Category: Gratitude Course

50 Things That Make Me Happy

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

In the free series of writing prompts I put together, one of the prompts is to make a list of 50 things that make you happy. I love lists (they’re one of the things that makes me happy!), and I love using lists as a way to kick-start my writing.

It’s not writing, it’s making a list!

Writing lists appeals so much to my desire for organization, neatness, structure, and order.

Today’s prompt is to make a list of things that make you feel good. If you’d like, scratch out your own list, or enjoy perusing my list, below.

1. When the sky fades from baby blue to yellow in one stunning moment, just before the sky dips into brilliant indigo and deepens to darkness. The hint of a highlight of the last moment of sun over the rooftops, indicating the near-closing of a day.

2. The immensity of oceans, water, and the seaside. Sitting by the sound of swelling waves lapping up at your toes. Where the sky meets the waves meet you.

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3. Swimming, being in water, being immersed in water, being hugged by water.

4. Showers, the tickle of rainfall shower heads, the drizzle of an open-air shower on a hot summer day, opening your mouth to capture part of the rain, closing your eyes, dreaming up the best ideas inside a steady trickle of wet noise.

5. Baths. Luxurious, delicious baths. Bath houses. Steam rooms and cold baths and warm baths and Japanese bath houses and Russian-Turkish baths. The community aspect of bath houses in the winter. The solo aspect of rejuvenating your body.

6. Beaches.Sand in your toes. Sand just warm enough to melt you in it, but not too hot to burn your toes. Playing volleyball in the sand.

7. Forests. Canopies of leaves, overhead roofs, green for days. Multiple colors of green, a rainbow of greens, bright and neon to dark and seductive.

8. Hidden trails and hiking adventures. Leaves, trees, and paths beckoning you to follow them. Wandering in the woods on a mindful adventure.

9. Camping. Spending time outdoors. Un-plugging. Doing things more slowly. Cooking food. Stinking up like campfire smoke.

10. Cabins. Wooden cabins, small cabins, cabins with shared kitchens.

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11. Retreats and adventures with close groups of friends. Sharing a home, a meal, a weekend with people you choose to call family.

12. Shared silence. Conversational silence. Understanding the beauty of a pause as rich as the words just spoken beforehand.

13. Parallel play. Being in the same room as someone and not having your attention commanded by the ego or insecurity of the person across from you. Dwelling in collective, simultaneous absorption in a project or task and relishing in the depth of self-thought.

14. Learning how to sing. Music, of all forms. Wiggling your hips to shake off the day.

15. Afghans and blankets! Particularly tossed up over my head and cuddling me up.

16. Cuddles. Hugs and snuggles and couch cuddles. Pile-ups with family and getting 5 people in a bed just for hugs. Promoting hug parties instead of standing and gabbing when I get tired of extroverted party antics.

17. Really, really good conversations. Conversations that unfold over a period of days, exploring an idea, returning to it, delving into it, pausing, becoming something again.

18. The perfect chair to sit in.

19. Reading good books: books that sweep you up and away inside of their ideas or adventures.

20. Exploring new places as a way of staying present with yourself.

21. Sleep that feels just right and wakes you up feeling refreshed.

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22. Fractal patterns and other patterns in nature. Wondering in the beauty of existing forms, creations, and beings. Sinking into the awe of it all.

23. A black hardcover moleskin.

24. Pens! Pilot pens, V5 thickness. Black ink. Plus back-up roller-ball pens for airplanes, because sadly these favorite pens can explode on airplanes.

25. Cards, notepaper, stationary, letters. A box of unwritten cards beckoning to be written. An enveloped of letters stashed away in my backpack. Writing letters to friends as often as daily.

26. Text messages with friends for no reason.

27. Laughing at inside jokes. Being unable to stop laughing. Uncontrollable giggles. Things that make you giggle with their memory, hours and days later.

28. Monthly friend dates with people far away, people all over the world.

29. Someone who sends the perfect Google calendar invitation, knows their way around online organization tools, and is as geeky as you are about email, scheduling, and notifications. You breathe out. They get it. YES.

30. Making friends on the internet without ever moving past the social connection. Just knowing that you know each other are there. Having that be a joy in itself, and enough, for right now.

31. Writing. Writing in my journal, writing 750 words, writing a blog post, writing an email. Writing out my feelings, my ideas, my worries, my anxieties. Even writing in the middle of the night, when I have to — I still love it.

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32.Writing lists!

33. The perfect soup-plate bowl. One plate-bowl to rule them all.

34. Family. Sisters. Brothers. Cousins.

35. Alex’s cuddles, his smile, his hands, his kind spirit. Talking to Alex when I’m having a rough day and knowing he’ll let me cry and he’ll rub my back.

36. Bicycles. Summertime air. Being outdoors.

37. Bourbon or a really delicious cocktail from Three Sisters in Brooklyn. (I’m longing for one — sometime, soon enough, we’ll have another one.)

38. Cooking potluck dinners for friends. Stews made in one large Creuset pot, soaking up flavors all day.

39. The view from up above — aerial views from a plane.

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40. Thanksgiving. Gratitude. Christmas with the family.

41. Snow Fall. Winter boots.

42. All of my Ecco shoes (they are the BEST). A good brand that treats you well. Excellent customer service.

43. The sound of rain when you’re inside.

44. Blossoms bursting open on an early day of Spring. The first signs of winter shaking off it’s cool slumber into the explosive greenery that is Spring. The fierce trumpeting of birds, flowers, and forests in a vibrant sense of newness and noise.

45. Volleyball games outside. Soccer games. Pick-up soccer! The Brooklyn Bridge Waterfront park. Ultimate frisbee. Running in cleats. Bicycling home. Breathing hard.

