Cultivating Curiosity

When is the last time you allowed yourself just to wonder?  Read the post HERE

Master Bedroom Feng Shui

You can read the post on my new website by clicking HERE.

Feng Shui Basics - Bagua Map

You can read the full post on my new site by clicking here

I'm Moving ...AGAIN

No, I'm not leaving the country AGAIN

No, I'm not buying a new house.

Nope...but I am moving this BLOG.

I'm doing what all the cool kids are doing and I built a new WordPress Website, which at this writing is somewhere in Internet Purgatory!

I'll be hosting my blog posts on my site at www.sherrytrentini.com,

 

I'm so Grateful to Blogger, I've loved being a part of this community.

 

I do hope you choose to follow me over to my site!

 

I'm still figuring out the logistics to get an RSS Feed going, or you can join my email list and get notified that way!

 

 

The Value of Venting or Sh** Journalling

The journal that you write your gratitude in is gorgeous.  

The one that you carry in your bag, at your bedside or keep on your desk is plump with ideas, musings and inspiration, and has the most decadent feel to it, in all ways.  

The writing instrument which you use to write the words of thanks, wax poetic about your intentions and mind map your inspirations is not merely a pen, but a vessel from which your own energy flows from and onto the pages of those sacred books.

Those journals, in all their beauty and masterpiece, are containers, preserving all the good thoughts and things documented about You and Your Life and Your Dreams.

So where do you document your angst, your tizzy, your discomfort.  

On those days when you are listening to a monologue from your gremlins?  The eye rolling, the disdain, the What The …?

There is a journal for that....drumroll please...

Introducing the "Sh** Journal"!!

The Sh** Journal is where you write with whatever marker, crayon, pen, pencil or finger dipped in peanut butter.

You write whatever sh** is running through your mind, that is fast tracking your moment, your morning, afternoon, evening, day, two days, week and beyond into the depths.  

The pages will be a safe place in which to express your sh**, your fire, brimstone and disdain. 

It is where you articulate thoughts like:

• The "I suck, let me count the ways!" soliloquy,
• The "What on earth made me think I could do this?" tirade,
• The "Are you freaking kidding me?" moments,
• The "Really...Seriously...This is happening?" and other drips of sarcasm,
• The why I should practise, "Would you like fries with that?" monologue.

Where you can pose philosophic questions like:

• "Who gives a Sh**?"
• "Why do I give a Sh**?"
• "Is this really my Sh**?"
• "Why is this Sh** running through my mind?

There's more...write about when you think you are or feel like the Sh**ty:

• boss,
• leader,
• parent, 
• partner, 
• spouse, 
• friend, 
• consumer,
• driver etc.

WHY DO IT  

We have 60,000 thoughts per day, and lets be honest they are not all affirmations.  Its when one of those "I Suck" themed thoughts grabs our attention, then it invites a friend, and the friend invites a friend and suddenly its gone viral.   One simple thought morphed into a stadium filled with these self-deprecating, confidence busting, and alignment kinking thoughts. 

The longer we ignore them, the more come to the party. So get them out of your head, its like crowd control, calling security or 911 for assistance.

HOW TO DO IT

1.  GRAB WHATEVER PAPER IS HANDY

You are welcome to go out and buy THE most unattractive to you journal to have at the ready.  You can even doodle or collage a picture of what your gremlin looks like and add it to the back page.  Therefore when you write pressing down as hard as you can its like a voodoo energy towards that monster.  **Don't forget to add horns or other adornments that further embellish that image.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from grabbing scrap paper from the recycle bin and just going to town.  Make it as easy as possible.

2.  WRITE WITHOUT STOPPING 

Or lifting the pen.  Write with absolute abandon, the faster you write those thoughts and get them out the better.

  

DO NOT edit, correct, punctuate...VENT!  Go with the flow.  Its not a presentation, dissertation or speech.   

Why not type it in a document on your laptop then delete it?  Read this article on why handwriting makes you smarter.

