-
A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 14 – An Authentic Life
“Design the Life of Your Dreams” is the title for Day 14 in Fiona Ferris’s book, 30 Chic Days. Fiona encourages us to conciously sit down and have a good, honest think about how we want to live our lives. She advises us to pick up pen and paper (or put fingers to keyboard) and make a list of everything that pops into our heads when we ask ourselves, “What really makes up the life of my dreams?” Big pieces and little details, list them without hesitation, especially without thinking of what anyone else would say or think if they saw your list. I tried this exercise in June of…
-
A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 11 – Inner Choice
In Fiona Ferris’s book, 30 Chic Days, Day 11 is “Adopt A Low-Drama Way of Being.” Fiona gives a lovely discussion of how letting go of being a “control freak” allows her to nurture an internal sense of beautiful calm and peace – to a large degree independent of the events and people around her. I can claim the role of poster child for Fiona’s description of a type-A, control freak – with all the near constant frustrations and irritations that accompany that role. It was (initally) quite a disheartening surprise when I truly recognized that the uiverse goes on merrily without any thought of adjusting itself to my…
-
Inspiration and Creativity as Springboards to a Beautifully-Lived Life
Want to add a sparkle to your day? Read Thirty More Chic Days: Creating an Inspired Mindset for a Magical Life by Fiona Ferris. Ferris offers a month of ideas that will turbocharge your inner Parisian chic-ster (and upgrade your daily life experience.) Each chapter represents a day in the month. And each day, the author presents an idea to “up-level” the reader’s ordinary life experience. Whether it’s an idea to free one’s creativity or an idea to set aside a little time for additional self-care, each nugget of advice is gently and persuasively described. One cannot help but be inspired by the author’s sense of enthusiasm and ingenuity! Her…
-
Sleep -vs- Calm
I tried a “schedule” experiment a few weeks ago. I read Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning: The Not So Obvious Secret Guarenteed to Transform Your Life and decided to try his 30-day challenge. Here is Elrod’s basic message: how we START our day basically sets the course for how our day goes. Start our day by scrambling out of bed late and panic-stricken (because we hit the snooze button too many times) and we tend to continue on a scrambling, chaotic-feeling course for the whole day. Start our day with a short series of activities that brings us to a calm, focused, grateful mental state and we move through…
-
Road Rage or Inner Peace?
Joy on Demand by Chade-Meng Tan. So how do we spend our time when caught in traffic or trapped in the slowest line ever experienced in the history of mankind? Tan gives us some ideas on how to creatively use these brief (or not so) interludes in our busy days. Humorous and thoughtful, Tan offers unusual wisedom and good advice presented in gentle, bite-sized nuggets. I’ve tried his approach to line-survival (the 20-second meditation on loving-kindness) and can honestly report that it works! I could feel my tension seep away as I breathed slowly and focused on the positive intention of sending the (very) slow clerk thoughts of loving-kindness. It…