46. Yoga. Breathwork. Connecting to your self, your mind, your spirit, your body. Union. Refreshing realizations.

47. Meditation. Easy music to put you into a peaceful resting. Finding a place of stillness in your seat and relishing in it. A warm cup of tea and gazing out the window. Letting the thoughts untangle, tumble out. Slowing down. Breathing.

48. Lofts and unexpected nooks and crannies inside of houses.

49. Urban patterns. Architecture. Understanding that everything outside is built, made-up, born of someone’s imagination and patterning. Space, time, movement, and human behavior. Small cities and big bustling metropolis’. Rural farms and tiny cabins.

50. Being connected to each other.

Adding Gratitude Into Your Life: A December Journey

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This week, while in the snowy mountains of Colorado, I felt called to open up Grace & Gratitude again for a winter session. We’ll begin December 4th and end December 20th. If you’d like to join us, sign up here.

2013.

The plane was a few hundred feet from landing in my home state, and I could see the familiar urban shapes of houses and city streets from outside my window.

Brooklyn brownstones neatly crowded the landscape, small boxes packed in together against the expansive network of streets. The rivers of New York spread out in either direction, framing the famous boroughs.

For the last twelve hours, I sat on a plane, staring out the window, reflecting on where I’d been. The sight of my home country brought tears to my eyes—it was so good to be home. For the past ten days, I’d been witness to the conflict in the Middle East, as a documentarian for a new water project attempting to bring clean water to a community of 6,000 land-locked refugees.

Showers. Free, open streets. The ability to leap into the sky and turn halfway around the world in less than a day. Power. Internet. My family.

I wanted to cry. There was so much to be grateful for.

I wanted to help.

I am often overwhelmed by the amount of good that comes into my life. There is so much that comes my way that it regularly brings me to tears, and I well up in thanks—thanks that I get to be alive, that I get to be here, that I have two hands and a voice and a way to make a difference—right here, right now.

For the longest time, however, I felt like I couldn’t possible deserve it. Like somehow the universe had goofed with all of these gifts, and would be taking them back at some point. What did I, this regular girl from California, have that could possibly mean I deserved all of this?

Why did I get to live this life and yet people around the world were suffering daily?

I wonder if that’s why I chased so many opportunities and accomplishments—working harder and harder just to repay this debt I felt I had for being given more than I thought I deserved.

Sometimes, when painful moments came my way, it was almost a relief. There, it was saying. Now everything is balanced out. You didn’t deserve all that goodness before, the voice in my head hinted.

Over time, however, I’ve come slowly to realize (through time, patience, and LOTS of learning and reflecting)–that you don’t have to do anything to experience grace and gratitude.

Just being you, exactly as you are, in the brilliance of yourself and your soul, is enough.

The ability to experience grace is a heart-opening experience that doesn’t require more pushing or doing—it’s about softening, allowing, listening, and breathing in the beauty of the present moment that swirls up all around you.

Paradoxically, letting go is some of the hardest work in the world.

Our egos, our beliefs, our habits, and the swirling world around us can get really confusing.

And we forget.

You are already enough. You are worthy and capable of love. You are a brilliant creation. Inside of you, already, right now—is a well of light and joy. I imagine your soul, your essence, as a beaming white orb of light, a brilliant light and life that’s deliciously and uniquely you.

Over time, however, we build up layers of crud and plaque—hardness and habits from dealing with the world—and we lose touch with this light center.

Call it Spirit, Light, God, the Universe, blessings, or Shiva-Shakti—it’s there. (You can name it what you want—I’ll reference religion and various opinions in my teaching, but I won’t preach to you from a particular doctrine beyond my belief in the need for radical self-acceptance and self-love.)

My life, to date, hasn’t been free of heartache and trauma; and I’m not sure there is a life free of pain or sorrow, except perhaps transcendent Buddhists and angels—and I’m afraid I don’t know all of the conclusive answers here. (I’ll let the hundreds of spirituality books and teachers chime in on this one).

Yet inside of and among it all, there’s still a quiet whisper. If you’ll hear it. If you’ll allow it. And it says something like this:

Life is a gift; an act of grace in itself.

Your life is a gift.

And then, in haste, in urgency, I began piling up notes quickly and easily, like many of my short programs. Words and whispers, a collection of ideas, a series of practices. In a few short days, Grace and Gratitude, a two-week journey, was born. A series of small exercises, of five-minute practices, of connecting to each other.

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I first ran this program in 2013, with a crew of 83 people from around the world. It was a whisper of an idea, and I decided to run with it — I didn’t know what to expect, and the results really made me open my eyes.

Folks wrote in with tears in their eyes, with stories to share, and with a whispered thank you for encouraging them to take this time for themselves.

Two sisters, Easkey and Beckey-Finn, used the program to reconnect to each other and spend a year writing back and forth as they traveled the world on their independent journeys.

A woman in London wrote to me to tell me she conceived after several years of trying while taking this program. (I can’t guarantee fertility results, but WOW. There definitely is something powerful about opening up to gratitude & grace.)

I’m opening up this program for two weeks, beginning December 4th. Join us.

In a world filled with email, urgency, and haste — this is a chance to breathe softness and light into your life again. Just a little bit at a time — nothing overwhelming or sudden.

It can be lovely.

And I think it’s also going to be wonderful.

This small program — of stories, emails, and 5-minute exercise for two weeks — was born out of my need to look inwards, to reflect.

The details

Full details on the course are here.
Holiday registration ($47)

Please sign up by Friday, December 4th, to begin with us. This year, I’m taking the price down to $47 for registrations because I’d like for anyone who wants to, to join me (the course is normally $150).

If you need to join and have particular financial hardship, email me for scholarship details.

Register by December 4th to join us. Course begins December 4th.

