For today’s Pause to Ponder post, I want to share a short but powerful exercise I learned from Patrice Vecchione during our recent Quest “Write Your Mind Open” writing workshop. Before we started writing, Patrice asked participants to create a list of beliefs, attitudes or behavioral patterns that shut us down or hold us back—in relationships, writing, work, or any other arena of life.
Read MoreHave you ever considered how you use your voice, reflecting upon how often you feel safe and secure enough to speak honestly, truly uncensored? Are you confident speaking out, or do you regularly stifle your truths or modify what you have to say out of fear or deference to others? Can you trace your life back to a time when you spoke unfettered and used your voice freely?
Read MoreMy father believed that the most important thing he’d ever done was to become an explorer of his mind and heart. “I got to know myself as I really am, rather than who I imagined myself to be,” he wrote. “No one else could have deciphered the subtleties of my own mind. No one else could have faced my repressed emotions, heartbreaks, and fears.”
Read MoreOne of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my father is that each of us has a perspective that is totally subjective, and that the world we see is never independent of our individual projections.
Read More“Although we are part of a country and culture that places utmost reliance on linear, rational thought, our greatest wisdom doesn’t reside there. To gain access to our deepest knowing and discover what we’ve been storing in our hearts for so many years, we can tap into our imagination, emotions, memories, intuition bodily knowledge, dreams, and the relationships we have with the earth.” - Patrice Vecchione
Read MoreI took my first writing class at Esalen Institute in Big Sur in the fall of 2012, a few months after my father died. It changed my life. The remarkable writing teacher, Laura Davis, told us at the outset of the workshop that if we plan on writing anything autobiographical, we need to give up the hope that our family stories will feel accurate to everyone involved.
Read More
