Summer In The City



I have a new addiction. It involves a pretentious private school girl on a student exchange, a sulky Tongan schoolboy and the campest drama teacher this side of San Francisco – all played by the same comic genius, Chris Lilley, in the Aussie mockumentary, Summer Heights High, now showing on BBC3 and HBO in the US. It’s hard to know which character to love or loathe more.

Ja’mie (pronounced Jah-may) is hideously bitchy and without an ounce of self-awareness, as she gaily patronises all the state school students around her. Jonah is the classic under-achieving, sulky teenage boy and Mr G is deeply frustrated at being a ‘theatre professional’ in a high school teacher’s job. Which is of course particularly difficult for him, given his track record in writing and producing stage productions, including such gems as Ikea The Musical and Tsunamarama, based on the Boxing Day Tsunami tragedy, set to the music of Bananarama.

Although it’s hilarious, Summer Heights High can be as uncomfortable to watch as The Office, with performances that will make you cringe with recognition as the characters play out their personal dramas and power struggles. If you want to know exactly how not to behave, these are life lessons writ large. Possibly that’s why Perez Hilton called it ‘one of our favourite shows on the planet’.

For something a little more palatable on the life lesson front, there’s always Sex & The City, now lighting up the silver screen, and the subject of commentary around the world. At Beliefnet.com, there’s even an article on 15 Love Lessons from the TV show, by Valerie Reiss. As a firm believer in finding wisdom anywhere, here are a few of the highlights for you to enjoy. To read the whole piece go to http://www.beliefnet.com/gallery/15lovelessonsfromsexandthecity.html.

“Fate Is Not Always Fate – It’s so tempting to interpret the tea-leaves of love, to decide that fate is (finally) working in our favour. When Trey saved Charlotte from being mowed down by a speeding taxi, she decided it was fate. Not just that he was a nice guy who saved her life, but that he must be the guy to live out her ‘marry tale’ with. Turns out, not so much, and I think after that divorce, Char developed a very different notion of fate, ie we don’t know how the universe works and just because it seems like synchronicity, it doesn’t mean you have to marry the dude. A lesson better remembered than re-experienced.

“Be Vulnerable – More than anyone else on the show, Samantha and her mien of steel taught us that true strength is in opening and trust. She started to get this from her girl-flame Maria (‘I’ve got monogamy, I think I caught it from you people.’) but mostly from her hot-hot boyfriend, Smith Jerrod. First he forced on her his ‘perverse’ desire to hold hands and then, most touchingly, shaved off his golden locks when she lost hers to chemo. We all have an inner Samantha – the part that feigns bravado in the face of pain and trusts no-one. Watching her set down her insecurity-as-sword reminded all us tough girls to do the same.

“Don’t Mistake Scraps For Jewels – ‘It was the singlemost encouraging moment in our relationship.’ Was Carrie talking about Big sharing his heart with her? Giving her a thoughtful present? Nope. She said this when he gave her the ‘only’ extra pink toothbrush head one night. Sure, it was the only baby step toward accepting her into his life that he was capable of. But all of us need to love ourselves enough not to mistake glitter for diamonds, scraps for a meal – exactly what that toothbrush head was.

“Love Beyond Yourself – Though ever-cynical Miranda adored her baby, she was not instantly maternal, referring to him as ‘meatloaf’ at one point. But she eventually warms to motherhood. And later on, she grows her heart an extra size when she cares for her mother-in-law with dementia, gently bathing her in one especially heart-breaking scene. The girls – and all of us – are at their best when they give and extend themselves to others.

“Always Come Home To Yourself – When Carrie is off with the Russian in Paris, (wearing that amazing tulle dress that goes on forever), she loses her signature nameplate necklace. A heavy-handed metaphor? Maybe. A key lesson in all relationships? Yes. It’s so easy for women especially to lose their identity in romantic relationships – we tend to merge with our lovers, sometimes dropping our own ‘names’ in the process. Ms Bradshaw does find her necklace, and any good shrink (or scriptwriter) would say it’s important to note that it was with her all along, fallen into the lining of a Dior purse. The series ends with these words from Carrie, after she has gone back home to New York, to herself, her friends and her Big love: ‘the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well that’s just fabulous.”

