As I soar thirty thousand feet in the air heading to a conference, I realized this is really how I want to experience life. I want to fly with ease, trusting the forces that keep me in the air and always heading into a new adventure. I want to be as curious as the Wright brothers who knew flight was possible even if it seemed improbable at the time.

I want to invest in my own experiences by being willing to attend conferences, study new methods and meet interesting people from all over the world. I would love to learn a second language other than spirit talk and I fully intend to see and visit every state in the country I live in and love.

Like everyone, I have a dream list, one with things on it I don’t even know about yet. What I haven’t done in a long time is speak these dreams out loud or write them down as I am now. I know it is an important part of the manifesting process but I had yet to take the time to really catalog them. I also know that many times, something will be spoken or written and then it must change because the energy has been offered up to the universe. I am good with that too. I like surprises.

So, what about you? Have you asked yourself lately what you would like to experience in this lifetime? Have you allowed yourself to be brave enough to ask for more or to expand beyond what you see in your view finder today?

I know after working with people as a coach for so many years that it takes an incredible amount of bravery to be able to not only say you would like more, but to go for it. While accessing that bravery one often runs smack into the wall of “Who am I to ask for such things?” “Who am I to want love and humor and chemistry in my partner?” “Who am I to believe I could help effect that lives of others in a substantial way?” It’s only natural.

I’ll tell you who you are; you are someone who was brave enough to decide to do this Earth journey again. You are someone who, while scared at times, has amazing resources at their disposal simply by being a soul. You have an amazing perspective of this life; yours. You are also deserving of the most amazing experience you can stand while being in human form. And you are a whole lot more.

Did you know that? Did you know we really came in to have fun, do life big and silly while contributing to the expansion of the universe? Did you know that you matter? If you haven’t heard it before, hear it now and hear it clearly. Let it absorb and be in amazement that life isn’t about trials and tribulations, unless you are a trial lawyer and then yes, it is. However, most of us are not trial lawyers and we STILL see it as a big ole test that we are never going to pass.

I have news for you, you aren’t going to pass a test, there isn’t one, but you will pass, of that it is certain. So, why the heck not make the most of this journey while you are here.

I am going to challenge each of you reading this to create the, I would love to list. Put everything you can imagine wanting to do, see, experience, create, offer, embrace, feel, manifest, taste or bring to the world on that list and do it big! It doesn’t mean that it all has to be done today. Quite the contrary, this practice is to become aware that you even want more out of life.

Please let me know what you have come up with. Sharing is inspiring and when we realize this life thing isn’t a competition, we can soar to even higher heights. Perhaps I will add running a complete 5k without a walk break because man, I would really love to do that!

Head in the clouds and loving it, 

Vicki

www.vickibaird.com

I've always had the benefit of being a good sleeper. Regardless of what may be going on in my life, I can shut down and get some sleep. It's not always a restful sleep as my acupuncturist likes to point out, but it's sleep. The time to power down and close the world out for awhile.

I am very grateful for this ability as trying to sleep after you've slept with someone for as long as Howard and I did, can be tricky.  Granted, the snoring is less but it's still different. I had never considered this before. I hadn't considered many things before that I do now. There can be a gift in experiencing such a big life event if one is willing to be open to them. I find myself amazed at what I didn't know before, that I am learning now, even as I try to navigate this newest adventure.

So, as I traverse this challenge of waking up and remembering every day, as if it's the first day after his passing, that the dude isn't downstairs drinking coffee (he was ALWAYS the early bird in our house), I got curious about this process.

Was it the waking up that was challenging or was it the smack of reality that hits shortly after?  A few mornings in a row I did my own experiment to see which it was. Fortunately, it doesn't happen every day but enough that I could grasp the real issue. It wasn't the waking up or even the smack in the gut that was so hard, it was the realization that I had to get up no matter what was going on. I had a life to life on this side and laying in bed was not the type of life I wanted. Once I grasped this concept, waking up became less challenging.

Why was it easier to wake up after this awareness? Well, it became similar to any other day of my life. Like when the kids were little and I was so exhausted I didn't know if I could hoist my you know what out of bed or when we were running the store and working eighty hours a week and still had to open, ya just get up.

Not unlike when someone goes through a break up in a relationship, a change of vocation, a relocation, a passing of a loved one or any other millions of scenarios that effect us, we have to get up. Before we can get up, we have to wake up and we have to be willing to wake up.

Waking up isn't all about the sleep process. What occurred to me was the waking up was relevant to those scenarios I was talking about previously. Perhaps one has to wake up to the fact that their partner is not the type of person they want to be with or maybe they realize that the job they've been doing for decades really sucks and they don't want to do it anymore. Maybe it's realizing that family may be DNA related but the dysfunction is something you no longer are willing to tolerate. Whatever it is, waking up to the truth is a whole lot less taxing when you realize you already have the strength and the history of getting up every day.

