Acknowledge that you missed the mark…and start again. Growing isn’t about getting it right all of the time. So much of what you have become has come out of the dark corners, the tough times, the setback and the failures. Missing the mark is just a place to start again.

Acknowledge that you missed the mark…and listen intently with curiosity to who might be calling you out. Is there some wisdom being shared that you need in order to get unstuck?

Acknowledge that you missed the mark…to yourself. Not so you can drown in self pity, but so that you can become a better you.

Everybody misses the mark. Maybe that is one of the intentions of this human experience…to have a chance to set ourselves right, to recover, to begin again. How else would you ever know how beautifully resilient you are? How amazingly strong? How tenderly humble?

How about just looking back over this single day and ask yourself…how did I miss the mark? Where was I not my best? And then decide to make an adjustment. That’s how you ‘fix’ missing the mark…you adjust your aim.

In this spiritual work we have to pay attention, pause to consider and then be humble with our new ‘aim’. Not to worry about missing the mark…I am certain we will have new opportunities quite often to aim again.

Much love
Paula

We have an expectation that everyone understand, well, just about everything we want to talk about. On top of this is our absurd expectation that whenever someone hears ‘our side’ they’ll change their mind…surely…because after all we’re right.

Here is what is closer to the truth – what you and I know is a tiny sliver of what is available to be known. It’s why this little phrase makes sense: The more you know, the less you know. Another truth is this – I’m not always right and neither are you. Here’s the phrase that captures it: There’s my side, your side and somewhere in-between is the truth.

Forming an opinion or gathering knowledge exclusively from sound bites, headlines and talking heads is like trying to learn how to swim without getting into the water. You can understand a little bit by standing at the edge of the pool, but from there you just can’t know what it’s really about. You’ve got to jump into the water. It follows that if you really want to know more about something, anything, you’ve got to dive a little deeper.

I was talking to my sister, Lynn, about this exact thing. She heard or read something about Christopher Columbus and the reason he set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. It didn’t sound quite right to her. She is now reading a history of the United States. She wants to find out for herself.

If you live as if you already know everything you will never learn anything new. If you only scan the headlines, read the memes and listen to opinions you already agree with…well, you will never expand your personal horizon.

None of us have the time to learn everything there is to know. Life is complex and rich and amazingly dynamic. We’re all changing and evolving, struggling and succeeding, aware and unaware, taking steps forward and taking steps backward, in pain and free from pain.

I don’t know everything, I’m not always right and my opinion is just the way I happen to see it. It’s the same for you. How about we resolve to simply be more kind, and more humble?

Paula

The only way to know life is to live it. Take a leap. Dive in. Take the next step. Give it a whirl. Gather and go. Begin…and begin again. We can’t protect ourselves by sitting this one out. The Universe doesn’t honor or understand ‘time out’.

Living doesn’t happen in the mind. Living and thinking aren’t the same thing. Living is about experiences…all of them. Living doesn’t include guarantees. Living is engaging the best we can, even when things are tough.

It is wise to remember that all living happens in the moment. Conscious living is a balance of taking a leap and taking deep breaths that keep you grounded. Joy is what happens when you can do both at the same time.

Me? I’m still practicing.
Paula

I like to have a plan. I think things through, sometimes over and over again, to be sure I haven’t missed something. And then I revisit the plan again, assessing every angle. I like to have the full picture in my mind, the details and the broad view. This has served me well in many aspects of my life. For instance I can:

• Expertly pack the trunk of a car for four women heading home from a wine tasting (and buying) excursion.
• Navigate cross country, alone, before Google maps.
• Dissect construction details along with contractors to avoid delays once work is underway.
• Always be ready with plan B or C…no surprises.

How will it work and what are the consequences? Leaving nothing to chance or depending on someone else. It makes me reliable…and also worried and anxious. Really, it is exhausting. I’ve learned to let go of some things…but this needing to have everything worked out plus contingency plans has stayed with me. The problem is I am finding less and less joy in the moment as I prepare for some moment in the future.

What to do? It helps to meditate and to make time to be still. It helps to practice not getting things done but simply letting things be. It helps to remember to be grateful for being alive. It helps to stop and have a cup of tea. It helps to step back and see the bigger picture. It helps to remember that I already have what I need.

I am a work in progress. Whew!
Much love
Paula

How do I really want to feel? Have you thought about that? What is the best feeling, the one that will sustain you and lift you and hold you? Of course to feel good. That’s the most obvious answer. Hey, I want to feel good. What does it take to feel good? I’ve decided two things.

If I could walk around the world feeling hopeful, I think that would work. I’m thinking that’s the main event, the bottom line, the pièce de résistance. Feeling hopeful is the cure for many ills. The feeling of hopefulness changes my outlook on life. It doesn’t change what is happening but it changes me, my mind and my heart. This is not always easy. In the midst of physical pain, heartbreak and loss…we have to find our way to hope, to the feeling of hopefulness.

I believe I could be happy for the rest of my life feeling hopeful. That’s how powerful hope feels right now. How do I want to feel? Hopeful. That’s it. Because without hope everything is gray and there is no foothold to be had.

With this on my mind, I asked my godchild about her renewed interest in getting back into college classes. I wondered….was it a feeling of hopefulness? It wasn’t, she said. It was about desire, the desire to have a bigger and more meaningful life. And at 20 years of age, the next step for her is more education. She said “I want more out of life.” Desire – the power of wanting to change for the better, expand, grow, take a step toward. Without desire…restlessness, indifference, stuckness.