3.  EYE-ROLLING, SNEERING, SCOWLING ENCOURAGED

Get into the process, whether its rolling your eyes, sneering, snuffling, scowling or mimicking with your mouth what the face of those thoughts look like as you write them out.

Adding facial expressions while you are writing goes further get that energy out of you as you write is doubly cathartic.

4. SAY THANK YOU 

Once you have purged and vented all the Sh**, write Thank You to close.

I know you are thinking, "What the....?"  

You have just vented it out, every sh**ty detail.

How do you feel now?  Relief? Exhausted? Refreshed?

What's happening inside that beautiful head of yours now?  

Is it possible that steam roller is no longer making pass after pass flattening your energy, self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence?  

Have you every had this experience when talking to a friend, whereas you were given the space to vent or been that friend?  What did you say at the end?  Probably thank you for letting me get that off my mind. 

Thank you is closing the loop, its completing the process.

5.  LET IT GO

Rip the papers out of said unattractive to you journal, tear them into itty bitty bits, feed them to the shredder, or if possible set a match to them (in a safe, well ventilated area taking all the precautions when setting something afire).  

Feel free to do a tantrum tap dance on top of them before sending them off to their final resting place.

Keeping them serves no value.

Keeping them makes it possible for confidentiality to be compromised.

Keeping them is like keeping those thoughts.

Let them go with another dose of gratitude and a dash of Love.

Why Love?  Well, you may have learned something in your Sh** journalling, you may have learned that the stadium of thoughts had a common denominator called Fear.

Fear that those things were factual.  (Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real)

Adding love to the letting go process is more for YOU so that you can replenish what had been steam rolled earlier.  

AND FINALLY

Big Inhale

and

Big Exhale

Trust me, when you have been hosting all that Sh** in your head you were breathing shallowly and now that its out we can get back to business.  So freshen up and reset the body, mind and spirit by taking 3-5 big deep breaths.

Now you can get back to the business of being your awesome self, loving your fabulous thoughts and all sorts of other Good Sh**! 

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Building my Bagua for 2016

All those in favour of the "holidays" being over, raise your hand!

I'm ready to get back into a more normal flow of things and have been for a few days.  

The decompression of one's normalcy during the holiday season through to the New Year, starts out favourable, then it can bottom out.  

That lack of consistency of a routine has hit a saturation point when it comes to sleeping, waking, eating, coming and going.  

The starter's gun went off on January 1st, yet it feels like someone fouled at the line and we are in a holding pattern to really get going, until the 4th or 5th of the month.  When collectively the world around us gets back on the field.

I'm holiday'd out.

I'm ready to get on with it.  

I'm ready to put things back where they belong and move forward.

Inflowenza:  The state of awareness that one's energy is adapting and changing to life's experiences.  Symptoms can include:  Going with it, going against it, floating on it or treading your head above it. 

 ~Sherry Trentini

Feeling that sense of eagerness to get on with whatever moves your spirit is what fuels motivation.

While revamping my space I came across a few fun things in my archives.  I'm not certain what my source of motivation was, but I quite like what I've jotted down.

Nature abhors a vacuum

Who you want to be?

What you want to do?

What you want to have?

Who you become determines what you do and what you have.

Who do you want to become?  Be limitless...Remember emotion is the fuel of motivation.

Emotion is the reason you take all the action to create.

Fall in love with your vision.

How do you want to be remembered.

I AM........

This morning over coffee I really focused my energy on my Power or Theme word for 2016.  I've noticed that there many people are calling this year 'Sweet 16'.  

I loved turning 16.  It was pivotal.  The year I got my driving license and my first car.  Which expanded my independence and had me driving towards adulthood, (rather quickly at times with music blaring).

When I thought about what that felt like back in the day, and thought about the whole energy around turning and being 16, the word that came to my mind was "liberating".  

What would it feel like to have a liberating year in 2016?

What word would encapsulate that feeling of driving with music blaring?

3 sets of words came to mind:

• fulfil, fulfillment, fulfilled
• prosper, prosperity, prosperous
• thrive

All great sets of words.

