Scott Sonnon

Facebook does have it’s benefits. One of the things I like the most is that you can see what your friends press ‘like’ on. I noticed my friend Tanya was always liking this guy’s post and when she commented on his posts, she’d call him Coach.

Who is this Scott ‘coach’ guy? Is he a life coach? So I started clicking into his posts.
Writing wise, he does everything I would like to eventually do. He gives personal anecdotes that provide an experiential teaching. He wasn’t the cool kid, or the good looking kid. He was the over weight kid. He was the kid who wasn’t supposed to amount to anything. He was the kid who was told, by the well-meaning, that he should have realistic goals. Don’t dream too big, you’ll be disappointed.

If I were to describe who Scott is, well, it would fall short of all he encompasses on his page. And don’t we get too focused on trying to describe who people are rather than focusing on the gifts that they give? Needless to say I’ve been following him for a year or so now.

One thing I could never understand about Scott was why he always responds to the negativity. We’ve all read those comment sections in articles or on facebook pages where there are the ‘anonymous’ posters who take a crap on what’s just been said. They take a crap on the views expressed. They take a crap on the people who want to move up in their thinking instead of staying in the dirty gutter of negativity.

I’d read some of Scott’s posts responding to those types and I’d think, “Scott, why do you bother? You can’t change them!”

And then it clicked in, it’s not them he’s trying to change. He’s showing on a daily basis that he has a particular focus and no matter what the gutter dwellers say, he isn’t losing that focus. ‘So thank you for your comment, you have a right to it, and this is what I believe and have a right to believe.”

It connects so well with what I mentioned in a previous blog entry about accepting others exactly the way they are providing the opening to then accept ourselves exactly the way we are.

Scott’s posts teach me everyday to stay focused in doing what I want to do, no matter the criticisms. And There Will Be CRITICISMS! Right? Always criticisms. I wrote him a quick note to tell him that I finally got what he was doing. And Thank you because it is so important for us to learn - At Any Age!

This is my Personal One Year of a new Nine year cycle, as I mention a lot ;) And I’ve learned some profound things this year. I’ve been learning the deeper meanings of what I thought I already knew. The most recent reason why I sent Scott a message was about his response to “Being From Prague”. I will post his response as a blog entry.

I had an AHA moment about being centred. I told Scott that what I’ve really learned is that he is role-modeling how to be centred - physically, emotionally and spiritually. I’ve always understood being centred as being grounded, feet firmly planted, the physical aspect of being grounded. But I’d never brought the discipline of thinking into it. I’m seeing more and more that thinking/ thought is a discipline.

The discipline of thought is running a race and not getting distracted by the people in the stands screaming your name or your opponent’s name. It’s performing as your character in a play and not noticing your family in the audience. It’s the practice of Work as Yoga and not being attached to a specific outcome. Fully in your centre.

It reminds me of a question that Wayne Dyer asks in one of his PBS specials, “ What comes out of you when you’re squeezed?”
He says if you squeeze an orange you always get orange juice. But if someone squeezes you do they get anger, venom, what do they get?

We can choose what it is that comes out of us regardless of what is going on. We can remain in our centre even when we are squeezed. We need the discipline of our thoughts to bring us forward. Who am I kidding, all those sentences should say “I, not we!” ha-ha!

Sometimes my mind is like Houdini struggling to get out of a restraint, except he was gifted and quick. lol What do I choose to come out of me when I am squeezed?

EY

Scott Sonnon on Facebook

Work Yoga Attitude Makeover

My friend Sarah posted a link to an an article by Sally Kempton about bringing a yogic attitude to your work. (The link to the article will be at the end of this blog entry. ) And it affected me profoundly. It’s so funny how sometimes I can remember how much smarter I was when I was younger in some things. I think it was because I kept things simple. But that was more of my work attitude in my early working days.

Anyway, I read the article, highlighted what resonated with me then brought it down to a page of focus for me to look at each morning before I go to work.
Here are the tidbits that I find helpful, I’ve changed some of the wording to suit my needs:

What matters most is not what you do, but how you do it.
1- Throw yourself completely into a task. Do whatever you do impeccably, with full attention. Approach your work with your full presence and with your highest quality of attention.

EY note - I’ve always been this way but I’d been doing it angrily, lately.

At the beginning of a task, say to myself, “Looking back on this, How would I have wanted to perform this task?”

2- Surrender your attachment to results. You never know how things will turn out. You simply can’t know if anyone will buy your novel or whether someone at another company will notice the work you do and offer you a great job. Consider what it would look like to do your work for the sake of the work alone. Discover how you can, moment by moment, release your attachment to outcomes. Consider how you can live your passion and yet detach yourself from how things turn out.

EY Note - There are no promises in anything we do but there can be gifts that we never expected.

3- Do your work as Service. (I wrote to think of the idea of my day job as me doing a service for my writing)
Do something for the sake of being helpful.
Shift that inner attitude from “What am I not getting?” to “What can I give?”
Shift from “Something’s wrong with this situation” to “How can I help make it better?”
Begin taking action at work, ask yourself, “Who or what does this serve?”

