I am not ashamed to say I love Disney movies. My mother and I frequently watch Tangled sands my nephews. We love to cuddle up, sing, and revert back to the simple times of childhood. So today as I celebrate my beautiful mother, I know she will love and appreciate a Disney clip.

A mother is the most wonderful person in the world.

Bright Faith: it’s the Holy cow, I’m standing at the beginning of something that is so insanely ripe with potential that I wanna get naked and roll all over it right now while singing rock opera. Bright faith is essential to falling in love- with people, with causes, with your own perfectly perfect self.

Danielle LaPorte is a genius. Buy the book, period, now go get it!  The timing that this book arrived on hold at the library could not have been better. LaPorte’s writing got to me. It sparked the fuel to my passion fire and life path. Recently I decided to go with my own vision. To create my own company. To follow my passion. I feel like this passage, on the cusp riding shot-gun with bright faith. Fire Sessions was powerful. I got real, REAL with myself. I answered questions wholeheartedly. I allowed myself to be 100% vulnerable with myself, authentic. Let’s dig deep. Let’s set fires. Be a trailblazer.

How do you want to feel in life? Answer in this moment, how do you want to feel? Me, I want to feel free. I want to feel enthusiastic and inspiring. I want to feel empowered and passionate. From here what am I good at? Stop wasting time on things I feel I need to do. Focus on what I do best. My top three: hiking, cooking, and writing. I knock out two of these with my food blog and cookbook I am going to publish. I love to cook and serve people. I like to do things for others. I love to cook for parties and friends. I am a culinary creator. Boom let’s focus this energy to the local farmer’s market this summer. Let’s work into a food cart. Into a food truck. Let’s write your book In Dreams Awake. Let’s fuel the muse. What does my muse crave? She begs for a little forest bathing. For some time in nature. Where she can frolic free and unperturbed, her creativity unleashed. Get outside and hike Brittany. Take the time, that is where your creative core lies. Spread some positive vibes. Be authentically awesome to yourself. Stick to your strengths. “A strength is what you do that makes you feel strengthened.” Lastly ask. Ask the universe.

Next up dream. Dreams are wishes the heart make right? What does your heart wish for? My personal dreams unedited and sincere: I dream of burning passion. Of food truck and culinary creations. I dream of sharing. Of building a community. I dream of health. I dream of lots of laughter and constant smiles. I dream of gatherings with friends and families. Of bedtime stories and basketball games with my nephews. I dream of fearless dancing. I dream of books. Of cookbooks, books, and children’s books. I dream of love unknown. I dream of adventure and travel. For moments of awe. For widespread love and joy.

Take your Soul Vitamins. Who makes you feel empowered? Who sparks your creative thought flow? Who can you be completely vulnerable with? Whose got your vibes? Find those people and surround yourself with them. For me, my mom is like vitamin D. She is a solid source of spiritual nutrients. We are a solid team and together nothing is impossible. We build and build each other. Take your vitamins daily.

Give! I personally love to do things for others. A little thoughtfulness, a little compassion, a little consciousness: Just be the Giver. Please. Be the generous one, the mentor, the adviser, the motivator, the donor, the donator, the one who cares. Find a way to make what you do matter for more people, or matter more for one person. Give someone a break. Give someone hope. Make a promise. Keep it. Overdeliver. Open the door of opportunity; open your wallet. Open your heart, take out the love, and hand it to someone.

What are you/we waiting for? You and I both have what it takes to be fire starters right now inside of us. Light your fire! Grab the book, get real and burn. Last line from Fire Starters:

YOUR WAY

                The soul fire way

                Ablaze with passion.

                Passion that can’t be faked.

                Passion that the world cannot deny.

When we choose to become students of life who learn and grow from our experiences, everything does in fact, happen for a reason.