The one I kept coming back to is...

Thrive may rhyme with drive, and since I was channelling my 16th year energy there may be an emotional connection.  However, truth be told, as I shared in my last email to subscribers, I shared that 2015 was a curvy year, the learning kind.  I'm ready to use that as a foundation of my personal growth and enhancement and compost it.  

Building on what I learned about myself and others.

Building on my ability to be fluid from 2014

Building on my ability to be fluent from 2015.

Sweet 2016 is my year to plant in that very fertile soil of the past and nurture a robust garden of delights.  

Thrive is defined online by:

• grow or develop vigorously
• prosper and flourish

And when I think of those definitions and the energy that burbles up when I think about how the word applies and its many applications to my life as a whole.  It looks like a starburst firework over my bagua!

I decided to reverse engineer things.  I decided to look at my 2016 year of thriving as if it were December 31, 2016.

I decided to feel what it would feel like to have:

• Thrived in feeling gratitude and feeling grateful;
• Been connected to a Thriving Community;
• Thrived in all my relationships (the one with myself included);
• Made nurturing decisions about health that supported my overall being thriving;
• Exponential growth in feeling Joy and being creative;
• Thrived in being able to reflect and learn;
• Having had a chronic case of "In-flow-enza";
• Flourished in being open to help and being a helpful spirit.

When I paused and looked at all the life areas from the perspective of 

Having Lived 2016 in a Thriving Energy, 

as if I had already achieved it at December 31st.  

WOW!

Un-clicks Seatbelt and gets out of the car to a

Huge Celebration!

I plunked down from Exhilaration!

I AM THRIVE!

I AM FEELING THRIVE ENERGY!

I AM THRIVING!

What word gets your engine going for 2016?

Or do you need a word that supports you slowing down, pulling over, being a passenger?  

On December 31, 2016 what word do you want to use to describe your year?

Subscribe to my Email List and receive my Intentional Gratitude E-book

Decluttering 2015

The dawn of a New Year is nearly upon us.

The calendar is shiny and clean and waiting for us to fill it.  
Like opening to the first page of a new notebook or journal or climbing into to a new car and inhaling that new car smell.  

The possibilities are endless of what we can create for our new year.

Isn't it exciting and liberating that annually we collectively start anew!

Globally the world is literally letting go of the old year and welcoming the new.  

We get to choose what we carry over from our last year. 

We get to choose what we let go of from our last year. 

We get to choose how we feel about our experience with 2015 and how it affects our go forward into 2016.

We get to choose.

A Year in Review

How would you sum up your experience in 2015?

Going back through the months and reviewing your year, from the perspective of this moment.  

What does the past year feel like overall?

The good times and the challenging times, the high tides and the low tides; the chaos and the quiet.  Reflect on how you have evolved and what 2015 taught you, especially the lessons and skills you acquired about yourself. Without the substance and experiences of this past year, you would not be the person you are in this moment.  

Keep

The good stuff that added value to you and your life experience in 2015 are definitely the keepers. The memories, moments and stories that when you recall bring a warmth and happiness that 

• you were there, 
• you were a part of something, 
• you did, 
• you went, 
• you tried, 
• you experienced, 
• you connected, 
• you succeeded, 
• you taught,
• you inspired,
• you learnt, 
• you laughed, 
• you cried,
• you thanked,
• you helped,
• you nurtured,
• you loved,
• you rocked it,
• you believed,
• you challenged,
• you breathed,
• you . . . . . .

Amongst that list there may be occasions that only by looking back from this moment can you see and feel the value.  The times that only when the experience or situation had passed were you able to then or now look back and say, "Yes, that was mine."

Taking ownership for the good stuff, no matter that it was not readily apparent at the time, strengthens our foundation.  Keeping the energy of the good stuff and appreciating what we garnered from it helps us create and attract more in the future. 

Toss

Letting go of the times in the last year that do not serve you.  The times that may deflate your energy and or take away from the good stuff.

