Category Archives: Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Embrace a New Mindset

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Embrace a new mindset.

In my book LIFE: Living in Fulfillment Every Day, Grace encourages Eve to embrace the main goal, the big plan … and that is to always follow what feels good! Embrace your passions; enflame your desires; do the things you enjoy, the things that invigorate you, that make you come alive!

While we don’t speak about this directly in the book, sex could be one of the things that you might want to experience more of on this wondrous physical journey. As women, sex is a multifaceted quandary. It is psychological as well as physical. When we were young, we may have been bursting with sexual curiosity, but in expressing that part of ourselves, we would have opened ourselves to society’s censure and risked incurring the wrath of derogatory labels—think the Scarlett Letter. Or perhaps we embraced the opposite philosophy and practiced abstinence and still experienced social and peer pressure to change. As we get older, we may find ourselves in a committed relationship, and we might be so caught up in our careers or parenting that sex is relegated to the ‘to-do list.’ Stress is great at depleting desire. Or, as is too often the case, our body image and self-judgement might dampen our fervour, at any age.

A friend of mine was very self-critical about herself and her body. She was married to a wonderful man who absolutely adored her, and accepted her for who she was … but she would not accept herself. Because she erected a concrete wall of self-consciousness between them, their sex life dwindled, in fact it was teetering on life support. She desperately craved intimacy, but she resisted having sex, because she didn’t like her body and felt self-conscious in bed with her husband. He didn’t understand her torment and tried to reassure her, but she couldn’t get past her negative beliefs.

Our ego with its negative self-talk can ruin a perfectly good evening—or morning depending on your preferences. It’s hard to get ‘into the mood’ when our mood is wallowing in self-inflicted cruelty and criticism. There have been a lot of negative comments about plus-sized models lately. These women do not view themselves as ‘plus sized,’ but rather believe we need to take stock and embrace a healthier model of beauty. There will always be detractors in life, and standing in your own strength takes courage and perseverance. A Scarlett Letter can only hurt if you allow people to stick pins in you, otherwise the label just slides off.

Beauty comes from the inside. If you are a kind, loving, joyful soul, that beauty shines through and people naturally want to be around you. We all come in different shapes and sizes, like my co-author Annemarie and I say in the Life, we are all a magnificent collection of unique and colourful containers but inside we are filled with the same essence … a loving, beautiful soul. It’s often hard to appreciate that when society focuses on the container rather than the substance.

If my friend had left her ego at the door and invited her soul into the bedroom instead, I suspect she would have had a very different experience—one grounded in mutual respect, adoration, and love. I suspect, she would have rather enjoyed herself and the sensuous time spent with her husband because her head wouldn’t have been there sabotaging everything she truly wanted—a beautiful, honest, intimate connection with her partner.

Whether we doubt ourselves because of what society might think, or because of the limitations we impose on ourselves due to our negative self-criticism, it’s critical to honour what feels good to us!

While we were growing up, we tried to navigate a world that revolved around the ego. In other words, we were very concerned with what image we presented to the world around us— to the people around us. Should we be wild and adventurous, or conservative and practical? Our decisions determined how we presented ourselves on a daily basis. And we presented these images, these ‘holograms’ of ourselves to fit in, to be accepted. But at some point in our lives we want to take the bold step and turn off the hologram; embrace who we really are and what we really want, irrespective of other people’s opinions, judgments, and expectations!

This is the path to fulfillment—to truly finding a life of happiness and delight. Let go of the need to ‘fit in,’ to ‘be perfect,’ to ‘be who everyone else wants you to be,’ and simply be yourself!

Try a little experiment. The next time you are feeling a little frisky and the mind tries to interject its opinions. Kindly, but firmly tell it to butt out. Leave the ego outside the bedroom door, with all its negativity and doubts. Imagine for a moment, that you are born anew, without any expectations, or judgments.  Embrace a new mindset. Just for one night, see yourself for who you really are— a lusciously yummy, beautifully sexy, wondrous, and passionate woman. Then, see if you can embrace that idea of yourself from this moment on!