With love and gratitude,

Sarah

Slowing down to connect across the world: two sisters, reconnecting. {Guest reflections by Easkey and Beckey-Finn Britton}

Posted on by Sarah K Peck
Easkey Tree Hugging
 

You immediately inspired me to have a ‘slow morning’ – get my body moving with some gentle, nourishing stretches and movements (from Dad’s routine!), make French press coffee and sit on the deck in the morning sun thinking nothing at all. Spying some wild blueberries on a nearby bush and foraging for my breakfast… Hope you get in the sea. I walked barefoot today, too.

– Easkey, October 2014

I was grateful my big sister, Easkey, decided she wanted to do this with me out of all the people in her world. For the first time in a long while I saw things for what they were, an amazing chance to connect with a sister whose path in life zigzags all over the world, exploring every nook and cranny, while mine follows the river, always flowing forward, always at home within itself. It was a chance that could not be missed. – Beckey-Finn, October 2014

Quiet whispers of intuition: seedlings, writings, and an idea.

It was hushed and quiet during the late Fall of 2013 in brownstone Brooklyn; the outside world was damp and leaf-strewn. I curled up at my writing desk inside my new apartment, warm yellow lights casting into the early darkness each afternoon as I carved out a new routine in a brand-new city. That night, I scribbled down a few ideas for a series I wanted to create.

Grace… and openness, I sketched. Movement and being. Presence. Gratitude. I jotted down some notes, catching ideas into my moleskine. Practices that move your body, open your mind, encourage you to reflect, connect, nourish. A series of letters, or emails. Something to connect us. Something deeper than just writing. And I love writing.

But could I do that by email?

And would anyone want it?

Quiet whispers of intuition don’t come stomping and shouting into my life.

They come briefly, a light wind, a stretch here and there, an idea that pops into mind while I’m journaling. It’s as though my adult self turns around in my chair to see a five-year old’s whimsy and curious eyes, asking me to come and play. If I shut it out, it runs away.

Our intuition doesn’t shout at us until we’ve really misbehaved.

Luckily, I listened.

I scratched and scrawled, wrote and edited, and made a new adventure — a two-week guided journey, a series of stories delivered from me to you, virtually, in this magical process that the internet lets us have.

Into my journals went the story of what I was making. Out onto the screen came an email. I pressed publish, that tantalizing blue button that still scares me, and went to sleep.

That week, people responded to my whisper. In fact, it was the highest course enrollment I’d ever had, and for a program I still didn’t quite understand.

We all took a breath and jumped in.

This was the Fall of 2013.

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Grace and Gratitude: A Journey Inwards

It’s been a year since I launched the first series, and in the space in between, thousands of emails have been quietly delivered to inboxes around the world with prompts to pause, stretch, listen, and weed out space in your life and mind. I follow the journeys and the progress through email letters, instagram photos, and I even get to form new friendships with lovely souls who join in and understand what I’m trying to do.

Over the course of the last twelve months, I’ve heard beautiful stories from hundreds of people around the world. “Thank you,” they share with me. “This is exactly what I needed.” One woman wrote in to tell me that on the last day of the course, she conceived — after several years of infertility.

In the journey, I ask people to soften to their inner heart, to listen to their spirit whispers, and to find happiness in the life they have all around them. Sometimes, we just need a new frame with which to see.

And today, two sisters (and friends of mine) shared with me the journey they took together, last Fall, on their own Grace and Gratitude journey. I’ve opened up my blog to them as a guest series and a window into the power of gratitude. They’ve inspired me so much, and I hope their stories inspire you as well.

Meet Beckey-Finn and Easkey Britton: Two sisters who decided to share a journey together to experience gratitude, open to grace, and reconnect to each other. They’ve both written their stories — here’s what can happen when you open your heart.

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Two sisters. One journey, one moment at a time.
Part 1: By Easkey Britton

Dear Beckey-Finn: I don’t want or need anyone to tell me it will be alright (because I know it will) but I feel shit and want to be ok with that for a little while… until it passes. I realise it is so much easier to have gratitude when we feel happy and so much easier to have self-pity/loathing when we feel down. I look forward to looking inward with a fresh start tomorrow (I thought today would be my fresh start but it didn’t happen) with gratitude for all that I am. For now I’m Easkey – tired, sore and a little sad. Already feel better having shared this with you!
— Easkey, March 2014-11-04

It’s been a year of grace and gratitude, a journey shared with my little sister, Beckey-Finn.

I live a nomadic lifestyle that takes me far from home throughout the year, and it sometimes makes sustaining and nurturing a meaningful connection with those I love most challenging, especially family.

We know they aren’t going to abandon us, we will remain sisters for life and yet it is too easy to take that bond for granted. I didn’t want us to drift apart, I wanted to find a way to share with her those parts of my life that only a sister could understand, even if we couldn’t be together all the time and instead of feeling there would never be enough time to catch up on all the important things we were facing and going through in life.

Sarah’s Grace and Gratitude course offered the perfect opportunity for us to reconnect and by sharing the journey, make it stronger for both of us. Ideally we ‘d do this in person, create a lovely space, wrap up together on a sofa, candles lit, other times it is by Skype or email writing our thoughts – giving and receiving. It is a practice that has strengthened our bond beyond imagining. With my restless, nomadic existence and her home-grown life, instead of drifting further apart we are closer than ever. It hasn’t always been a smooth ride but we hold each other accountable, finding the yin to our yang.

My Grace and Gratitude practice has been an expansive heart opening process. A kind of release brought about through powerful, and sometimes painful, letting go.

“Weeding out the weeds” – the practice of letting go of what no longer serves me – has left space to cultivate a practice of simple, creative habits and a safe space for those monthly check-ins with my sister.

It has allowed me to slowly begin to live with greater honesty that comes from truly listening to ourselves, each other and the world around us.

There have been many times I’ve felt on the edge of being broken but instead of pushing harder or becoming consumed by the need to control the outcome, our Grace and Gratitude practice has reminded me the power of process: the process of being kind to myself and giving myself permission to feel however I feel and be ok with that, to just sit with it and breathe a while. 

