suzie, Author at Curves Welcome

Everything is Temporary

by suzie | Feb 12, 2016 | Articles

Recently a friend of mine ran into some troubling adversity. I tried earnestly to say something that would help, but I was at a total loss for words. The situation was a tough one, and no words seemed adequate.

What do you say to someone who suffers from devastating news? Don’t worry. It’ll get better with time?

Let’s face it, in moments like this, that kind of statement can feel like a slap in the face because it’s hard to see past the blow. Until we’ve walked in someone’s shoes, we can’t be certain what thoughts are running around the mind. I’ve heard it said repeatedly that time heals.

I do believe this is true. Time heals. It doesn’t completely take away the pain, but it does eventually smooth over some of the initial bumps. I find great hope in this concept. And I hope my friend and you do too.

“Sandcastles are temporary. Trying to build them into permanent structures is an impossible dream. They fall down quickly, with little warning. The comfort comes when one realizes that when they crumble and fall back into the sea, they become the foundation for something else in the waiting.” – Sandcastles

Everything is Temporary

As deflating as adversity can feel at the moment, I believe it puts us in a place that helps us grow into even better people. Because everything is temporary and doesn’t last forever, we can draw out the lessons and experiences and transform from them.

Something to keep in mind – without pain, agony, and defeat, we have no frame of reference on which to judge greatness when it shines itself onto our life. I am a firm believer that defining moments shape our lives just as the powerful storms and angry volcanoes of years past have shaped Earth.

We need adversity

Without adversity, we’d have no Grand Canyon, no Mount Everest, no separate continents, and in respect to our singular lives, no respect for ordinary days when all is calm and right. And just as the temporary storm clouds clear and open up to bright blue, sunny skies, my wish for anyone battling adversity is that so too will the shrouds of fear, sadness, and hopelessness be lifted for you. For everything is temporary.

For the sake of analogy, let’s take nature to explain the beauty in the temporary. In every blink, life evolves. What disguises itself as death in nature is quite spectacularly a sacrificial dance of transformation. In nature we see the falling of leaves as a marked finality from their mighty sustainer. Yet, their shedding grants a moment of revival. Beneath the surface exists an exciting universe of possibility where nutrient-rich life blooms in a nurturing cocoon. Energy circulates and provides the eager new growth with the power to transform into fresh new life. This newness gathers its strength and bursts through the protective coating of its womb and reaches toward the air in a dance of spectacular beauty. In symbiotic union, the new bloom shares its life-sustaining richness with the world, offering its grace and love to all. It will share its fruit until it, too, has lived its purpose, at which point it will sacrifice its temporary gifts for the promise of future generations. It is only through this temporary cycle that we emerge stronger and more capable to thrive along with life’s dynamic nature.

Get Outside of Your Comfort Zone

by suzie | Feb 6, 2016 | Articles

The comfort zone is a place that paralyzes many. It drains the energy needed to sustain the long legs of a purposeful journey. This may be why many claim that it’s beneficial to get uncomfortable.

The Dynamic Beat Beyond the Comfort Zone

To stand at the edge of that circle and gaze wantonly into its center only serves to layer the seeds of change into an impenetrable womb at our feet. Those seeds want to come alive and experience their full unbridled potential, bursting through the surface of their imposed limits and reaching heights that offer spectacular sights.

Once beyond the banality of circumstance, these seeds extend their curiosity and offer life, love, and abundance to all who care to share on their journey. The fruits of their growth exemplify the very core of living in full bloom. No longer diminished by the emptiness of their cocoons, they free themselves to enjoy the mysteries, adventures, and gifts that await beyond the comfort zone.

It is in this space where they grow into the majestic beings nature intended them to be – full of glory and intrigue, cultivating the uncharted into something so familiar it too will eventually demand rebirth.

“Sometimes in life, people had to learn to swallow fears and walk past the shadows that lurked. I approached one of those times. It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about so much more than me.” Jane in The Muse

Jane in The Muse had it right. She would never be able to be the positive influence she needed to be without allowing herself to come out of her comfort zone. I think most of us have been there, in that moment when our comfort gets in the way of our growth.

