I notice myself flourishing in the presence of some people. I make my best jokes, I feel light, I feel at ease, I feel understood, I feel at my best. I can count the number of those people on my hands. They are rare.
The question is, how can I be like this for others?
I remember an exercise we did a few years a go with a mentor where we were requested to practice listening more to the people in our lives. Whenever they struck up a conversation. We needed to listen attentively, hold back from switching the subject, and notice our urge to interrupt and talk about ourselves. If it’s the right time and place, we also needed to offer the space for them to continue their thought process, with as little probing as possible, until they figure out what they needed to do next all by themselves.
Being very similar to the exercise I mentioned in this post, it was such a hard experience to implement.
Try it and see firsthand the insights that will reveal themselves to you. Simply witnessing the urge to take the microphone and be under the spotlight is something totally worth catching.
If you get asked, answer shortly and then kick the ball back into their court. Make them the guru not you. Wonder what they could teach you. Listen with the purpose of learning something new about them and their worldview and maybe a useful fact or two. Be open and curious. Trust me, they will feel it and open up to you. They will feel you not rushing them so you’d take your turn to speak. For example, If my conversation partner tells me they are starting to wake up early and share their routine, I need to resist the urge to tell them I’ve been doing that since 2016 and have a whole thing around this habit.
It’s been a while since I practiced this, so it’s time I activated my listening muscle again. I think it grew weaker lately. Join me and let me know how it goes with you.
Although I expected it, taking a break from writing daily here last month did not leave me with so much to say that I couldn’t wait to get back to tell you about it.
Sure, I jotted some ideas here and there, but not the volume you’d think someone on a break would have. Once I ended my break by creating my first Instagram post last week, I started getting ideas on what’s next and how to build on what I shared. It was amazing to feel the creative juice flowing in my veins again. You know the one?
If you are on my social media, you would already know how excited I am about today. I got so excited that I sent a voice note to my favorite local Arabic radio station. Listen here.
It is the only Sunday in 2021 that also happens to be the beginning of a new month. This is very thrilling news for us humans according to studies. We love to start something on special days. It feels good to commit at the beginning of a new week, also the start of a new month, but when they coincide? The mix is magical, or it just me?
Working in a monthly-sales-target environment makes me even more aware of the beginnings and ends of months. Since last year, I got used to resetting myself every month by doing the monthly review exercise in which I reflect on the wins, lessons learned and goals progress during the past month, and also plan for the month ahead by adding important dates on calendar, scheduling some events and online content like my podcast episodes.
Today marks the beginning of a new quarter of the year, which gets me to another whole level of reviews. I love doing the quarterly reviews, and as I concluded before in April, I will take 2 weeks to do it properly and reset my goals for the coming 90 days. This is the way I believe each quarter should start.
Since it’s the mid-year mark too, I may need to re-visit some of the things that inspired me at the beginning of the year like my mantra of the year which is Practice Focused Attention.
Also, July is my birthday month, which means fun ahead, especially that many family members and friends are visiting for the first time in 2 years with the pandemic finally withdrawing.
I used to buy online courses in July that I didn’t finish, and thus developed a limiting belief for a while that “I don’t finish what I start”, only to realize later that it was not about me but the timing of those courses with respect to my life. It was simply not the right season. Therefore, I vowed not to create audacious goals for July anymore and just enjoy the flow of summer and the heightened social life that will be temporary up until most people travel back before schools start.
In order to honor this special month, I made 2 lists, let go list and keep list.
In July I want to let go of…
Waking up at 5AM because I will be staying up late most days.
Regular posting on Instagram (apart from stories), I will take a break.
Digital Rules: I will not apply strict mode when using social media this month. Most of my digital rules became habits anyway, like no Instagram before I leave the house in the morning.
In July I will keep…
15-minute morning meditation.
Daily one-sentence journal for my kids (I don’t like to see empty pages).
Five-minute gratitude journal.
Food journaling (I did not commit well in June).
Weekly 5-minute podcast episodes and of course newsletter.
Keep writing here at least 5 days a week. (Break in case of traveling only)read the update below
Doing less is a challenge for me. There are many items popping up in my head to add to the Keep List, however those are the only ones I want to track daily/weekly and the compass to a successful July.
It’s July 7th, and after reading the below email from Leo Babuta I felt this is exactly what I need. Therefore, I changed the point above about writing daily here. I am taking this month off. Anything I post would be a bonus.
I am still in the quarterly/birthday/mid-year reflective mode, plus summer fun family focused mode. Just to keep you in the picture, I am not taking off from everything, I still go to work every day.
See you soon.
Returning to Practices
I mentioned recently that I took the month of June off, and have just come back to work … what that means is restarting my regular routines & practices.