This week, take a look at what you might have learned from your favourite shows or movies. What kind of values do they embody? What do they tell you about how you’d like your life to be? Which ones inspire you to follow your own vision? Which ones show you exactly what not to do? If you had to pick a single line to encompass your philosophy, what would it be? Draw some inspiration from the screen – big or small – and let life imitate art in the most fabulous way.

For the Coach Fabulous archives, go to www.coachfabulous.blogspot.com and for the I Am Fabulous archives, go to www.fabcentral.blogspot.com. You can email me at coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 9 Jun 08)

New Beginnings

The heavens are aligning in a particularly inspirational way this weekend, as we celebrate the spring equinox – marking the birth of a new astrological year – and Easter, traditionally a period of rebirth, at the same time. If that’s not a clue, I don’t know what is …

To get with the programme, make sure you carve out some time for yourself over the Easter break to consider how to invite the energy of a new direction into your life. It’s a time of regeneration – letting go of the old and making room for the new to take shape. That spaciousness comes from introspection and opening up to intuitive inklings of what might be ready to be expressed in your life.

If you’re a regular reader, you already know that stillness is the key when you’re looking for inner guidance. What you might not know is that the author of Practical Intuition, Laura Day, considers that there are four main personality responses to crisis that affect how you receive and interpret intuition. They reflect the fundamental ways in which you respond to difficulty – through anger, denial, depression or anxiety.

According to Day, each of those approaches carries within it a specific gift. Anger has passion, denial contains effectiveness, depression bears wisdom and anxiety incorporates awareness. Each one deals with things differently when life doesn’t go well and therefore needs a different type of preparation for opening up to the intuition that will guide them out of difficult circumstances.

As she says, “Each type has a different way of meditating. An Anger type needs to discharge some of their energy. Instead of sitting and chanting, what they need to do is maybe run a quarter mile or do a hundred jumping jacks.

“A Denial type needs to release some of the fear. Once the denial type sees what’s wrong and has the courage to do that, they can solve anything. What they need to do is something that makes them feel, whether it’s a song that makes them cry a little, seeing a friend that warms their heart or looking at an old photo album to get them back into their feeling self. That gives them the peace that they need.

“A Depression type is afraid of action because they’re already exhausted just by the idea of life. The first thing a Depression type needs to do to intuit clearly is to find support. They should make their environment supportive – get a comfortable chair, have a beverage – making them feel like they’re taken care of first and then their intuition will flow accurately.

“Anxiety types’ nemesis is confusion. Anxiety types get so much information all the time intuitively and can do absolutely nothing with it. All it does is make them anxious about things they’re never going to encounter. What they need to do is to break their intuitive inquiries down – make a list of questions and do each one step-by-step. They need to order their experience.”
You can find short, guided ‘audio experiences’ for each of these response types at http://www.welcometoyourcrisis.com/experiences.html. They’ll help you to relax and tap into your intuition in a way that’s best suited to your personality.

That should get you geared up for a little seasonal inspiration and intuition. Have a heavenly Easter break!

For the Coach Fabulous archives, go to www.coachfabulous.blogspot.com and for the I Am Fabulous archives, go to www.fabcentral.blogspot.com. Email me at coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 10 Mar 08)

Wake Up & Smell The Coffee

This week’s I Am Fab is going to be a short, sharp burst of inspiration – rather than the customary rambling affair – due to a far too fabulous birthday celebration yesterday. Give me a whiff of champagne and I’m party central, which is of course fun, but does leave one with slightly less enthusiasm for concentration the following day. However, inspiration struck in one of many fizz-fuelled conversations during the afternoon and evening of festivities, when the birthday girl asked a very interesting question: what’s the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?

Of course, our mindset in the earliest part of the day really sets the tone for how the rest of the day will unfold. If you kick off grouchy or stressed, no prizes for guessing the day can only get worse. If you make a conscious effort to focus on positive or peaceful thoughts, you’re laying the foundation for a calmer, happier experience throughout the day.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll have already surmised that meditation is the first cab off the rank for me in the morning – that and recalling any fragments of dreams that are still lurking about in a sleepy morning mind. It’s always useful to pay attention to what’s going on in your dreams, not only because it’s one way that your subconscious helps you to solve problems or bring to conscious awareness issues that are troubling you, but also because some of our best and clearest intuitive messages can come through dreams.