A Recent Experience

I recently visited Epcot Center and ran into a situation that inspired me to stretch beyond my comfort zone. I ventured into Ellen’s Energy Adventure and landed eyes on a peculiar sight. Before me was a waiting room of sorts, a large oval shaped space that housed an enormous screen displaying a fun commentary by Ellen. The hundred or so people in the room gathered along the back wall, leaving the entire center vacant. I followed my friend to the far reaches of the wall so as not to get in anyone’s way. We stood craning our necks to see the screen. I looked to the center of the empty room again and thought, ‘what a waste!’

It dawned on me that all of us were so uncomfortable to make that first bold step to fill the room that we suffered in cramped unison. I thought, ‘this is a fantastic opportunity to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.’

“F&%k this kinked neck!” I thought.

I boldly opened up my stride and planted myself smack dab in the center of the room where I enjoyed a most spectacular view of Ellen! Suddenly, everyone else followed my bold lead, leaving the comfort of that back wall to embrace the full display they paid good money to see.

This got me thinking how comfortable most of us are just standing by the sidelines, stuck in the routine of the norm, and how by holding onto it with such determined rigidity we forfeit the chance at viewing the world through its widest lens.

A sense of empowerment flowed in me as more and more people filtered in around me.

Getting out of my comfort zone felt amazing!

Since that day, I’ve committed to taking small steps each day to stretch beyond the comfortable. The result has been a shedding of the old to make room for the new.

If you’d like to try breaking free of your comfort zone, too, here are some ways:

Smile at a stranger
Compliment someone
Make a phone call you’ve been avoiding
Ask for something you desire
Take the lead
Face a fear
Do something that normally makes you uncomfortable

Help me out. Share your ideas on how we can break free of the comfort zone!

Be Ready for Opportunity

by suzie | Jan 26, 2016 | Articles

Opportunity is everywhere and available to all of us. We only need to open our eyes to it. Then, it’s up to us to recognize and take hold of it.

It took me decades to understand this concept about opportunity. There was a time when I would say, “Wow, that person is so lucky to have such talent. Imagine being born with that kind of opportunity in life? How did she get to be so lucky?”

I don’t have the scientific backing on this, but I would say with utmost confidence that a majority of people have pondered those very questions, too.

Luck and Opportunity

Let’s face it, it’s hard not to look at someone like Tony Robbins, an incredibly popular and successful success coach, and think of how lucky he is to have been born with such a gift. People pay him astronomical amounts of money to listen to his advice, and all he has to do is stand up on a stage with a headset and talk. Wow, such opportunity!

He makes motivational coaching look so easy. He walks that stage, flexes his strong jaw, and gets everyone pumped up with what seems like natural flow. How lucky he is to have such ability.

Here’s the thing

If you focused the majority of your time on becoming a success coach, logic points out that you would eventually gain the ability. What we focus on the most, by the very virtue of the physics of energy, will begin to emerge. This is powerful.

Tony Robbins is not lucky. He is focused. He is prepared. He is committed to his talent.

Behind his brilliantly-delivered coaching sessions are years upon years of determined focus. He didn’t become a world-class coach by focusing on the latest television show or drinking his productive hours away at a bar. He did so by concentrating his efforts on that goal daily, and making it one of his top priorities.

In my novel, Tangerine Twist, a story about a musician who hits the big times, the lead character Becca James is completely out of her element and struggles with finding her footing under the wave of success that hits her overnight. Why is this? Well, she wasn’t prepared. She also didn’t truly believe such ‘opportunity’ would ever come into her life.

Ready for Opportunity

So how can we apply this to our own lives right now?

