Yes With Joy

Cartoon Thinking

I’m officially weird.  During a massage, I would have a thought or a visual image come to mind. I said them out loud and the points released more easily. (Even the therapist said this was helping.)  That by itself isn’t weird.  In fact, if muscles hold memories then when the muscles are stimulated as with touch, the memories can be released, which is another way of saying the memories are given recognition and permission to move.

The weird part was how much I think in cartoon form. Some of today’s cartoons were very creative.  While the massage therapist was working on my left shoulder in the front, I thought of a bakery with cakes lining the walls.  Then “4 a.m.” popped into my mind. I sat with it for a while and didn’t try to analyze it.  It just was.  Then an image of a white mountain of ice cream appeared.  I was skiing by myself down the mountain around moguls of nuts and chocolate chunks.  At the bottom of the mountain was a lake of hot chocolate.  I could actually see the steam rising.  I got the giggles at how silly this was.  But then I asked myself, “Who is with me?”  I saw myself sitting in a wooden Adirondack chair sipping a steaming mug of hot chocolate and looking at the lake.  In the chair next to me was my mate I have yet to meet.  We were quiet and just enjoying the moment.  The shoulder released as soon as I saw who was with me in the visual.  Very cool.

The arch of my left foot produced an even weirder image.  The thought that came to me was a money purse, like a big coin purse with a twisty clasp on the top.  It didn’t feel free moving, so I looked underneath.  A thick-silver chain was attached to the bottom of the purse and was pulled taught, attached to something below.  I went looking for whatever was holding the other end.  A jolly little man was sitting Indian style holding the chain and laughing.  It was almost as if he was just holding on until I noticed.  I greased the chain with some of Mother Mary’s blue goo and Archangel Michaels’s violet fire of transformation. The tension in my foot eased immediately.

I love when my creative thoughts just flow and images come to mind…and I feel even better as a result of it.  It’s fun to be weird.

“Success is in the offering” sounds like a biblical term, possibly one dealing with money. But for me, it is more than just a phrase.  It is a feeling.

A while ago, a teacher explained to me that it is enough to offer words of wisdom and encouragement in my coaching.  That is success.  If the client takes and uses the information, that is up to them.

Underneath it, I understood her, and even agreed.  However, it wasn’t until an event occurred in my own life that I really got how powerful it is to give without worrying about if the person accepts it.

You see, my son (who was 12 at the time) broke two fingers during wrestling practice.  Being in a lot of pain, he didn’t sleep well for the first two nights.  This meant that I didn’t either.  We would sleep and then wake up as the pain increased.  To get him to return to dreamland, I would “run energy” into his hand.  He would relax and fall back to sleep.  “Running the energy” continued throughout the days and nights.

Eventually, he would just take my hands and place them around his broken fingers.  It was a silent connection, but still very powerful.  But I was growing weary – or at least I thought I should be.  However, in reality I was calm and peaceful.  I’d even noticed that a minor headache that had started during the night was gone by the morning.  I was feeling great. (True confession: I was tired and foggy, but I was also energized because I could feel the peace and calm…and I didn’t have a headache, not even the monthly hormonal one.)

This made sense once I realized that running energy is the same as sending love.  The more love I was giving out, the better I felt.  I was offering of myself and not worrying about if it was doing what it was supposed to do.  I was offering my son’s hand love.  He chose to accept it.  But the part that is amazing is how good it made me feel.  Yes, success is in the offering.

Resistance steals energy.  I’d always heard it, but I didn’t really believe it.  Until today.  They say that if you are doing the things you like, you will feel energized when you do them.  Those same people, whomever they may be, also say that if you do things that you don’t really want to do, then you feel drained.

For example, if you love your job, you will feel energized and it won’t feel like work.  However, if you dread your job or it just doesn’t interest you that much, you are more tired at the end of the day.

Well yesterday, I was tired but also energized.  In fact, I was even still excited and bouncing at eleven o’clock at night.  I’d spent the day doing stuff that I love, such as writing, learning and leading a discussion.  Today, I was looking forward to the meetings I had from nine to four.  Apparently, I wasn’t looking forward to them as much as I thought I was.  I was exhausted by the end of the day.

When I look back on the experience, I realize that while I chose to participate in the meetings, there was resistance.  I showed up late to the first, wasn’t super prepared for the second, and didn’t pay attention to the clock and was late to the last.  Oops.

But there was gold.  I did get to talk with people I hadn’t seen in a long time.  I was able to shift out of a headache. I was able to contribute valuable input.  And hey, I even found out that something very big that I’d matrixed came out in our favor…big time.

I guess the lesson of the week is to feel good by doing what you love.  And if you have to do other stuff too, then…try to neutralize your feelings so at least it doesn’t drag down your energy or simply find the gold.  And now that I’m writing, I feel much more energized, so another choice is to follow what you resist with something you love.  As soon as you do what you love, your energy will grow.