EY Note - I like this because it removes the bitterness of feeling like I’m doing all this work while others are screwing the pooch. It doesn’t matter what they are doing. What matters is that I am keeping my focus.

I also added the note, which is so important, “Being of service is not the same thing as martyring yourself for a cause or letting yourself be exploited. Consider yourself in the equation. Think about what you need in order to serve at your best. And Stand up for yourself!”

4- Make Your Work an offering
Whatever you do, make it an offering, bringing an attitude of devotion to your actions.
“I offer this day asking that my actions be beneficial for all beings.”
Whatever you are doing, whether it is “important” or “unimportant”, you can offer it. And by offering your work, your practice, and even your small everyday actions, you align yourself with the universe, and your work becomes yoga - the natural path to union with the whole.

Sally Kempton wrote a great article which goes more in depth, obviously. I hope it gives you the gifts it has given me. And Thanks Again Sarah!

EY

Bring a yogic attitude to your work and find satisfaction in your job, no matter what it is. By Sally Kempton

The Book Purge has Ended - For Now

I have to say that this whole purge thing is labour intensive. It is far more work than the years of purchasing. ha-ha!
I've managed to pull out all of my books from the bins and trunks and boxes that I had of them. I got rid of a good chunk of books and now nothing is hidden away. All the books I still have I can actually see and reach. So next will be to do a whole lot of reading and to continue to purge.

I think it will be easier to let go of more books once I purge more of my other things. But in the meantime I feel like I've done a good job. I sold a few books and left a whole lot on the window sill of my apartment building for others to pick through. And they did! Walking down the stairs and seeing the books rearranged and disappearing was a satisfying feeling.

My trunk that was filled with books is now filled with my handbags and purses. I won't be purging those anytime soon because I actually use them all. So that's a great place to keep them since they are easier to access.
One of the rubbermaid bins that was filled with books now has my sheets, pillowcases and my electric blanket in it and is strategically placed under my bed.

So it was a good week of accomplishment considering starting with books was the hardest thing to do. The good thing about starting with the hardest thing is that I'm starting to feel more ruthless.

I met with a couple girlfriends, while I was on vacation, and brought one some activity books (from my Child and Youth work days) and stuffed animals for her daughter. The activity books she can grow into. And for my other girlfriend who has a boy and a girl, I brought her the rest of the small stuffed animals. Because she's a teacher, if her kids don't want the stuffed animals (like they wouldn't - hee-hee) she can bring them to school. I kept my oversized stuffed animals, for now since they already have a spot in my apartment. There are a few I will keep, like my mom's teddy bear from when she was a child and my teddy bear from when I was a child.

I took a break last weekend since I had to do laundry and get groceries and all those kind of chores. Plus it was the last of my vacation and I didn't want to be handcuffed to the purge. It was good to relax and get back to the mindset of going back to work on Monday. And I felt good about going back to work so that was all good.

Tonight I came home with a purpose and got rid of a whack of picture frames that have been in a pile forever and made more room for my cookbooks. I'm going to go through them at some point and whittle them down. It's so easy to get recipes on the internet, which I mostly do these days but there are still some cookbooks that I'll want to keep.

I was flipping through the minimalists site last night at my part-time job and jumped on to a post about throwing out/ getting rid of one thing per day. I like that idea as well. So I'm finding that trying ANYTHING and everything is probably my best bet.

And my binders. I've been looking through my binders of papers that I can scan to pdf and save on a flash drive.

And that's how the purge goes for now. :)

EY

Minimalist in Training or The Big Purge of 2013

Last night, I started Day 1 of getting rid of my stuff. I started with books because my place is filled with them and books will be the hardest thing to let go of. I started with three empty boxes:
1- Keep
2- Recycle/Garbage
3- Sell

As I was sorting through the books in the shelves under my window I could see how difficult this could be. Talk about emotional attachments to books. When you write and even beyond that, when you love to read, it's hard to let go. I wasn't getting too far because honestly, the books were going in the keep box and the Sell box was empty. So I added a fourth box - Undecided. That helped me to pull some books out of the Keep box and really got the process flowing. And some books started making it in to the sell box as well.

I went to a used book store on my way home from work on Monday and asked if they buy a lot of books, "Like buggies full," and Buddy said they are happy to buy buggies full. It's a good quality used book store so they'd be going to a good way station before they go to a good home. Um, yes, emotional attachment to books.

I've negotiated with myself on a couple things to make the process easier.
1- Now that I've unplugged the television, I can read more of the books I do own and then sell them
2- The books that I sell immediately, I will write a list of titles and authors (that still interest me) and I can purchase them on Kindle or Kobo, if I really want to read them. I know full well that my attention goes off in other directions so I probably won't buy them for my e-reader but it's the mind trick I'm playing with myself that will help me to move it along.

