Press The Play Button On Your Life!

Few things you should know about me:

• I do not care too much what other people think about me.
• My life is lived on my terms, I set my own pace, tastes and agenda.
• No one, no matter how important they think they are for whatever reason, tells me what to do.
• Drama, complications and other people's business do not interest or engage my attention.
• I love hard, deeply, wastefully and easily but can walk away from anyone or anything in like manner.

After 50 years of learning, the "play" button on my life is permanently pressed. My finger is glued to it.

Hardly ever looking back but when I do, it is merely to see how far I have travelled, my eyes are steadfast on the path. My feet are carefully planted in the footprints of Spirit's. When I do falter, which is often enough, little time is spent berating myself. Usually I laughingly say to myself, "Claudette, you @$%& up there!"

If apologies are required, I quickly make them and move on.

Experience has taught me that the best days of life are the ones that are not paused for anything or anyone. What I have also learned is that others will almost always try to do just that - pause, rewind, stop you in an easy for them sequence.

They are not necessarily malicious nor are their intentions outright evil. People are self-focussed, looking out for Number One and that is not you. With their eyes fixed on their personal wants, needs and desires they just cannot see yours.

Some people have ill intentions for your life. The smile on their faces belies the fact that  there is a knife in their hand, poised to stab you in your back. They must pause and rewind but more so stop your moving forward.

What I have found is, if your life experiences were anything like mine (or 'worse'), there are people who will want to keep you there, caught in those memories, never moving forward without constantly reminding you of your past. Misery loves company, sufferers love group wailing. Like a broken record, they repeat your backstory, demanding to know who you think you are wanting to hit play? Who are you to want to leave the pity party?

Thank heavens for the digital age where there are no needles required to "play" the record of your life.

Play is always an option. In fact, it is the only option if your desire is to:

1. Live in the integrity of who you really are
2. Fulfill your dreams no matter how long you have had them on hold
3. Step up and into the next phase of your development
4. Simply be You

Those are my choices and here is what I do daily:

• I seek audience with my heart each step of MY way
• While I share openly, I decide privately
• I change my mind about anything or regarding any relationship with the intention of finding what is in my best interest first and foremost, then what serves the highest good for all.
• No one can pressure me, subtly or forcefully, to be or do what is against my better judgment. No one.
• Love is always my choice - not of things but of myself and what is loving to others without bonding them or me.

The key to my happiness is pressing the play button on my life AND allowing others to do the same in their lives. Should both of us chose the same "song," we will dance together for as long as the track plays. When it is done, it is done.

You get to choose. Allow yourself to be paused, rewound or stopped by the multitude of opinionated people and detractors in your experience and continue living like an hamster spinning its wheels. You get nowhere.

Hit play and live your life, moving at the pace and in the direction of your own heart's calling. You might see me on the dance-floor if you do!

Need further support choosing? Join my mailing list, drop me a line or visit me on my page and let us go over the playlist together.

Namaste

Claudette

Did you read yesterday's essay on Shaming?

Some photos: pinterest.com

How Old Are YOU?

People look at me and do what Malcolm Gladwell made lots of money writing about. In a "Blink," they judge and feel they know me.

Never mind, they do it to you as well.

What is so funny is that you line up six persons and you behave in the same way and each of them might sum you up differently. Why is that so?

Perception based on their, not your, past experiences.

Some might look at me and think I smile a lot, while a young lady who I am not particularly fond of her gossiping told me the other day that she would love to see me smile more.

Others see me and decide that I am cold. Then ask some of the visitors in the Big House how I struck them and you might hear "very warm."

They say a leopard never changes its spots. Being as I am not a zoologist I do not know. What I do know from my own experience is that while I still have those spots from my past, they were never who I am.

It has been a four step journey to Me so far and something tells me that "it ain't over." Thus far, I have:

1. Accepted who I was along the way. All the mistakes, missteps, misdemeanors that I made and took had to be acknowledged and accepted before I could go deep. As with everything, this is a continual process as I mess-up daily.
2. Come to Know Whose I am and how I want to be in the world. This was an important next step for me. I tried to be many things and greatly so - wife, mother, friend, colleague, employee, employer, neighbour, etc. Yet, it was not until my 40's did I say @$%& that and started simply being the greatest Me. That came about when I embraced my Source in a way that went beyond churches, books, theories and personalities. I arrived at a personal relationship with It that I deem my raison d'etre and that freed me from being what the world prescribed.