Hope + Desire = Possibility and the chance for something different. Hope grounds me, desire moves me. My dynamic duo!

All is well.
Paula

Hey, smile. Just smile. It’s such a simple thing and so powerful. There’s the jubilant smile, the impish smile, the surprise smile, the crooked smile, the toothless grin, the so much joy I could cry smile…well, an unending number of smiles and faces on which they appear. Take a look.

Did that make you smile? I sure hope so. It’s contagious isn’t it? You look good when you smile. You look softer and more inviting. Sometimes I am just so serious. I need to smile more often. Let’s do that together…even behind the mask.

Be well…and smile!
Paula

Have you ever said this: We don’t discuss religion or politics. Usually said with the intention of keeping the peace…in families and groups of friends. Look where it has gotten us. We have developed a tendency to not discuss anything that makes us uncomfortable and to not listen when others speak about things upon which we disagree.

Here’s another one: Let’s just agree to disagree. If this were actually true we might be getting somewhere. But what it really means is – you stay over there and I’ll stay over here. More to the point it often means – I’m right and you’re wrong so let’s just leave it at that.

We have moved ourselves into our own insular worlds, surrounded ourselves with only like-minded people…not wanting to spend the time or exert the energy to engage with ‘the other’. And when we do engage, too often it is with self-righteousness rather than with curiosity and humility.

This is the point where some say…but why do I have to be the one to show up with humility, why do I have to be the one to listen to understand, why me? My answer is – Why not you? Why not me? Are you interested in healing, in unity, in civil discourse? Does it matter to you that we are able to really talk with each other rather than for conversations to dissolve into raging emotion and hatefulness?

Maybe we should be saying: Let’s keep talking about this. I believe there is common ground in even the most diametrically opposed views. If we can find that, we have a jumping off point for not just agreeing to disagree, but for understanding. It doesn’t mean we need to be less passionate about our beliefs…it just means we can come even just a little bit closer to understanding another point of view.

We are not here to change the world, we are here to express as much love as we possibly can. The elders among us and those who are experiencing their final moments on earth tell us this over and over. Come closer they say, we want to feel the love…that’s what matters most.

With much love
Paula

What you think you want and what you really need may be two different things. Stop putting conditions on what shows up in your life…what’s good or bad. This kind of behavior keeps us in fear….fear of losing the good we have or fear of being stuck in the bad forever.

Beneath all of our wants…
things to be different
people to change
for life not to be so hard
to be loved, accepted and respected by others
a successful career
everybody to get along
…is our soul wanting us to remember who we really are.

Beneath all of our wants is the call from our soul to love our self unconditionally. Beneath our wants is the call to accept that we are enough, in each moment…enough. This is our true need. To breathe a sigh of relief and know…hey, I’m okay. Isn’t that what you need…to feel okay with yourself? I think that’s what the soul wants you to know.

In the wise words of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger…You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.

And beyond okay is this soul call from Nina Simone.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, joy.

Rumi

Feeling good. Indeed.
Paula

Why is it that we so often hear from families who have endured an unspeakable tragedy…hear them calling out for attention, calling out to expose a horrible wrong, a condition long past due to have been resolved…so that another family, a mother, a father, would not have to experience the same pain, sorrow and loss that they feel? Why do they care? Isn’t their grief enough to carry without worrying about the rest of us?

I think there is a great knowing by those enduring such awful pain. It is a knowing that we are all connected. And those who cry out to be heard for benefit of others are really saying: ‘The whole of us cannot endure this pain repeating itself. So, if just one family can be helped, it will be worth it’. I think what they’re saying is, ‘Let’s stop hurting ourselves. We really will not survive unless this ends’.

This is an important message revealed through grief. I think there are messages that come from pain as well. Rodney King, in 1991 after having been beaten and arrested, said: ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ George Floyd, in 2020 as he was being pinned to the ground with a knee on his neck, said: ‘I can’t breathe.’ In other words, let me breathe, let me live, let me be free. Not perfect men, but messages from pain. Messages not just for these men but for the health of the whole.

Perfect messages come through imperfect men and women all the time. Maybe we should pay closer attention, listen beneath the distraction, beneath the judgment and hear with our hearts. I’ve said before, there is no us and them, there is only us. I believe this is true.

Much love always
Paula

Trying to retrieve a moment in the past is what regret would ask us to do. It’s just not possible. Why is it so hard to release and move forward? Listen, to release regret is to forgive yourself. It doesn’t mean you don’t take responsibility. Releasing regret is accepting that you can’t change that moment in the past. What can be meaningful is to sit with yourself, own the shortcoming, feel the discomfort, accept that you are imperfect and that just maybe…it was the best you were able to do in that particular moment.

Allow that moment, that decision, that argument, that action, those words of regret to pass through. They have already shaped you, done their work in you, left an imprint, offered their wisdom or secret…no need to hang on. No need for regret. The soul welcomes even the experience of falling short because the soul doesn’t judge…it just wants to grow and expand. The soul wants you to experience everything and wants to guide you toward awakening.

My dear friends, this is how we can be grateful for even the times we fall short. Instead of stewing in regret we can take the opportunity to practice self forgiveness. And the side effect of self forgiveness is…freedom. And freedom allows us to look ahead with joyful anticipation.

Much love always
Paula