So, here’s the deal: this week, take the first five minutes of every day to notice what’s going on in your night life by remembering your dreams and writing down any that seem significant. If you don’t do this almost immediately upon waking, you’ll find that the memory of the dream will slip away. The more you do this, the more you will learn your own personal language of dream symbolism, making it a powerful channel for intuitive messages and personal awareness.

Secondly, notice your mood and make a conscious effort to either enhance a naturally good mood or uplift yourself from grumpy grouch mode. One easy way to do this is to pick three things to concentrate on: think about someone that you’re grateful to have in your life; imagine doing something you’ve always wanted to do; and, finally plan a treat – however small – that you’re committed to giving yourself that day. That should get your thoughts on an upward spiral!

If you’re so inclined, go for gold and get in a mini-meditation, by simply focusing on your breath and clearing your mind. Every time thoughts arise, return your focus to your breath. Don’t try too hard, just notice when you’ve become distracted without getting hung up on it. The aim of the game is peacefulness, not perfection. Give yourself the gift of stillness and it’ll pay dividends you cannot yet imagine.

Have a fabulous week and notice what a difference even small changes like these can make.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 2 Oct 07)

Feet Of Clay

I’m not entirely sure what set me off on this train of thought, but I’m noticing a lot about hero worship cropping up in various ways. It probably started a couple of weeks ago when I was mucking about with a MySpace page because a friend had sent me a link to his new blog at www.myspace.com/chriscrudelli – well worth a read if you want the lowdown from a true martial artist – and one of the required formats on the page was to list your heroes. That got me thinking that I don’t actually have any. I have inspirations, for sure – people whose work, spirituality or integrity is something I value and admire, but I just don’t go in for the whole hero worship thing.

Having met many of the major figures in the self-help and spiritual arena over the years, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there’s no-one who’s got it totally together, whose life works seamlessly and who behaves impeccably every single day. That’s an illusion – and a very real danger spot for those who begin to believe their own publicity – as well as being pretty much a human impossibility. We all have our vulnerabilities, our blind spots and our bad hair days and it’s a cruel joke we play on ourselves when we think everyone else has got it together but us. If you’re alive, you’ll have issues. That’s just the way the story goes. Life is about letting go of the stuff that gets in the way of knowing that there’s a divine perfection within you. In that process you’ll need to have compassion for yourself as you work through your human frailties – it’s about aligning yourself with an inner truth, rather than trying to create an outer facade through rigid control and perfection obsession.

The Brand Beckham phenomenon is a perfect case in point. They are both subject to an almost unimaginable amount of hero worship, not only for their careers, but also for being an allegedly perfect couple (until the wheels fell off in the shape of Rebecca Loos et al). Yet whenever I see them appear in the media I just feel exhausted. Victoria Beckham is the epitome of someone who is dedicated to the ‘trying too hard’ school of style and she never, ever looks happy. Control and rigidity are written all over her face and the staged ‘togetherness’ pics – particularly when their marriage crisis was in full swing – simply smack of desperation to uphold an image rather than a genuine attempt at togetherness. We seem to have reached a societal nadir where we value image above all else. We hero-worship people who are little more than just famous for being famous and a whole generation of children is growing up with the idea that fame is a goal in itself, rather than a by-product of success in your chosen field.

Couple this with the explosion of glossy magazines showing airbrushed celebs with cosmetic enhancements creating a kind of dubious beauty that doesn’t exist in nature, and we’ve created a seriously poor breeding ground for self-esteem, not only for ourselves, but for children who are too young to know any better. At least we’ve accumulated a little life wisdom that allows us the perspective to realise that no-one’s perfect, but what chance do they have when calculated imagery is all they see? Stars have always existed, but they were escapist figures, remote from daily life, and there wasn’t the modern pressure to meet those impossible standards in real life.
I wonder if we’re all yearning for a time when perfection wasn’t the byword and people were more raw, honest and interesting. The huge popularity of the BBC TV show Life On Mars with its unrestrained, testosterone-fuelled 70s detective Gene Hunt, played with gloriously unashamed machismo by Philip Glenister, makes me think so. Of course Gene Hunt’s a complete git and every feminist’s nightmare, but it’s wonderful to see a real character come to life, full of flaws and utterly beguiling in his humanness.

