25. Whistle Tea & Hounds

Hello everyone. Okay. Whistle tea and hounds. You’re probably wondering where on earth did she come up with that title for today’s episode, but it happened in a kind of a synchronistic. Is that a word? It was a synchronicity on a recent walk and I’m using it now as my mantra to remember to number one, choose to do the things I love. And number two, remember to look at the positive side of things. We have the opportunity in every moment of every day to either slant our mindset to the Wawa or lift our mindset to the hate. I’m going to look around and see what the silver lining in this is. I’m not going to choose to stay in the drama or the gossip or whatever it may be. So how did this come about? So I am in my hometown right now. I’m getting ready to head back home today, but I grew up in just a beautiful small town, um, you know, next to huge woods on the river.

It’s just darling. And recently I did one of my most favorite things, which was take the dogs for a walk in the woods. And I have my English setter, my parents’ English setter. Um, I call them the hones and then my cousin’s little Boston terrier. Who’s adorable to hug sitting her. And I have my big mug of tea. I’ve got the dogs eat collars on them, the setters, because they run, they will be gone. They will be in the neighboring town within 30 minutes. If I don’t beep beep beep them. And then I got the little Boston terrier on her leash and I’m walking along and I’ve got the whistle around my neck because you know, sometimes the whistle works, um, before I have to use the beeper on the colors and, um, one of the dogs, okay, little TMI here, one of the dogs did her little do do so I bent over to like, this is kind of gross, but okay.

I bent over to go like flick it in the woods with the stick. And as I was doing that, my whistle dipped in my tea and I’m like initially, Oh my God, the whistle got trenched in my tea. And then I stopped and I started laughing and I thought whistle tea, whistled, tea, and hounds. And the whistle tea is an example of, Hey, look on the bright side of things, you clean the whistle. Um, and you know, just looking around at the hounds, running around and thinking, you know, rather than focusing on the fact that my whistle got dunked in the T look around at the joy in these hounds running around. So in that moment I kind of laughed and I thought, well, I can focus on the poo and I can focus on the whistle and the tea, or I can shift my mindset and be like, that’s okay, because I’m on a gorgeous, early morning walk doing what I most love, which is being with my dogs in nature.

And I just had to chuckle. So in a synchronistic kind of way, again, I don’t know if synchronistic is a word, but I’m making it up. I just, I love that. So whistle, tea, and hounds. And so over the past few days when I’m feeling like overwhelmed with work or, or, you know, not looking at the positive, I’ll kind of laugh and I’ll remember my whistle T and hounds walk, but it’s interesting because over the past, um, couple of weeks that I’ve been here, I’ve gone out on walks. And initially when I first started going on walks in the woods, I would be contemplating things or, you know, things that were irritating me and I would get, I would get to the end of my walk and I’d realize I didn’t even look around. I didn’t even listen to the birds or smell the smells of spring or feel the wind on my face, or, you know, listen to the trees or look at the trees or just forest bathe.

I didn’t do any of that. I was focused on the [inaudible] and I thought, you know what, I’m stealing my own joy. So my question to you is when do you steal your own joy? When do you get caught in the poo and the, and the whistle and the tea, rather than looking around at nature or your hounds or whatever it is that makes you happy every day, there’s little miracles waiting to be discovered. And if we give the space and the room and the attention within our lives, which essentially are in the minutes and the hours that we’re awake, if we give that the attention to that, if we allow the magic to happen, our experience can be so incredibly, incredibly different. So how do we do this? How do we not focus on the whistle and the tea? And we focus on what we love.

I think it’s really just the number one awareness, like being aware of how we’re feeling in our body. So often we operate 99% of the time from the shoulders up. We are in our heads. So just feeling how something feels in our body, a choice that we have to make a decision, anything, and just getting connected, being aware, being in the moment. And I know that sounds so cliche, like just be in the moment, but it’s true. A friend of mine, this was recently joking and, uh, you know, she’s got kids and it’s like, you know, a crazy fun time in her life with the kids. And she’s like, I know I’m just trying to be in the moment and be laid back. And so we don’t want to like put pressure cause she was putting pressure, I think on herself. And that even creates more like, Oh, I’m supposed to be chill right now.