Sometimes my Grace and Gratitude practice is more subtle and less explicit.

Grace is more subtle, but equally powerful — if not more so. I understand it as a dynamic dance.

It’s about getting grounded, presence, conscious mindfulness, an exercise in Be Here Now… my mantra became ‘make space for grace’ by weeding, de-cluttering, clearing, literally and figuratively.

Space to let go, grow and for creativity to flourish.

One of the practices asks you, “what will you do to listen to your heart?” It became okay to stop doing what I’ve always done if it no longer served me, no longer lit me up deep inside. I discovered I didn’t have to stop to be still but could find my stillness in movement, or as Nithya Shanti so beautifully described it, “be steady in movement and discern flow in stillness.”

My Grace & Gratitude practice has taught me how to be kinder to myself and to give thanks for my gifts – where I’ve come from and all that I’ve already don’t. Before I rush to the next big thing, my Grace & Gratitude sessions with my sister remind me to reflect, to look at where I want to go. And to know that I am already enough.

Easkey Power Pose

Some of my favourite G&G practices:

My ‘G&G power pose’: being grounded is very important to me because I’m so often full of ideas, facing forward, restless and constantly moving, living an unpredictable lifestyle.

Being in nature or connected to my environment is hugely important for me and makes me come alive. Gratitude has taught me the importance of making time for play and wonder.

So I like to be in the elements and feel the world around me through all my senses. I drink in the horizon, close my eyes and feel how the wind brushes my cheeks or the sun gently kisses the back of my neck. To feel the solidness of the earth beneath my feet, or better yet to go barefoot and dip my feet in the sea or wriggle my toes in the grass and stretch my fingertips skywards like a universal embrace. It teaches you how to live wholeheartedly in each moment.

My gratitude prayer: Before I go to sleep I name the one thing I’m most grateful for that day, the one thing that surprised me, and the one thing that touched my heart.

When we started last year we both reflected on what grace and gratitude meant for us:

It’s important to share gratitude. Grace is that feeling you get when you’re in sync with something. My grace is being able to take life, not necessarily in my stride, but with a clear mind and desire to be in that moment. It’s opening up to the universe and allowing it to shower you in whatever it has to offer and give.What surprised me is how many things I’m grateful for that I didn’t even acknowledge or think about or realise!

— Beckey-Finn, December 2013

I think vulnerability and humility are the sister and brother of grace and gratitude. Grace is not turning a blind eye to what we have the power to change. Grace is acceptance, surrender and letting go… it’s knowing when to say no thank you so you can say yes tomorrow…grace is being open to change, to the unknown, embracing uncertainty, honouring our humility and vulnerability. Openness. Space. Standing tall. Moving from the core but with fluidity. Smiling.

— Easkey, December 2013

Going forward, I want to keep working on practicing ‘creative habits’, to explore and learn more about mindfulness (or blue-mind-fulness, how to incorporate my experiences and insights from the sea and surf to better understand myself and others) and to listen better to myself and others. 

I’m a water dancer and a wave maker.

A seeker and explorer.

Freedom and passion are the code I live by.

Grace and gratitude are my compass.

I’m so happy for your transformation, guidance and opportunity to share with you Beckey-Finn.

Love and gratitude,
Your big sister
Easkey

A sister-sister journey of grace and gratitude
Part 2: Beckey-Finn

It all started with a bit of a random email from my big sis asking if I wanted to take part in the Grace and Gratitude course. My initial thoughts were a lot of ‘ehhhhhh… huh?! Sounds a bit weird!’

But it was right at this moment that my Grace and Gratitude journey really started. I was graceful in opening myself up to the experience instead of shying away. I was grateful my big sister, Easkey, decided she wanted to do this with me out of all the people in her world.

For the first time in a long while I saw things for what they were, an amazing chance to connect with a sister whose path in life zigzags all over the world exploring every nook and cranny while mine follows the river, always flowing forward, always at home within itself.

It was a chance that could not be missed. 

My Grace & Gratitude practice has been a journey to the expanse of the ocean. It has opened me to moving with the rapids, twists and turns of my path while still maintaining the laid back flow of who I am (the trick is to dive in deep where it’s calmest).

For me, it is a journey that happens beneath the surface of who I am, beneath the day to day of my life, something that has become a part of me.

Being a journey it has been easy, tough and everything in between for both of us but meeting each other in whatever way we can on the first Sunday of every month gives us the space to really reflect on the month gone and the month to come. This is important to me, as I am a very reflective person but now have less time in my life for it. So, I always know that I will have that space at least once a month with someone I can trust absolutely and completely with my heart and soul. 

What is most incredible about our monthly Grace & Gratitude practice is that we are forever finding what we need in these moments within each other. I have learnt to live more dynamically, dancing with grace, accepting the opportunities that present themselves even if they take up my time, which is second nature to Easkey. And she has learnt to stop, breathe in gratitude during the pauses that present themselves in her busy life instead of filling them which is very me. I realise more and more we bring out the best in each other and have become a great support for each other where there never seemed to be enough time and space to do so before.

You immediately inspired me to have a ‘slow morning’ – get my body moving with some gentle, nourishing stretches and movements (from Dad’s routine!), make French press coffee and sit on the deck in the morning sun thinking nothing at all. Spying some wild blueberries on a nearby bush and foraging for my breakfast… Hope you get in the sea. I walked barefoot today too. — Easkey, October 2014

By continuing to practice Grace & Gratitude we have realise that there are these themes in our lives that we struggle with. For me it is time and for my big sister it is space. By having grace and gratitude practices, and creating this time and space for each other, we have learnt to harmonise better with these themes. Working with them instead of fighting them.

Life Pie

Some of my favourite G&G practices:

Creative/body moments: I take little moments out of my workday to doodle on my doodle wall or to do some stretches on my yoga mat (usually with my cat, Fin, joining in). Taking that moment to be graceful in a little bit of play and give some gratitude to my body.

