The house is empty and I am alone.  For the whole weekend. 

The kids are working (they will be home for dinner ~ I think) and David has gone away.

The house is empty.

It’s just me.

So … I’ve done what every mum does on a weekend: the washing is on, the dishwasher is ready to be unpacked, I’ve planned dinner and reminded myself that it’s bed linen changing weekend.

Getting organised, I took myself to the local shops for weekend supplies.

And, that’s where the JOY occurred.

A discussion about Purple Carrots, a laugh about the whole concept of a carrot being purple, and a ‘mother cry’ about a child moving out of home.  Oh, and I indulged in 5 bunches of Jonquils!

A visit to the butcher where we had the experience of ‘exactly 1kg of chicken drummies’ … that means that when I ordered 1 kg, the butcher bagged exactly one kilo.  Very rare! We had a laugh and a celebratory “woo hoo”.

Onto the bakery.  Great!  They have apple strudel.  I’ll have that for dessert, tonight, so the working son can feel nurtured with dinner.    I bought a breadstick for the working daughter, bread for the freezer and some croissants for a ‘self’ indulgence.  Arms completely full, I turn around to leave the bakery and a very lovely gentleman opened the door for me, with a smile.

What a JOY!

I’m a bit teary about David going away, a bit teary because it’s been such a massive week shared with the most inspiring and amazing people, a bit teary because I am on my own all weekend when I really wanted to be wrapped up in family.

But, I am also smiling.  Broadly.  The Gift of Everyday JOY. 

And … chocolate for breakfast!

Today is the second last day of the Motivational Magic Daily Oracle Card Journey at Gentle Warriors.  It’s been, as always, an incredible week!  This time, there are many more ‘new’ people ~ first time visitors to the experience ~ and it’s such a JOY getting to know them.  Wow!

I think the thing which has stood out most clearly has been the experience of people Sharing Freely their thoughts, hopes, dreams and challenges.  As the week has progressed, each ‘traveller’ has become more comfortable with the process and there is more interaction between people.  It’s like each individual has been given a voice and learned how to speak, then how to speak clearly, and now how to speak up.

It’s such an honour to be involved in this process.

Thank You.

Spending a loooong week at the Gentle Warriors Forum, sharing oracle card messages …

Indulging in the wisdom and JOY shared by those Travelling in the Forum with me …

Discovering a NEW JOY …

Remembering & reconnecting with all the things which bring me JOY …

Experiencing, again, the Law of Attraction: the more I focus on JOY the more it appears in my awareness …

A light bulb moment of realisation that COMPASSION, my theme for the month, is exactly what I have been engaged in during the Journey …

Feeling humbled at the magnitude of wisdom and sharing a group of people are willing to engage in …

Revisiting the world I have created and rediscovering the essence of JOY.

The last thing I expected, while on holiday in Cairns, was a visit from “Beatrice Margaret”.

But, she appeared at The Coffee Works in Mareeba, as I was engaged in discovering all about coffee pots throughout history.

Imagine, standing in front of this display case, very intrigued by the 2 spouted coffee pot, listening to the audio tour with the collector sharing it’s history (very rare, apparently, and used for coffee and milk), when ‘out of nowhere’ I ‘see’ Beatrice Margaret standing to the back left of the cabinet.

This is not the first time, Beatrice has come by, unbidden.  She is the most persistent of my past life characters and I was taken aback by her appearance.  Normally, I don’t do ‘work’ stuff on holidays but there was a connection to the mid-late 1800′s and I think that was why she visited.  I thought the visit must have been because of the time period of this fabulous coffee pot, but then realised that Beatrice Margaret was a tea drinker.

Puzzled, I explored further … why was she here?  My sense was that she was a very curious woman who loved to learn!  Because she was hearing-challenged and not really good with people she had to find other ways of managing her world and, as a result, became a voracious reader.  She was very, very knowledgable and I realised that she had something to share about this coffee pot – she didn’t drink coffee but was intrigued by the 2 spout pot and loved the smell of roasting beans.

“Look Your Frog in the Face” is the name of this chapter in Brian Tracy’s book.   Another fabulous sharing of managing the turning of a negative situation into a positive one.

The most interesting part, to me, this time was the description of two types of personalities: the Confronter and the Evader.  In essence, the Confronter faces his/her fears and deals with them and the Evader, suffering from fear of the unknown, doesn’t.  Of course, it made me think about which one I am and, mostly, I am the Confronter.  But … I do have a really good relationship with the Evader, too. 

Now, I take a lot less time indulging in the ‘fear of the unknown’ but in years gone by there was a lot more avoidance.  I think that everything I did, or didn’t do, was affected by my fear.   In the next part of my journey, once I had started ‘kissing some frogs’, the challenge was to understand why I wasn’t ok (that was the biggest thing) then to face the fear.  Now, I am more ‘resigned’ to the fact that I will need to ‘kiss the frog’ and get onto it much more quickly.

I do feel more In Control of my life, these days, and that comes from learning to ‘kiss the frog’ that is holding me back.  I am a happier and more empowered person than I was in my earlier years.  Kissing the Frog does work!

Being in Cairns, my intention was to see everything there was to see, but high on our priority was Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Rainforest.  The Daintree seems almost magical in my thoughts (a little like Kakadu – another place on the To Visit list) probably because people talk about it in awed tones.

It was the rainiest day of the whole week and we drove for what seemed like hours.  I enJOYed the walk into Mossman Gorge.  The trees, ferns, creepers and lichen were just beautiful.

That set the tone for the next stop – the Daintree Discovery Centre - and another beautiful boardwalk we visited, on the way home.  I liked having the opportunity to learn a lot about the Rainforest through the use of the audio tour.  One of the aspects I found most interesting was the Canopy Tower – each level featured a different part of the rainforest, leading to the ‘bird’s eye’ view.  We did get a giggle out of wearing the very cheap plastic ponchos, too!

What did I learn?  I rediscovered a JOY of lichen.  So many little fungus ‘plates’ in so many different colours.    I enJOYed a greater appreciation for how the Rainforest works, the different kinds of treens and ferns, especially the basket ferns!  And, I liked the fact that the things we learned made the next rainforest walk even better because we knew more about what we were seeing and experiencing.

It’s a wonderful part of holidays, learning new things and experiencing things which are not part of my everyday life.

“To become a truly happy and fulfilled person, you must start with a clear definition of the ideal person you would like to be and the perfect life you would like to live.  What qualities and characteristics would you have if you were the very best person you could possibly be?” (p.11)

I love questions like this one!

Brian Tracy and Christina Tracy Stein have been ‘travelling’ with me over the last week or so and I have enJOYed taking the time to think about such questions.  What would my life look like if I was the very best ‘me’ I could be?

This seems to have been a journey I’ve been on since I was quite young.  Having a LOT of issues from childhood, and a lot of challenges as a young adult, I eventually reached a time where I realised that I just wasn’t happy and it was not ok to be like that.  I decided that I wanted to be happy.  And, then I discovered that I had No Idea how to be happy.  What was Happiness?  What made me happy?  Another quest was added to my journey.

Now, many years into this quest, I know what makes me happy and I know what Being Happy feels like.  From this place of comfort in myself I could start expanding into something even more empowering: Being the Best ‘Michelle’ I Can Be.

This chapter in “Kiss That Frog!” is about ‘day-dreaming’.  What will my life look like in 5 years?  What does my IDEAL life entail?  When given permission and encouragement to take a little time to day-dream the most amazing ME into existance, possibilities are endless and a path or direction becomes apparent.

I have learned the benefit of planning.  Each trip or workshop or special occasion is so much more successful if it is planned.  For the next 10 weeks (term 3 of the school year), I have created a Plan.  My focus is on Health and Wellbeing & solidifying my career path.  I know what my schedule looks like, I know when to put my wellbeing sessions into that schedule for maximum support, and I can see what else I need to do to have optimum success by the end of the process.  Now that that is all written down, I can consider what qualities and characteristics I want to create/expand/support to help me be successful and a better ‘Michelle’ by the end of the term.  The plan can be ‘tweaked’ where necessary to ensure that I am always doing the things I really want to be doing, and which make me happy.

I love the way books like this one allow me to learn more about myself and that it’s encouraged.  I also enJOY the process of exploring and discovering what the qualities are which make me the best Me I can be.

This is our kitchen bench, all ready for each day’s potential adventures!  We had So Much tourist information that it was almost overwhelming.  After a little bit of time at the table, together, we sorted and sifted through and created several piles of information which I laid out in a vague order, for the week.

After all day travelling and getting organised the day before, we decided to take it a little easier for our second day in Cairns.  A trip to Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures to start the day and maybe go into Cairns later on.

The ‘highlights’ of the visit with the crocodiles: the beautiful storks with blue-black heads, black and white bodies and red legs!  Wow!  I really couldn’t get my head around how these birds evolved.  But they were rather glorious.

I think there were a lot of challenging things about this place, from my comfort level, rather than highlights.  I was very disturbed to learn that crocodiles were being purpose-bred – good for the environment but distressing from the perspective of Handbags and Shoes. I was quite distressed about the ‘fashion’ factor of killing crocodiles.  Another thing which I found upsetting was the koala and kookaburra enclosure: a lovely open ‘pen’ with 3 koala’s in trees, asleep, and 3 kookaburras perched on rocks and branches on the ground.  The kookaburras looked really clean and couldn’t fly and I found that sad.

