A Vision for Your life

Each of us needs to have a mission statement and vision statement for our lives. Major corporations and even small ones craft a vision to inspire them to success. Likewise we need a vision to inspire us to achieve beyond our own expectations. To point us in new directions and give us the determination to get there by visualizing what it would be like when we have arrived. To quote Aristotle, "the soul never thinks without a picture." So, What is the vision for your life? Where do you see your most successful self? A few years ago I was trained by the Institute of Cultural Affairs in Community Facilitation. This course gave me the skills necessary to aid community groups with whom I was working to determine and achieve their common goals as a neighborhood. One of the exercises taught to me, I want to now share with you to aid you in determining and creating a map to achieving your life's goals. Its what I use to help me to stay focused on my goals and keep them tangible.

The key is begin at the end. Imagine yourself at your most successful. The ask the following questions and write the answers down:

1. What am I doing?
2. Where am I doing it?
3. How do I look?
4. How do I feel? This is an important one, holding on that feeling will make the goal seem that much more real.
5. Who surrounds you?
6. What feels good?
7. Who are you talking to for support?
8. Who is paying you?
9. How much are you getting paid?
10. Why are they paying you and not someone else?

When answering these questions, remember that its your ultimate success story. So there are no limitations, so dream big. Think about what your perfect world would look like. Just by answering these ten questions you can see clearly where you would like to be. Next you must note where you are now and then how you will get from point A to point B becomes your goals. You goals should be distant enough so that you can work for it, but clear enough to measure progress. This can be done quarterly, yearly, every five years, whenever, as your vision for yourself becomes refined, refine your goals. Next you should create a visual representation of this exercise. This is known as a Vision Board. I have been working on creating my vision board and will share it with you later. Now start work and begin to envision the most successful YOU.

Love now

Love now...

My cousin who I love dearly and I have this most interesting way of making our daily walk to the subway more interesting. We play this game where we try to imagine the life story of people we pass. It usually ends up leading back to our very lives, which does not surprise me. If you've read my earlier blogs you know by now that I think our stories are universal. Today, I practiced our game in reverse. I wonder what people who passed me on the subway, stood next to me on the train and passed me in the street could tell about me. Could they tell my story by just looking at me? Could they see all there was in the making of ME? With that thought in mind I smiled at the man seated in front of me on the train, held enough eye contact for a New Yorker, with the elderly woman who I passed on the platform this afternoon and probably every afternoon and starred at a baby being held my his mother longer that I should have. It was as if I wanted to shout, there's more to me than meets your eye!

Above all, I realize that this game made me stop and notice humanity, all about me. I've recently seen a video called the Love Now. I don't know if many of you have seen it. Today, I called to mind the part of the video that said, and this is loosely quoted, "We make pilgrimages to see the Dalai Lama, be in the land and go to the temples of Buddha and Gandhi for some moment of hope, when we encounter divinity all around us every day.... The whole world is our temple/church." More on this later. Check out this most inspiring video at http://www.lovenowmusic.com.

I am falling in love......

With me. I am beautiful. I am beautifully human. My face and body are different than it was years ago. But I am more beautiful now than then. I look at my face and body both changed by the birth of my two children and I stare. I stare at how knowing and instantly endearing my eyes are, I see them reflected in those of my children, how my smile has become more genuine, because I know true joy, how my arms are stronger from carrying my children. How my hips are more defined from giving birth, how my hair is longer and healthier from having a baby in my womb. I love my hands, they have become softer from being used to soothe, I love my breast they can sustain life. I love my skin how it melts into that of another and provides warmth. I love my mouth, the way my lips move when I say I love you and mean it. I love the way I move, with a purpose. My nakedness is appealing and when I am clothe I stand in the center of who I am. Please accept this not a sign of conceit but rather a sign of a woman coming in to her own. Let me inspire you to stand in front of the mirror naked and stare at your reflection with the utmost desire and see yourself for who you are today and how your beauty has grown. To all my girlfriends, excuse me when I stare...I am just amazed by your beauty!

The way you understand love is the way you make love

The way you understand anything is the way you make it, why not love. I have seen my mother make Roti on many occasions, yet I cannot make Roti, why? Because I don't understand all the steps involved in making my favorite dish. I just don't get it. So it is with my sex life, it is a direct response to my current understanding of love. When I understand the woman I am, I feel sexy. It is then my sex life takes on a clarity of its own, this is manifested in me being more open and direct about what makes me feel good and what it is that I want.