In gratitude,

Marissa xo

A Writer's Musings, B, Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Balance – ABCs of a Passionate Life

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Balance by Marissa Campbell

Can too much of a good thing really be bad?

Chocolate? Perish the thought.

Time with good friends? Never.

Shopping? Say it isn’t so!

Yet, I am loath to say that yes, indeed, too much of anything isn’t good. We need balance. A little of this, a sampling of that, a pinch of something old, a smidge of something new. Taken all together it creates a wonderful harmony, a delicious symmetry in life.

Too much work causes stress. Too much worry and fear leads to disease. Too much blood, sweat, and toil leads to disillusionment and dissatisfaction. There must be time to enjoy ourselves, to stop and smell the roses. To nap, to read, to play. There must be passion and motivation to drive us toward our dreams but we must seek to find a work ethic that maximizes efficiency yet allows ample time for relaxation.

The most disheartening word I hear often is ‘guilt.’ We feel guilty if we take time for ourselves. We feel we should be doing something else—slaving toward financial freedom, toiling toward the next rung on the corporate ladder, striving and struggling for the bigger house, the prestige, the title, the coin. Ambition is a wonderful thing, but not at the expense of our souls, our life force, our passion, and our enjoyment of life, with all its wondrous experiences waiting for us to savour.

Yes Man with Jim Carrey is a wonderful movie, filled with inspiration. A reminder that fantastic things happen when we stop trying and just let life happen, giving into the moment, allowing ourselves to experience. I try and say yes to each new opportunity that flows my way, not worrying about why they are presenting themselves. If it is something I am interested in, or find entertaining, I will usually give in to the experience, and rarely am I disappointed. While I appreciate, I can’t spend every waking moment smelling the roses, I make sure to grab each opportunity as it arises and make space for the unexpected and pleasurable.

Take a nap. Read a book. Go for a walk. Dance in your living room. Laugh over lunch with a friend. Put the work down. Breathe. Live. Enjoy. Relish a quiet moment. Break the mold. Rebellion is exhilarating. 🙂

In gratitude,
Marissa xo

A, A Writer's Musings, Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

ABCs of a Passionate Life – Awesome!

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An Awesome Life by Marissa Campbell
An Awesome Life by Marissa Campbell

To take my one-word-a-post concept even further, I’m going to attempt to go through the entire alphabet, highlighting the keys to an abundant, passionate life one word at a time. And to start this crazy train off right, I’m picking the word: Awesome.

I love the word awesome. I remember meeting someone who said that awesome was overused. He complained that we had lost the original meaning of the word and it was just superfluous. Bummer, man. Seriously.

Here’s what my tried and true, 1977 edition of The Living Webster has to say: Awesome: Inspiring awe; as, an awesome display of talent; characterized by awe. Now let’s flash forward a few years to my 2006 edition of the Oxford Canadian Dictionary: Awesome: 1. Inspiring awe; 2. slang excellent.

Great, fantastic, excellent, wonderful . . . these are all good, but awesome? That hits the spot. It’s a simple word expressing supreme awesomeness!

“How do you feel today?”

“I feel awesome!”

“How was the concert?”

“Totally awesome!”

“What kind of day would you like to have?”

“I’d like to have a lovely day.” or

“I’d like to have a wonderful day?” or perhaps

“I’d like to have a wicked, totally freaking awesome day today!”

Even if we added all the adverbs to lovely, wonderful, or great, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it. And who’s to say we have lost the original meaning of the word? I’d love each day to inspire and create awe in me. I’d love to be blown away by life, in awe of each moment. I want my life to be most excellent, dude. I want it to be freaking awesome!