This gem comes from You Can Create an Exceptional Life by Louise Hayworth and Cheryl Richardson. I could be a life time student. I think curiosity is a beautiful thing to have and share. But from this quote I get what I got from Pema Chodron. Live it up. Life is an experiment. It is one experience, one moment after the other. Some are great, others are not as thrilling, but they are about who we are and the lessons that we learn. I tell mom sometimes I feel like they try to help me too much, sometimes I need to fall or falter occasionally because that is when I learn the most. The events that have seemed to be the most tragic, have brought the greatest lessons. How can I appreciate the greatness if I’ve never known difficulty? Life for the moment and learn from each experience whether you perceive it as bad or good. Learn and more on though, don’t continue to let it control you. Be curious. Be studious. Learn and grow.

I just read The Book of Awesome. Such a simple concept, yet the rewards are endless. By shifting our thoughts from how our lives suck, we instead think about how life is awesome. We shift to being grateful for the little things. We live in and love the moment. The wonderful thing is that everyone’s list is different. We all can create our own list of awesome. The list itself is awesome. Here are some of the things I find awesome in life:

•    Driving to an unknown destination: just getting in the car and going. The push from your ego to control and always know what’s coming. But instead you chose to be completely present. You just take off, completely free to be and go wherever you want. To  turn or take whatever turnoff your intuition wants. To see things as they’re unfolding, rather than living in the future picture of where you have to be.
• Great Friends: people there no matter what. People whom you can be vulnerable with. Who have seen you in all your glory and your darkest days. Whom you can be authentic with. Who make you laugh. Whose presence instantly brightens your day. Who are always there, no questions asked. Whom you can just be with, chattering or silent.
• A hot drink after sledding. At 25 I think I enjoy sledding more now than I did when I was younger. An opportunity to play and be present. Nothing warms you back up and is cozier or more soul-warming than a nice hot drink after a sledding adventure with the family.
•   Finishing a book series: You’ve read hundreds of pages and fully submerged yourself into the characters life. You’ve felt pain, happiness, sadness. You’ve taken the journey and at the end you feel complete and whole. You’ve completed the journey. You’re somewhat nostalgic for leaving it behind, but you’re content with the outcome.
•    Movie Quotes: I am a huge Will Ferrell fan (Old School is my favorite). My friends and I love to throw a movie quote or a song into any conversation. It instantly lightens the mood and makes us laugh. But movie quotes don’t have to be just an inside joke, they can unit us with complete strangers. They can initiate conversations and relationships.
• Meditating: Taking a pause to breathe and connect. To relax and get in the gap between your thoughts.
• Seeing a deer: I am a hunter. Spending hours in a tree stand in all types of weather, the feeling when you finally see a deer is awesome and shoots your heart rate up.
• Taking pictures
• Running barefoot: wiggling out your toes and gripping into the fresh green grass.
• Cooking a complete family meal.
• Making something from scratch.
• Dancing and I mean really dancing like lose your mind crazy
•  A cold ice tea on a hot day.
• Getting a letter in the mail
• Old songs from your childhood on the radio
• Lazy rainy days inside when you have nothing to do but relax.
•  Complete and refreshing night of sleep.
• Hiking: nothing makes me feel more alive than hiking.
• The feeling at the end of an exercise
• Compliments: both giving and receiving
• Being vulnerable
• Farmers Markets
• Kettlebells
• Euchre
• Opening the windows during a storm

Man I felt like I was soaring on my hike yesterday. I’d given up being mad a long time ago, time is too precious to spend it in anger and life is too precious to have moments of angst rather than love. Yesterday, though, it struck me that I don’t have time to worry. Our physical experience really is temporary. A small blip on the human map. This time in my body is so small. Why waste it?

Time is too precious to spend it worrying or thinking about problems. There are only experiences, I want to make the most of this one experience. I want to live it up and love this life because I don’t know when it will end and I don’t know where it is going. I don’t know what is beyond this physical experience, but I do know that one day it will end. I don’t have time for bullshit.

Lately in meditation I have been experiencing this complete peace when I’ll sit back in my spirit. I get to the center of my core, this bright light shining in the mist. This is my true self. So I spend my meditation space hanging out with myself. I observe my thoughts and ego in action. It’s crazy from this position I can really see the craftiness of the ego trying to keep me safe. Injecting fear, anxiousness, doubt, jealousy, comparison and discontent when I’m just starting to get that rush or when I take my foot off the brake a little, it rushes in to regain control. But now I sit back in watch objectively.

