Mollie blew a puff of breath at her wayward auburn bangs as she hung her head close to the tablet on her desk, scribbling furiously. Caught up in the excitement of the assignment, her purple ink pen burning her hearts desire onto the blue lines of the tablet, she barely heard her fifth grade teacher’s exasperated voice, “Mollie, stop writing this instant and pay attention!”

Mollie’s teacher had given them a simple assignment: spend ten minutes in your journal writing everything you love about your best friend. That was easy – Mollie’s best friend was her horse and that horse meant the world to her. No way could she put it all down in only ten minutes, but what she wrote was near and dear to her and put a smile on her face that lit up the room.

That’s what journaling is about – pouring your heart out. Pour out as little or as much as you want, but get it out there to see and touch. Start with a list of words; add phrases, graduate onto full paragraphs. It’s your stuff; it’s your baggage, your goals, your desires. It’s not a huge process – just get started and allow it to unfold.

The beauty of journaling is that you can be anybody you want to be on paper. Be your public self; be your private self; create a new self. Journaling allows you to see and take possession of all those facets of yourself that want to come together into one awesome balanced fabulous person. It validates you, and when you are comfortable reading your own writing, you can then “own” those facets that would shine with a little more (or less) attention.

Journaling will allow you to access and approach your core – your center – with more authenticity. More authenticity generates a healthier self-appreciation and esteem and isn’t that what we want when we greet our spouses, clients, and friends?

Are you already that awesome balanced fabulous person? Great! Use journaling for another purpose: to identify parts of you that you want to let go with love and gratitude. Approach it like Mollie the fifth grader: “Sally talks about me behind my back – I’m going to spend more time with Erica who treats me better”. An eleven year old can do it – so can you!

Getting started in journaling can be as grand or quiet as you want it to be. At first, I went out and purchased a beautiful hand-tooled leather journal and quickly filled it with thoughts, poetry, rantings, sketches, and other assorted personal doodles of interest. After that filled up rather quickly, I realized I needed some more economical versions of a journal and couldn’t wait to see the rows and rows of new school supplies set out each August, with all the great tablets and spirals and colorful binders.

I find that journaling works really well as a “self-check” system as well as a creative outlet. My goals are written in the front of my journal and then I start filling the pages. I can flip to the front and check myself – am I spending time fulfilling the steps to reach my goals (stick to the list, I can add to it once I attain this) or am I slowly adding more clutter (joining too many groups, looking for better, easier, etc), keeping me further away from the goals?

When I scan a weeks worth of journaling – or a months worth – I can quickly see if I’m adding too much in, diverging, or right on the track with the goals that I set for myself. I like that. I take responsibility for myself. Not my friends, not my coaches, not my husband – me. Journaling allows me to see growth that I would have missed had I not written it down. It’s very empowering.

Not all of you who read this will be willing to take the time to journal. That’s okay but if you take away anything from this, please take the “potential”, the “idea”, that to journal is to realize what an awesome fabulous person you are even when it feels like the whole world is sitting on you rather than holding you up. Maybe next month you will give it a try. Remember the fifth graders?

Journaling can bring a smile to your face and joy to your heart that nobody else can – because it’s all about fabulous you.

If you have been following my blogs we recently chatted on how creating intention makes order out of fragments of thoughts when we are setting personal goals. To be in tune with our intention allows bits and pieces to gel into something meaningful. In turn, we become super clear – and our mind can take a break and be quiet – on the steps needed to reach our goals with little or no resistance.

You can create your intentions anywhere and at anytime, but by creating a very special space, i.e. place, for your brainstorming, meditating, or quiet reflection, the outcomes of your goals suddenly become richer and more meaningful.

What is Sacred Space?

Any place that helps you to feel more centered, grounded, peaceful, grateful, or joyful can be defined as sacred space. It’s all about your needs – you get to pick and choose. It can be a favorite rocking chair in a sunny window. It can be a fantastic shade tree behind the barn where you are hidden from the calamity of the world for awhile. I have a friend who uses a rusted out single-horse trailer for her special place. She parked it at the back of her wooded property among some giant trees, set out a bunch of plants around it, stuck a bale of hay inside with a blanket and called it “hers”. A bit cold and sparse for my taste but she loves the feeling of her little hide-away and that’s what counts.

Why do I Need Sacred Space?