100 happy days: This was a challenge I decided to do when I first started my business in January this year, taking a picture of something that made me happy or grateful that day. It has made me far more aware of all the small things I am grateful for in my day to day that got overlooked before Grace & Gratitude. I spot these things all the time now.

It is so important for me to continue to have this in my life. Every month it grows and I want to incorporate more active practices which Easkey is very good at such as the life pie and soul collaging.

Big sis, every practice and every chance we get to reflect makes me more and more grateful to have you as my sister! 

Big hugs,
Lil sis
Beckey-Finn

Beckey-Finn Britton is a filmmaker and longboarder from the North West coast of Ireland. She hails from the Britton surfing family in Donegal where life evolves around the sea. She works as a Creative digital Media Consultant at her own business, Bexter Productions, and has recently started working with coastal environmental organisation, Clean Coasts, as their digital media and community engagement officer.

Easkey Britton is an internationally renowned professional surfer, artist, scientist and explorer from Ireland, with a PhD in Environment and Society. Her parents taught her to surf when she was four years old and her life has revolved around surfing ever since. She is co-founder of the non-profit Waves of Freedom which uses the power of surfing as a creative medium for social change.

Have You Ever Lost Your Temper?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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This is an excerpt of an essay from my twelve-essay short series on Grace and Gratitude. Each day, I send a story with a nugget, an idea, and a practice — everything from losing your temper, to finding small happiness, to practicing meditation. The program is here; or just enjoy the essay below as a window into our world.

The other day I lost my temper.

I’d been holding on tightly to so many projects, and I was carrying both loss and love in my heart. An email came in and I swore softly under my breath. (Edit: perhaps not so softly). I stomped into the kitchen and started muttering. 

This person, I thought angrily, had no right to be so demanding about the project we were working on. I proceeded to launch into a tirade, ranting about the terrors of this person, sending grenades of vicious language into our living room from the kitchen table. My honey raised an eyebrow from his chair in our office and turned around, listening. He hadn’t seen me like this too often.

My mind and tongue got swept up into a spew of vitriol. Getting angrier seemed to somehow make me… angrier. 

And in the middle of, around the third or fourth paragraph, my body started to sag. I felt energy fall out of my body, and somehow I felt even worse. The crazy yelling wasn’t helping at all. I was just working myself up into a funk and I was horrified at the things that were coming out of me. It was like anger spewed out of me and I had lost myself in a tirade of feelings just because I could. For a brief second, I saw myself from across the room—this human body standing in the kitchen, frothing anger at the mouth. 

And in that realization, 

I took a breath. 

I paused. 

I stopped talking for one second.

And changed my mind.

“Oh noooo.” I said to my partner, my face scrunching up into a mash-up of worry and frustration, gasping breath in, 

“I don’t like what’s happening. I don’t like talking like this. I need to watch my tongue. What’s happening?” 

I exhaled completely, shakily. I called a time-out on myself. (I think my partner thinks I’m comical when I do stuff like this). Marched myself into the other room and sat down on the bed, steaming mad, huffing and puffing, shaking and stomping, still angry, but with enough of a fraction of awareness to take my piping-mad self into the other room and give her a little time out.

“You know what?” I yelled from the other room.

“I’m going to go shower and stop talking and see if I can figure out some of these feelings. I’m sorry about losing my temper.”

It came out “I’M SOR-RY I LOST MY TEMPER. HUMPH.”

I walked (stomped) out and headed to the shower. Not the classiest apology, but.

That. 

That was a moment of grace. 

It’s not about being perfect and never making mistakes (Please! Who are we kidding?). 

It’s about giving your self the grace to become aware in the present and to shift your thoughts or your behavior.

You’re allowed to be imperfect, and you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to edit yourself, reflect, and improve. It’s about owning where you are at this exact moment. It’s about being honest and brave. And it’s about being able to say,

“Oh gosh, that just isn’t what I meant to do. That’s not what I want to be. I am so sorry, and I’m going to shift. Right now, now that I’m aware, I’m going to change my mind.”

And

I have permission to do it another way.

As a husband or a wife, you can pivot. When you make a mistake and you yell at your child, you’re allowed to go in and say to your partner, “I think I goofed. I think I did that wrong. Can you help? I’d like to find a better way.”

And

“That didn’t feel good. I want to do it better next time.” 

This is a moment of grace. Of presence. Of foundation.

Here’s the interesting thing about grace: grace can happen anytime. Grace can happen anywhere. It’s a softening, a releasing, and a letting go. It’s permission that you maybe don’t have everything right. And you can pivot in a minute. You are allowed to be you. 

Words of wisdom: you’re allowed to make mistakes. And have feelings. 

As humans, part of our job is allowing ourselves to make mistakes, acknowledge them, own up to them, and reaching out if we need to. You’ll know the feeling. You have a pang, a little emotional signal shooting up at you when you think that maybe you’ve over done it, but you stubbornly don’t want to admit it.

Feelings are our body’s way of talking to us. Most people tend to ignore their feelings or cover them up by stuffing them under a rug or trying to forget what happened and move on. We puff up and change our behavior largely because we just aren’t sure what to do with that firestorm of feelings brewing beneath the surface. It’s not entirely our fault, either: we don’t have great language (or cultural norms) for talking about and identifying all those feelings we have inside. 

When you start to analyze what the feelings are behind the emotions and reactions, it will become easier to understand your reaction to different people and events and learn from it. 

The more awareness and emotional intelligence you have around your feelings, the less you become a reaction fuse, and the more you’re able to look inwards and say, “Huh, that really made me angry. She pushed a nerve—she triggered this insecurity within me. I now have a choice in how I react.” (The alternative is a blind “nerve-pushed! nerve-pushed!” reaction). 