I’m supposed to be aware. I think being present is really being present to whatever is. So when I was out on that walk rather than see, I was so caught up in my head on the [inaudible] stuff, the negative stuff going on, that I wasn’t present in my body now, am I saying that I should have gone on the walk and like all those feelings away? No, maybe however I could have just stopped and sat there and like looked around and then gotten out of my head and more into my body and asked myself, okay, these feelings that I’m feeling, these overwhelming feelings, these anxiety ridden feelings, where are they in my body? How does it feel? What are those about? Tell me more, I’m interested feelings. Tell me more, where are you coming from? How can we figure out some solutions to move out of this?

The brain loves it when you ask it questions like that and you give it a job, like how can we move out of this? You know, versus, Oh, why is this happening to me? Why does this always happen to me? No, we move it to, Hm. I wonder what solutions I could think about that would move me out of this feeling. So you’re aware and yes, you’re in the Wawa mindset, but you’re still aware and you’re in your body. You’re not just in your head and chances are, you’re going to come up with a solution. You’re not going to end the walk in the woods and be like, what just happened? I was so caught up in my head. I don’t even know, like where did that all go though? The past 30 minutes, but if we’re aware, so just awareness, allowing yourself to feel the feelings.

And then like I just mentioned asking for information from your intuition, asking for information from your body and then making a choice because once you have the information available to you, um, and let’s face it, we all are our own best guru. We all our own best psychic. We have the answers within us. It’s just sometimes too painful or too difficult or too scary to actually ask our selves the questions. So, um, again, yeah, no, I know I’m a little all over the place there today, but like that’s okay. But when we practice whistle T and hounds, we are able to acknowledge that, ah, dang, the whistle fell in the T how does that make me feel? Well, it makes me feel really annoyed, but that’s okay. All right. Why am I really annoyed? Is it really the whistle in the tea? Or is it something else?

So you go deeper and why and why. And then once you kind of unpack that and that’s complete, then look around and be like, okay, you know, but look at everything else that’s available to me right now. I, um, was talking with a friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about my art hometown. And I said, Oh, I just, I love coming here. I feel so grounded after I leave. And she sits and she lives here and she said, yeah, so many people, so many people say, Oh my gosh, this town is in the middle of nowhere. And she said, you know what? My mother says, my mother says, this town is in the middle of everywhere. I’m going to repeat that. So you’ve got a small town. A lot of people would say, it’s in the middle of nowhere. The flip side is so, you know, that’s the Wawa that towns in the middle of nowhere.

Wow. [inaudible] but the upside, the upside is no, this town is in the middle of everywhere. And what she meant was there are several big cities within the, you know, an hour and a half to three hour drive. And so, you know, her viewpoint and her mother’s viewpoint is they have the best of both worlds. They have the peacefulness of, of, of the country, of rural life. And they can hop in the car and do a day trip and get their fill of the city. So again, it’s always the way you look at it. And I love that. So are you operating from a viewpoint in your life of I’m in the middle of nowhere or are you operating from the viewpoint of I’m in the middle of everywhere? So if you’re feeling frustrated with your job, instead of being like, I’m just stuck here, perhaps you could shift it to, I wonder what possibilities are around me. And a lot of times, all that it requires again, is looking around us on my walk. Am I going to be immersed in the poo and the whistle and the tea? Or am I going to look around at the dogs and the nature, you know, in a small town, are you going to look down at your feet and be like, I’m so bored where I live, or are you going to look around and say, where could I go on a day trip today?

So in your, and this can happen in relationships and friendships, we can look at what’s, we can focus on what’s not working, or we can focus on what is working and solutions to shift what isn’t working. So there you go. That’s my whistle, tea hounds. I hope it inspires you to look at the positive side of things, as well as not pushing down the quote unquote negative, but allowing yourself to experience it. I think so often we run really fast. We run really fast from any kind of pain. I said that a friend of mine told me that a few years ago, she said, Meg, you’re just afraid of the pain. And I’m like, well, yeah, who isn’t, who wants to be emotionally suffering? Unfortunately, emotionally suffering is the doorway into transformation into what we really, what we, what, how you really want to feel in your life. I think, um, and I know I’ve said this before, so forgive me, but I love it. Amelia Earhart has a quote that’s equivalent to, um, courage is the fee that life extracts for peace. So in order to experience that inner space within us, that we all also often want that inner space of contentment. We must have the courage to feel the feelings that we’ve been running from. So there you go. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I’ll see you very soon. Bye-bye.