Sacred space creates a wonderful, supportive cocoon where you can relax and work on goals through intention. It reminds you that this is YOUR time exclusively for the next ten minutes or an hour. It allows you to be vulnerable yet safe because this is a calm, nurturing, and forgiving environment. When you create things while secluded in your sacred space they become more meaningful – and you become more focused and jazzed about what you create in it!

How Do I Define My Sacred Space?

Bring items and mementos that have personal meaning to you: art from your best friend, a poem from a loved one, smooth river stones, iridescent feathers, fruity scented candles, a favorite pillow, soothing music, lush green plants, trophies and ribbons, wind chimes, or prayer flags. The list is endless, but remember – this is your space – make it say “you”.

Keep your sacred space neat and tidy, or swept and weed-free: you will be keeping the energy moving by seeing to its upkeep. As you sweep away dust or weeds on the outside, you will also be clearing out the “dust and weeds” that have been cluttering your mind.

Now, you are ready to sit down and create some intentions! Be careful who you allow into your sacred space. Negative people can leave a negative residue behind and you’ll want to “clean up” after them (and maybe not invite them back into that space).

Sacred space creates sacred intentions – your intentions. Next time we will chat about capturing those intentions in writing, via journaling. Have you got an idea about where your sacred space will be?

Late in December a really grand idea started brewing in my head. Mechanical pencil in hand, I chose a fresh spiral notebook and scribbled furiously for days, writing in the margins, upside down, noting jaunty phrases and other assorted food for thought. It was really fun and exhilarating to be creating a brand new instructive resource for the equine baby boomer and I just knew that it would be a big hit when I went public with it!

Wait a minute – I’m still writing, and rewriting, and editing, and changing, and what’s this?…doubting. Taking a step back I looked at the mound of concepts and visions that were multiplying during the wee hours of the night. What a mosh pit of thoughts! How do I get from “wishing” and “wanting” to “doing” and “living it”? “Not to worry grasshopper”, said the modest voice in the silent auditorium of my brain, “stop, and go back to the concept of creating intention for your grand design”.

You and I probably did the same thing back in December: in the excitement of moving into a new year we vowed to make changes – let go of this, add that, do more of this, do less of that – and now it’s one big jumble of ideas that has no beginning or ending. Or so it seems. My New Year’s resolution started out with wanting to have a realistic goal that I could actually achieve. It just grew from there, excitement and all.

Before we move on, it’s important to define the difference between a wish and a goal. A wish is as simple as, “I wish I could compete in a dressage event this summer”. A goal is, “I want to compete and place first in the Bluebird class in Hunter Pace at Pine Hill this summer, there are three things I have to accomplish before May and those things are…”. Hear the difference? Good, let’s move onto the good stuff.

This is where the creating intention part comes in. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and work with me. Now use the goal of placing first in the Bluebird class of Hunter Pace you just fleshed out of a former “wish” or use your own goal and apply these questions to it:

a.)    Do you intend for it to serve you physically, as in getting into better shape to improve your time?

b.)    Do you intend for it to serve you mentally, as in staying sharp and focused, free of distractions, visualizing the course?

c.)    Do you intend for it to serve you socially, as in making new friends or just staying in the loop with your peers?

d.)   Do you intend for it to serve you spiritually, as in mastering a goal after recovering from an injury or setback?

Now you have taken a huge goal (“I want to compete and place first in the Bluebird class in Hunter Pace at Pine Hill this summer”) and identified the reasons, or intentions, behind that goal. Each one of those four areas deserves their own time and space to mature and become visible as a goal you can attain. This is a huge, huge step for the brain to take because each of the four areas requires different methods to achieve them. If you kept it all lumped into one goal without being clear on why it was so important to you, you would soon question your focus, become a bit annoyed, and eventually lose sight of how much you actually achieved during the process of going from goal/intention to hunter pace/personal success.

English please? Go back to creating intention. If you joined me in this exercise, you have now written a goal: you have identified the reason it feels so compelling to achieve it (physical, mental, social, or spiritual); you are now mentally ready to take the next step and OWN it.

Let’s say you have the intention of placing first in Bluebird class of Hunter Pace because you are a rider over 50 who no longer cares so much about speed, instead you care more about form and mental accuracy in working as a partner with your horse. Your preparation will look a lot different from the rider whose compelling intention is physical! But Cassie, don’t they all four work together? Yes they do – but the brain wants, no it NEEDS you to be clear and concise so you can work as a team and claim success. Maybe your goal will include more than one of those four ‘reasons’, and that’s okay but not necessary – just start simple.