Its not always easy to let go of past experiences that were not especially stellar. It is not always easy to recognize that holding on to those times may be taking away from your energy rather than adding value to it.

What does holding onto them do for you?

Is it possible that you are "shoulding on yourself?"

In your reflection, note if you find yourself saying...

• I should have done,
• I should have went,
• I should have said,
• I should have tried,
• I should have gone,
• I should have started,
• I should have taken,
• I should have helped,
• I should have ....

For whatever reason you chose not to do something, reflecting with "I should have" statements make you feel guilty.  

Let them go.

If you hear yourself saying "I shouldn't have...", for whatever reason in the course of the year you chose to do something, however in retrospect you wish you had not.

Its done.

You did.

Let it go.

And if you are challenged by doing so...what would it feel like to forgive?

Make Peace

Lingering amongst the "shoulds" of 2015 may taint the go forward resolutions or intentions you are creating for 2015.  We can become mired in the why's, the worries and what if I hads.

What if you were to look at those lists with the eyes of observation rather than judgement?

Is it possible that you made the best decision you could have with the information you had at the time?

Is it possible to make peace with the things you feel you ought to have done but didn't? 

Is it possible you can convert those should have's of 2015 to I choose to's in 2015?

Armed with what we know now, we may have made different choices then.  We can not go back to those moments, however we can choose whether bringing them into the new year serves us going forward.

Is it possible that you can find a take away?

To find the life lesson amongst it all?

Is it possible that letting go of the shoulds can be fertilizer for what we want to create in 2015?

Letting go by making peace is not a means of pretending it did not happen.  It is about changing the way we look at circumstances that may be resonating negatively within us.  

Forgiveness is not making what did or did not happen okay, vanquishing us of responsibility or accountability.  Forgiveness allows us to release the tensile strength of our emotional attachment to a circumstance. ~Sherry Trentini

Choosing to lessen the  load of carrying negative energy from 2015 into the new year, helps to create space in our thoughts and feelings.  Choosing to no longer vibrate or resonate with the perceived negatives at the same level is frees up energy so we can direct it towards what we do want to carry.

By first making peace with chosen content of 2015 can make it easier to choose whether to carry it forward into the new year or let it go.  Whatever you choose to do, adding the essence of gratitude to what 2015 taught you goes a long way to cultivating gratitude in the coming year and years to come.

You get to choose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Download a copy of my e-book Intentional Gratitude!

http://www.sherrytrentini.com/newsletter.html

Saying Goodbye to The Dress

I didn’t go shopping for it in the typical way.  You know, load up your Mom, sisters and besties and head to each and every bridal shop in town and try on dress after dress.  Wait for the ooh’s and ahh’s from the assembled panel or watching their faces that tell you thumbs down, as I exited the dressing room and paraded in front of them over and over again.

Nope I didn’t do that.

I had the dress in mind, inspired by a picture in a magazine.  The only place to get the dress was halfway across the country, and when you are planning a wedding some expenses are non negotiable but others are.

Having found a dress designer in my small city, I promptly set off, magazine picture in hand, to get the dress custom made.  

The experience of getting a dress designed and made just for me, was less than stellar, and the connection with the designer just wasn’t happening, so I chose to let that go.

I got up on a Saturday morning, went to my first choice of a bridal shop in town.  The first dress I saw and tried on was it!  Its been a few years (over 19), but if memory serves me correctly I never bothered to try on any other dresses.

How crazy is that?

• First one off the rack.  
• Tried it on.  
• Fit perfectly.  
• Ka-ching and done.

Nobody but myself had seen the dress.  

I loved the fact that it would be a surprise for everyone at the wedding.
I loved the fact that when I came down the stairs everyone would be seeing it for the first time.
I loved the fact that I felt so amazing, so elegant, so bridal.

I loved the dress!
I loved that the dress was a reflection of what I felt on the inside.

I had a lot invested in the dress.  Financially, of course, as far as a wedding dress goes.  But even more so, my emotional investment far exceeded what I had paid.

Wedding dresses are significant.  

The one thing a woman buys to wear once.  

