Internet Inspiration – January 8, 2016

January 8, 2016

Waiting for Perfection

February 10, 2016

Currently | February 2016

Published by Kathryn at February 3, 2016

Currently

Reading

I’m not really far enough along in any of these books to give you a good synopsis, but if you want to see books I’ve read this year, check out my Pinterest board here. Also, yes, I’m always reading at least two books at a time. One of the nonfiction/personal development books is specifically read in 10-20 minute bursts as part of my Miracle Morning practice, another nonfiction I usually read one chapter at a time before bed, and the other just… hangs out with me all the time.

Eating

My favorite breakfast is still lemon sardines (smashed with onions, capers, and sunflower seeds) on toast. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

And I’ve also been making this salad. Or rather, I made the salad dressing, and it’s the type of salad dressing you could pour over an old tire and make it taste good, so I’m just making salads with whatever I have on hand.

Thinking About

Someone left a comment on this post about yearning and love, wondering how any true desire of mine could break someone else’s heart. I love the comment, and am writing to myself on the topic so far, but will eventually publish my findings. The honest truth is I have only the vaguest guess as to what the specific desire was, but the comment is inspiring me to think more about how my desires pull me outside of myself and into relationship with other people, and how often relationships are fraught with competing desires.

Also Thinking About

Body Image and Beauty. I need to write an essay, and this is the topic that’s calling to me. Here are the seeds I’m soaking:

Body Image –> We imagine the body
Imaginal Buds –> “… Inside the caterpillar’s body are clusters of cells called, of all things, imaginal buds. Imaginal refers to the imago, the adult phase, but it also means “to imagine,” and psychologist use the word imago to mean an idealized image of a loved on, including the self. The imaginal buds contain the idealized image, the blueprint, for growing a butterfly. While the caterpillar goes about its earth-crawling business, these cells, deep inside, are imagining flight.” – Soulcraft, Bill Plotkin
“As we speak about our personal relationship to beauty and what is beauty and what is beautiful to us, we reveal our longings to be seen, our need for acceptance, the powerful influence of mothers and fathers, grandparents, older siblings, first loves and favorite cousins, our keen ability to remember what embarrassed, confused, a delighted us, our yearnings to stand out and fit in, our desires to be loved.” – Notes on the Need for Beauty, J. Ruth Gendler
“Perhaps we trivialize beauty because we know it is powerful. Beauty stops us in our tracks, takes us outside of ourselves at the same time it brings us into ourselves. Often we are jaded because we have not tasted its true sweetness. What is called “heartfelt” is often soft and sticky, lacking the clarity, focus, audacity, and fierceness that the true heart insists on, that beauty carries.” – Notes on the Need for Beauty, J. Ruth Gendler

There’s more here, but I’m mostly thinking about why we crave beauty. Once you take away all the ways we reach for beauty and perfection in order to assure safety and belonging, there’s still a compelling pull of beauty, something that brings us into life and relationship.

Looking Forward To

I’m traveling to India at the end of February, on a yoga trip led by a dear friend and fellow yoga teacher. And I decided to layover a few days in Dubai. Anyone ever been? Specific tips on anything I should do?

Enjoying

Making Eating Psychology videos! For Beyond Emotional Eating, I make two videos a week. I mostly decided to do it to add some variety to the format, and so people could see me, and maybe listening or watching some topics are better than others, and I’m really enjoying it. I’m feeling the pull to make more videos as an alternative to writing here, but I struggle with the idea that the videos should be under 10 minutes, and I also struggle to think of topics I think you guys don’t already know. But I’ve been loving youtube and podcasts for the past few months, so there’s some energy there. Any thoughts? Are you into videos? Or do you prefer to read?

Learning

More about my word for 2016. I chose “Lionheart,” and it both inspires and confounds me, as a good word probably should.

I stumbled upon, rather than chose, Lionheart. I had been looking for a word like courage, heart, or brave. Courage as a word doesn’t do for me what courage as a concept does for me. I could listen to people talk about courage for days, but the word itself is hollow for me. Heart is a lot of the quality I want, but too gentle. And brave was the best placeholder for what I want, but was missing the wild and free connotation I craved.

But I looked up “brave” in the thesaurus and there was Lionheart. I immediately wanted to write it all over my arms and make a vision board for it. It’s fierce and wild, but also grounded and steady.

I looked up “Lion” in my “Animal Speak” book and found the following:

The idea of the young lion being associated with the rising sun is most significant. Since the females of the pride do most of the work, it actually reflects the idea of the rising of the feminine energies. The sun has not always been a masculine symbol. It does give birth to new days, and it nurtures and warms life This is not stretching the correlation to see the lion as the assertion of feminine energies to bring forth new power.

When a lion has shown up, there will be opportunity to awaken to a new sun. Trust your feminine energies — creativity, intuition, and imagination. These will add new sunshine to your life.

Loving

Bullet Journaling.

Making a commonplace book.

Spring cleaning. I think I’m the only person in the world that hasn’t read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I still get the itch to get rid of stuff every year.

Morning pages. Always. Forever.