Gratitude Check Mamas How Do You Feel?

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Tuesday, March 30, 2010

We feel good!  Oh We Feel So Good!  UH!

Remember that cheer from high school?  Or am I the only dork that still has that and others running through my head on occasion?

A few weeks back when I was feeling like Queen Grumperella, I opted to create a little Mama Bonding here around pet peeves that come with early parenting.  And I have to admit, I truly enjoyed it and loved all the comments from you all.

I think it’s important for everyone, but particularly for women, to talk about and purge what’s not working in our lives to clear it out and make space for peace and creating the life we do want. Talk it out. Exercise it out. Meditate it out during the daily poo. Whatever mode of excretion works best for ya.

A few years ago before I had my girls, I participated in this yummy Goddess circle one evening in which we all took paper and scribbled down everything about our lives that we couldn’t stand, mostly lies about ourselves that we no longer wanted to buy into.

We debated whether to burn them or transform them — and opted for the latter. I shredded my paper into 100 pieces and made the art you see here.

I tend to learn lessons over and over again. Like learning that running significantly alters my state of mind — in a good way.  It’s ridiculous how many times over the last 20+ years that I’ve said, “Oh yeah! I forgot about this!” And the lesson that I re-learned when going down the pet-peeve path recently is that when I focus on what’s wrong, my inner complaints tend to feed off of each other and pretty quickly all I see is what’s not working, what’s not not fun, what’s annoying, etc.  No bueno!

Thankfully I’ve gotten much better at cracking this little pattern in recent years with more self-awareness and a few tricks up my sleeve for redirecting thought patterns.

It’s all about finding the balance between the healthy expression of anger, sadness and disappointment and setting yourself up to move quickly from the purge into a new set of questions. Sound familiar? I know I’ve mentioned the idea of “Changing the Question” as an emotional coping mechanism several times here before.

What would make running this errand fun? What can I do to have my children and husband consistently experience my Love? How could I change my daily schedule to incorporate the me-time I need for my well-being?   What is perfect about my life right now?  What am I learning?  What am I grateful for?

And this brings me to the topic du jour.  Gratitude.

Please join me in making a list of everything you feel grateful for in your life.  This is an insightful part of the Power of Intention guided journaling exercise that I’ve come to love in recent months.  I haven’t committed time to it in the last few weeks and am inspired to kick start it again knowing how much more powerful focusing on what you want can be versus what you don’t.  Have any of you given the Power of Intention journaling a try? Curious to hear if it has impacted others in any way.

I’ll start the Gratitude list and welcome everyone to add their blessings through the comment section.

I am so grateful for:

• My family — every member.  My husband, my sweet girls, my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law and niece and nephew and everyone on my husband’s side. I am so lucky to have this family.
• My friends — near and far, old and new, I love each one dearly.
• My home.
• Our sweet housemate who is helping us so much with dinners and breakfasts and cleaning our kitchen and sitting with our girls one evening a week so we can go on dates. What a gift.
• Our amazing nanny. We are so lucky to have someone so grounded, gentle, smart, creative and conscious about what children need emotionally to step in for us in caring for our angels while we work.
• The project work that I received last month and all future work that will come my way in perfect time
• Sweet Songs coming to life. My next post will give you all an update.

Posted in AP & Self Care | 4 Comments

Dreaming up the Perfect Elementary School

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I mentioned a few posts back that amazing, unexpected gifts from the universe continue to appear since I started a regular practice of setting clear intentions and expressing gratitude for everything in my life.

Whenever I do the Power of Intention journaling exercise and write about my dream life, one of the lines that I’ve noticed I repeat every time is, “We have all the resources necessary for our children to attend any school that we like from preschool through college.”

What I would like for my girls to experience for elementary school?  Montessori.

As we inch closer and closer to Kindergarten with our Sadie Bay not yet having manifested abundance, I have been thinking that perhaps I need to let go of this dream and get comfortable with public schools. Our neighborhood school has a fantastic reputation and I do believe that with great teachers and supportive parents that children can benefit from the traditional model of education.

Just like the fabulous lyrics in Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine, I desire to roll with things more — to be good at being uncomfortable so I make the most out of what is.

But I’ll be honest. Here’s what I’m uncomfortable with regarding the traditional model of education: (more…)

Posted in Education | 9 Comments

Living the Dream – We Love Our New Housemate!

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Thursday, February 11, 2010

Here’s the bizarre dichotomous nature of my life right now. On the one hand, I’m fully living the stress of this recession as my husband and I scramble to figure out how to live off of 10% of the income we had three years ago.

On the other hand, I’ve never been more rich than I am right now. I’ve never felt more alive or inspired to create; I have never been more fully expressed (I love writing my bloggity blog!), and I have never felt more gratitude for everything I have:  My family, my health, my connections with others. Pure sweetness and true wealth in my book.

And — HOLY POWER OF INTENTION — we have a live-in cook!!

Amazing!  Sometimes I still can’t believe it. I can play with my girls and/or exercise while someone else prepares a home-cooked healthy meal and after dinner I can either work or participate in our bed-time routine and someone else cleans the kitchen. What??  Is this for real?? (more…)

Posted in AP & Self Care, Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping, Nutrition | 3 Comments

Our New Wild Card Approach to Self Care

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Monday, February 1, 2010

Three years of ridiculously bad sleep, a laughable exercise routine, a high dose of economic stress and a solid propensity for weekly binges on either chocolate chip cookies or Annie’s mac and cheese or a basket of tater tots at Dog Almighty……um yeah, I’m not exactly the poster child for Self Care that I strive to be. Yes, I balance my occasional mac and cheese binge with frequent visits to Casa de Luz thanks to a trade my husband worked out with the owner, and I prepare plenty of healthy meals for my family — but all together I haven’t felt great about the big picture of our lifestyle.

