Five reasons why I like Happy Yoga

I've been spending my mornings at Starbucks reading lately. And lately it's been all about yoga. My BF and I have joined a yoga studio in Phoenix this month, and I borrowed a book called Happy Yoga from the BF's sister to learn more about the philosophy--or at least this guy's version of it.

I must say, I'm glued to what I'm learning. I don't want to put the book down. Except, the information is so intense. In order to absorb the key points, I have to read this book in spurts, one chapter at a time. There are seven of them. So I'm taking notes on notecards, jotting down the quotes that stand out, the lessons I need to remind myself, the words that project some meaning for me that I don't want to forget. I'm going to get a copy of this book for myself, I'm sure. For now, I am glued to this borrowed one.

I keep suggesting to my BF that he read the book as well, and now he wants to do just that. I'm also planning to get copies for both my son and my daughter. Hopefully, their respective spouses will read the book, too.

I think it's that good. Here are ten reasons why:

_The quotes the author has collected.
From the words of Buddha ("There is no way to happiness--happiness is the way.") to thoughts like this one--If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?--I cannot help but consider how these words can positively impact my life in this very moment. The quotes alone make me question who I am and what I'm doing here. It's perfect timing, considering my branding experience, which is moving along nicely now.

_The inspiration offered.
I am inspired by the author's own journey with yoga (from rock band to yogi man), how he came upon his passion (spent five years in India to study the practice), and what he wants to share with the world (that yoga is not as serious as you might think). Any time I can find another author or expert with a spiritual journey that has helped transform his life, I want to know how that happened. I want to know more, as I am naturally inspired by mankind's ability to live with purpose. Steve Ross seems to have that down, and his book is helping me in my own search for whatever it is I must know. Plus, his work clarifies my own thoughts about living in joy. This is a guy who sees yoga as a means to happiness. I'd never thought of it that way, but I like it. As someone who is new to the practice but also believes in this natural state of happiness, his book leads me to believe I am on the right track. And that's a good feeling.

_The lessons learned.
His book covers thoughts about death, about society's push for the perfect body and how unenlightened such a goal really is, and so much more. Essentially, this is a book that shows you how to put your mind at ease and not worry so much. What a great lesson right off the bat! For someone who has experienced a lot of fear in life, this author is teaching me how to let all of that go. That chapter alone makes this a book worth having.

_The exercises suggested.
Not only does he provide great stories that offer great lessons, he also delivers exercises or tips that will help you experience the same. Don't know how to just sit still and relax? He offers suggestions on how you can do that successfully, without having to be perfect at it the first time around. I love do-overs!

_The poses illustrated.
At the end of each chapter, the author provides pictures and instructions on how to do specific poses that will help your body achieve specific things, such as a lean body, a calm mind, or a more loving heart. If all you wanted from the book were poses to achieve a specific goal addressed in the book, you'd have it at your fingertips with this one. I like that.

"Happiness arises from acceptance of yourself, others, the world, and this moment," just as it is, Ross writes. You have a choice, he's saying--another reminder about where the responsibility for the self really lives. Inside of me. Inside of you. Inside of the individual.

Agree or disagree? Let's discuss.   

A Sunday challenge

Yesterday, I walked for a mile backwards along the Arizona canal. The key is I walked BACKWARDS. Not the normal way to move forward, is it?

The reason I chose to walk backward? To change things up. On my walk that morning, I wanted to sort out a few thoughts I had going on inside my head about an upcoming presentation. Once I'd warmed up on the first two miles, I realized I could change things up and maybe that would take my thoughts in a more creative direction. So I turned around and walked backwards for the next mile.

What happened?

_I saw things from a different perspective.
_I became more aware of my surroundings, as I had to keep looking from side to side so I wouldn't walk into anyone coming my way, get hit by one of the cyclists, or walk smack dab into the canal itself.
_I worked on a different set of leg muscles.
_And, yes, I did work out a few kinks in the presentation, ironed out the last detail, and came home to write it all down before I forgot what I wanted to include in the message.

