Living in Austin, TX (at least for this month) certainly has it perks. Actually, it has so many advantages that I am tempted to call it my favorite city in the world, but that’s a blog post for another day. One of the perks of Austin is that it seems to draw eclectic, like-minded people together from all around the globe and one of those such groups of people is the raw vegan community.

I was excited when I realized I would be in Austin for Thanksgiving and promptly found out what the other fruit and veggie lovers were planning. The result was an epic potluck with amazing treats. Check out what we enjoyed.

Banana-Persimmon-Date Pie (Recipe Here)

We also had the lovely treat of live entertainment from fellow fruit-lover Sean.

Potlucks are a great way to get together and relate with others. Everyone feels like they are a part of the gathering because they have brought something to contribute, and that way it is not too much work for any one person to pull together.

There is no need to wait for a holiday to plan a potluck either. Get a group of loved ones together and start planning a gathering! Create an event on Facebook or check out Evite to send an invitation for an easy and fun way to keep everything organized.

Sometimes I find that I just need to reset. As spoken by Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Life today DOES happen fast, and sometimes despite our best of intentions we find ourselves reeling to keep up. What I have found is that instead of chasing life by the tail, sometimes it is best just to take a time out.

Certain days a five minute breather does the trick and at other times a whole day would be more appropriate. The idea is to do this often enough that we don’t ever feel the need for an epic vacation because we are living such ideal lives that we would never dream of vacating them. However, if you are super overwhelmed with where your life is, setting aside a time to retreat and reset for as long as you can – week, a month, a year – may just be the hiatus from a not-ideal reality that you need to start the new, intentional life you want to be living.

Yesterday I took a time out, a short one, just for a couple hours. I donned my backpack, got on my bike, and set out for some green space. I have found my needs are pretty simple in terms of what I require for a quick reset.

Although my reset varies depending on what is calling me at the time, there are a few things that it generally seems to incorporate.

1. Finding some place out in nature where I can be quiet and alone.
2. Finding a comfortable place to lay on the earth.
3. Breathing clean, fresh air.
4. Taking a few rounds of slow, deep breaths.
5. Stretching my body.
6. Visualizing something that fills me with joy.
7. Filling my thoughts with the many things I experience that I am grateful for.
8. Appreciating myself, making a mental list.
9. Doing some light mental or physical organizing.
10. Imagining and embodying spaciousness.

Yesterday when I got to my green space, I first climbed a tree. I spent some time laying in a comfortable nook breathing in the fresh fall air, being grateful for the strong limbs supporting me, and for the beautiful day I was experiencing. When I climbed down I moved my body around, doing some playing and stretching, continually clearing my mind clear of any mental clutter that tried to creep in. When it felt like time, I laid down in the grass and filled my mind appreciation, first for taking the time to reset, and then gratitude for all the other pieces of my joyful existence. I smiled and soaked in the gratitude filling my body with happiness and ease. I reminded myself that I could come back to this feeling place at anytime. I decided that when I returned home I would clean and organize my space, make a nice simple meal and enjoy it in mindful silence. Then I would do two items on my “to do” list that I had since gained inspiration about and spend the rest of my night playing, and that is just what I did.

Could you benefit from taking time for a quick reset? What would that entail for you? How much time would be ideal for you to set aside? Can you take it now or schedule it into your life? You deserve to feel reset and refreshed. If you are looking to the world for permission, I believe you just found it here, within yourself.

Lately I have been becoming more intimate with the concept of trusting myself. Maybe it was my latest read: Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love or just the general circumstances of my life at the moment, but I have been coming to understand more and more how important it is to me to be able to trust myself fully. And do I? That is the million dollar question.

It usually quickly becomes apparent when we have a friend or family member in our lives that we don’t trust completely. We learn who the ones are that arrive late, the ones that break plans, the ones that have a new fad diet each week and so on. But we do not so often look inward to see which untrustworthy qualities we ourselves identify with. I have decided to venture inward and see what I find.

There are people in my life that I do not consider reliable and I am sure this is a common tale. I do not love the unreliables any less or even feel hurt when they go back on their word (after having come to expect it), however to some extent I do feel that my friendship with these people has grown as much as it can in many respects. A relationship with little-to-no growth potential is not something I am really looking for this lifetime. This truth has been easy enough for me to realize when looking at the friendships I have surrounding me, however before recently I had never thought to consider this in regards to the ultimate relationship: the one I have with myself.