The more you can take a look at the deeper feelings behind every action, and how each feeling connects to an action, the easier it gets to connect the feeling to the action in real time. To be fair, however, sometimes it takes me months to figure out what the real feelings are behind something that happens; other times the connections become more and more apparent.

Forgiveness—of both ourselves and of others—isn’t about forgetting or surrendering to other people. Forgiveness is seeing things as they really are. It’s about seeing yourself as you really are (and the inner stories you have, the feelings you’re feeling, and the work that you’re holding); and it’s about seeing other people as who they are, in real time. It’s about realizing that everyone has their own body of work to do. 

“Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now.” —Marianne Williamson

The more you practice, the easier it gets.

There’s a really important point about this exercise that’s worth pointing out: the more you practice it, the easier it gets.

In life, there are examples of small-but-tangible practices. Have you ever dropped litter on the ground? Some people stop to pick it up and don’t even think about it. Pretend that you accidentally dropped a wrapper on the floor and you don’t notice for a few steps. When you turn around, you see the trash behind you.

What do you do?

For many of us, it depends. If it’s far away, we might continue walking—even though there’s a ping in our hearts that says, “I really should go get that.”

Actually, the biggest and most opportune time to practice a behavior is when it’s so small it’s easy to do.

Whether or not you pick up the trash is incredibly important for the neurons and habits in your brain. If you practice picking up the trash every time, you begin to tell yourself a story about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. You commit to taking action when you notice something that’s wrong.

“The most opportune time to practice a behavior is when it’s so small it’s easy to do.”

It initiates a cascade effect of good behavior. The next day, if you see someone leave their tablet out on a table and forget it, it will be a smidgeon easier to walk over to them and say, “hey, I think you left this behind!” The behavior chain and habit pattern continues. Then, when you get to a moment and you’re in a heated fight or angry outburst, this neuron—this behavior pattern that lets you pivot, that lets you initiate, that knows that you trust it to do something right—it will speak up. It will nudge you, and it’ll say, 

Hey, maybe not this way. 

Try again? 

Let’s pause. 

Let’s do it this other way we’ve been training.

Let’s look at ourselves, imperfect, fallible, strange, growing, and remember that it’s okay to learn. To grow. To adapt.

We’re allowed to make mistakes. We’re allowed to breathe. And we’re allowed to say, hey,

I’m going to try to make this a little bit better.

Cool?

What is grace and why does it hurt so much? (what I learned about emotional resilience through a 10-day detox retreat in Ubud, Bali).

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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“The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it.” — Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

On the black sands of the Java Sea.

The waves crashed over my limbs as sobs heaved in and out of my chest. I had wandered down to the ocean’s edge after two weeks of intense cleansing at a raw detox retreat in Bali.

“Retreat” was possibly the wrong word.

Raw detox meant the absence of caffeine, sugar, or comfort foods like meat-n-potatoes. Silence. Meditation, every morning. Runs through the rice patties. Yoga inquiries and journaling.

The conditions led to a deep cleansing. Which felt like my body and mind were cracking and breaking, giant armies of light swarming into my darkest corners. Every itch, craving, and nagging disbelief were unfolded, on display, in public.

At the end of the two weeks, I took a three-day trip to the north shore of Bali, to a serene seashore villa. I nibbled on “bad” foods again. I walked down to the beach, lost in thought.

I was more tired than I was before. What was I doing?

Too much work, not enough rest.

Five years of nonstop work, and before that, three years of graduate school—where architects are encouraged through perverse social culture to pull all-nighter after all-nighter—and my body was burned. Exhausted. My kidneys ached, soreness emanating out from just beneath my ribs like little blinking warning lights on my backside. Coffee didn’t register in my body, and I could fall asleep on the bus, in the car, and whenever I put my head down on my desk. My lungs ached and I kept getting sick.

I knew I needed to take a vacation — I’d been trying to take a vacation for years — but each time, I had an excuse, a block. Instead, I went to conferences and events, running down my adrenals further. It took buying a plane ticket five months in advance and signing up for a raw food retreat around the world to commit to a decompression.

Luxuriating on white sand beaches, sipping martinis, escaping into the blissful happiness that lines the advertisements of all vacation destinations —

— that was the plan, at least.

Although “martini” probably wasn’t on the raw food menu.

After the ten-day retreat, I felt like I was breaking down even further.

I knelt into the black sand and touched the warm, frothy water with my fingertips. Despite being in my yoga clothes, I needed to get into the sea; I couldn’t be bothered by a swimsuit. I crawled down into the water until it hit me at waist-level, and leaned back. My head hit the rocky sand and my gaze drifted up, unfocused, at the cloudy blue sky.  Waves lapped up at my body, tickling my fingertips, washing across my belly. Tears ran down the sides of my cheeks and mingled with the salty water of the Java sea.

Why was I feeling this way? It was supposed to be a blissful vacation. I was supposed to be delighted. Filled with joy. Open. Letting go.

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I couldn’t shake this bittersweet fear that all of this life — the sand, the water brushing against my feet, the wind washing through my hair — would suddenly and eventually continue it’s relentless chase towards death, and that I would only be here for a brief, passing moment.

Within that thought, however, the same time, I felt this inexplicable joy. I was so happy. And yet I was so sad. The gratitude for being able to be here, for living, for being in my body, for the grace of each and every day—it was such a gift.

Why did I receive it? I was so thankful.

Why do any of us receive grace?

And I thought about this idea for a while, chewing on it, thinking through the word while in the black sand. Turning towards grace.

What, exactly, is grace?

Grace is not always easy, and it’s not always comfortable. Grace is not instantaneous, and it is not always straightforward—but if we’ll allow it, one piece and one day at a time, it begins to show up.

We use the word to describe the way that people move—“she moved fluidly across the stage, with grace,” – and to refer to people that have a quality of elegance or refinement. In the Christian and Abrahamic traditions, grace is a specific divine assistance given to humans; a godly virtue; a gift.