From time to time, it's a good idea to change things up, to do things differently than you normally would and go outside that box. It's like working a different muscle. You'll work a part of your body not generally used, you'll feel differently, think differently, and may wind up with a better result. It's good exercise all the way around to change things up, to surprise yourself with what you can accomplish under different settings, and to challenge yourself to consider an alternative to the norm.

This works especially well when you feel boxed in to an idea or format. If you catch yourself feeling that way, it might be time to force yourself to approach a problem differently. Find someone you know who will expand your own point of view and discuss the problem with them. Open your mind to the possibility that the answer to your challenge is the opposite of what you thought it might be. Maybe it's actually somewhere in the middle. But to get there, you'll have to stretch the boundary a bit. You might have to "exercise" a little courage and risk judgment from others. You might also be very pleased with the result.

Today's challenge for you: Pick one thing you undertake today and do it differently. If it's the dishes, and you're used to stacking the dirty ones in the dishwasher, try washing them by hand today. If you generally use lists to run your errands, skip the lists and see what happens. Will you remember everything? Will you do more than the list might limit you to do? Will you do less because you forgot something? Will the list become obsolete because your idea of what needed to be done changed altogether? At the end of the day, evaluate the change you took. My guess is you'll be surprised by the result. Tell us what happened by posting a comment below.

Survey says!

During the Blogathon, I ran a poll asking you how I could improve my blog in the months ahead. I can't say I was really surprised by the results.

The majority of you want me to continue writing about my BIKE, sharing those stories and lessons that led me here. I expect to do just that. And it's nice to know the work that I do here makes sense to you, that you get something valuable out of it. I love hearing that. It means a lot.

I also have some work to do. You asked for more news commentary, so I'll be focusing on ways in which I can do that better. I occasionally write about this, but not in the way I'd always like. So I'll be looking to add new Google Alerts in order to find articles that merit attention here.

If there's something specific you'd like to know more about, please let me know. If I've touched on something that's piqued your interest, and you'd like me to delve further into it, let me know that as well. My blog is only as good as the readers it attracts, and I want you to keep coming back--and bring your friends. I hope to continue helping you learn new ways of thinking about how you can turn your obstacles into opportunities. That's always been my focus, and as long as I stick to that, I know the message will be effective.

I am grateful for your visits and look forward to your next.

Staying True with Jenny Sanford

I just picked up a copy of Jenny Sanford's book, Staying True. I finished it in two days. That's how easy a read it was. It wasn't particularly enlightening, either. But it did give me a positive impression of the woman who wrote it.

Jenny Sanford, as you probably know, was married to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. He was the guy who claimed he'd been "hiking the Appalachian Trail" last summer, when he was really "visiting" his Argentinian girlfriend. His trip became national news because the guy had disappeared for a while, and his state department people didn't even know where he was.

From what Jenny says in her book, it wasn't the first time he'd disappeared. He'd done it before. Apparently, he'd slipped away after a business trip, flying into New York to see this same woman.

Sanford's book isn't a tell-all, so don't buy it if you're looking for hot, juicy details about what happened to the crazed governor. Instead, her book takes you through the life she made with this man, including some of the clues she missed that could have warned her of what might occur in the future. She acknowledges it's just speculation, and you can never predict the way a person will behave.

What kept her married to him all those 20 years of sometimes really bizarre behavior on his part--he left an old clunker of a vehicle for her in the airport parking garage with directions to a party on her first visit to meet his family in South Carolina; he opted to leave town when she once had surgery; he kept asking for her advice about how much detail she should tell the press after they'd discovered his affair--was her faith. She believed in love. She believed in him and their family. And most importantly, she believed in her God to show her the way.

She portrays very eloquently how she winds up losing the life she expected to be her future, how her ideal was changed by her husband's adulterous ways. She doesn't do it in a way that makes you cringe. She's very matter-of-fact and accepts her own responsibility for this marriage gone wrong. Not that she made her husband cheat on her. Women cannot do that. We just don't have that much power, unless it's criminal. But she accepts that she might have created room to allow it to happen, mostly because she didn't believe it ever would--or could--and she had become far too independent of him. Perhaps she didn't need him, as she'd learned how to live without him because he traveled so much. The contradictory truth here seems perfectly normal to me, another former wife who lived that way with her former husband.

