Category: inspiration

Like a Fish out of Water: Step out of your comfort zone

Stepping out of your comfort zone can be scary at times. While staying in touch with the familiar feels safe, facing fears and challenging yourself to try new things always has beautiful rewards that make it worthwhile.

I recently read a book called – The Day the Whale Came (also published under the name Grayson) – written by open water swimmer and endurance athlete, Lynne Cox. The book tells the story of how at the age of 17, while training to swim off the California mainland, Lynne Cox encountered a lost baby grey whale. The baby whale, who she named Grayson, had somehow separated from his mother. In an effort to keep the whale at sea, Lynne ends up spending hours in the ocean and swimming a couple of miles to an oil rig in the deep rough waters, staying with Grayson until he was reunited with his mother.

I loved this sweet story and the picture that she painted of ocean life. I enjoyed the little nuggets of inspiration included in the book as well, as it touches on lessons in endurance, having faith, personal strength and challenging your own limits.

What do fish have to do with stepping out of your comfort zone?

One of the interesting things that Lynne Cox mentions at the start of the book is the grunion run. As a nature loving soul, I was fascinated by it so I did a little research. Grunions are fish with a very unique spawning behaviour. Each year, during Spring and Summer, they swim ashore the South coast of California, during New and Full moons when the tides are high to lay their eggs in the beach sand. They then wiggle their way back to the ocean waters. It is an incredible sight! (See youtube clip here:Grunion Run) This makes for an interesting take on the saying “Like a fish out of water”. I was blown away by the fact that these brave little critters courageously leave the safety of the waters to fulfil their role in sustaining the future of their species. It’s an inspiring demonstration of the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone.

Life constantly challenges you to help you grow. However, since routine and familiarity gives us a sense of emotional security, the fear of change makes us resist it. This puts you at risk of becoming too complacent. But when you push the boundaries and take a few risks from time to time, you gain valuable experiences and inevitably expand your horizons. Stepping out of your safe space sets you life’s journey in motion life and attracts exciting experiences. It invites adventure. And while those adventures may turn into misadventures sometimes, the lessons you learn and the growth spurts that your soul goes through are invaluable.

Lynne Cox’s life story in itself is a one of a truly inspirational trailblazer who has built her legacy around constantly moving beyond the boundaries of comfort and pushing herself to new limits. She was breaking world records from the age of 12, when she did her first long distance open water swim across Catalina Channel with a group of other teenage swimmers. She went on to swim the English Channel, Cook Strait, Bering Strait and Antarctica among many other swimming expeditions. I am so inspired by her determination and achievements as an individual and as a woman as well.

“Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zones. We have to break the rules. And we have to discover the sensuality of fear. We need to face it, challenge it, dance with it.”
~ Kyra Davis

What is waiting for you beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone? How can you take one step outside of your safe space today? Start now. Try new things. Do everyday things differently. Take a risk. Break free from restrictions that you have placed on yourself. Allow yourself to expand and become more of who you are. Enjoy the adventures. Learn from the misadventures. The important thing is to live your life, populated it with rich experiences, stretch to your ultimate limits and blaze your own trail in the process.

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The Art of Opening Up

“I sit before flowers, hoping they will train me in the art of opening up.” ~ Shane Koyczan

When you open up and share your stories, you allow others who live similar stories to know that they are not alone. 

I loved witnessing the bravery that the first flowers of the new season demonstrated when they opened their little petals and filled my garden with sweet scents weeks before winter came to a close. I imagine that it takes a certain trust in the unseen forces of the Divine to courageously move from bud to bloom. These gentle creatures teach us the delicate art of opening up and fearlessly sharing your extraordinary gifts with the world. They blossom unapologetically and are a mirror of the love and beauty alive within each of us.

When writing the intro for Pearl’s guest blog post two weeks ago I was reminded of those fragile moments early in my relationship with my husband. At the time, I was not used to receiving affection or positive reinforcement. A childhood plagued with bullies and growing up in a harsh environment led me to retreat inward as a defence mechanism. But something shifted when he opened the petals of his heart before me and radiated a kind and genuine love that I never thought I’d find. His honesty, warmth and openness softened the rough edges of my jaded heart, so that with time I began to open up too. The manner in which my husband embodies his presence always inspires me. He has a beautiful way of coaxing people out of their shells and allowing them to be comfortable, as well as to see their own inner beauty.

 “How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise, we will remain too frightened ” ~ Hafiz

My desire to inspire and share healing with others has encouraged me to do the same over the years. So many people walk difficult paths and often all they need is a little bit of positive energy, understanding and sincerity to encourage them to let their guard down and share the rich contents of their inner world. By being who you are more fully and openly expressing your essence, you inevitably give the people around you permission to let down their facades and to be more of who they are freely. They open up and the pathways to meaningful connections are formed. I’ve come to treasure those precious moments when the other person suddenly lights up and feels comfortable and inspired enough to bring their exquisite inner petals to the surface. Watching a liberated heart sparkle in plain sight is incredible.