Creating intention – the “what” am I wanting, “why” do I want it so badly, and the “how” am I going to get it. It defines your thoughts. It makes order out of spiral notebooks of scribbled ideas. Intention allows form, and form allows clarity, and clarity allows the mind to relax and let the things we know so well to flow without effort and without resistance.

You can create your intentions anywhere and at anytime, but at our next session I’m going to chat with you about the use of creating a very special space and how it can have a huge affect on the outcomes of your goals. Oh, and that instructive resource for the equine baby boomer I started back in December? Well it will soon unfold in all its glory…with focus and clarity and purpose. The grasshopper learns well!

I wanted to share something I’ve been doing that’s a little different: I started my going-on-24-yr old gelding, Sparky, on a veggie diet a couple weeks ago, taking him off concentrates. Yes, I was concerned about keeping weight on him, but between the new diet, and sharing a small bale of hay 2x a day with two other horses, he is doing just fine. He’s got quite a thick fuzzy winter coat grown, so in truth it’s hard to tell exactly how his weight is. He meets me at his dish though, pushing it around and nickering, which he didn’t do on the concentrates.

Here’s what he gets 2x daily:

• ½ head of lettuce, cut into ¼
• a small yam sliced up or ¼ of a squash
• a small apple cut into ¼
• a sprinkle of himalayan salt
• sometimes some dried peas
• sometimes some rolled oats (oatmeal)
• our household fruit/veggie/bread scraps
• in the evening, this is topped with a dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg – makes it smell like oh-so-yummy cookies!

I’m not up on my spices/herbs, but I’ll learn that too! Yes, this takes a little more prep, and a bit more financial planning to carry out, but I’m hoping it has some benefits for him, and for other horses I’ll feed this way in the future.  I’d love to hear what you think about this!

December 2010 was a beautiful ending to a challenging year. I enjoyed making several new equine friends and was especially enjoying the seasonal well-wishes as I read the daily notes and emails from the support group of like-minded women. We bonded because of common goals. We continue to bond even tighter because our goals include activities based around heavy bales of aromatic hay, worn leather gloves, and the “nuisance” of plucking horse hair out of everything we own.

As the year was coming to a close it made my heart glow with genuine joy as I read all the new goals and promises we proclaimed to each other: we would practice gentle self-care so we could be the best mom/wife/sister/friend/horseman we could; we would enjoy the experience and take “one day at a time”, allowing the special people around us as well as our cherished horses to create deep, meaningful relationships; and we would slow down and “make every moment count”, allowing the little stuff to just float up and out of our daily cares. Now that we are smack in the middle of a dreary January, I’m still reading the posts and emails, but I’m starting to notice a shift in other people’s goals. Are you seeing it too?

Time, as you and I know, can appear to go in two speeds: nothing happening, and/or, it’s all happening at once. Those mellow intentions that we spoke of in December now need to hurry up and happen because January is slipping away already! Gentle nudges of encouragement from December are now head butts of reminders in January! But wait, stop a moment – do you know how to make meaningful goals? Have you thought about the difference between a goal and a wish? How do you keep the momentum going all year long on all those goals? If you haven’t already cyber smacked me for asking you these questions, I have some tips to offer you for 2011.

I really want to get across each point to you without overwhelming you with print, so we’ll address our goals for 2011 in a series of blog posts. There will be four parts and each blog post will look something like this:

1. Blog 1: Creating intention – where do you start with all the ideas floating in and out of your brain at all hours of the day and night? What tools can you use to gain clarity over your goals? Is it a goal or is it a wish? Are you ready to discover your passion for 2011?
2. Blog 2: Sacred space for setting all of those intentions – do you walk around with the ideas and wishes in your head, maybe scribbling a few here and there on a calendar or appointment book? You have a very special place where everything just comes together…let’s discover that place for you!
3. Blog 3: Do you know how to use journaling without getting lost or losing focus on your goals? You’ll gain lots of insight, including how to ignore the crabs, in this section.
4. Blog 4: Did you realize that practicing your intentions (i.e., your goals) within your sacred space (i.e., your personal private spot) will not only clarify the outcome you want, but also allow you to stop the mind chatter that has previously kept you from reaching a goal?

So here’s the plan: over the next four weeks we’re going to take a very pleasant journey together that will clarify the “what, why, when, where, and how’s” that are scrambling up those wonderful intentions that first started taking shape back in December. We’re going to get back to the things we love about ourselves by creating clear goals using clear methods of achieving them, and a put a safety net in place that consists of terrific people who will support us along the way. By the end of the four sessions, you’ll have a nifty cache of words and actions and will have had the opportunity to practice in a safe, loving environment which automatically sets you up for success. Now – doesn’t that sound like a blessing?

It’s been six weeks of recovery time since my mind-opening fall. Mur, my senior gelding and riding partner that day, offers me sweet apologies as only a horse can give: soft nuzzles, liquid brown eyes, and stillness when I go out to visit him. The stillness allows me to gently touch him, rub his velvety ears, and apologize to him for my oversights. The stillness also keeps me safe so I do not have to move much with my tender ribs, allowing him to enfold his massive grey body around me, offering comfort and protection, lovingly strengthening the silent bond between horse and human.

Since I now have hours upon hours of stillness to endure yet during this recovery process, I need to find an outlet for all the information bombarding my senses. It’s as if I have tapped into a universal energy through the actions of Mur and need to capture it on paper: clarify my thoughts, sort them out, and keep the ones that support my authentic self. The healing process is tapping into my creative outlets in a big way.

Loving color and sound and rhythm I have a new burning desire to express myself in the form of writing, or more specifically, journaling. Journaling allows me to see random patterns and if I can wrap my brain around the patterns of emotions, then physically I should be just fine in time. This quiet, ‘still’ time is allowing me to clarify things that perhaps I was ignoring before. I can journal into the wee hours of the night, talking up a storm that only I can hear. It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be complete sentences, it only has to capture and record the essence of a thought and emotion so I can create something tangible out of it later.

Emotions keep spilling over like a magical rainbow of out of my heart. Sketches, catchy jingles, heartfelt poems, and songs are flowing with ease and a cheeriness that defies explanation. Seeing them appear on paper allows me to say them out loud, taste them, experience them, juggle them around and see how they fit the new me. There is no right or wrong way to journal – it’s private and personal and is a tool for reflection. The insight gained through journaling will go back out with me to the horses in the way I listen to them with new interest, talk to them with new respect, and plan activities with outcomes that stretch compassion and joy rather than function and form.

In retrospect of this process of clearing out the cobwebs of excess emotional baggage and tag-along shadow thoughts, I’m appreciating this new clarity in my thinking. By bringing in focus and clarity I can move ahead with a purpose more true to my authentic self.

Talking to the night does have its rewards and the reward is a deeper, more genuine, self-confident person who can appreciate the wisdom of silence and quiet time. I find that to be a blessing.

Last week I shared with you the news of my bone-breaking fall from one of my horses and how it was bringing me a “landslide of blessings”. What kind of blessings come from broken bones and bruised brains? Plenty and this appears to be just the beginning of something immense. As one of my friends put it so well, “you went through a gateway”. A gateway – now that makes sense. I’ve spent years studying various methods of becoming heart-centered and I’ve finally made it to the front gate – hallelujah! I’m putting in my request to the universe for a softer landing next time, just in case I still don’t get it right this time.

My brain has always been rather black and white and rather harsh at times. If life handed me lemons I didn’t just make a pretty little pitcher of lemonade. Nope, I smashed those darn lemons to smithereens, got what good out of them I could and then hastily tossed them in the compost pile of life’s bitter lessons. My brain still wants to deal with it now, pronto, but my heart now wants to take it in, hold it gently, and understand why it was thrown into my face to begin with. And so it is with my fall from my otherwise gentle and collected horse, that my bruised brain began to look at the piles of lemons that I have tossed aside: re-examine them, re-evaluate their usefulness, and bring some softness (and sweetness) into my brain’s “how-to deal with life” file.

I make lists. And lists of lists. And my refrigerator is a collage of colorful squares reminding me to check the lists. The bruised brain is now looking at the clutter and the message is loud and clear — too much. So many notes, information overload, visual overstimulation. All those notes didn’t mean I was getting a lot done either. I had been fooling myself, believing that I was incredibly productive because after all, look at the number of notes on just about every horizontal surface I own! I am totally onboard with this new approach – life is not about the notes, it’s about the action. Or, in this case, my newly discovered desire to toss all those lists and notes and stickies and SIMPLIFY. I have obsessed with the notes and created myself a nice little rut. Ahhh, the heart is getting another point across to the bruised brain.

While the endless stacks of notes are being pared down, my collections of notebooks get to stay – I can take notes and scribble and create all I want and then close the cover. I no longer feel driven to evaluate the success of my day by the length of my notes. I have flexibility, choices, and I can act upon those that my heart declares are of a healing and self-supporting nature. I’ve tried this already. Did you know that nobody else cares if the dishwasher is still full of clean dishes at 8:00 a.m. in the morning? They really don’t care and now, neither do I. Did you know that nobody really wants to see all the nit-picky things that need attention in the barn, but they do care if your horses are happy, healthy, and content? Now I can’t wait to take a new notebook, sit and observe the beauty of my horses as they go about their daily routine of just being a horse, and write about the emotions they inspire.

Thinking back on that tumultuous day, I realize now many things that I had taken for granted: I expected certain behavior from my senior gelding; I went on auto-pilot, allowing my brain to override checklists, silencing my heart’s messages about what my horse needed from me that day. I want to support myself in healing ways, not be defined by my brain’s To Do list. This is a huge step forward for my brain to just sit back and be quite and allow my heart to come into the landscape. I find this to be quite a blessing.

Next week: Talking to the Night

Falling off of a 1200 pound large animal is typically not considered a blessing by most sane folks. When it happened to me I was totally unprepared for the landslide of blessings that I would come to experience as a result of this heart-stopping moment in time. Looking back on that exceptional Saturday, I know in my heart there was no other way to get where I am today without going through the bone-crushing event.

The day began with my usual list of plans, hastily scribbled on the back of a used envelope. By 7:00 a.m. that Saturday my list was looping onto the front and sides of white space – as usual, I had filled it to the brim with “stuff” that just felt important to me. And so it went, checking off the list as I got each inky chore accomplished: clean the water troughs, check the pastures for weird stuff, tidy the hay loft, pick hooves, and so on. By 10:00 a.m. I decided to add one more thing to the list: ride Mur.

It had been months first of rain and wind, then moving our ranch to a new place, and then enduring the harsh summer heat – today was perfect for a little easy walkabout in the back pasture. I went to Mur and told him of the new plan which perked him up immediately. Mur came to our ranch to retire after a colorful life of dressage and then a rather dull life (his words, not mine) of being a lesson horse. We had spent the last 11 months with him relaxing, going barefoot after years in shoes, and the bonding was evident in our daily interaction. He shuffled his feet in his “happy dance” and followed me along the fence line, talking up a storm and pushing the mares out of his way in order to get to the gate. Laughing, I put my hand on his shoulder and moved him away, “not yet big boy, I have things to do yet”. I was tickled that Mur had been able to spend these months unwinding, getting healthy, and wanting to be with people. He had been unusually attentive and animated the last several weeks and this public display of silly animation from the otherwise grumpy gelding was icing on the cake for me!

Mur is like me – he prefers routine. Just try to give him his hay first before his feed and see the expression of “good grief, human” come over his lovely Romanesque face. Chores dutifully performed, it was finally time to have that little Saturday ride, or, landslide.

The trip from my cushy AP saddle to leaf-strewn pasture was swift, unexpected, and gave my ego a good whipping. For Mur, a seasoned dressage horse, this should have been a piece of cake for him.

I have several distinct memories from that day: everybody’s happy, I’m falling, and I’m turned inside-out with pain. I recall being huddled in the seat of the car while my husband drove willy-nilly to the emergency room. I recall the tiresome logic side of my chatterbox brain kicking in: did I shut the gate? Are we going to be back by dark? Did I leave anything off my list? Ack! Finally, all I wanted was to sleep and get out of the immense pain.

Sleep was the first thing that changed. Not one to embrace drug therapy I was determined to do this on my own terms. And that started the process – the process of change – the process of unraveling the safety net of my standard thoughts for survival. This was different. This was not drug-induced, but pain induced. But wait! I could dissolve the pain into a bejeweled comforter of brilliant white light in which I had the most creative, colorful, and meaningful thoughts! Was this MY brain? I was waking up and scribbling hastily in a new notebook (ok, that’s one area that I had to keep, the cache of notebooks for impulse writing) and by the next day I would have this story with characters of untold beauty and strength. After reading and re-reading two weeks of these stories it hit me like a bale of tightly packed alfalfa: it was ME in the story, with this newfound strength and clarity. Just who was this woman living inside me? Did I like her and want her to stay? Would she continue to grow and evolve or was this just a fluke to tease me? Can I really go through such a drastic change in less than a month? Can I turn this landslide of painful events into something bigger, with personal meaning and staying power?

Next week: Connecting My Brain to My Heart