Upon further analysis I have found that there are certain things I do (or better put, things I do NOT do) that leave me feeling disappointed. Hm, I wonder why. Well, diving deeper I have found that they tend to have a common link. For example, here are a few common things that I have thought lately:

1. “Well, another day has gone by and we still do not have a new home. This is so lame and frustrating. Well, maybe we can just live out of our plywood trailer…”
2. “Why did I eat that? And right before bed? Hm, I better get up and start doing some push-ups or heavy rhythmic dance moves to burn it off. On second thought, my head-bang would probably wake up my hosts. I’ll start the dancing in the morning instead. Or I’ll just eat better tomorrow…”
3. “Sh**! How did it get to be so late without doing my (daily) squats? It looks like another midnight session is in my future.”
4. “I’ll definitely write that blog entry this week! Yea, I’ll do that right after I look into that student loan repayment plan…”

If these thoughts were coming from a friend of mine, it would be easier for me to see them for what I think they really are. So let me have an out of body experience for a moment and look in on these thoughts from the outside. My mental answers would be something like this:

1. Ok, you do not have a home yet. You need to make peace with the fact that you are still in the process of seeing where your next move will be and trust that everything will turn out just as it should. If my living companion does not have a job and you do not have home by “X” day, you will get one in the place that appeals to you the most and start your new life there. Now let it go.
2. You are right, getting your groove on in the wee hours of the night while everyone else in the house sleeps is not a great idea. What would be a better idea is to take a deep breath before you want to eat something in the future and see whether or not it is in line with your greatest desires, one of which is having a beautifully clean body. BUZZZZ- TIP: If you have to stop and think that hard, it’s usually NOT in line with your greatest desires.
3. The good news is that you are sticking to your daily goal of getting your squats done. You know (ie you TRUST) you will do them every day, so that is a good thing. But you want to trust that you will do them earlier in the day. So you have to do this really complicated thing: Do them earlier. That’s the ticket. Just set a timer and do them. Don’t procrastinate. Just get them done, then move on.
4. Ok, stop right there, buddy. Putting anything on your list AFTER a student loan is a sure-fire way of never getting to it. So I ask you, do you like blogging? I know you do. So find a time that you generally enjoy putting your thoughts into words, decide on a frequency, put it in your calendar and hold yourself accountable. Then do it. Every time it comes up in your calendar. If it turns out you are not enjoying it, change the frequency or omit it from your life all together. But you can leave the drama behind about deciding you want to do it and not doing it, because that is just silly.

Suddenly, when I’m talking to the “friend-me” I’m such the expert. It all seems so simple. But wait now, if it seems so simple, why can’t it be? The truth is, it can. Things are either as simple or challenging as we say and believe they are. My squats are a 2.5 to 3 minute endeavor each day. What is so intimidating about 3 minutes, even if it does end with sore thighs and huffing and puffing? The more important thing to remember is that it ends with stronger thighs and a better-feeling me.

So, lately when I have been having these disappointing thoughts, I have been diving deeper and asking myself the following questions after a thought comes up:

How do you feel right now?
Do you enjoy feeling this way?
Why do you feel let down in this moment?
Is there a way that you could fix this right now or in the future?
What would you gain if you changed this old pattern that is not serving you anymore?
Would you trust yourself more if you stuck to the goals you set out to achieve (keeping in mind to always set goals that are achievable and in line with your greatest desires)?
How would it feel to trust yourself completely?

…How would it feel to trust myself completely? Holy sh…it would feel FANTASTIC! I want that! I can have that. We can all have that.

Today, I am working on trusting myself completely.
Because I want to grow in my relationship with myself.
Because want to achieve all that I know I can.
Because I do not want to go to bed at night with feelings of discontentment about how I lived my day. Or even more so, someday, my life.

I think in the end, this little experiment and more so this philosophy comes full circle. Trusting myself completely will bring about more trust-worthy people and situations. For something to manifest externally it must first begin internally, right?

Thanks for coming along for this post of self-analysis. I want to leave you with that same ultimate question. Do you trust yourself completely? If not, how would you feel if you did? How would you feel to know that giving yourself your word meant it was as good as done? You owe it to yourself to ponder…