I like to thing of grace in a non-traditional way, and my definition looks like this:

“The softness to allow something good to happen to you, even in uncomfortable ways; the realization that the universe is far larger than we are and works in mysterious ways.”

In that sense, we are all given the grace of a new day, or the grace of slipping into slumber in the evenings (although for the insomniacs among us, we might wish fervently for that grace).

Sometimes I am given the grace of having a large freight train rumbling by at the exact moment when I say something out of turn, so that when my friend asks me to repeat what I had said, I have the chance to revise my grumpy snip into something softer.

Grace is what happens beyond our control. It’s letting go when we hold on so tight, and it’s allowing and receiving beauty in our lives.

For me, when everything goes right, it’s knowing that there are far more things happening in the world than I can possibly control. And when everything seems to be going wrong, it’s thanking the beautiful day for teaching me, even if it’s been frustrating.

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The caveat: opening to grace and opening your heart means opening to feelings.

“The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail.” — Ramakrishna

The human paradox is deliciously complex — and when we invite joy and happiness and grace into our lives, there will be times of sorrow, pain, sadness and all the other spectrum of human emotions. When we block sadness and pain, we inevitably numb our ability to feel joy and happiness as well.

Opening your heart to grace means opening to feelings. We are not seeking to escape our feelings, but rather invite the entire experience in.

In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer writes:

“Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”

We can live with an open heart or a closed heart, he describes. There are many things in the world that will cause us to close our hearts—cruelty, embarrassment, bad experiences—but our job is to whittle away at this calcification of our souls, allowing ourselves to open. Opening does not mean being naïve or being without boundaries—but it does imply that we remain open to experience and possibility. Singer continues:

“The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it. It’s like sitting down at night and deciding whether you want the sun to come up in the morning. The bottom line is, the sun will come up and the sun will go down. Billions of things are going on in this world. You can think about it all you want, but life is still going to keep on happening.”

Love, affection, and joy are qualities of an open heart. So if we want to know what it’s like to be open, “pay attention to when you feel love and enthusiasm,” Singer writes.

When life isn’t going as planned, sometimes the universe brings us Fierce Grace.

The pain of experience and the (at times) harshness of consequences are a sharp and swift reminder that we aren’t behaving in ways that are in harmony with what we know to be true.

In The End of Your World, renowned spiritual leader Adyashanti describes this as a form of “fierce grace” — a painful reminder that what we’re doing isn’t working. Pain and heartache are reminders, at times, that life wants us to head in another direction.

“It is not a soft grace; it is not the kind of grace that is beautiful and uplifting,” he writes.

“But it is grace nonetheless.”

In my life, when I willingly slip into a habit or behavior that doesn’t serve me, the twinge of awareness and recognition is life’s reminder of fierce grace.

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Back on the rocky black sand, I sat alone in my yoga pants, my toes in the water. I leaned back towards the sky of the southern hemisphere and took a breath in.

I am drawn to the edges of the sea just as I’m drawn inwards to the edges of my mind, staring and exploring its peculiarities. To me, the water is analogous to the depths of my mind, an anchor that reminds me of my own consciousness. Each time I dive in to swim, I’m in awe of the depths and majesty of it all.

This living thing—this being here, right now.

This.

It’s such a fearsome joy and delight and such a treasure. The awe of living is so huge and tremendous that it can regularly bring me down to my knees. It hurt. And yet the feeling of it all — being able to feel, itself — was joyous. I sunk my arms into the sand. I had wandered down to the beach to say thanks, and to let go.

Inside of it all, we can control nothing. We can only bow in gratitude and grace, humble, and thank the gift of being here, whatever the circumstances may be.

“The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it.”— Michael Singer

Why do any of us receive grace? With gratitude practices, we can soften, we can realize the magic of being alive, and we can begin to see again. Practicing gratitude, in turn, erodes the calcified edges of our heart and our mind, making us a bit gentler—both with our selves and with each other. This, then, is the beginning of grace.

What does it mean to open to grace? What does it mean to act with grace? What visuals come to mind when you think about people who live gracefully? And in what ways are you already living in grace?

My body needed a period to restore and renew. To cleanse. Despite how painful the retreat was at the time, it was, in it’s own way, a divine moment of grace in my life. Learning how to let go of addictions — from sugar, caffeine, even dairy and meat and the comfort foods I’d loved — was a shock to my body, but a welcome interruption.

Grace isn’t always pretty or easy, despite the misconception. Grace is sometimes exactly what you need in your life, even if it looks a little messy.

What does grace mean to you? When do you experience grace, or when do you imagine grace to be working?

How do you open to grace?

This is an excerpt from my two-week digital class, Grace & Gratitude, a journey towards cultivating an open heart and developing a spirit of gratitude in your life through rituals, practices, and essays. The course will re-open for enrollment at the end of August as a self-guided journey. 

 

 

Finding the little bliss(es): this is it.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Where is happiness? Where do you find it?

The $7 coffee pot we bought the day we moved in together–because we knew that functioning properly as a team might require adequate dosages of caffeine in our morning routines.

Stretching my toes against the curb while waiting for the light to change.

High-fiving the blinking walk sign’s red hand, just because I want to jump up and smack something.

The strange satisfaction from deconstructing cardboard boxes and stacking them neatly in the recycling pile—and the way the open-faced scissors run against the tape and snap—split!—open the box.

Running my hands under hot water with basil-lemon fragrance, and then doing it again just because I enjoy the feeling and the scent. Cooking food in a pot and stirring it, without doing anything else. No phone, no thoughts, just delighting in the tomatoes. Watching the skin of the tomatoes shrink, shrivel and curl under the heat, and the center seeds ooze out into a sauce.