What do you need to wake up to today? What have you been avoiding because you are more afraid of the sock to the stomach feeling than the memory that you have dealt with many others and got up after. When you remind yourself that you have indeed succeeded in waking up in other areas, the new experiences don't carry as much fear. Build that confidence by reminding yourself of all you have accomplished in the past. It really does help.

If you are someone who is afraid of waking and getting up, come see me, I'll help you shift that because this life isn't all about falling flat on your face and whining about it and staying on the floor, it's about getting up and saying, heck yeah, I've got this!

Sleeping is great but give me the awake time so I can rock this lifetime,

Vicki

www.vickibaird.com

I posted this picture on my Instagram and then thought, wow, that would be a good reference for life wouldn't it? At first when you read the sign you think, whoa, 127 steps! Your brain would probably start to figure out if that is a big number for you, perhaps wonder how far apart are the steps, or wonder, like I did, who thought to put that number up in the first place and is it meant to inspire or intimidate?

This sign was at Letchworth Park in New York. What I thought was a funny picture to take to prove to my trainer that I was working out even though I was missing our date, is now a great memory as this is the last trip Howard and I took together and one of our best in my opinion. There were amazing views and we were in awe of the beauty.

As I remember going down the steps and then back up again, I recall the fact that Howard and I both came up with 126 steps. The best part is we didn't tell the other we were counting. I love that with two different personalities, we both went to counting. Me, because I tend to do that anyway when I climb stairs and him because he had a natural tendency to not believe what he read, heard or saw until he put it through his own questioning. Frustrating at times, and very telling at others because he had an annoying tendency to be right when he listened to his doubt radar. I used to think he was simply being contrary but over the years I learned to hang back and see what the data gave us because it often turned out to be as he said, especially when it came to people who were looking to take advantage of me and I wasn't seeing it because I believe the best in people. I'm going to miss that help!

Either way, neither of us even thought to take the easy view of the falls. Without discussing it, we naturally went to the 127 stair option. I pointed this out to him and he said, "the easy way won't have the best view". At the time I thought it was purely a photographic perspective, when contemplating this later I realized it was actually pretty profound.

How many times have we taken what was the less challenging way because we thought it would be easier and cause less stress? How often have we not wanted to rock the boat and just went with what was option number two? I know I have done that when it meant having a conversation that might be tough or if it meant admitting I didn't know something. What if we believed what Howard said, the experience with the best view was worth putting a little effort into?

In the picture below he was up on the wall overlooking a huge cavern and doing whatever was necessary to get the picture. I took it because he was breaking the rules and I wanted proof of where he was if he fell in! I was being playful about it and I'm glad I was as not only do I have the photo, but it is what sparked this thinking for me. I could take the "easy" route and not challenge myself either in work, life or soul growth but what fun would that be? I want to break some rules too and trust my balance in life to get up on a ledge to get the best picture. Don't you?

What if we agree to trust that life supports us much like the wall above held Howard up? What if we decided a little bit of fear is a good thing and may just be the inspiration we need to stretch and grow? What if we took the 127 step option to see the falls and we did them one at a time?

If there is anything I have learned this summer, it is that life is meant to be lived and every moment we have the choice of how we will do that. I choose the ledge and the great view.

Breaking rules left and right,

Vicki

www.vickibaird.com

This weeks chapter is Where Did I Put It?  Trust me when I say I have asked myself this a hundred times over the last two months. I like a place for everything and everything in it's place but when exhaustion and grief move in, the brain process seems to move out the back door. Along with the brain goes the desire to please everyone so it isn't such a bad thing to go through something so life altering. However we can reset that GPS, I say go for it.

As I get to know who I am every day, I reset the coordinates and look to where the adventure will be. 

I hope you enjoy this chapter and get excited about getting to know you.

Where Did I Put It?

Where did I put it is not only in reference to your car keys, your wallet, or that list you wrote out because you were going to take it with you this time. It refers to that part of you that gets left behind, not intentionally, but often through the process of life and the events that can pull our focus away from an intentional journey. There isn’t a conscious thought where we say, gee, I would like to venture away from myself and focus on things outside of me but it happens. It usually happens with one small thing that we commit ourselves to and then another gets added on and then we find ourselves with so many items on the to do list we move to the bottom of that list and have to work with intention to reach the top of it again.

Have you ever found yourself in the habit of saying yes? This can be when someone asks you for your input or when they are requesting your presence on a board or a committee of some type. It can be in the volunteering world where you feel guilty if you don’t at least offer up some type of contribution even if at the time you are agreeing, you are also asking yourself where am I going to get the time or the energy for this?

It would be in that moment of awareness that this is too much that you would, if you hadn’t wandered away from you, pause and let the person or persons asking that you will need time to think and feel about the request before committing yourself. It would also be where you could flat out say no thank you, but that can be challenging for a lot of people who have become pleasers to others forgetting that they must fill themselves up in order to give to whatever the request is, fully and authentically.