Reading my Self Care posts, you may have gotten the impression that I’m the queen at manifesting all things good and healthy for myself and my family. (Ha!) Health and well-being is certainly my number one priority right now. I’ve been striving for it and certainly writing about it a lot — but quite honestly — our diet and exercise routine (or lack thereof) hasn’t come close to what I believe is necessary for disease prevention and longevity. Living through the last month of my entire family so unhappily sick helped me get clear on our need to change something about the way we live.

Our one fabulous bit of progress has been on the sleep front.  Our new approach to the family bed?  Divide and conquer.  Our littlest, now 16 months, has turned a corner and can happily sleep seven or eight hours with her Daddy.  YES! (this “yes” really deserves eighteen exclamation points to give you the full idea of my feelings on the subject). She may wake once or twice, but she immediately falls back to sleep.  And I feel OK about it, because she’s still being responded to with sensitivity and love.  This is a life changer.  Had I continued to sleep with her, she would still be nursing every two to three hours and I would officially be The Crazy Cravotta Lady. So, it’s Daddy and sweet baby in one bed; me and sweet toddler in another.  What about the husband-wife thing, you ask?  We’re working on some creative solutions in that department.

Now. To the truly healthy lifestyle and self-care question. My husband and I have been saying we’ve got to figure out how to work exercise back into our schedule for months and it just hasn’t been happening. And I’ve been worried that when I’m back to work 8-5 and anxious to get home and see my girls, the probability of fitting in exercise could be even more challenging.

And then I got this wild card idea while setting intentions for the New Year. What if we rented out our guest room to someone as a trade? Maybe someone studying to be chef that would love free rent in exchange for grocery shopping, preparing meals for us five days/week and cleaning up the kitchen afterward?  That would free up as much as 2 hours/day for me on those days!  Time that I could take the girls out in the jogging stroller and knock out a run, get some special time with them at the neighborhood park, and come home to a healthy, home-cooked meal.

So we went for it. Posted an ad on Craig’s List earlier this month.  And Voilà!  Would you believe the dream we put out there was a dream come true for someone else? A young, delightful woman who wants to change careers and become a chef moved to Austin last week to pursue her passion for cooking. She told a friend that she really hoped to find a family here that she could live with and cook for to get practice toward her dream profession. And she’s starting cooking school with the Natural Epicurean in May.

She moves in tomorrow.

February 1st, 2010 marks the beginning of a new chapter in our life and our mission to take better care of ourselves while caring for our sweet angels. We hope and give thanks for this little experiment being a positive experience for all of us.  Power of Intention rocks!

Posted in AP & Self Care, Nutrition | 8 Comments

The Power of Intention

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Sunday, January 24, 2010

Our brilliant and amazing friend, Helen Attridge, has played a powerfully supportive role in our lives including marrying us in Austin almost five years ago. My how life has changed! 🙂

She’s a talented coach who shares all kinds of great tools for creating a life you love.  Here’s an easy meditative journaling exercise she adapted from the 15 minute miracle that you can do at the beginning of each day. In the past, I’ve done variations of this, including expressing gratitude at different times during the day for something I seek before it happens as if it already has.  This week, I’m all about expressing appreciation for my family’s health and practicing patience for this becoming so.

Today________is a new day for me to enjoy. I am free to choose my thoughts and in choosing my thoughts , I can choose what I attract and create in my life.

Today my intention is_____________________________________________________________

1) Give gratitude for the blessings you already have in your life. (Research shows that just 3 minutes a day spent in gratitude impacts the immune system for 6-8 hours.   Example:  I am so grateful for my health that allows me to enjoy my friends, my children.

2) What is a positive emotional state that you love to feel?  (grateful, inspired, passionate, secure)

I love it when I feel___________. When I feel this way I__________________which makes it easier for me to________________.

3)  Play wildly in your imagination and picture yourself living the life of your dreams — a life you would love to wake up to. Write about it as if it were already so.

4) Re-read #3.  Close your eyes and visualize yourself living this life, notice how it feels in your body and write down a description of the sensation.

5) Invite assistance from  your Higher Power. This may be spiritually based for you or may be a relative or friend you cared for who has passed away, a strong connection you have with nature, or other guides you check in with.

Dear______, thank you for your guidance, love and ongoing support. If it is in my highest good and supports my well being and my path and the path of others, please divinely orchestrate the following in just the perfect time. Examples:  Give me the strength to…….inspire me to……..guide me to……….help me to………

6) I am now ready to release any beliefs, patterns or behaviors (eg. self doubt, need to control, sabotaging myself), plus all other issues known and unknown that are preventing me from living my best life now. This act of releasing enables me to_______________.

7) Ask your wise self for advice or guidance.  Dear__________, please make it easier for me to move forward in my life by providing wise advice on the following question:_____________________________________.

Write down answers that you receive.

With enormous gratitude I now agree to __________ these and even greater gifts in just perfect time in wonderful ways that bless and benefit me and others.

Signed_____________________

Date______________________

Posted in AP & Self Care | 1 Comment

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