Sunlight streaming in through a window and running over like a cat (what? run? I mean strolling deliberately without a care in the world) towards the sunny spot, closing my eyes for a few moments. Yes, a catnap…

The sun shifts. Back to work.

Squeaky chairs and creaky old apartment doors and fixing the whines with magical cans of WD-40 (that stuff is amazing).

This is it, isn’t it? These are the little blisses.

These are the moments that are worth it. These are the parts and pieces. [tweetable hashtag=”#happiness @sarahkpeck”]Happiness isn’t a victory, a destination, or an achievement.[/tweetable] It’s not something I’ve won or owned; I’m not sure it’s something I can ever capture. But when I start to look around for it, it shows up in the smallest ways, in the minutiae of moments, in the collection of pieces I often forget.

Life isn’t felt in summation or as some frozen awkward final pose. It isn’t a grade, it isn’t a race, and it isn’t something you can buy. Life is a series of moments, and is experienced as that—a series of simple moments. Change is hard not because ideas are hard to have, but because mastering the little moments is tremendously challenging. It’s inside of the little moments that lies all of our life.

[tweetable hashtag=”#happiness #life #philosophy @sarahpeck]Life is a series of simple moments, one after the other.[/tweetable] Life is about finding the bliss in the moment right now.

Things like…

Licking envelopes closed and sealing them, addressing piles of cards and notes to send to faraway friends across the world. Writing positive postcards and telling your friends that you love them.

Calling people randomly because scheduling all of your phone calls becomes slightly neurotic. Catching up … just because.

Tape, and all of its goodness. Tape tape tape. The sound of tape as you say it. TAPE.

A do-it-yourself at-home sauna treatment after you’ve had a cold for a few days: sinking your head into a bucket of steam and eucalyptus oil and praying to the sinus gods to let you get better quickly.

A classroom full of some of the most intelligent, talented students you’ve ever met who all let you take a short break and even send you get-well messages when, like this week, you run headfirst into a cold and don’t know how to slow down.

Flying across the country to see my Grandpa and have him meet my man. Watching the two of them talk, and hearing stories of growing up hungry and skinny during the Depression. Him saving 10 cents and skipping lunch so he could spend that money on new chemicals for his chemistry set. Watching this smarty-pants have his eyes get wider as he looks at my mom and mock-whispers to her, “These here are some smart ones, aren’t they?” about the work that we’re doing in the world.

People who write back to my newsletters and posts, taking the time to share a part of their world (and their wonders and struggles) with me.

A seat opening up on the subway so you can sit down and sink into your book.

Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury, and his reminder to feel the aliveness of being alive. ALIVE.

The kindness of strangers. Old people who still joke about love and sex. The beauty of medium-sized. New friends on Twitter. Honest conversations. Handwritten words on the internet. Hitting publish. Audacity and courage.

A small glass of wine on a Friday night, resting up. A glassy of bubbly lemon water with fresh ginger.

The little blisses.

What are your little blisses? What are the moments that make you pause, lift the corners of your mouth a bit, or crack up in a smile?

“A serving of gratitude saves the day,” (and five gift spaces open in the course)!

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Did you see the headline of the New York Times? It turns out that a serving of gratitude does wonders for you psychologically:

“Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.”

Gratitude is powerful, particularly when you engage in daily practices–cultivating habits, really–because over time it changes your mind.

When you change your mind, you change your world.

And as Maya Angelou says:

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”

The last day to sign up for the course is Saturday, November 30th:

If you’re curious about gratitude practices, and want to join us in a 2-week micro course, hop over to Grace and Gratitude and sign up before tomorrow!

Normally the courses I teach run for $400 and $500. This holiday, the course is $75 (or $50 each for two), because I’m really serious about giving it away as much as possible. As I’ve done with all of my courses to date, I offer the first round at a discounted priced–I love sharing my ideas with people and believe in the value of getting this work into the world. This course is less than an hour of coaching with me–and you’ll get my love in your mailbox each day for 14 days.

I believe so much in building grace, gratitude, kindness, and acceptance into our lives. It begins with ourselves–looking inside and opening up to the fullness that’s already within our hearts.

If you know of anyone that would like to join this course with us, tell them to sign up before November 30th as we’ll start together the morning of Sunday, December 1.

The giving twist: what’s up with those gift spots?

Some people have been asking about the twist that’s part of the Grace and Gratitude workshop — the gift twist. If you buy a single space, it’s $75. But if you want to gift one to a friend, you can buy yours and the gift for a friend is $25 ($50 each for two).

I’ve done this by design. I want to give this away as much as possible.

I want people to be able to gift it to their friends and the people who need more love, grace, and gratitude in their lives. When designing the program, I though, how can we build gratitude and gifting into the program itself?

This program is near and dear to my heart. It’s closer to the work that I want to do in the world than anything else. It’s about cultivating a gratitude mindset into your life through simple, daily practices. It’s about feeling love when you’re overwhelmed and feeling lonely. It’s about helping to reframe your mind and open up mental patterns for healthy growth. It’s about learning to see the world in a new way.

It’s about getting the word out and sending love to people this holiday–the more the merrier. 

And that’s not even the best part: five gift spaces open!

More than half of the people who have enrolled have also purchased a gift for someone else–and some of the people are writing in the gift line, “GIFT FOR ANYONE” and asking me to share it with someone who wants to enroll.

If you want to join the course, five of those spaces are currently open–OPEN!–donated generously by the course participants to people who want to join the course but are bootstrapping, stuck on cash, or in a financial hardship.

If you want to join the course and would love one of these gift spaces, please fill our your name in this scholarship form by 5PM Pacific on Saturday, November 30th.

(As a quick reminder: if you can afford the course, hop over and register in the regular fashion so we can save those spots as gifts for our friends who really need it.) 

Let’s do this. I want you here. Big love. We all need more big, grateful love. Yes.

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“The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.” — Henry Ward Beecher

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” — John F. Kennedy