Far from being overused, this word isn’t used nearly enough. Why? Because most people don’t feel awesome every day of their lives. We get too bogged down in expectations and demands. We force ourselves to fit into other people’s visions for us, to allow their judgements to influence our behaviours and our choice of words, clothes, actions, careers, music, etc. We can’t be awesome when we are giving up our authenticity, or our passions and dreams. There’s no room for awesome there.

Awesome stems from being enlivened by life, by allowing our passions and dreams, our goals and desires a place to grow and flourish. When we allow others to tamp down our vitality, it’s very difficult to find awe in our daily lives, to find awe in each moment. But if we plant our feet firmly on the passionate path, staying true to what makes us happy, being honest with ourselves and others when we explain what we need and what we want out of our relationships, careers, etc., we will find that life can and should be totally awesome.

In gratitude,

Marissa xo

A Writer's Musings, Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

A Passionate Life

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A Passionate Life
A Passionate Life

Years ago I started a little blog over at www.lifelivinginfulfillmenteveryday.com to help celebrate the wonderful message in my book Life. But it’s really hard to juggle two blogs at a time, so from this point forward, all things Marissa Campbell will be held in a nice, neat, and convenient place: here. 🙂

When I started on the path to writing Life, I had a plan. I wanted to live a passionate life. I wanted to feel the wondrous love of living. I wanted to experience the delicious scoop-full of vitality in my daily life. Part of the quandary was recognizing and appreciating what I already had, another part was looking for new and unique ways to bring more joy and fun into my life.

My philosophy is simple. Follow what feels good to you, what feels right. This cannot be done in a vacuum, we have to be considerate of other people’s feelings, but we also have to be considerate to our own and live our life authentically, being true to who we are and what we need and want. There must always be compassion for others as we embark on this passionate path, but we cannot compromise ourselves in the process.

As I sallied forth into this gloriously passionate life, I figured I would reflect and blog about things that I have experienced or insights I’ve had. I’ve tweaked and messaged my original idea and have come up with a new concept. Going forward, I will pick a word and expound upon it, and in my own unique and humble way, I’ll give you the nitty-gritty on feeling giddy. 🙂

Stayed tuned, and join me in a passionate life!

In gratitude,

Marissa xo

 

 

A Writer's Musings, Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Goodreads Giveaway for Life!

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Hurry! Enter today for your chance to win a copy of Life!

Open to residents of the United States and Canada.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

LIFE by Marissa Campbell

LIFE

by Marissa Campbell

Giveaway ends February 19, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

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A Writer's Musings, Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

How do I deal with these feelings?

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Feelings by Marissa Campbell
How do I deal with these feelings?

This is an excerpt from one of my personal journals …

“How do I deal with these feelings of deep resentment, unhappiness, anger and oppression?

Such heavy words.

I have them, but what I am supposed to do with them?

Perhaps yelling and screaming? Perhaps crying? Perhaps taking action?

But what action would that be?

In order to get myself out of this situation, I must make changes, or movements toward alternatives. But what are those changes? those movements?

I’m not sure of the answers, or am I? I am questioning my clarity, my understanding, my intuition, my gut.

I need to release or express these difficult emotions. But how?

I must accept that everything is only temporary, nothing is stagnant, only my thinking, my inability to act, no my unwillingness to act stops me from moving forward, to moving to where I want to be.

I act by letting go, by facing the emotions, by feeling them, by releasing them from my mind, my body, my soul.”

I wrote this many years ago, and it was these types of ruminations that lead to the awareness and answers that are in my book Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day. It was a long journey to find the insight and courage to act. I hope you find your way too.

In gratitude,

Marissa

Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Pain Management

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Pain Management

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day, and to my friend, let me apologize … because inevitably, a friend will always end up somewhere in a writer’s musings ;).

My friend is going through a very difficult custody battle for his daughter, and a wonderful site called Ponder Central had recently posted an excerpt from our book, Life, on detachment. My friend responded to the post by saying he didn’t agree with our philosophy. He explained that he was in the middle of a terrible, painful fight and he couldn’t just let go of it.