I decide to create loving, peaceful thoughts instead. Life is too short and temporary for BS and worry. I’m going to spend my time in the light!

Think thoughts that make you feel good, make choices that make you feel good, and take actions that make you feel good. ~Cheryl Richardson

Gabrielle Bernstein’s books say to ‘become the happiest person you know.’ Can I just first how rad I think the word become is. Eliciting the thought of just being, while also giving a sense of potential. I admit sometimes my ego tries to take this happiness away. It tells me it won’t last. You that I don’t deserve it. It tells me to look at my bank account, what about that is happy. It wants to point out what is missing from my life. It says to compare myself. Or I hear the voices from the past telling me not to be happy. You shouldn’t be happy all the time. People don’t want to hear about how happy you are.

I am not listening. I am happy because I chose to be. The world needs more happy people. Stop looking for a reason to justify your emotions. Stop searching for a reason to be happy. Just be freaking happy!

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Spring is here and it is gorgeous. With a new camera in hand I admit I was reluctant to shoot the blossoming flowers. They were obviously pretty and I’ve always liked weird and different. I wanted to capture unique and I wanted to snap moments. I was doing what I said above. I was taking for granted that Spring always comes once a year, that these colorful flowers will always bloom. They’ve been there every for 25 years.

Let’s change this perspective. Look at the miracles of this flowers, how the seasons change and once a year the flowers miraculously blossom. And they are beautiful. They’re there waiting on me to be in awe. Don’t just be in awe and bewilderment of ordinary, be in awe of the beautiful. Don’t take it for granted. Appreciate this flower. Stop and stare. Breathe it in. Snap a picture. Smile. What if this was your last Spring, what if this was the last time you saw this flower?

Flowers have taught me to appreciate all aspects of life and not take anything for granted. Be in awe at all times.

My ~ing activity has been biking. What I have so craftily doing though was creating routes on the flattest surfaces possible. When I was seven I fell off my bike while flying down Tecumseh hill. Ever since I avoid hills. So even though I was doing my ~ing activity, I was still avoiding my fears. I letting them determine where I go in life. So Sunday, I chose. I chose love. I stood at the top of the hill (not nearly as daunting I have to confess at 25 than it was at 7), ready to go. I think the biggest things reason I held myself to flat ground was a fear of falling (or failing), but also a fear of losing control. Even as I started down the hill, I found myself with a death grip on the break. Loosen up Brittany. Stop controlling the situation. What is the worst that can happen? You fall, big whoop, get back up. Starting riding the break in life. Get your head out of the future. Don’t live safely in your dreams. Feel this moment. The rush of the decent. The wind breezing through your hair. Enjoy the world whirling past in greens, blues and blossoming flowers. Live! Laugh, actually throw your head back and let out a belly full of incandescent laughter.

When I step back what I have become enlightened to is this: I am my own problems. I am my own fears. I have created them. If I cling to them, it is by choice. There are only ever two options: love or fear. Now I applaud you for your progress. I would say at least 90% of the time I chose love. I am happy a majority of the time. But this blog is also a place for me to explore that occasional 10%.

My mom lost her cousin last year to cancer. The story she tells me always sticks. The last time she saw Ooch his brother Cheeker ask him what he’s learned. “None of this matters.” He is not saying that life itself is irrelevant. He is saying all the fears and problems don’t matter. All the little worries we carry around with us, all the walls we build to stay safe and protect ourselves, the perceived lives we tried to build are not what matters. What matters in our decisions is that they are based in love (or God, although I know using God or referring to god isn’t comfortable for some, but in most of my spiritual learning, I’ve learned to believe that I am God).

So when I step back into the clarity I: Realize I alone am the creator of my problems and fears. I realize they don’t have to control me, though. I am aware of them, but I chose love instead. From now on I choose miracles. I spend more time in the lightness of love. Be happy and really let go. Stop riding the break. Let go of control. Let life happen and be happy when it does.

“Do what makes you happy, be with who makes you smile, laugh as much as you breathe, and love as long as you live.”

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