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You Too, Can Make Metaphor Magic

Surprise Inside
Creative Commons License photo credit: hermanturnip
Send us some metaphors for your life, your trials and tribulations, your joys and your passions.

E-mail me at Ellie@BouncebackCafe.com or leave a comment at the end of this post.  We love hearing from you!

In my last post I shared a reader’s description of grief over significant personal losses:

Think of my grief as a wave and I’m on a surfboard. I must watch that I don’t lose my balance and become engulfed by the water. Water has power and can drown me. But I don’t want to drown, so I will stay on top of the wave of grief and let it carry me to the shore where I will be safe and feel stable. This wave will crash and I will have survived.  I will be stronger for having made it to shore unharmed. But I will never forget the ride.

Besides touching my heart, our reader demonstrated how potent Metaphor can be as a tool for understanding and working through our personal challenges.  Jose Ortega y Gasset, a prolific Spanish philosopher says this about metaphor: “[It] is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its [power] verges on magic… a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of his creatures when he made him.”

Continue reading » You Too, Can Make Metaphor Magic

Yoga for the Soul

gumby! test
Creative Commons License photo credit: highlimitzz
How can you streeeetch to become more flexible?

A friend of mine has become a serious part-time nature photographer. After having worked for several years in a highly left-brain technical field, he has put both sides of his brain together to create some beautiful art. In picking his equipment, he focused on all the technical doohickeys that make what he has great. Once he’s out in the wild, he gets caught up in the wonder of nature and records it at the rate of many frames per second. Then, he chooses which pictures of the many hundreds he took are suitable for publishing.

Continue reading » Yoga for the Soul

Here comes the sun
Creative Commons License photo credit: Stephen Brace

I was really pleased when Ellie used a picture of Eeyore on her post because I’ve always liked Eeyore.  I guess that’s because he was soooo gray that he seemed funny to me.  I never really thought of him as being depressed or depressing.  He was so extreme that he was endearing, though I wouldn’t actually want to have to work or live with him.

Continue reading » Morphing Into Persistent Perseverance While Looking for Many Right Answers

Is Anybody Out There?

discussions in the sun
Creative Commons License photo credit: _foam

This is an invitation – an invitation to join a conversation about making the most out of life no matter what it throws at us.  Ellie and I have been doing a lot of talking and we’d really like to hear from you.  Please, join the conversation.

I met a friend for dinner over the weekend.  We used to work together and we’ve been friends for a very long time.  Not wanting to be pushy, I waited until the end of dinner to ask her if she’d had a chance to go out and look at our new blog.  She said that she had, but that she didn’t know quite what to “do” with it.  Since she isn’t the first one to express this sentiment, I thought I’d take a stab at what you “do” with a blog.

Continue reading » Is Anybody Out There?

Too Busy to Think

A Baby's Work is Never Done
Creative Commons License photo credit: Sugar Pond

OY! I have waaaay toooo much to do. (I get to say OY, I come from Chicago and it’s better than swearing.) It occurs to me that there comes a point in time when my immediate todo list (as in must get done by yesterday) becomes so overwhelming that I freeze. We haven’t spent a lot of time describing learned helplessness and how to deal with it, but I think one of the things I do is decide that since I can’t get it done, I won’t try. So, here’s my three steps on how to deal with WAAAAY TOOOO much to do.

Continue reading » Too Busy to Think

Cup o’ Inspiration

cup with steam swirl

Take a short break and consider the following:

“It is not enough to reach for the brass ring. You must also enjoy the merry go round.”

Julie Andrews

From the Giftshop

Buy an Appreciate Good Things in Life - wildflowers mug
Buy this Let Your Spirit Soar mug
Appreciate the good things in life mousepad
Awwwwww... what a sweet kitty (mug)

Recommended Reading

Image of The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People (Expanded and Adapted for Small Groups)
Image of Steering by Starlight: The Science and Magic of Finding Your Destiny
Image of The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice
Image of Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers