How many small, seemingly insignificant opportunities do you have throughout the day to reconnect with a part of your heart that’s perhaps gone a bit hard? My challenge to you is to stop and smell the roses, take a moment and listen, really listen to what’s around you. It may be a song, or a person or an intuitive thought telling you, guiding you, moving you.
Then follow through and take a risk and do it. Open yourself up.
How many times do you fly past something and notice that you never really saw it or heard it? Being present is a powerful gift that gives you the ability to be more grounded in your life. But sometimes during times of crisis or pain, it’s not easy to stay present.
The past year has brought with it a lot of challenges and in many cases for me, it was a lot easier to just use my stress relief tapping to zip past whatever was bothering me. I’ll be honest and tell you that being present wasn’t a priority.
So during those tough times that my family went through we each found a way of coping with our stress. My daughter, Cara found music and her writing to keep her grounded. I buried myself in my writing. In the absence of having better outlets for their stress, my hubby and my son were usually at the mercy of their emotions, often close to a rolling boil. It hasn’t been easy.
So when Cara would get ready for school each day, she would listen to a song that she felt a particular connection to. To me, it sounded like whaling cats and I couldn’t stand it, and many times I told her to close her door or use her headphones.
She explained to me that she really resonated with this song and the artist, Amy Lee because she was singing about losing someone she loved, and we as a family were all trying to process the same grief ourselves.
In Amy Lee’s case, her song, “Immortal Beloved” was written to honor her recently deceased husband’s memory. Although Cara told me that, it didn’t register for me, because for a long time I cut myself off from my emotions.
Today I finally got a chance to sit in her room and listen to the song. It was beautiful and it made me cry. It made me realize that there is such power in being present.
Yesterday was another example of that same lesson for me. While working at Avenue, we have a recorded tape of certain songs that runs on a loop. Because they are not particularly my style of music, I don’t pay much attention to them until they actually get on my nerves. There are several of them that I consider screaming meanie songs where I’m not really listening to the artist, but judging them based on how they sound.
One of those songs is entitled, “Just the Way You Are” by an artist named Bruno Mars. Until Cara told me the song title, I didn’t know what it was. Once she mentioned it, I immediately thought of Billy Joel’s song, “Just the Way You Are” and I got up on my high horse and I said, Okay Cara, I’ll listen to this guy, Bruno’s version of the song, but first you have to listen to Billy Joel’s so that you can see what real music is. We both listened to Billy’s version first and it instantly swept me back to the comfort of my dad’s apartment in New York, where I lived with him and my precious step mother, Rosie as a teenager. Felt so good to be back there if only just in my memory.
Then when it was time to listen to Bruno’s version, I was a bit resistant. I started to tell Cara how annoying I felt his song was and she asked me, “Mom, have you ever listened to the words-the actual lyrics of that song? It’s so beautiful.”
And I told her, “Not really. I’ve just been annoyed by the way the guy sounds. So she led me to do a Youtube search to find the song, with the lyrics. We found a video. When the video began, from the beginning to the end of it, I fell in love with it. I was saying to myself, “No, I don’t want to like you. I want to keep on hating you and not listening to your music. But the artist’s creativity and his beautiful lyrics found a place in my heart. I still can’t stand the way the guy sounds, but the words of the song are beautiful, and they touched me.
How ’bout you? How many small, seemingly insignificant opportunities do you have throughout the day to reconnect with a part of your heart that’s perhaps gone a bit hard? My challenge to you is to stop and smell the roses, take a moment and listen, really listen to what’s around you. It may be a song, or a person or an intuitive thought telling you, guiding you, moving you.
Then follow through and take a risk and do it. Open yourself up. Then let me know what it was like for you by sharing a comment. Until later, make it a great day! Bye Juicy Woman.
Amy Lee, Andrea Amador, The Juicy Woman, self esteem, empowerment, Bruno Mars, Just the Way You Are, Billy Joel