The one article of clothing that is photographed more times by more people than any other piece of clothing you will ever own.

The one article of clothing that gets you more compliments and makes you feel more beautiful, than anything else in your closet:  past, present or future.

Like women before me and women after me, I wanted it to feel and be my version of perfect.  And it did.

It is Iconic.  

It is magical.

A week before my first anniversary, I picked it up from the special dry cleaners, who cleaned it and boxed it up, complete with a little window for me to peek at it from time to time without having to break the seal.  I paid to preserve its magical qualities, along with my shoes, head band and clutch.

I didn’t peek at it over the years.  I didn’t need to.  I could conjure up the weight of the dress, I could hear the swoosh of my skirt, I could see it daily in the wedding picture we kept displayed during our marriage.  

I kept it safely stowed and preserving in a closet.  

Preserving the magic.  Preserving the memories.  Preserving the investment.  Preserving…

I know that times have changed and there are some brides who promptly sell their used dresses, donate them, or do whatever to them.  It is all about what we believe to be true for ourselves to do.
  

• I kept my dress, perfectly preserved in the special box with a window.
• I kept the gold wrapped box with all of the cards I received from bridal showers and from the wedding.
• I kept the guest list spreadsheet.
• I kept a copy of the handmade invitations.
• I kept the RSVP's
• I kept my husband’s tuxedo and his shoes.
• I kept a lot of things that even surprised me that I had.
• I kept anything that I believed had magical qualities.

Over the years I did end up letting go of many things, as I downsized my storage bins.

It never ever dawned on me to let go of my dress.  It never dawned on me to sell it, donate it or do anything else but keep it in the special box with a window.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My husband died suddenly in July 2009, twelve and a half years after getting married.

Our girls were then aged ten and eight.

Around the time that would have been our thirteenth wedding anniversary, I brought the dress out.

With my girls.

I broke the seal.

I hauled it out.

And the girls tried it on. 

I let them play in the magical dress.

One of them said something about wearing my dress on their wedding day.  I responded, “No honey, you choose a dress that has YOUR energy, that reflects who you are.  This was my dress.”

I repacked the dress after that playtime.  Taped it up and returned it to the closet. 


It never dawned on me to let go of the dress. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In May of this year I was downsizing my stored treasures.  The bin that held the archives of the wedding was on my list.

I looked through each and every card, then let them go.

I read over the guest list and RSVP's and let them go.


I thinned out the bin, and I let those things go with love and gratitude.

The dress.  

Stayed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    

In the last 3 years I had thought about it.  

But I resisted.  That dress and that bin full of magic and memories was the antithesis of grief.   

It held space for me.  It held Love.  It held magic.  I was holding on.

An experience in June inspired me to come home and dive back into that bin, and I was set on unceremoniously letting all of it go.   

The experience led me to realize that I had invested in the fact that keeping the dress and all the accoutrements staved off the fact that it triggered unresolved grief.

Keeping the dress, for all its magical qualities, didn't take away the grief of loss and death; it didn't resolve the grief of unrealized dreams; it didn't mend the grief of my daughters.  Grief had consumed the magic.

Getting rid of the dress in that moment, would have satisfied me immensely.  It would have assuaged my anger at the realization that holding onto those things was holding me back, rather than taking me back.

But I waited.

I practised what I preach about letting things go with gratitude and love.

I waited until the anger had passed.

I waited until I could find peace in the letting go.

I waited until I was able to feel peace in letting it go.

I waited until I was able to feel gratitude.

I waited until I was able to feel love.

Then I took the dress out peacefully 24 hours later; Layed it on the floor and remembered. 

I recalled what the dress felt like, the swoosh of the skirt.  

I looked at the detail of the pearls and beads.

I held the dress.

I expressed gratitude for the dress, my husband, my marriage, my wedding and any and all things and people associated with it.

Packed it up and let it go.

With Love.
For me.

Letting it go did not take away the magic from that day.
 
Letting it go did not magically heal the grief.

Letting it go created space for me to allow for more magic in.