. The other can be there to cheer us up with his sense of humor. Still another might be the inspiring one, always ready to share her amusing experiences. That is why it is so important to keep room for both old and new, because one never knows what present the other will bring along and which friend will really be there to help in a time of need. 

How important are friends in your life? In this busy, crazy world, where we are pressed for time and when enjoying our time off, are dutifully engaged in the virtual insanity of social networks, blogging, chat rooms and online dating, how interested are you in making new friends? How often do you keep up with old friends, calling them up just to say hello and to let them know you are thinking of them? If you were a girl or boy scout, would you get a badge for being available to your friends, old or new?

The old, gold friend who "Skyped" me lived in France for a long time and in his honor, I conclude that having friends is a magical gift and regardless of the "status" of old or new, as Louis Armstrong once sang, 

Image via Top100musicdownloads.com

"I'll say to you, as the French people do...C'est Si Bon"!
It's so good to have friends and I wish to honor and thank each and every one of mine! You are certainly the silver and gold of my life!