Thanks to everybody for your comments: I read every single one and appreciate them a lot. Today’s suggestion is: “Get up, get dressed, get going.” I have an essay with this title in my book, Fit from Within, and when filmmaker Michael Moore wrote in Oprah’s magazine that it was one of his favorite books, he said that this was his favorite chapter. A lot of people have similarly commented. Here’s the gist of it: on this earth, very little happens until to go out into the world where everything is happening.
I’ll use the backstage analogy just like I did yesterday: staying home, or staying home and going to work but never really getting out when things are going on, is like being backstage at the theater. You can’t play your part (much less take your bow) until you go out on stage or, in our case, get out and be in life in a big way.
It seems a bit contradictory to the spiritual teachings that all you need is inside you and that God speaks to you from deep within yourself. True, true! And yet, unless you’ve chosen the path of the cloistered nun or monk, you can only do something with what you tap from inside when you take it out and test it, get yourself to the town square or Times Square, the meeting, the march, the marketplace.
Sometimes it’s hard to get out. You’re tired. It’s dark. It’s cold. You went out last night. Now, certainly there are times to stay in and relish the comforts of home, the one place where you can be completely, utterly yourself. Nevertheless, home is backstage (unless you have people over, in which case you’re bringing them to your performance).
So, for your 8th day of coming more fully into your own charmed life: get out! Go somewhere new, somewhere different, somewhere surprising, somewhere delightful. Ya know where I went today? — A restaurant supply store. I looked for weeks for a big stainless steel bowl. (As a high-raw-food eater, I make very large salads.) I couldn’t believe how much trouble I was having finding a stainless steel bowl in New York City where you can pretty much find anything. I ended up ordering one online. It was big all right — I could serve salad from it to the whole Mormon Tabernacle Choir and have leftovers. And it’s too big to fit in the dishwasher, which was the reason why I wanted stainless steel instead of wood in the first place.
But today at the restaurant supply store, they had stainless steel bowls in every imaginable size; the one I opted for — three sizes down from the monster-bowl I currently possess — was only $6.50. And I got to look at aisles and aisles of other stuff, regular restaurant gadgetry and lots of Asian accoutrements in which this particular store specializes. It was the most fun!
So, today: get up, get dressed, get going — somewhere wonderful, somewhere different, somewhere that makes your heart sing. Then leave me a comment and tell me what you did.
Victoria Moran is a certified life coach practicing in New York City and by phone around the country. For more information, go to www.victoriamoran.com and click on the “coaching” icon. All the information is there, including an email and phone number to schedule a exploratory chat to see if coaching is for you.
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