I did not find the book particularly moving, in that it didn't delve deep into the emotion. Even during the moment when she shares how she had to reveal what dad had done to her boys does she take the story where it could have gone. Simply put: I think she did more telling than showing. But it is told nicely, and in such a way that you understand exactly how her story unfolded. And you do feel sympathy for her, and even sympathy--some--for her now ex-husband.

I must confess that I hate seeing these stories in the news. I read them, however, because it seems to me to be part of my research for the work that I do here. I also hate knowing that men can cheat so easily. I know there are women like this as well, but I am just not friends with them, and you rarely read about them, anyway. I especially hate hearing the line, "once a cheater, always a cheater." I'd like to think this is just the media promoting this view, giving these guys a bad name. But I know better. These type of men do that to themselves.

The ones who will continue to do this to themselves--and others--are those who continue denying their own responsibility. Once they start playing the blame game, I think, they are in trouble, and they've already lost.

If you've been wondering whether or not you should read Jenny Sanford's book, let me tell you I think it is her attempt to explore her marriage and the husband she had in it and why he did what he did. She couldn't. So the book ends with her accepting that his values just don't match her own. She had to let him go so he could figure out his stuff, and so she could figure out hers.

You know she will. You close the book wondering if he can do the same.

Recovery: Accessing your Inner strength

I've only met one person in my life who thought he'd never had a bad day. Nothing ever hurt him. He wasn't bothered by anything. Neither did he express a whole lot of emotion. That was my ex, and I thought it impossible to live like that.

Even after he fired someone at work, even when the day came that he found out his own job was expendable, he still never talked about it and certainly didn't give off the impression that he was hurting inside. He kept it all to himself, no matter how much I encouraged him to share. He just didn't.

I'd tell him things like, "Some day, you're going to explode," because I don't believe a person can hold stuff in like that. I don't believe it's healthy. And I was right. Turns out, he was releasing his anxiety in other ways. The things that did hurt him or bother him was all hidden in behavior he didn't want anyone to know about--till it suited him.

And on the day that it suited him was the day my life changed forever.

I'd had my Inner strength tested before. After all, I'd married as a teenager. I'd become a single parent in college. I'd become a widow afterward. I knew I could survive terrible times. I'd done it before. I had "experience."

But the day my then-husband announced his famous line to me at our kitchen table--"Jackie, I've been lying to you. I've been living a secret life. I think I'm a sex addict"--was my real test. His were the words I did not understand. His choices in life were the choices that left me reeling in a pain I could not stop. That was the only time in my life when I was no longer sure how much I could handle.

So my short lesson for you today is this: Know that you can handle a lot!

You'll have to dig deep to find all that Inner strength within. You'll have to trust it's there. And some days you won't. You'll have to keep digging. You'll have to believe you can go deeper when you need it. You'll have to rely on your natural instincts. You'll have to have faith that you can move those mountains. You'll have to know that it's possible if you expect to overcome the really bad stuff.

Oh, trust me. It's natural to feel otherwise, to think you're broken beyond repair. But as long as there's even the tiniest part of you that knows otherwise, that is where you'll begin. You'll take it one second at a time if that's all you can muster. Because to fall prey to victimhood will not be the right answer in this multiple choice game of life. That response will only allow you to fail at life. But you can rise above the fall.

You may not come out on the other side the same person that you were--Hopefully, you'll arrive on the other side a better person--but you will come out of your challenging times. You will if you let yourself, and if you find the guide you need to get you there.

As you know now, my guide was my bike. It was divine intervention. It was very symbolic. And it worked.

Your guide might be something else entirely, but it is still the same process. You must still believe, have faith, and see beyond the pain. No one else can do that for you.

So just know that you always have the ability to access your Inner strength. It is there and will be there at precisely the moment when it's needed. To gain some of that believe or faith, practice accessing your Inner strength today while making that phone call you don't want to make, or having that conversation with a friend you've been avoiding, or somehow feeling stuck in a situation that feels uncomfortable. Make the call. Talk to your friend. Get past the situation that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Do whatever is is that you may have thought impossible, and you'll see that the other side isn't so bad. And you will feel better because of it.