Now, I am living from that my Truth (#3) and whether it pleases some, none or all matters not to me. I dress and spend how I want. I love wastefully starting with me. Rumi wrote, "let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love."

I am drawn daily towards Step #4 - Enjoying my life.

In exactly 25 days from now, I will be celebrating 50 years of my arrival here. If I were any happier it would be a crime! I know who I am, what I want, with whom I love spending time and the things that I will and absolutely will not do.

Years ago, I thought it ridiculous when people would say that life begins at 40, 50, 60 or whatever age they were. It is not ridiculous but inaccurate. Life becomes totally enjoyable when you start living as You - however that looks, whatever the circumstances of that life.

That's my story and I am loving it!

What about you? How many years have you been here? Are you enjoying your life yet? Share your story with me here or on my page. Prefer privacy? Then email me.

Do enjoy the rest of the day at least!

I Am Claudette

It took all of 15 years or so for me to finally answer her question.

"Who do you think you are to be writing those things and putting out there?" She was livid in a genteel, upper class way. Mad because my writings made reference to her child with whom I was in a longterm relationship.

Communication has always been my first love although it was not immediately clear to me as a child standing on my soap box in our backyard. At first, I thought being a doctor was my future career because my next door neighbour was destined to be one.

For many years, even through high school dreading another Math class, politics began calling my name. Over my young adulthood into my early thirties, I would be involved in the politics of my island home to varying degrees. Much of that involvement was on the communication front.

With the advent of the Internet and from the first day that I turned on our giant of a computer that was handed down to us, I have not stopped writing, chatting with people and generally sharing.

It is just me. It is who I am.

That is what my response should have been to my "in-law." Words, however, failed me. Reflection, contemplation, self-assessment, formal studying and life experiences thankfully did not. Now at 40 plus, I have claimed my place in the world, my world.

Living authentically from the core of my being, there is no desire, inclination or need to respond to anyone's "who do you think you are" question. I am Claudette and I am doing me as only I can.

"I honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it." Chuck Klosterman 

I have no idea how old Mr. Klosterman was when he wrote that statement but it matters not. Why? Well, I really do not give two figs about anyone's feelings about me (the negative ones). Those who remain in my space are people who love all of me - the touchy-feely me, the easy to cry and even faster to tell you straight up how she sees it Claudette.

You either accept that I am going to love you hard and will sacrifice everything for you and honor that or get the hell out of my way!

Again I say, youth is truly overrated but it was through those years that I grew into the woman that I now am, love and completely adore.

Hope you feel the same way about yourselves. Please share with me how your "authenticating" process is going. You can do so here, on Facebook or Twitter. We also now have a BBM Channel - ping me at C004D8ABD

Continue to have a great "I Want You To Be Happy Day!"

Proud Women, Not Poor Imitations

In a previous life, I might have been a man but I honestly do not recall. Something tells me though that this "trip" around the block of Life will be etched in stone.

Close friends always ask me when is the book going to be published. That date cannot be set yet as I am very much still writing! This journey into womanhood continues and for every river that I have crossed and thought "it cannot get worse/better than this," I was mistaken.

Men, I am sure, enjoy being men. Their exploits, sexual and otherwise and their conquests - of women and challenges that only a man can undertake - are nothing to scuff at.

Experiencing this trip as a woman, however, is where it's at. Sorry guys :)

You have to think as men do to understand and hold their sometimes fickle attention. Then, you have to nurture, care for and support men as their mothers and sisters do. If your strength has not evaporated after you have cooked, fed the family, done the dishes and tidied up the house, you have to make love to him like a porn star.

"Sure God created man before woman. But then you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece." ~Author Unknown. 

Personally, I have no clue who is a "real woman," despite the numerous posters on Facebook. Real to me means physically existing and if we all can see you with our eyes, then you are real, you exist.

Ask me what is a power-filled woman and I can answer. 

That is a woman who has answered "Yes" to The Invitation:

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. 

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. 

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. 

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human. 

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. 

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.' 

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. 

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. 

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

What is your response to the invitation? Share your thoughts on this or any other topic with me in our comment section, on our Facebook page or on Twitter. You can also send me an email. Would love to hear from you.

Blessings.

Source: "The Invitation" is written by Oriah Mountain Mountain Dreamer