In my early twenties, I was not so sure about how I wanted to be loved, because I was not so sure about myself. What I knew about sex came from the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine, I read and then I acted, what I understood was what I read, someone else's experience written out to help us understand the act of sex, a manual much as a car manual is written by someone else and it helps you figure out how to open the hood and check the oil, etc. I know now having read my car's manual how to open the hood and check the oil, but I never do it because, I just don't quite get it. Likewise, though I am grateful to Cosmo for the tips and techniques I learned, it was not my thing. My thing is what I have learned over the years, its precious to me, I gained an understanding of what it is to love myself.

In my relationships throughout the years, I have loved every which way. I loved with guilt therefore I made love with a level of shame, I loved with fear, so I made love with fearing that if I was not good enough I would be abandoned. I loved with a sense of power, not in myself, but power in the act itself, so I made love selfishly, only to hold someone else captive. These experience I can now admit were not true expressions of love.

Now that I am older and I am growing in my understanding of me and my spirit and love itself, I can make love as if I better understand it. I can be sexy and open and even use some of the tools Cosmo taught me because I understand love to be the very nature of the divine, and I am a divine being. We are here because of the power of love. The act of creation is solely based on love, and as a woman I can I become so filled with love that I can create. That's sexy!

The power of love, as I now understand it to be, is the one thing that connects each and everyone of us beyond any barriers, in race, class, or geographical divide. So yes, from a woman's standpoint, sex does get better with age. Age brings understanding, and understaning brings orgasms. And in each orgasmic moment you will begin to see flashes of your divinity.

My obvious choice - Sleep

Sleep is my redeemer. It restores me, it renews me, it refines me. When asked what are my plans this weekend I want to reply SLEEP. When asked what I want to do by my partner I want to reply SLEEP. When asked what I want for Christmas, I want to reply SLEEP, Valentine's Day, Easter, my Birthday, you know the rest. As you can tell by now, I rarely get the needed amount of sleep. I am a mother of a thirteen month old who has been unable to separate my bed from his, an eight year old who is going through a week of not wanting to sleep in his bed without the lights on and regular checks from his mother, and a nocturnal boyfriend who feels that we should have logical conversations after two in the morning.

I love to sleep. I remember after the break up of any of my numerous relationships I would sleep it off. I sleep when I am happy, I sleep when I am sad, hungry, full, whatever, I sleep. When I arrived from my life changing trip across the country, I could not wait to fall asleep in familiar territory, my old room. I slept the way I slept when I was a teenager, in my teenager room, on my teenager bed. I was home again. This is what sleep signifies to me it signifies being home again, letting your guard down and disappearing from the world and all its entrappings for a while, if I am lucky a long while.

Sleep renew the cells of the body, renews the mind and generates new thought. It provides answers to our long held questions and creates a new beginning for you each time you awake. At this moment all the children are in bed and I am heading to my therapy session with my therapist Pillow. I will see you when I awake tomorrow. Goodnight.

Transparent Parents

So much has been made about the subject of transparency. Its been said that we need a transparent government, a transparent financial system, transparent corporations with transparent practices. How about transparent parents? Should we as parents be completely honest with our children? Should our children see through our goals, desires, dreams and household business? When I think of transparency I think of communication. Communication is the vehicle you take to the destination of Transparency. So I communicated to get to the bottom of how my children felt about this subject?

I asked their appointed mouth piece, Lauren my 11 year old what she thought about mommy sharing in all honesty our household business; and since the financial crisis has been all over the news I decided to frame the conversation around our family finances. I asked her would she be interested in knowing what our financial situation was and how this affects her? She wanted to know the how this would affect her part. Her response surprised me, she said kids want to know some of your business, not too much nor too little. This was an Aha! moment for me. At that moment, I realized that children want normalcy, a middle ground, we think as parents that we have that if we speak to our children we have to go to the extreme and reveal everything, but that is a learned adult trait. Children know what a grey area is innately. Basically, answer the questions they ask as honestly as possible, not having to delve into areas that they are not ready for. I strongly believe that when they ask that means they are ready to know.

I then said to her if I explained our financial goals she would understand better how this trickles down to her, why mommy says no so much. She agreed. See my financial goals should also be theirs. If they and I own our goals they would be easier to achieve. Our conversation reinforced that children understand much more that we think they do. Mine understand whats going on even when I don't talk to them about it. So its better that I engage them in conversation regarding the things that affects their everyday lives and their future. When saying no to them for some of their requests, like going to the movies every weekend or purchasing an item every time we go shopping. I ask them to suggest something we can do as a family that's for free or I say lets bake cookies at home instead of buying something. They begin to feel powerful in the role they play in the family, part of the decision making process. When ever a financial goal is accomplished, I intend to celebrate with them, my partners for our progress and great accomplishment.