The 70s were fertile ground for recognising that heroes had feet of clay, with the most infamous tale coming from John Lennon’s lengthy sabbatical from his marriage to Yoko Ono, the ‘lost weekend’ period with girlfriend May Pang. One night, drunk on Brandy Alexanders, Lennon was at a gig at the Troubador in LA when – with the kind of twisted genius that alcohol is known for – he came across a clean sanitary towel on the floor, which he decided to wear as a headband. When the waitress refused to serve him, he pulled the “Don’t you know who I am?” card, to which the waitress rather dryly replied, “Yeah, you’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head”. She later went on to muse about what a bummer it is to find out that your hero is an asshole. That’s the downside of hero worship – it’s ultimately going to come a cropper because sooner or later we all do something stupid, no matter how famous we become.

One of my favourite inspirational authors has pushed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour recently. I’ve followed the work of Caroline Myss from the early days before Anatomy OfThe Spirit became a runaway success and was particularly looking forward to her latest work, Entering The Castle, based on the writings of St Teresa of Avila’s extraordinary treatise on the soul, El Castillo Interior. I’m still working my way through the book, but I found her meditation CDs based on that work almost impossible to endure, due to the berating, judgmental and condescending rants that accompany them. Sadly, for me it’s kind of up there with the John Lennon incident – there’s a point at which it might be prudent to realise that perhaps you’re taking yourself a little too seriously and that being contemptuous of your core audience could turn out to be a risky strategy.

This week, take a look at those you might be hero-worshipping, even on the mildest of scales. If you’re comparing yourself to them, by assuming they’ve got it all together and you haven’t, take a closer look. Things are not always as they seem and none of us is perfect in every way. That doesn’t mean you need to look at them negatively or judge them, but that you can see that they have their own struggles and you can love them for that as much as their achievements. A lot of greatness comes from people who are driven to achieve extraordinary things because they’ve had to overcome real difficulties. Know that having compassion for others helps you to have compassion for yourself. Having a blind spot isn’t the problem – not being willing to face it and do something about it is. We may not always get things right and we should just get comfortable with the idea that we’re not meant to be perfect all the time, but it’s the willingness to move forward that really counts. Be kind to yourself this week, learn to love your own frailties and have compassion for those who can’t relax long enough to let themselves just enjoy their own lives, however imperfect they may be.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 16 Apr 07)

Sleeping Beauty

As you probably know by now, I don’t normally have any sense of what the blog’s going to be about until I crank up the laptop and today’s no different. Sometimes I write about the process, sometimes it’s what’s going on in my life or for those around me and other times it’s just a bit of a riff on whatever takes my fancy. Let me warn you now, I think it’s going to be one of those days when who knows where we might end up ...

I’ve spent the past couple of days doing the most curious thing – writing a holiday brochure about a place I’ve never been to. Luckily it’s one that caught my imagination long ago, but even so, this has been an interesting challenge to bring to life a city you’ve never visited and write entertainingly about its various quarters without ever having set foot in it. Thank God for the internet – or maybe not, as without it I’d probably have had to make the trip myself, which would have been much more fun.

Having to research the city so thoroughly has made me even more determined to see all these wonderful sights I’ve been writing about. Being fascinated by art and architecture, one of the greatest pleasures of travelling is to experience these fabulous buildings or masterpieces that I’ve studied. It took me two trips to Rome to finally get a chance to see inside the Pantheon and I’ve racked up a sweaty crawl into the heart of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh along the way, but my all-time favourite piece of unseen architectural splendour is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It’s particularly irksome to write lovingly about it without ever having had the chance to witness firsthand the way the mystical quality of light shimmers through the nave, giving the impression that the vast dome seems to hover above you. I’ve admired the Ayasofya from afar for so long, I hope it lives up to its reputation when I finally make it to exotic Istanbul.

That does rather remind me of a fabulous travel piece by the comedian Dave Barry. Writing from an American perspective, he touches on some of the classic moments of discovery about tourism in Europe. My favourite tale of his is the one about the American tourists standing around at the Louvre, asking “Where’s the big Mona Lisa?”. As an iconic piece of art, it looms so large in our culture that we assume it to be a huge canvas, but in reality it’s quite small, hence the dazed and confused US tourists. He also does some great lines about European traffic, including the fact that Italian taxi drivers will not only drive you to your hotel, but right into the lobby.

