Dance like nobody’s watching, sing like you don’t need the money.
Words to live by, although, in my case, it might be amended to “sing like nobody’s listening”. My poor cats have been subjected to my off-key but exuberant renditions of my favorite songs as they poured forth from my computer speakers the last couple of days. And yet, when I start to sing, instead of heading for cover, they all come into the room to join me. I guess Joy is attractive, no matter how pitchy it sounds!
Bringing back the music has brought on an incredibly productive period. Laundry is done, cat boxes cleaned, floors vacuumed and scrubbed (and re-swept since certain felines are incapable of using the sandbox without throwing the sand all over the bathroom), client work completed for one client. I even had time to change my dancing look tonight, which received very positive responses from my friends. It’s amazing that two days ago, I went dancing in what I’d worn all day, not really caring what I looked like. Today, it was a 180 degree turn. My hair was braided (which I never do unless Heather is here to do it for me), I wore a skirt instead of shorts, and a sparkly shirt. I forgot how much fun it is to line dance in a skirt! It spins and twirls and you can play with it, flicking it around…ok, so I’m like a kid with a new toy, even if it was a very old skirt!
Even more disturbing, is that I’m excited about going to the gym tomorrow! If a little bit of music can induce such dramatic changes in only a couple of days, what might we expect after a week???
The tiniest of changes can change your whole world
I’ve heard it said that a small change can have an enormous impact, but I’d never thought much of it…until now. Such a simple thing has changed my entire outlook. There is no limit to what a person can accomplish if they start by improving their outlook. Esther and Jerry Hicks talked about a continuum of emotions, with the deepest, darkest despair at the bottom, and complete and utter joy at the top. Each small step up or down that continuum has the power to impact our entire life. Though it is possible to stay at the very bottom indefinitely without concerted effort, it is difficult if not impossible to remain at the top 100% of the time. Life interferes and our joy slips. For each of us, it has to slip to a different point before we stop and say “Now wait a minute! What’s going on here? What did you do with my Joy?”
It’s at that point where we aren’t feeling as good as we’d like to that we start making those small changes which will put us back at the top of the continuum, one baby step at a time. I’m not at the peak of joyousness right now, but I’m several steps up from where I was two days ago. Isn’t that what’s called “progress”? I don’t know about you, but I’ll take that progress any day!
If my own baby steps weren’t enough, taking a little extra effort with my appearance drew so many compliments that I moved a couple more steps up the continuum with no additional effort on my part! How’s that for bonus points? I don’t think there’s a human alive who doesn’t respond to compliments. Yes, many of us do, or have at some point told ourselves that we didn’t deserve the compliments, but hopefully, by now, we’ve stopped trash talking ourselves enough to accept the compliments gracefully and enjoy the rush of positive energy, truly believing that we deserve it.
That really is the key to moving up that continuum. We have to begin by being kinder to ourselves, loving ourselves and seeing our own beauty. It doesn’t matter if we don’t meet society’s size standards, or if our features aren’t perfectly symmetrical. True beauty doesn’t lie in our outer packaging anyway. The most beautiful people I know are kind, caring individuals, both to others and to themselves.
As I sit here typing, thinking and reworking, the song “You’ve Got a Friend” is playing. “Ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend? When people can be so cold, they’ll hurt you and dessert you. They’ll take your soul if you let them, but don’t you let them.” I think that says it all. That is where our true beauty lies: in being a friend, to others, to ourselves, to our animals, and to our planet.
Stepping off the soap box now to give you tonight’s gratitudes:
1. I am grateful for my friends who can be counted on to lift my spirits, even when they’ve dropped lower than normal.
2. I am grateful for my cats who love me (and my less than perfect singing voice) no matter what, and show me in little ways every day.
3. I am grateful for the lessons I began learning more than 15 years ago which allow me to recognize negative thoughts and behavior and turn them around before they can damage my life, or let me slide into a depressive state.
4. I am grateful for examples which show me where I don’t want to go, even more than those which show me where I do want to go. They inspire me to move towards the shinier, happier places.
5. I am grateful for wonderful nights of dancing, chatting with friends, sharing stories and most of all, the joy of just moving our bodies to music we love.
6. I am grateful for abundance: love, joy, music, friendship, caring, kindness, harmony, peace, health and prosperity.
Namaste
That’s a good list of gratitudes.
How about adding some of these to the list?
Thank you. I post gratitudes every day, and they’re specific to me. I encourage everyone to make lists of their own. It’s great for raising your vibration or just for making you feel encouraged when you’re down. But thank you for the suggestions.
Oh, you make me want to dance. Your joy is infectious. If only I could don a skirt and dance as if my hips were newly made and my knee didn’t have to do so much work supporting my old body. If i could just forget my pain, maybe I could dance. At least I can sing. That’s a pleasure available to nearly everyone. Just reading about how it affected you, makes me want to sing.
Francene, there’s nothing wrong with doing what you can. I’m glad my joy made you think about singing. You can also close your eyes and don that beautiful skirt in your mind where you can dance as much and as long as you like!