For me, for the past 6 months, it’s been baseball.  Day in and day out, the sounds of the crack of the bat, the announcers’ steady voices, the cheer of the crowd… these have filled my car rides, my evenings spent working, and beautiful days out at the ballpark.  Yesterday was the end of the season, and I don’t quite know what I’m going to do with myself for the next 6 months.  It was the most perfectly beautiful day at the ballpark, and the perfect bookend to a season started on another beautiful day at the park.  I couldn’t stop thinking all day about how drastically my life has changed in the past 6 months, with the sounds of baseball as the soundtrack to those changes.  About all the growth that has led to this blog which epitomizes the changes that have happening, put in crystal clear relief by the direct easy comparison to a similar day, 6 months ago.  I’d like to think that maybe I’ve manifested that growth by an intense focus on self-care and alignment – just like after only writing this blog for a few weeks, I see joy everywhere I look.

What daily practices do you have that are subtly changing your life, day in and day out, and what milestones may help you notice the true enormity of those changes?  And what’s the soundtrack that underlies that life?

Esther

(It’s kind of a theme. )

Check out this mind blowing conversation from one of my mentors, Jonathan Fields, on his podcast and web TV show, the Good Life Project.  I couldn’t keep track of all the quotes that I want to sit with for longer, but I’ll start with “My path isn’t to write your story, it’s to write my story. And that doesn’t mean they don’t intersect.” Thoughts on getting real, with yourself and the world, believing in yourself, and knowing you who really are and how to show up in this world 100%.

<3

Esther

The summary of my day at Natural Products Expo East.  So much to see!  So much to learn!  But also this.  Mostly this.

Fun sighting in a garden.

I love how much contemplation this inspires.  What are you working on?  What would turning into a prince mean for you?  Makes me think.  

-Esther

Speaking of appreciating the moments…

“What if this is happiness?  What if happiness is the practice of the slow calligraphy of these small gestures?  What if it’s always been that way?”  

So what’s on your happy list?

Today I’m grateful for being grateful.  Does that sound crazy?  Inspired by this article, almost exactly a year ago I started logging one thing I was grateful for that day or that made me happy that day, by noting it on a small piece of paper and adding it nightly before bed into my gratitude jar.

At the beginning of this year I moved to keeping the below gratitude journal, and noting one thing became noting everything I could think of from that day but always at least 3 things, sometimes filling multiple pages but usually at least fully filling that day’s page. And then last night I just had this moment of profound appreciation.  I now have this book full of ~260 days (how far are we into the year??) of things I have been grateful for or that made me happy.  What an incredible log to be able to look back on and see the wondrous parts of this year.  I traveled with my iPad as my eReader in order to not travel with heavy books when I was on the road for 6 weeks this summer… but this physical, paper, journal was important enough to make the cut anyways and accompany me on the whole journey.

I don’t know when it happened, but now I find myself noticing gratitude throughout the day, being grateful for things that might never have registered before.  What an incredible practice this has been.  Have you ever considered a gratitude practice?  I would love to hear the details of yours if you have, and if you haven’t, I hereby highly recommend it. Being grateful FOR being grateful… and then being grateful for being grateful for being grateful… what an unbelievable feeling.

<3

Esther

Last Sunday’s comics featured the following gems, within one space of each other.  The joy it brings to find things like this out in the mainstream world….  <3

The Mutts is so simple, so perfect in its simplicity.

I hope you’re enjoying  your lazy Sunday as much as I’m enjoying mine.

Esther