We had a short tour of the crocodile breeding area, after learning that more deaths occur each year from Swan attacks than crocodile attacks, and I found it fascinating to see all the young crocs together.  David and I had seen similar sights with Alligators in Florida, many years ago, so it wasn’t new but it was still compelling.

During the crocodile boating tour we learned that fully grown adult males have almost no enemies.  They either die of old age or are challenged by another fully grown adult and maybe killed.  The challenge is to live at all because there are some seriously pesky birds which raid the eggs in nests.

I felt that I’d learned quite a lot of interesting things at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures.  I also felt a sense of compassion and awe for the crocodiles.

We spend the late afternoon and evening in Cairns, having dinner and exploring the markets and shops.  Most interesting was the Ukulele Festival - ukulele players are Very Enthusiastic and Fun People!  One group we watched even played a Status Quo (one of my favourite old bands) song!  What a hoot!

So … inspiration hit at the Melbourne Airport Book Store when I saw that Brian Tracy has a new book out called “Kiss That Frog!”, co-authored with his daughter, Christina Tracy Stein.  I have had such great value from Brian’s “Eat That Frog! Get more of the Important things done today” that I was intrigued about what his new book was going to share.

This is what I have learned … from the Introduction and First “Great Way”:

“The great aim of human life is to enjoy happiness and peace of mind.  Every normal person wants to enjoy and experience the positive emotions of love, pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfillment.” (p.3)

Brian and Christina say that almost everyone has something which holds them beack from becoming a truly happy person.  In “Eat That Frog!” we learn about taking the biggest, most challenging task on our daily To Do List and doing it first up.  That’s the “Frog”.   The idea is based on wisdom from Mark Twain who said that if everyone ate a live frog in the morning that would be the worst thing you would have to do in the day.  Brian Tracy has suggested that if we adopt the same approach to Getting Things Done – taking the biggest challenge on our list and calling it the ‘Frog’ – we’d ‘eat our frog first’ then all other tasks would be easy to achieve.  In essence, that is what I learned from “Eat That Frog!”  It’s an easy and quite liberating strategy for effective time management and works for me.

Great Way #1 is called “Seven Truths About You” and sets out the things help to make life great and for me to Feel Good about myself.  I especially liked point 4: “You create your world in every respect by the way you think and the depth of your convictions.” (p.7)  I am absolutely challenged in the “think” part of this statement.  I can be very ‘excellent’ and ‘important’ on the outside but oftentimes the opposite is what I am feeling on the inside.  It’s my main focus, at the moment.  I have been collecting a range of strategies for managing that situation and find myself more empowered than ever before.

It’s interesting, though, just how many people I cross paths with who just do not have the awareness of how important they are or that they are a “thoroughly good and excellent person” (p.6).   I spent some time ‘coaching’ a couple of the gorgeous staff at our Mastermind Monday coffee place, yesterday … they found it really hard to accept – deep down inside – that they are AMAZING.  They will by next week because I gave them homework:  repeat the affirmation “I am Amazing” every day, all day, until I see them on Monday! 

The homework set by Brian and Christina is to identify my own self-limiting beliefs and ask myself, “What if they aren’t true?” (p.10)  How would I feel and how would I approach my life, going forward, if I had no limitations and was guaranteed success?

Food for Thought.

I think the thing I love most about going on holidays is catching a plane.  I don’t do it all that often but when we fly rather than drive, it seems that we really are Going Away.

The thing I like least about going on holidays is the mad rush to Get Things Done – make sure the washing is up to date, there is food or money left for those staying home, all the chargers and phones and cameras are gathered … it seems like the first day of the vacation is then spent recovering from all the extra energy expended before I leave.

The holiday feelings begin once we get to the airport and have checked in our bags.  Then, it’s off to the book shop.  I was Very Inspired by a couple of books so purchased them and began reading, immediately.

A few hours later and we arrived in Cairns to warm, wet conditions.  We collected our hire car (a very comfortable Passat Wagon – mm mmm) and checked into our accommodation – fabulous!

First stop was the tourist information centre where we armed ourselves with a huge bundle of flyers and booklets telling us about all the things we Must Do while in Far North Queensland.  We took ourselves to the Raw Prawn, began the arduous task of working out an itinerary, and were ‘rescued’ by an enterprising waiter who promptly made a list of all the things to do for the week.  Wow!  Fabulous gift!

Day 1 and we were settled into our new home for the next week.