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Experience has taught me that you never know the burdens that each person carries or how long they have been imprisoned in the shadows of fear or pain. We learn to hide these parts of ourselves in shame, and pretend that all is fine. Yet, so many of us go through similar experiences. When you open up and share your stories, you allow others who live similar stories to know that they are not alone. When you share your dreams, your allow others to dream too. When you communicate messages of love and inspiration, you touch the lives of those who are willing to receive them in profound ways.

What Will Your Daughters Search for?

Note: In South Africa, we celebrate Woman’s month in August as a tribute to the thousands of women who marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956 in protest against the extension of Pass Laws to women. This time of the year we are reminded of the struggles that South African women and women in general have endured over the ages. We also celebrate women in general, as well as the amazing, strong and inspiring women who have risen above obstacles to achieve great successes and created meaningful change. Hence the inspiration for this post.

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 What will your daughters search for?

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Don’t you love those precious moments when life softens your heart by putting things into perspective and reminds you of all you have to be grateful for?

Today, you are blessed to live in an incredible time where the world is open to you. Doors of opportunity stand wide open beside you, dreams and goals lie within your reach and exciting adventures are calling out your name.

Sometimes we can say YES to these things with ease. We skip through those doors, reach out and grab what is there for us and go along for the ride with great joy. Other times, we hold back, resist, give in to fear and confine ourselves to embodying only a fraction of the greatness that radiates from our true being.

Isn’t it strange that somehow it seems to be easier to find “reasons why not to” be everything that you can be against all the odds?

Something that I read this week reminded me of why we need look beyond the ‘reason why not to’ and invest more energy in finding reasons to move forward fearlessly. I reread an essay that Alice Walker published in 1984, titled: In Search of our Mother’s Gardens. In this poignant piece, Alice explores how women of past generations who lived in slavery and repressive eras survived this harshness and kept their muted creative spirit alive.

It got me thinking. Each of us reaches a point in our lives when we search for a better understanding of our womanhood and how to live. In those moments it is natural to look at the women around us, role models and most often at women who have come before us – our mothers, aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

“Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength – in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” ~ Alice Walker

Like Alice, it is not uncommon to find that women of past generations have battled through the immense hardships of oppression, poverty, abuse and sexism. Many of them lived in a world where their thoughts, opinions, emotions and dreams were completely disregarded and had to be tucked away into dusty suitcases, with no hope of being recovered. They were forced to succumb to a life of duty to their ‘masters’ in various forms. While the spirit of some of these women died a slow death, many managed to find the inspiration to persevere and give their spirit life in tiny ways. When we look back at their lives, one may be overcome with sadness for the small lives that these women were forced to lived, especially in the awareness of how much more they could have been had they had the chance. They did so much with so little and found ways to be content and even their small nuggets of wisdom, inspiration and guidance still serve to motivate and fill us with gratitude. But how much more could we have gained if their stifled gifts had been allowed to blossom?

…exquisite butterflies trapped in an evil honey, toiling away their lives in an era, a century, that did not acknowledge them, except a the ‘mule of the world.’  ~ Alice Walker

There are those too who were fierce and fearless, those who rose beyond all restrictions and circumstances to achieve the unexpected. These women awaken our awareness to how powerful we are if we simply allow ourselves to be. Warrior Women, Writers, Activists, Suffragettes and Artists – from to Wangari Maathai, Oprah, Maya Angelou, Mother Theresa, Margaret Thatcher, Graca Machel to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma – these are inspiring women, women who changed the world in their own way. They became the giants whose shoulders we can stand on in order to soar to even greater heights.

This insight pushed me to ask myself two questions – What will my daughters search for? And what will they find?

I realise that I have a choice. You do too. Will your life be a story of regret for things that could have been but never found ways to manifest into reality? Or will you be a super awesome, powerful, colossal Goddess Giant whose shoulders your daughters and all the future daughters of the world will stand on – a spring board to heights unheard of by womankind before? I would rather be the later.

Granted in many ways, women still have battles to fight. Yet, so many of us are fortunate because we are not burdened with the same repressive circumstances that the women who came before us faced. This is reason for gratitude and also to commit to going beyond perceived limitations. When we think of the incredible bravery that a young girl such as 16 year old Malala Yousafzai has demonstrated, then we are reminded that there are no obstacles big enough to justify us not living our greatest life.

So I am gathering together all of my meaningless little ‘reasons why not’ and transforming each of them into empowering reasons to move forward fearlessly – typing our words, healing souls, canoeing across rivers and walking across the sacred paths of the Earth. Not only for the future daughters, but also in honour of those who came before us.

What do you want your daughters to find when they search for the footprints left in your wake?