This has me reflecting on the act of re-starting something like a meditation practice, exercise routine, or work routine.
It can be tough for a lot of us when we get derailed and have to re-start. We can feel discouraged, because we have some idea that we should have not stopped or gotten interrupted, that something is wrong with us for not sticking to it (once again).
I say toss out that idea. It’s not so helpful.
Starting again is a part of the process. And the process is never over — you don’t form a habit or do a practice and then forget about it. You have to give it your focus, fully, and then give it your focus again when you get sidetracked. Just like returning to your breath in meditation after you’ve gotten distracted. Again and again, we come back.
Instead of thinking of it as a frustrating task to start again, we might think of it as returning home.
I wish you a continual returning home, for life. gratefully,
While doing my weekly preview, I noticed that last week was full of gatherings with friends.
That is a sentence I have not uttered in over a year. Life is returning to the way it was before March 2020, and we are appreciating this face to face time more than ever.
With these wonderful changes, I also noticed some old anxieties creeping up on me, like my comfort with my interior design skills, and wanting to upgrade all the furniture in my house at once so that I feel I can have guests over more readily. I also noticed that I am now aware enough to call them “anxieties”, while, before, they used to be sheer dread of visits.
Realizing this, I want to gently remind myself that I don’t need to wow anyone who visits us. I will only work to have our home clean and to feel welcoming and cozy. If I want to change furniture I need to plan it financially as the investment it is, and take my time to do it.
No rush.
No urgency.
I just need to make sure everyone feels comfortable and well taken care of.
Have you had a fire-in-heart-setting conversation lately?
This was my experience yesterday when I met 9 members of the Sunrise Winners group I’ve been leading for a while to wake up early and build morning routines that will serve them to win their day. We spent more than 2 hours talking about our morning habits and what’s working for us versus what’s not. We gave each other action points to work on to fine tune our routines or move a goal we were trying to achieve, and we will use the group for accountability.
The best part about this meetup was having a genuine shared interest; to wake up early to take care of ourselves before taking care of our world, be it a family, school, a career or a side business. I left the meeting feeling a charge like no other. I told my own accountability partner about it, and she promised me she will often remind me this is one of my favorite activities to elevate my state and that connection with like-minded people pushes me forward.
This feeling reminded me of this post I wrote before.
I wish you such flames of high energy, dear reader.
I was leaving for work and waiting for my car to open as usual by having my key in my bag, but it did not because it was not there.
I remembered that I last used it in the evening before to get my lunch leftovers from work to offer the stray cat that visits us every day (I’m that nice, in case you didn’t know). I went back in and checked the house and the corssbody bag I was wearing in the evening- to put my phone in while walking and listening to an audiobook on my Bluetooth headset- with no luck. I looked everywhere, including the trash, where I put away the empty lunch bag. I was late to work by then, so my mother-in-law, who lives downstairs, graciously offered me her car for the day.
Later that day, after we got back home, my husband checked the security cameras for any clues about the key’s whereabouts. They proved I got in the house carrying it in my hand, which was a proud moment for security cameras’ footage being put to good use and all.
Stop waiting for them to accept you, to embrace you, to be proud of you, to love you.
Do you understand that by waiting, you are giving up the responsibility of your own happiness over to them? Don’t you get that life is too short to put happiness off? It is too precious to wait for someone to change to feel good about yourself.
They have their own issues. They can’t give you the love the way you want them to. It’s about them not you or your worth. You are worthy one hundred percent. This is what they know. This is probably their best. Maybe they even do love you but their way is so far from what you need.
Accept them. Love them. Embrace them. Forgive them. Wish them well. Don’t expect too much from them. Never miss out on life by waiting for them.
One minute you are in the “yes, oh my God, life is amazing” zone, the next minute you are not.
You might be able to recognize the trigger that caused you to leave that sweet zone, or you just can’t put your finger on it, not right away.
You keep asking: “Why am I not there anymore? Is it the cold/hot/windy/rainy/whatever weather, is it the not enough/too many hours I slept, a morning routine step I missed? A shift in my hormone levels? What happened? And why is their behavior irritating me again?”
Better questions I am learning from Tara Brach follow the RAIN acronym, from her book Radical Compassion:
I like to tell students the story of a man who went to a mindfulness retreat because his therapist said he’d feel better if he learned to meditate. The retreat turned out to be a real roller coaster. Yes, there were moments of calm, but he also plunged deeply into fear, anger, and grief. The next time he saw his therapist, he told him he’d suffered horribly. “How could you have promised I’d feel better?” Nodding sagely, the therapist replied, “You are feeling better . . . you’re feeling your fear better, feeling your anger better, feeling your grief better!