To rise to our fullest potential takes commitment. We need to slip into a productive mode of preparation so when we meet up with opportunity, we can stand before it with unshakable confidence. On our way to this point, we’ll traverse paths that will surely test our resilience. This path will be nothing short of adventurous because anything less will never allow us the chance to grow persevering roots. Expect these challenges and plan to embrace them. Let them teach you the rigors of controversy, the humility of defeat, and the glory of accomplishment. A path full of obstacles is a great gift, for they serve to get us out of comfort just far enough to stretch past our limits.

Along this path, we’ll surely encounter fallen branches that will twist up at our ankles and threaten to trip us. We’ll be blocked by boulders capable of stopping our momentum if allowed. We’ll come across raging rivers that will force us to contemplate our journey, teasing us to lay ourselves down on the side of its banks and ease into our familiar comfort of safety. We will need to choose to either admire the opportunity rising on the horizon past this river or engage with it by plunging in with everything we’ve got, ignoring the least resistant path.

Anything less than tripping, climbing, and tackling the flow may result in our losing the opportunity to see what the other side of this obstacle has to offer. Digging into the challenges and discovering their weaknesses allows us to develop strengths that would otherwise go untouched and untrained.

Don’t fear the road that has no footprints yet. For ours may very well need to be the first set.

Be ready for your opportunity.

Determine your Passion

What gets your heart pumping? What would you be willing to either get up early for or stay up late for to do? Go do that!

Prepare

Get into learning mode. Absorb as much knowledge as you can about your passion. Study it. Practice it. Repeat this over and over until it’s so deeply implanted in your brain that it looks easy to those who haven’t seen the behind the scene efforts.

Embrace Opportunity

Look around you. Opportunity is everywhere. Once you’ve prepared for it, you’ll see it and be ready to partner up with it.

Being Authentic

by suzie | Jan 15, 2016 | Articles

I did it. I took an important authentic step forward. I looked that irrational fear in the eye and told it to go away, for good. It was no longer welcomed in my life.

My Authentic Step

On Wednesday, January 13, 2016, I had the extreme pleasure of ‘coming out’ as my true self on air to an international audience. The lovely and talented Blog Talk Radio host, Alex Okoroji, paved the way toward an honest conversation about life, fears, and grabbing hold of my authentic self once and for all.

With the gentle guidance of Alex, I felt comfortable to talk about a deeply personal part of my life. After spending the past four years hiding my true self from my readers out of a fear born from an unfortunate moment in time, I finally freed myself. You see four years ago, I wrote a blog post in the spirit of authenticity that backfired on me. I wrote what I am going to say here: I am a bisexual author who writes best-selling lesbian fiction novels and have been happily married to my soulmate, a man, for 21 years. Four years ago, I got bullied with hate mails from some of my lesbian fans in the LGBT community for being honest about my sexual orientation. I was crushed to say the least.

Thanks to Alex, and the powers at be in the universe, I decided it was finally time to find the courage to come out after years of holding back, by openly addressing my FEARS on the show.

The result a whole day later – I feel FREE! I’ve received an incredible amount of positive feedback from so many. Their responses are what I hoped they’d be – they are grateful for my keeping it real.

The lesson: Fears will hold you back if you allow them to grow. Don’t feed your fear. Feed your truth.

Feed Your Truth

“See here’s the thing about fear. The more I allow it in, the stronger it becomes. It takes on its own power and becomes my leader. I’m not okay with following that. I’m not okay with bowing my head to it in reverence, as if it were a mightier force than me and had any rights to my freedom.” – Becca from The Journey Somewhere

For life to fully bloom, it needs love, light, and freedom. A life lived under the veil of fear is one that lacks the nurturing qualities of truth, for fear is irrational. Born from the roots of pain and suffering, fear is a by-product of the imagination. You see, anything that has not happened yet is imagined.

Fear is nothing more than our preconceived notion of how the future will play out in a given scenario. Sensing danger and taking action on that sense is what saves us from precarious situations, not the fear itself. The fear only serves to debilitate, not prepare us.

Fear needs fuel to create dramatic tension.