Recovery: Using reminders

You may notice that I repeat myself here at BIKE WITH JACKIE. There's good reason for that. I don't mean to bore you. What I'm doing is giving you reminders.

Without reminders, we all too easily forget that which we want to do, think we should do, or really, really need to do in order to create change.

During Recovery periods, the expectation is that change will occur. The old will be made new. Think of what's happening in Haiti right now. The earthquake destroyed Port Au Prince and other parts of the countryside. Buildings have toppled. Lives have been lost. Lives have been altered. In order for the people who live there to find peace again, Recovery from the resulting wounds will be necessary. It will take time.

This is the same process for anyone who hopes to overcome a loss or tragedy, or for anyone having to give up something for whatever reason. You must adapt. You must relearn. You must accept your new role or new reality. Sometimes, the only way to do that is to be reminded of how this can be done. The people of Haiti are not there yet. But when they arrive at the moment when they can begin true Recovery, they, too, will need reminders of how this is possible.

So this week, we'll focus on reminders you can use to create the change you need in your life right now.

Do you have any idea what they might be?

Recovery: Taking down time

Today, my message is simple. Take a break! Get your down time. It's part of any self-care practices you want to incorporate into your life. Most weeks, I do work nearly every day. But even bloggers get to take time off the clock--even during a Blogathon!

See you back on Monday.

Recovery: Breakthroughs happen

The dictionary refers to a breakthrough as "an act or instance of breaking through an obstacle." That's what Recovery is all about--breaking through those obstacles that threaten to upset your life.

Obstacles, by their very own definition, place objects, people or thoughts in the way. When they are there, we sometimes think we cannot get past them. They are, after all, in the way, right?

But you don't have to be a Super Hero to move them. You just have to want them moved. I'm not talking about "thinking" your way around, over, under, or beside them. I'm talking about DOING something to get those obstacles out of the way.

When you're facing difficult times in life, whether that involves work, family, or your own inner demons, we can be challenged to our very core. Depending on what that challenge is, it can seem like a test we are sure to fail. But when you're working your recovery--when you're reading about something you need to learn, when you're learning a new skill to help you get that promotion, when you're going to regular counseling sessions to work on your relationships with others or yourself, when you're exercising and eating right because your health depends upon it--breakthroughs happen. They happen because you're fighting for them. And they happen because you're ready to replace the obstacles with solutions.

As I've mentioned before, Recovery is about action. You have to do something about a negative situation in order to turn it into a positive. A breakthrough is part of the solution. It's the answer, but it isn't yet solved. You're half-way there. You just need to put it in place.

Take what happened to me today: I have a strategic plan for my business. I wrote it with the help of a business coach. But it's not moving me where I want to go. I've needed to tweak it a bit. But I wasn't sure how. This is a challenge that's been bugging me for quite some time. The economic situation has affected my earnings and my savings, and I've been concerned about the dwindling numbers. I thought having a strategic plan in place would help. But that wasn't enough. It wasn't focused on the numbers I need to earn. It was focused on things I still need to do, but not on the money I need to earn and how to get the jobs that will pay it.

So I get a call from my financial advisor yesterday, who says something I needed to hear, was expecting to hear. I even thought I would have heard it sooner. And there it was. I had to face it. We'll be meeting next week to discuss my finances and what I'm doing to replenish that which I've been taking out. He didn't have harsh words for me. Just honest ones. And I found myself moping around this morning with worry. He's right. My income level is not where it needs to be. I am taking out funds from my accounts because of that. And I haven't had a plan in place to correct the delinquency. So, instead of being able to focus today on the edits I needed to do (the work that earns the dollars and cents), I kept finding other things to do. I told you; I was worried.

