Hey friends. Welcome

Need a deep breath and a few moments to yourself?

Yep me too

I hope this’ll help  – – –

A Good Word

Image by Jodie Grubbs

A Good Look

Where’s your heart leading you this weekend ?

Photo by KJ Ramsey

A Good Idea 

from Amber C Haines

This is about to sound like a fortune cookie, but I’m saying it anyway.

I believe our capacities are much bigger than we know.

Not just for pain but also for the good stuff.

It’s like as far over to the pain you go is as far over to the joy you can go, too.

It’s astonishing to me how one can carry such deep grief and deep hope at once.

I see it in you, able to carry worlds of both within.

Life is not what we thought it would be, not in any direction.

We just get to watch our capacities grow and grow, as if our souls are much grander than our bodies.

I believe they are.

A Good Read

Embracing Joy in the Midst of Uncertainty

“This kind of grey January day feels like a segue, a song that dips and shifts, without a pause in between. It’s lunchtime, though the clouds obscure any sense of passing hours. I’m standing by the stove, frying yet another egg while my daughter makes Valentine’s cards at the kitchen table. She’s singing a song about a royal detective.

I hum along with her, but I’ve only got eyes for my egg. I love the brittle lace of the albumen, the way it circles the yolk like a Sherpa throw. An egg is an easy symbol of new beginnings, but instead, I see it as a representation of my own stasis. Not birth, but purgatory, that moment just before. The bright jiggle of yolk, soon to be broken by little toast soldiers, feels tremulous, like my own psychic state. It contains the uncertainty I’m so desperate to hide from the world.

Once, not so long ago, I had a Google Calendar full of neat little boxes. Thao x Someone Else x Someone Who Probably Could Have Been Looped in on an Email. My to-do list ran down the page, like the map of a perfectly linear rail system. I got relentless satisfaction from filling in my neat circles. I was a woman with a plan.

I own three day planners, but, now, I have no plans at all” – – – –  keep reading

In Praise of Cold-Calling Your Friends

Nearly a year into the pandemic, these unexpected chats are my greatest joy

Here’s how I finally got myself to start exercising

When we received the stay-at-home order in March 2020 — I live in California — I came out of the gates pretty darn hot.

“Embrace not being so busy,” I wrote. “Take this time at home to get into a new happiness habit.”

That seems hilarious to me now. My pre-pandemic routines fell apart hard and fast. Some days, I would realize at dinnertime that not only had I not showered or gotten dressed that day, I hadn’t even brushed my teeth.

Even though I have coached people for a long time in a very effective, science-based method of habit formation, I struggled. Truth be told, for the first few months of the pandemic I more or less refused to follow my own best advice.

I think this was because I love to set ambitious goals. Adopting little habits is so much less exciting than embracing a big, juicy goal – – –  keep reading

That’s it for this week friends. Thanks so much for being here and remember you can browse through the previous articles and posts linked to in The Friday Recliner right  HERE.

And if you enjoy The Friday Recliner would you be kind enough to copy the link and send to a friend to enjoy as well.