Why not turn the tables on fear? Don’t entertain it. Let it entertain you. Laugh at its entitlement as it attempts to wrap itself around you like a gluttonous vine. Your laughter will choke fear’s power.

Fill up on the laughter. Get drunk on its echo. Further diffuse the insatiable hunger of fear by increasing the strength of your joy. Run with arms out-stretched through a field of wildflowers, inhale the freshness of the forest, observe the beauty of a sunset. Do something that sets your heart ablaze with happiness.

Joy and fear cannot coexist. It’s impossible.

Acknowledge fear. Observe fear. Then, side-step it and move beyond it. Focus on feeding your current reality with a good dose of nutritiously delicious truth about what’s really blooming. Life feels so much sweeter once you do!

Living in the Present Moment

by suzie | Jan 8, 2016 | Articles, Health and Wellness

“That’s the problem these days. We’re all too busy, aren’t we? We work ourselves to the bone and for what? To find out one day that we may have caused ourselves to get sick? So then we end up spending the rest of our days fighting for our lives instead of being able to savor the present moment.” – Dean from Sandcastles

The Here and Now

Do you ever find yourself reliving the past and planning for the future more than living in the moment? The here and now is such a precious lot of time, yet, many of us tend to ignore it. A while ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a person who was completely aware of the present. She had an aura of happiness around her that was unlike anything I’ve felt before. She radiated with a burst of energy that actually gave me energy back!

Before meeting her, I seriously fretted way too much in worrying about my future and all the what-ifs of a lifetime that wasn’t even guaranteed to me. Caught up in this cycle of looking back on the past and peeking ahead toward the future, I neglected to enjoy the moment in front of me, the only moment guaranteed.

I walked away from that conversation with hope. Her answer made me think, and through my thinking, I began to focus. In this determined state of mind, I delved into a whole new set of experiences that flirted with my senses. My world suddenly blossomed into sweeter scents, more delicious tastes, prettier views and a more definitive sense of awareness. I was savoring the present, making the best of my life as it was gifted to me.

Living in the Moment

As I write this blog, I am reminded that outside the giant, sweeping busyness of life exists a peaceful nook where rest breathes focus into our cluttered lives. In our quest to pursue dreams and achieve goals, we often rush through life, from one event to another, missing the treasures that offer solace, like a leaf dancing on the waves of a gentle breeze or the curiosity playing on a dog’s perked ears as she sniffs the green grass at her paws.

These moments, these small miracles of life, are happening in the here and now. If we get caught up in the craze of the past and the what-ifs of our future, we miss out on the delicacy of the present moment and all its delicious innuendos.

Life circulates its energy around us at all times. It doesn’t wait for us to stop and recognize its actions. It simply evolves and stirs its mystery about with an artist’s finesse. Beauty thrives, miracles whisper their unfolding, mysteries tap their cleverness in joyful beats, and all of these wonders happen with or without our attention. To witness such beauty would seem an awe-inspiring opportunity, one we would never pass up if we were thoughtful of its existence. And yet, its essence is always present, always within our reach. We only have to inhale its simple, yet poignant, energy to connect with it.

Vitality

This vitality multiplies when living in the moment. Thankfully, accessing it is free and easy. No magic pills, airplanes, long car rides are needed to enjoy it. We only need to mindfully observe, and it slides into our awareness as easily as dew slides along the silky surface of a fresh green leaf.

A jovial world exists within the present moment. When enveloped in the brightness of its majestic embrace, we can breathe in the serenity of the moment. In the peaceful folds of tranquility, we quiet our minds and provide a lush and fervent space for focus to take root. Grounded in the present, we are strengthened by the power protecting us from distraction. This is the moment to smile at the world around us with a rich clarity where we can see, feel, and taste its abundance.

A few times a day, we should gift ourselves with the present moment to rejuvenate our minds, stir our creativity, and manifest our dreams into reality. Engage the senses in the carnival of life happening right around us by pausing, observing, and allowing life to tickle us with its clever designs.

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Everything is Temporary