Inspirational places or paintings uplift us because beauty and artistic or architectural achievement lift our thoughts way above the mundane to something greater. Religious architecture like the Ayasofya is specifically designed to direct your eyes heavenward, to inspire awe and a sense of the mysterious. That particular iconic building alone has weathered three empires and a transition from Christian church to mosque and still manages to inspire people from all faiths to make the pilgrimage to see it.

Beauty, of a place or a piece of art, reminds us of the truth of who we are. It wakens us again to higher aspirations – for space, time, joy, reverence and reflection and to finding the deeper, richer parts of ourselves. As Plato’s prayer so charmingly expresses – “grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self” – we can be as influenced by our outer world as by our inner one, so it behoves us to make that world as beautiful as it can be.

We know how powerfully the absence of beauty can affect us as a society when we see how quickly run-down urban areas can become desolate and crime-ridden. In Broken Windows, Broken Business, Michael Levine has written of the ‘broken windows’ theory, where even small flaws left unattended can become attractors for far greater problems to come. In essence, when people don’t feel inspired by or engaged with their environment, they cease to care for it, and as they do, it will attract more of the same disrespect, degenerating quickly into dereliction. As much as this applies to neighbourhoods, it also applies to businesses. Small problems left unattended can grow into much larger difficulties, affecting the entire reputation and livelihood of the company.

Equally, on a personal level, even small things that you tolerate every day can be dragging your energy and vitality down. If every time that you look around the house you’re seeing things that need repairing or undone chores, then those things will be weighing on your mind, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. If you bite the bullet and get them sorted, you’ll be amazed at how much energy that liberates and how free you’ll feel. That’s why working on ‘tolerations’ is one of the first things a coach will have you do – it helps you to clear up your physical and psychic space and give you energy to go forward with the changes you want to make in your life.

This week, it’s going to be a two-fold process again. First, identify three things you’ve been tolerating, like undone chores, putting up with things that need mending, or conversations you’ve been meaning to have but haven’t managed to get around to. Then have a Nike moment and just do them. Pay attention to how good that makes you feel and do three more if you have the time.

Secondly, look at your home and your place of work with new eyes. How can you make it more beautiful? What can you place around you that will help you to find moments of peacefulness and joy? In one of my more manic jobs, I used to keep a statue of the fat, happy, laughing Buddha on my desk as a reminder not to take things so seriously. Do what it takes to distract yourself from habitual ways of thinking and behaving. Take some time out in a natural place of beauty, perhaps in a park or by the river. Step out for a bit of silence in a local church when you need some peace. It doesn’t have to be a religious experience – the quality of the atmosphere and the beauty of the architecture will work its magic whether you’re a believer or not. Go to a gallery and soak up the art at lunchtime. See a film with amazing scenery. What’s important is that you find ways to bring outer beauty into your life, to uplift you, inspire you and awaken the fabulous beauty that lies within.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com.
For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 30 Oct 06)

Fire In The Heart

Being your whole, fabulous self in its complete entirety is not an easy job. It’s probably not escaped your notice that the handbag and prosecco obsessions in my life are quite often engaged in an indelicate skirmish with the parts of me that reflect hippie, tree-hugging values and the search for a deeper meaning in life. Attempting to package that little lot together into a cohesive personality is way too much effort, so quite frankly I’ve just stopped trying. Even the seemingly contradictory parts of yourself can happily co-exist if you’re willing to just allow that to be OK. Genuine self-acceptance begins with realising that it’s your quirks that make you interesting. To exclude any part of yourself is to create an internal civil war that will ultimately cause you to self-destruct, because you’ll have cut yourself off from your own authenticity.

Speaking of old hippies, I heard a great quote from the musician Carlos Santana recently, who said, “If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired. If you’re inspired you will always be enthusiastic and there’s nothing more contagious on this planet than enthusiasm.” Apart from being an institution on the music scene for over thirty years, Santana is also a philanthropist who quietly goes about making a contribution to the world in line with his spiritual values, including donating the entire proceeds of his Shaman tour to help combat the AIDs crisis in Africa. He’s a flesh and blood reminder to us that whatever we want to create or offer, we can do it in our own way, without compromising who we are.