Finally, I gave in to the worry and left the house. I grabbed a book, a newsletter, and a few dollars and went to Starbucks for some coffee and down time. Within an hour, while reading an association newsletter, I came up with the financial plan I need. It was a breakthrough moment for me. I now know what I need to do in order to meet my financial goals by year-end--and please my financial advisor in the process. You see, he's part of my team. I need him, and he needs me. We work together, or we can't work at all. I wasn't doing my part. But now, I can show him otherwise.

Now, when I meet him next week, I have a plan in place, I know what to do, and he'll help me carry it out. The worry, which was my obstacle in this case, is gone. And I can focus on my work again.

How about you? Have you had any good breakthroughs lately?

Celebrate your connections

Just a quick post to make a few announcements to let you know what's ahead at BIKE WITH JACKIE:

• RANDOM BIKE PHOTO I want to remind you about the new section I created this month. Called "Random Bike Photo," you'll see it on the right-hand side, above my bio/photo. I thought it would be fun to post bike photos on the blog--both for amusement and to help you associate the BIKE with positive mental imagery. At first, I thought I'd just post photos that I took myself, random bikes that I see during my travels, and such. But I had interest from some of my readers, and they've sent in their own photos (See Jennifer Fink's photo up now.). I have two more scheduled to run in June, and I have several more of my own to post. But if you come across a bike and want to take a picture of it for me, or have a photo already, let me know about it. Either post a comment in today's post or any post after today (I'll get it!), or follow me on Twitter (@bikelady), and we'll get that posted for you. The more unique the better. In other words, those bikes you see in unusual places, I like that. Well, using good judgment, of course.
  

• BOOK REVIEWS I've announced this before, but I have a library full of books that either I have read or will be reading for inspiration and advancing my knowledge about the mind/body connection, which is really what my BIKE philosophy is all about. So I'll be posting book reviews or more Q/As with authors in the future. Watch for those.

• READER PROFILES I also would like to incorporate a regular interview with my followers into the blog. For one, it helps me get to know you better. And secondly, it will allow readers to get to know you as well. You all have some kind of common thread that drives you here, so it'll be interesting to see what that might be. So I'll be contacting you periodically to see if you're interested in participating in that. The interview would allow me to find out what brought you here, what's working for you, and what we can do better in the future. Also, I'd include links to your books/blogs/Web sites, so you can gain a little advertising out of it as well. When your interview is posted, I hope you'll refer the site to friends, family and colleagues so you can fully enjoy your 15 minutes of fame.
  

If you have any suggestions, thoughts, or comments that you'd like to share now about other ways to celebrate connections, please post them below. As always, I love to hear what you have to say. I'm here to help you learn new ways to move your life forward, or to encourage you in any way possible.

Fresh start

Yesterday, I officially began participating in a blogathon. Should be a fun-filled month ahead, with lots of links and back and forth commenting. At least I hope it works out that way.

Today, I chose the above picture to post because I just returned from New York, where the tulips are blooming all over the city. I found these in Central Park. I took several shots, but this one was my favorite. Since I'm not feeling well (I returned home with a head cold. Not swine flu. No worries there.), I thought it would be nice to give myself--and you--some flowers and the promise of a fresh start. Don't know about you, but I feel better already. ;-)

At BIKE WITH JACKIE this month, during the blogathon, we'll focus on a theme--the fresh start.

I find when I am in healing mode (whether that's from a cold, a personal upset, or other unfortunate circumstance) I look for the beautiful things in life, tulips, for instance. What about you? When you're down or feeling lousy--no matter what the cause--are you able to look for, see, and focus on things that can set your mind at ease?

For the next 30 days or so, I'll share with you what I do to steer my thoughts in the direction of what I do to keep the momentum of forward movement going, even when a ride is not possible on the road. For me, the ride is always possible inside my head. It can be the same with you as well.

So, we'll start with tulips. Then, each day I'll post a new picture and comment on things that keep me going or things that help me stay focused on where I'm going. Maybe it'll help feed the creative juices inside of you, so that you can do the same for yourself for whatever your goals might be.

At BIKE WITH JACKIE, we focus on living life with purpose, making conscious choices, and moving toward that which feeds the soul. Flowers in a garden can feed the soul. We'll start there. Tomorrow, please come back to see what else.