It’s dif­fi­cult to fully artic­u­late the dif­fer­ence that learn­ing to love my body — and ulti­mately to love my SELF — has made in my life. When I saw this heart-warming video clip a cou­ple of weeks ago, I imme­di­ately thought, “YES! This is what the jour­ney to self love was like for me! ” Take a look:

Not only does this video per­fectly cap­ture the eupho­ria that came from fully embrac­ing who I am, it also pro­vides a win­dow into my jour­ney. Read more

It’s January and weight loss mes­sages are every­where. On the tele­vi­sion, there is a steady stream of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutriystem with a dash of Slim Fast and Special K thrown in here and there. Pseudo-dieting mes­sages are preva­lent as well. Many of my Facebook friends are dis­cussing plans to start juic­ing or cut out refined sugar (with weight loss as the main moti­va­tor.) Read more

Last year, instead of set­ting goals or res­o­lu­tions for 2010, I selected a word of the year. This proved to be an extremely pow­er­ful tool for me. I wrote a post all about my 2010 word (ease) and was hon­ored to have my post fea­tured on the amaz­ing Christine Kane’s blog a cou­ple of weeks ago. I hope you’ll click over and check it out. (And she’s been shar­ing word-of-the-year guest posts every day for a few weeks, so lots of great inspi­ra­tion over there.)

As a new year draws near, I want to invite every­one to choose a word for 2011. (For those of you going through the process in The Love Your Life Creation Kit, I sug­gest choos­ing one of your “yes” feel­ing states as your word of the year.) Read more

Hello my dar­lings! Whew — it’s been quite a week around here. If you don’t know what I mean, check out the com­ments on Wednesday’s post. YOWZAS! My lit­tle old blog isn’t used to such mad­ness. It was won­der­ful, and I am so hum­bled by the response.

For any new folks who dropped in Wednesday and decided to stick around, WELCOME. I look for­ward to get­ting to know you. You’re going to love the com­mu­nity here. I have the loveli­est group of read­ers a gal could ever imag­ine, and I really like to KNOW my read­ers, so don’t hes­i­tate to leave a com­ment telling me more about you, or send me an email.

So, all that said, I have some excit­ing news. Well, I’m excited about it, at least.

Read more

“…We all die, some sooner rather than later. We are all just a breath away from it, all the time.

Don’t fear being near death — but rather fear, dread, loathe, and do all you can to do avoid near-life expe­ri­ences. No one goes to the grave or to the nurs­ing home wring­ing their hands and gnash­ing their teeth and just wish­ing they’d served on a few more com­mit­tees, worked a few more hours. Read more

Hey every­one! My “Discover Your Dreams” tele­con­fer­ence (you know, the totally FREE one?) is just about two weeks away! I wanted to take a minute to share with you a lit­tle bit about WHY I’m offer­ing this and WHAT you can expect as a par­tic­i­pant. Enjoy! Read more

Tis the sea­son of “back to school.” This is the first time since kinder­garten, that I will not be return­ing to a school build­ing and spend­ing the next nine months in a class­room. Some of my teacher friends have jok­ingly expressed jeal­ousy over this, as if I’ve won the lot­tery or some­thing. The truth is that I made very delib­er­ate (and often dif­fi­cult) choices and about start­ing a new career path. I didn’t luck into it, that’s for sure. Read more

Last December I expe­ri­enced the beauty of stingrays at the Chattanooga Aquarium. I was at a per­sonal turn­ing point at that time. I knew it was time to make some moves toward a new career, though I was still hold­ing onto a lot of lim­it­ing beliefs about all the things that needed to hap­pen in order for me to find and do work that felt joy­ful. I was curi­ous and open, but not quite ready. Read more

I have had the plea­sure of expe­ri­enc­ing an abun­dance of grat­i­tude over the past sev­eral days. Last Wednesday, my hus­band accepted a won­der­ful job offer that has been a long time com­ing. Dr. Tanksley will teach phi­los­o­phy at Clemson University this fall.

Not only am I thank­ful for the job itself, but I am thank­ful for the path that has lead us to this job. Read more

Happy Friday, party peo­ple! I made a video for you about the power of lis­ten­ing to your hopes and dreams, includ­ing some vision board 101. Enjoy! Read more