We need creative, funky and vibrant people from all walks of life to mirror back to us that spirituality and a life of vitality and passion aren’t mutually exclusive. We need to remember that enthusiasm, not dry dogma, is what drives real change in our lives and keeps us on song and on purpose. I love it that Santana went on to say, “In my life, I don't want to be a victim and I don't want to be a tragedy. I want triumph—spiritual triumph—with humility and grace, beauty, elegance, and excellence. You know, I learned a lot from Duke Ellington about class, and from Nat King Cole and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, and John Coltrane about humility. So I have crystallised all my religion into no religion – into spirituality. Religion is finely designed to divide and separate; spirituality brings unity and forgiveness and compassion.” Imagine a life of spiritual triumph – now that’s something to aspire to!

We’ve got the aim in sight – the spiritual triumph of being your total, fabulous self – but how do you stay on track day to day and keep your enthusiasm and inspiration levels high? Having a clean slate to start with is a big help, so here’s a mini-meditation to help you feel balanced and in tune with yourself. It’s a mindfulness practice, but it’s really about noticing what’s going on in your body, because that’s the fastest way to check in on your energy and deal with one of the biggest killjoys known to man – free-floating anxiety.

We’re in the midst of tough times on the planet and the fifth anniversary of September 11 is only a week away, so it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of general anxiety about. If you’re in any way sensitive, you’ll be picking that up, regardless of what else is going on in your life.

Sensitivity and intuition go hand-in-hand with empathy, which means that you can be picking up on other people’s stressful energy and not even realise it’s happening. Ever had a day when you were feeling upbeat and happy, but suddenly and unaccountably found yourself feeling flat and drained? That’s a sign that you’re picking up on other people’s stress. The trick is to notice it as it happens and learn to let it go. While you’re at it, you can release any of your own daily build-up of stress and anxiety too, with this simple practice that will only take a couple of minutes to do. We’re going to do a quick visualisation on lifting solar plexus energy into the heart. Most of us store our anxious feelings around the solar plexus, just below where the lower ribs meet, and our positive feelings are felt more strongly in the heart. This practice helps you fill your heart with positive and joyful energy that uplifts and burns off the anxious feelings stuck in the solar plexus.

Give it a try now – briefly close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing, noticing how it naturally slows down when you pay attention to it. As you feel yourself settling into a natural rhythm of deeper breathing, bring your attention to your heart and imagine it as a huge and vibrant sun. Feel it radiating light and joyfulness, growing stronger the more you pay attention to it. Do this until you can feel a great sense of expansion, warmth and lightness in your heart. Notice that as your heart energy grows and expands, it draws the energy up from the solar plexus like small flames that disappear in the powerful light of the sun. Keep allowing these flames to be drawn in and dissipated until you feel a sense of release and relaxation in your solar plexus. Finish by holding that sense of joy in your heart and returning your attention to the room, stretching a little to make sure you’re fully grounded and focused.

This is a good starter for the day if you notice you’re preoccupied with something, as an energy top-up during a coffee break, or to release your worries of an evening as you fall asleep. Your ability to stay strong in your intentions, pay attention to your intuition and maintain your enthusiasm will all radically improve if you keep your energy clear in this way. Just imagine what you could do if you weren’t being held back by fear or anxiety …

Inspiring people get other people juiced up about their own lives. Even if they did nothing else, that would be a massive contribution in itself. This week, find some role models of inspiration and, even better, be one. Here’s a little more insight from Santana to help you on your way: “My meat and potatoes is my intention, motives, and purpose, and the company that I keep … if I never got an award, that would be fine with me, because the company that I keep is very inspiring and stimulating. I love hanging around vibrant people, people who don't walk around with a tag. You can never put a tag on a Mandela or a Desmond Tutu or a Harry Belafonte. You cannot buy these people, and once they set out to do something, you can't bribe them. Those are the kinds of people that I'd like to be centre stage with.”

Spend time with the people who inspire you, embrace all that you are with humour and humility and, before you know it, you’ll be inspiring someone too …

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank emailto IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field. All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 4 Sep 06)

A World Of Inspiration

Although I’ve lived in Europe for over twenty years, I still associate the coming of September with the arrival of Spring - old habits clearly die hard in my house – but either way it is still one of the most beautiful months of the year, anywhere in the world. It’s my favourite time for a holiday, with balmy weather in the southern hemisphere and hopefully an Indian summer for those of us who hang out north of the equator. It’s also a great time to try out all the places that open up especially for the summer, but in complete peace after all the tourists have left. When I lived in southern Spain, it was a glorious month for enjoying the company of those who only visited off-season – generally a much more stylish crew – and taking full advantage of the beach bars and restaurants that would disappear by October as quickly and mysteriously as they’d arrived.