How can you get there, the place where you are able to honor yourself without a feeling of leaving the team behind? In small steps, much like the ones that helped you arrive in a place where you are no longer feeling like yourself. Whoever that person is or wants to be will be accomplished in incremental movements, at your pace with an awareness that you can do as much or as little as feels good to you.

This was never more apparent to me then when I met with my client Herb. Herb has a successful business where he is not only the owner but works in a service capacity as well. He came to me with frustrations about his life but also a deep hurt that he couldn’t explain and wanted cleared up so he could engage in his life and love what he was doing again and be a positive member of his family. As we moved through the session, I helped him to identify what it was that was really bothering him. Most of his life he had been trying to reach an invisible bar first set by his parents, then his mentors and then by himself.

This bar had become such a part of who he was he didn’t even realize he was using it to measure others in his life as well. This measuring process often left him with a feeling that others didn’t care as much or weren’t hard workers as well as a myriad of other excuses. Sensing this wasn’t about others, as it rarely is, I guided him in the direction of how HE felt. He then started crying and as was practiced in him, he was trying to stuff it. I encouraged him to let it out and we would see what happened after that. He did and while I waited for him to feel comfortable in the expression of this emotion I realized it wasn’t about the others or about how he even felt about himself. It was that he had left himself somewhere along the process and didn’t know how to meet up again with himself and that joy that he felt was inherent in life if he could just find the gps coordinates. When I pointed this out to him and asked if he felt that was an accurate description, we didn’t get very far when the tears started again. It is always a good indication of hitting the nail on the head or in this case finding the starting point.

So, from here I encouraged him to tell me about himself. What did he like, what was fun for him and where did he feel the most lit up inside. He started talking about his business and how he loved to help people not only on the outside but from the inside to help them feel great about themselves. He absolutely glowed when he talked about that. I then asked him to feel how he was feeling now after having described his passion and he again was moved to tears, this time out of joy rather than frustration. He had found where he left himself and was beginning to connect again. How exciting! (This is why I love my job, this is what helping is about and if you can help someone who wants to help others is a real hoot!)

Have you lost yourself somewhere along the line? If you have, do not worry, there is an eternal tether that holds your soul and self together so it is really a matter of following that tether line to the other end where you left your knowing of what you want in this lifetime. The processes in this chapter can help you do that.

First find where your own gps system is right now. Is it even functioning? If not, smack it a little bit like you do the remote when it won’t work. Then get a sense of who you are today. Don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow, who are you today? It is ok, even brilliant to say you don’t know, that is what we are going to find out but it starts with acknowledging that you exist and that you matter.

Next, what is it that feels or seems out of whack for you? Is your life balance a little off kilter? Are you spending more time on others than on yourself, on work than in play, on drama rather than delight? If so, find five minutes in your day to reprogram this. I find the appointment scheduler on my cell phone to be perfect for this. I set it to go off daily to remind me to breathe, to take five minutes and that the world is not going to collapse in on itself if I am not at attention. Once you have done this, applaud yourself. Go ahead, I will wait.

It is important to give ourselves this recognition and encouragement to continue with self care. How does it feel to have created an intention to find you again? Is there any guilt associated? I ask this because this is often the next argument I hear from people. While I truly believe guilt is a wasted emotion, it is part of the wonderful vibration that is the human species. A part, that when rewired becomes acceptance, becomes joy and becomes a feeling of freedom rarely felt in any other circumstance for it is then that one truly realizes they are an individual with so much to offer.

If there is guilt associated with this, how can you reprogram that response? Can you realize where it is coming from? It is a way to avoid feeling good, to put off satisfaction with your life? Could it be an old tape that is playing in your brain from past teachers who meant well but may have been a bit misguided? If the last is the case, we have moved on to the digital age and cd’s; skip that track. We also have access to Belief Re-patterning through yours truly that can help you reprogram that response and create a new way of being.

These questions are meant to help you redirect your attention back to you so that there is an experience of fulfillment in your life. You are what is important for no matter where you go, you are bound to tag along so wouldn’t it be great if you actually liked and appreciated your traveling partner. So, as a final challenge in this chapter, what are you going to do that will help you feel present in your own journey? Pick one thing, it can be a small step and incremental or you can put a large goal out there but recognize the smaller steps it will take to get there as part of the process.

Herb’s challenge? Well, his challenge was to learn to say no to that drill sergeant that was yelling in his ear to be more, do more, acquire more and simply enjoy the daily process wherever it took him. He is taking this one day at a time and loving his business more but most importantly, himself. It doesn’t get any better than that.

While locating myself lately has been a challenge, I am very excited about connecting with the now me. What about you? Can you get excited about you?

Putting it wherever I am,

Vicki

www.vickibaird.com