Well I’m just a few days into my 46th year as a physical being on this jewel we call planet Earth. Yet another profound summer has just whizzed by in a blink and again I’ve come the end of it looking back over my shoulder asking, “What the heck was that?!”
In conversation with an old friend a couple of days ago, we talked about how as children, we seemed to always grow quicker in the summer. As soon as school was dismissed, it was like someone hit the “turbo button” on life, there always seemed to be an exponential boost of growth in the few weeks before the next school year began. I always owed the phenomenon to the added sunshine and outdoor activity – we are just like plants in a lot of ways I figure. I recall the many times as I was growing up, receiving comments upon my return to “real life” like, “Wow, you really grew fast over the summer!” Later, as a new Mother I was able to see the same dynamics play out watching my son grow.
My friend and I came to the co-creative realization that those dynamics are still alive and well indeed, and playing out as we continue to grow mentally and spiritually! As I look back over the past 3 or 4 months, I can authentically say to my Self, “Wow, you really grew fast over the summer!”
I question my own theory now though, I’m not entirely convinced the growth is so much about the extra sunshine and outdoor exercise…now I know it’s more about the additional freedom, ease and letting go of a lot of what we “should” be or are programmed to be doing. Can you hear it yet? “No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks!” That’s an incredible amount of instantly released resistance; expansion is always freer to flourish when the resistance is gone. We go forth into our summers expecting different things to show up so we manifest different results!
In fact, I think I sang that same song above just 3 years ago when I found out I was leaving my corporate position…no small coincidence that I have experienced exponential growth since my release from that!
On this first day of fall, summer 2007 was by no means an exception to the phenomenon; in fact, I see it as the epitome of it! I have always instinctively been drawn to want to reflect on and recap my summer’s activities…sort of an essay to myself on “What I Did This Summer”. I now see that I’m programmed to respond that way, the reflection is always a mixture of delicious emotions and happy memories. By writing it all out I can recapture the feeling and later use those vibrations to inspire me onto the next one!
I’m a work hard and play hard kind of being. I’m getting the hang of letting go of the former (still) and that it’s the latter – the playing hard – that produces the stellar results in my life and causes the forces of manifestation to respond in kind.
I was blessed as a young teen, and I am largely grateful as I realize my summers were nothing short of “magical”. Between the ages of 12 and 15 or so, my grandparents were semi-retired and had taken the job of managing a beautiful, charming and well established northern family resort for a company based out of my home town. SC Johnson & Son was originally called “Johnson’s Wax” way back when my Grandfather cut grass for them as a teen. The resort was a perk for the employees, charged a minimal fee, one could take their family on a beautiful week’s vacation almost entirely on the company. Decades later, Papa left “the plant” as a successful manager and technological innovator, taking my grandmother with him – newly added to the SC Johnson payroll – to live out their days in nature’s bliss. My grandmother’s older brother and his wife had run the resort previous to them so “The Resort” was familiar to our family because we had all stayed there as guests over the years.
Every summer, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and March break I would be there like a shot! I had my own room, my own boats – motor, sail and canoe, my own snowmobile, water skis, snow skis, a beachfront on a pristine lake, a fresh rotation of new friends every week (two maximum), lots of untouched Precambrian nature to explore, a boys summer camp up the road and VERY allowing grandparents; all in exchange for just Being more of Me…and a few hours of cleaning cottages on Friday and Saturday mornings, cutting some grass, raking the beach once in a while after a storm blew in, bailing out boats, running small errands, oh and, filleting the fish the guests caught because they didn’t usually know how. I spent my time off in perpetual celebration from the time the school bell rang for the last time of the last semester until the day before I had to return to it!!
As I celebrate my 45th birthday this past week I am well into the 4th Harry Potter book, I am loving the luxury of getting lost in the story of Harry!! I am grateful I acted on the decision to read Rowling’s masterpieces! I am also enjoying the story of Harry Potter as a close metaphor to my own life.
“The Resort” was my Hogwarts, and summers were indeed magical and experiential! Today I still create the venues for my learning and growth in some unconventional and fantastically fun ways!
This summer has certainly been one of adventure and growth and more than a touch of magic – but mostly it’s been about “letting go”, of learning how to tap into the flow of my own life and get more in tune with my own “nature” and the dance of it. My day’s activities have shifted, become more focused, more efficient; I am getting back to the necessity of simplicity and ease and learning the art of living all of life as if it is “summer” all year ’round!
From the declarations bestowed upon us at Harv Eker’s “Never Work Again” in June, my favorite one states, “The less I work the more I earn.” As a programmed work-a-holic, getting to the feeling place of believing that has been “the work”.
I have literally “reinvented” myself, my daily activities and the ways I “work” over the summer weeks. I got good and mad at myself at some point, rolled up my sleeves and got to the work of learning how to play and get paid! The results of doing things differently are obvious and showing up all around me! I am slowly figuring how to “get out of my own way”, it’s a process, and patience with my Self is virtuous!
I learned from Tim Ferris while devouring his “The 4-Hour Workweek” book, the distinction between “efficient” and “effective” and shifted my focus to achieve mastery in the latter…
Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way” has been a daily practice the last month and a half, again I am amazed by the simplicity of what works for me. This book has been in my sphere of influence for 10 years and I clearly see why NOW is the perfect time for it to present itself to me. I don’t know what my day would be like without writing out the morning pages before it starts…and, I don’t take the chance of skipping them to find out!
All in all, after the summer seminars, camping trips, the perfect books and rich experiences with a diverse set of good friends and just the perfect amount of contrast, I am somehow much bigger now than I was this Spring, causing me to remark with pride again, “Wow, you really grew fast this summer!”
The Radiant Chocolate Goddess
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