New Life Appears Easily When We Look For It

Down the road from me there's a tiny park. About 4 years ago, the council decided that rows of daffodils would be just the thing...and every year since the tall green stems surprise me with their resilience and inate knowledge that it's time to surprise me! Just this week, yellow heads started to appear and I just love this time of year. I love it that I can again begin to track time by the way the greenery and colour around me is shifting. Don't get me wrong, I love the sparse nature of winter, the lack of foliage and the broody sulky teenager that it seems to personify. Still, thin and heavily into dark clothing, dramatic effect and stark nakedness.

But Spring! It just lifts my heart to walk around seeing buds appear, blossoms popping out, snow drops fading from sight. It's exciting and new, and just so beautiful. Like the spring all around me, I'm also coming out from my hibernation. I've been fairly quiet, enjoying moments of joy but keeping them all to myself or at least a select few only. Somehow it was needed. The restoration of winter, the hanging out with broody teens made me a little silent too, touching the deep and dark inside me.

And it feels so good. If you've ever had a little bit of a 'silent retreat' even with many people around you, you'll know the bliss of just turning in and listening to your heart. Slowing down enough to hear the deep flows of messages from the heart. That's been my promise to myself this year: Follow Your Heart.

Just that one decision has taught me so much. In the last two months, I have given up a job that was not serving me and that I had stopped serving people through; started writing the story that's been wanting to come out for about the last twenty years; been put in the path of several new fab people who are perfect travellers for this years new journey...My universe is working over time.

Simple mantras make life really easy. Have you made a promise to yourself this year? Have you set some words for your life that make it easy to create newness and joy in your world? If you have not, I'd recommend it. A really simply phrase I was reminded of recently has stuck with me and seems to be my soundtrack of the moment. And before you think I've let go of 'Follow Your Heart', I've not - this one just tied in so beautifully that it is acting as a complement to it.

This is my latest mantra which I'm using to think through any food or drink I'm about to delight in: 'Will it clog me or cleanse me?' (I take no credit for it, but believe it to be a Louise Hay quote).

Whatever you are hearing inside yourself, remember that words are important and that you can choose the ones that hold power for and over you. If you don't like what you are saying to yourself at the moment or have no guiding light for your days, here's my tip: get lost in a little silence, do a bit of brooding, be a bit of a skulky teen. Then when you are ready, emerge from it with words that inspire and nurture you in to being, doing and having so much more of what you want for yourself and those around you.

Much joy and wonder

Helena