Here’s part of the post: “Detachment is the art of letting go…When people think of detachment, they think of being insensitive, cold or emotionally void – a kind of numb, nonchalant, indifferent attitude, where we walk around and interact with people projecting an image of being aloof and uncaring. That is not the detachment I want you to embrace…” Let me also add, that detachment is also not about ignoring difficult situations in our lives, or pretending they don’t exist … as if we could. Detachment is about letting go of the pain, and negative energy and emotions, that tend to accompany these difficult rites of passage. We cannot let the pain fester.

I explained that while we may not be able to change our current situation, (at that exact moment), we can’t allow the pain to consume us. He responded by saying, pain was the only thing motivating him to fight for his daughter.

I responded gently by suggesting that perhaps it was really his love for his daughter that was truly motivating his actions.

His pain, however, is keeping him locked in a cycle of suffering. It is very difficult to focus clearly, and find objective, productive ways to move out of a difficult situation when we are knee deep in the pain, essentially only seeing red. All of our actions, thoughts and words take on a particular slant/tint when they are filtered through that anger and pain.

During one of my recent yoga classes, a student asked how to deal with anger. The key is to understand that by telling everyone how miserable we are, by talking about our ‘story,’ our ‘plight,’ by complaining, by rehashing, ruminating upon, reflecting on and in general letting the anger and pain consume us, we keep ourselves trapped in a cycle of negative energy … which if we prescribe to the motto ‘what we get is what we project’ … we will only draw more and more negativity into our experience.

The trick is to catch ourselves in the act: be conscious of our negative thoughts, words or actions. I remember, a long time ago, thinking to myself how easy life would be if I just had amnesia. I could forget all the pain, all the negativity, all the painful memories, and all the injustice. What I realized years later, was that we all have a choice. The past, the pain, the anger, the resentment, the hurt, it stays in our life because we let it … we give it room to breathe and grow. We nurture it with our thoughts and our tenacity to cling to negativity … after all misery loves company.

The wild thing, the exciting thing, the extraordinarily wonderful life changing, weight lifting thing about all of this is that we can choose to let it all go. Pain hinders us, makes us ill, makes us unhappy and unfulfilled. If we can take a leap of faith and try letting it go, try letting the pain slough off of us … for even a moment … the lightness, the peace and relief that follows will give us the confidence to let it go for good. We don’t need pain to live, we don’t need a negative past, or difficult memories. They hold us back, they keep us from thriving.

Letting go of negative emotions might involve speaking to a counsellor, (someone who is objective, as opposed to a well intentioned, but nonetheless biased friend), or something as simple as writing about it in a journal – without censuring ourselves. The key to writing anything down is to never let anyone else read it. I find it is easiest to get it all down, moan, scream, cry, swear, spit out the injustice and pain in big block letters of indignation, and then burn it, rip it up … destroy it. The process is meant to be cathartic. It is an emptying of pain, not holding on to it—in any form. Perhaps you enjoy kick boxing, or running. Maybe you like yoga or meditation. There are as many ways to release negative energy as there are ways of collecting it. Try to find a method that works best for you and make a commitment to releasing the pain once and for all!

Do you have a tried and true method for letting go of negativity? We’d love to hear about it!

In gratitude,

Marissa xo

P.S. To check out Ponder Central Click Here: http://pondercentral.com/2012/08/06/ponder-on-this-for-tuesday-august-7th-2012-by-annemarie-greenwood-and-marissa-campbell-in-life-living-in-fulfillment-every-day.aspx

Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Check Life out on Pondercentral!!!

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An excerpt from Life is featured on Pondercentral today!! A wonderful site with inspirational weekly messages!! So happy to be included!

http://pondercentral.com/2012/08/06/ponder-on-this-for-tuesday-august-7th-2012-by-annemarie-greenwood-and-marissa-campbell-in-life-living-in-fulfillment-every-day.aspx

Life: Living in Fulfillment Every Day

Lamenting the Loss of Summer

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My son recently got a job. His first job … ever. He was not really looking for a job; he was quite content to pass his summer in idle pursuits, like computer games, hanging out with friends, or creating a permanent indent in the couch. But when a wonderful opportunity landed in his lap, he changed his mind and became genuinely interested—the gobs of cash he would make with a full-time position over the entire summer was not lost to him. He went to the interview, landed the position, and started the next day. As we were traveling home from the interview, he was elated and excited until I mentioned he couldn’t go to Canada’s Wonderland for his brother’s year end band trip (they always invite siblings to join the trip—since it’s the parents that do all the driving.)

I watched this news sink in, and then sink in further still, and his mood became somber, disappointment written on his handsome face. This was not a fleeting ‘ah bummer’ sort of mood, it was a deep disappointment—a lament for the loss of his summer. Most would say he had been lucky. At nineteen, we had never pushed him into getting a job. We told him, his school was his career, and as long as he applied himself and succeeded, we would give him the jolts of cash he needed to have a respectable social life. However, that was all before university. University sucks a lot of money into its sizable vortex, and Mom and Dad are not made of money, so a job was very much a necessity. But as I watched him realize that his entire summer was now to be spent working, I couldn’t help but feel his pain.

This was not just a job. It was a symbol of his youth disappearing. The days of idleness and carefree sojourns, free of responsibility, were coming to an end. He was moving into the adult world, a world typically comprised of hard work, long hours, ambition, expectations, pressure, and stress—definitely not the world of his youth.

How many of us lament the loss of our own summer? We get swept into a life that may not look like the one we had imagined for ourselves. We get swept up in the want to prove, the want to keep up with the Jones, the want to establish ourselves as successful in the eyes of others. And often, we lose ourselves and our dreams, our desires, and our sense of fun and playfulness in the process. We can become automatons just churning out a good wage, chugging through the daily grind. We can become stuck. And when we are stuck in a situation we are unhappy about, we will often look to that grass on the other side and lament what we don’t have, or lament what we have lost.

That lamentation is a glimpse into our soul, our true nature; it is a peak into our deepest desires: long since relegated to the back seat. It is our passions trying to re-establish themselves, trying to let us know ‘hey, this is not all we are.’ It is an invitation to try and incorporate some of the things we love back into our lives, to take a moment each day to follow what feels good, instead of what is expected of us.

Summer doesn’t have to be lost forever. It is a choice to let it slip through our fingers, becoming a figment of our past. Summer can be now: every day. Remember what it felt like to just lay around, free of responsibility, to go swimming, or hiking through the forest, running through the fields, or climbing trees … rekindle that sense of fun, that sense of joy and peace. Make happiness a priority. Make engaging in activities that make you happy, your life’s pursuit. We can’t always pick up and change our life completely, but we can make small changes every day that move us closer to a glorious summer.

I’ve encouraged my son to put half of the money he will make toward his university fund, the other half is for him to live—and I don’t mean on things like food, board, or utilities, it needs to be spent on him, on things he will enjoy, that will make him happy. Things like trips to Canada’s Wonderland with his friends or something as grand as a vacation in Europe.

We get caught up in the necessities, putting every cent we make toward just carving out an existence. We need to start a ‘Fun Fund’—a little something for a ‘rainy mood day’ so we can do something to make us feel good. Fun Funds can go toward a bouquet of flowers, a new mani/pedi, an hour at the library just basking in the silence, curling up with a good book by the fire, or in bed, going to a movie—yes, even alone, buying a new electronic toy, or new shoes, tinkering with a hobby. The list is endless, and obviously very personal.

The key is to take some ‘me time,’ whenever you can eke out a moment and toss any feelings of guilt whatsoever out the window and just enjoy yourself. You are entitled to happiness. You deserve happiness. Happiness is your birthright; make it a priority—make YOU a priority. And no matter where life takes you, don’t compromise that happiness.

Enjoy your summer!
In gratitude,
Marissa xo