I set aside some children's books that I will pass on to my girlfriend for her young daughter. The little one isn't quite at reading age but she is definitely at being read to age. Plus some activity books from my child and youth work days, that will definitely be interesting to her for years to come. Especially since My friend is very crafty.

So really it's become 5 boxes.

I figure I'll start this way first and once I've gone through everything I will do the major one, that the minimalists recommend, packing up everything in your house as if you are moving and finding out what you actually use during a week or two and what you never touch. It makes sense to have less stuff before I do that one.

I do live in an apartment building where, if you leave your discarded stuff on the window sills in the stairway, other people pick up what they want from it. But with books (emotional attachment) if I leave them out there and they aren't taken I always take them back. I can't bear the thought of books ending up in the garbage. So that's the main reason why I'm selling them.

I took the week off work as a needed vacation because last week was pretty irritating and I realize that it was irritating because I haven't had time off since Bermuda and that was the first week of June. Only I could think this is a fun vacation but I'm actually really stoked. I've made plans with a couple girlfriends and am contacting a couple more girlfriends in hopes of making plans so there will be social fun and laughter and beer in the midst.

I realize that I'm not telling anyone anything new about purging and making changes in our lives. It was part of the gremlin/ critic in my head the other day. You know that ass that tells you, Who do you think you are? Why are you writing about these things everybody is laughing at you, is going to laugh at you? You aren't telling anyone anything that they couldn't find better information any where else. The Gremlin has been on full throttle. He's screaming actually. But I'm working through him anyway. I'm showing up anyway. I'm writing about what's going on anyway. I know when I get to the other side, something positive will come of it. Gremlins only say positive things once the work is finished, never during the actual pain and perspiration. Gremlins don't do work, they hinder work.

I've been blogging since 2006 and I only saw, could only see, the body of work when I looked back through the archives years later.

My ultimate goal is to get down to only having books on the four book cases that I own.
1- One bookcase has my favourite authors: Nancy Huston; A.M Homes; Jasper Fforde. And books that I re-read (Alice Walker; Richard Wright; The Great Gatsby; Five Smooth Stones etc)
2 & 3 - My two large bookcases have the workbooks: writing manuals/handbooks; Numerology/Astrology/Tarot; Kundalini Yoga/ Qigong; Energy work/Self development; Creativity/Drawing; Dream work (lucid dreams) etc. I need to get these cases down to the essentials and weed out the books that don't really do it for me.
4 - One bookcase has all the books I've purchased at IFOA (International Festival of Author's)
That's the direction I move towards.

The Boxes of Purge:
1- Keep
2- Recycle/Garbage
3- Sell
4- Undecided
5- Give away


EY

Magic and Asking Questions

Image of Ray Bradbury in his Basement office courtesy of http://www.mattselznick.com/2012/06/06/ray-bradbury/


I've been focusing on the inspirational aspects of social media. It's so easy to get caught up in wasting time. Playing too many Facebook games. Reading silly articles for the comments sections (people can be downright mean in them, holy cow).
And as always, I'm looking at ways to improve and ultimately change the course of my life.

I'd like to move in a new direction in my life and I'm looking for strong answers to move me forward.
I've got back into listening to Ted Talks. It really does feed the mind. On the weekend I found a couple of talks that have made me think about my options. Well going backwards in all this, back in the winter I was out with a girlfriend, Sandra. We talk mostly about what we are doing and where we want to go. At one point I confessed that Toronto feels like it has served its purpose for me and now I'm starting to think about where I'd like to live next. I've never really loved Toronto the way I loved Montreal and the plan never was to stay here.

The big thing of course is possessions. How do you even begin to look at purging 32 years of collecting? What must I keep?
Life has changed so much for me. Back in the day, I wanted a crazy Ray Bradbury room of stuff that explodes the imagination with ideas to write.

Nowadays I'm more interested in being a minimalist. The lighter you are, the quicker you can move. Or as my friend Vanessa said a few years ago, "If you own nothing, nothing owns you." That comment has stuck with me for years. And being in my 1 Personal year of a new 9 year cycle looking at what I want this 9 year cycle to stand for is ever present.

One Ted Talks made me think about how simple I could make my life
Jon Jandai - Life is easy, why do we make it so hard

and the other one made me think about tangible ways to get there.
Adam Baker - Sell Your Crap, Pay Your Debt, Do What You Love

The funny thing, the magic in these thoughts, is that since I've watched these two talks I struck up a conversation with a business man who sits outside where I do when I take my breaks at work. We've both have sat out there for years and out of the blue I strike up a conversation. Doesn't he say that he's a minimalist and has been for 5 years and he's the happiest he's ever been. Yep.

I've been playing with living a simpler life for at least a decade. This new 9 year period, I want to take living a simpler life a step further and purge. Seriously purge.

Today I found these guys, The Minimalists.
The link takes you to their 21 days on how they became minimalists. One of the ideas that struck me was to pack up everything in your house/apartment and only unpack what you need as you need it. After a week or so, you come to realize that most of the stuff you have you don't even use. Right?

EY