We may have a few days to go yet, but September is clearly already on my mind. If we’re not in vacation mode, then September can be a time when we tend to get a bit more serious about life as the playful mood of summer starts to fade. My crusade for this month is to remind you to keep things light – joyfulness is a state of mind that’s not just for holidays, it’s for life.

Like far too many of us, I have a dreadful tendency to be able to turn even the most joyful things into a burden. In case you hadn’t noticed, I love writing – absolutely nothing makes me happier or feel more on track – and yet somehow I will still manage to turn it into a chore and make it feel more like an obligation than an adventure. Take today, for example. Over time I’ve learned to trust that I’ll get the inspiration that I need and so I don’t plan what I’m going to write and generally just show up at the keyboard expecting the muses to do their work and give me something to write about. I’ve become pretty comfortable with this, but usually I have some kind of inkling about what the subject matter will be. Today, though, there was nothing - nothing when I woke and still nothing throughout the day, just a complete blank. As you can imagine, that was more than a little disconcerting and my mind was having a field day coming up with worst-case scenarios for what it might mean.

Then, as I was sitting outside enjoying some late afternoon sun, I got my first clue in the shape of a butterfly that flew right in front of my face and then settled on the tree on my terrace for a few short minutes. In the shamanic traditions, all animals hold associations for us and their appearance is a clue to the energy we need to embody. We especially need to pay attention to the messages they bring when they come into close contact with us physically or appear repeatedly in symbolic form or dreams.

Given that our own dreams are deeply fascinating, but hearing about anyone else’s is a fast-track trip to boredom central, you’ll be relieved that I won’t be sharing mine with you. Suffice to say that animal images seem to be popping up left, right and centre and the current theme seems to be expansion, growth and lightening up. Butterflies are associated with transformation, joy and lightness of being, so that brief visitation reminded me how I was turning writing into a chore, rather than an adventure, by focusing only on the goal and not the process. Not knowing what was coming could either be experienced as terrifying or as a creative challenge to be embraced and explored. The choice was entirely mine.

If you’re open to it, inspiration will strike in the strangest of ways. Some of us are more open to signs from the natural world and for others insights will come through the day-to-day channels of everyday living, like hearing exactly what you need to know through a chance TV or radio discussion or even overhearing a random conversation on the train. Plenty of people tell stories of going into a bookstore and literally having the book they need to read fall off the shelf in front of them. What’s required for this kind of ongoing inspiration to really kick in is to start paying attention. We tend to sleepwalk through life, sticking to the same routines and then wonder why life isn’t exciting or why we don’t feel in the flow. It’s a conscious choice, not a random occurrence. If you want to feel inspired, you need to expect it and to be open to however it comes. That was my lesson today, obviously. Of course, my mind would be an awful lot more comfortable with nailing everything down in advance, but it’s a lot more fun and far more of a creative stretch to open to endless possibility.

This week, fabulous people, the challenge is not to treat the Bank Holiday as the end of summer and thus the end of fun. If you normally get super-focused and serious as September unfolds, then think about how you can give yourself an Indian summer of the mind, carrying that sense of joy, relaxation and exploration into your daily life. Where can you lighten up and allow things to unfold, rather than forcing yourself to have it all planned out? How can you make sure that you enjoy the journey, not just arriving at the goal. Play around with how you get your inspiration too – what insights have you had in the past from random occurrences or encounters? Pay attention to the symbols that appear repeatedly in your life. If you keep coming across the same thing in your dreams or your daily life, then try to intuit what that might mean for you. If you need a little help, you can always get a bit more of a clue by looking up the symbolic meaning of whatever is appearing for you - there are plenty of web resources available for that. Above all, expect some inspiration. If you’re not looking for it, it just might pass you by.

As a parting note, should you be feeling a tad cynical about whether animals have anything to teach us, here’s some comedic wisdom from Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.”

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field. All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 28 Aug 06)