Seeds of intention

Hi dear ones,

I hope that your spring is off to a lovely start.  

This Aries gal loves the newness of spring. After a long and taxing winter, the month of April signals a desire for change, hope, revival and rebirth.

Around my birthday I always like to ask myself what I want to release and what I want to carry forward into the new year.  

Here are some of the things that I am ready to release:

• Feelings of scarcity

• A need to be busy and the culture of urgency

• Chronic overthinking

• Disregarding my needs

• The idea that life is short. It’s actually long. We actually have plenty of time to reinvent ourselves many times over

Here are some of the things that I would like to carry forward:

• Joy, ease, laughter and abundance

• In moments of stuckness, giving myself big doses of self-compassion and reminding myself that I’m in a season. The good news is that seasons pass

• Being mindful of my pesky saboteurs and using the tools at my disposal to weaken their power over me

• Celebrating wins, even the small ones

• Sitting with discomfort and learning to accept pain in order to set it free

• Trusting the unfolding of life and trying to find the gifts in even the most challenging situations

• Being able to tell the story of how I rebuilt my life and career in my mid-forties

• The deep love and appreciation that I feel for my smart, sweet and soulful coaching clients 

I’d love to hear from you: what are you releasing this season and what is awakening in you under the growing sunlight?  

Much love always,
Vesna

The love list:

Watching: The Andy Warhol Diaries

Reading: This profile on Ocean Vuong

Listening: The new Phife album

The wiser elder self

Hi dear ones,

Happy spring! What seeds of intentions or desires are you noticing growing inside of you? How can you ensure you nurture this growth?

I’ve been thinking a lot about growth and evolution lately, especially as my birthday approaches in April. One of the things that I’ve learned through my Positive Intelligence studies is a contemplation that instantly brings me back into my sage powers and reminds me of what’s important.

I invite you to take a moment to picture your wiser elder self. This is the elder version of you who is of sound mind and body, who has lived a full life, gained great experience, perspective and wisdom, and who is happy to share this wisdom with you. Picture what you look like, the expression of your face and eyes, your overall energy, spirit and attitude. Ask your wiser elder self, what is important for me to pay attention to today? What should I worry less about? What really matters? Thank your wiser elder self and feel their presence alongside you in the hours and days ahead.

My wiser elder self is bright and lively, but also super relaxed about life. She has short white hair and lives by the ocean. She likes to remind present-day me to have fun and she also reminds me that things can be easy. I did this this exercise with a coaching client recently and the message she received from her elder self was “it ain’t that serious.” How wonderful and true!

Based on what your wiser elder self tells you today, make some commitments to yourself about how you will approach situations differently. Let me know what your wiser elder self reveals to you.

I’ll leave you with this quote from writer Lisa Olivera: “In a world that so easily throws us off kilter, choosing to root back into what you’re here to do, what you’re here to be, and what truly matters to you, over and over, is a gift.”

All my love,
Vesna

The love list:

Watching: Abbott Elementary and Taylor Tomlinson: Look At You

Reading: The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Listening: Motomami by Rosalia

Tending to our hearts

Hi dear ones,

It’s a cold afternoon here in Montreal and the sun is streaming in through my office window. I’ve had an intense love-hate relationship with winter for as long as I can remember. This Arabtina is happiest when it’s hot and sunny and there’s a beach nearby, but lately I’ve been learning to appreciate winter as a season to slow down and go inward. This feels so counter-intuitive, especially when we’re bombarded with messages telling us that we always have to do more.

The truth is that I can’t come into clarity if I can’t first admit where I feel instability and uprootedness. I find myself often doing (and thinking) too much and I’ve had to learn that in order to tap into my inner knowing, I have to get really intentional about carving out time and space to be sensitive to what is showing up for me in any given moment.

The practice of slowing down and tuning out the noise is something that I always work on because my moments of quiet often bring up all kinds of emotions that I’ve been actively trying to avoid. As one of my teachers Lama Rod Owens likes to say, “I can’t get to joy if I’m always running away from pain.” 

Instead of always reacting and resisting, what if we could just tend to our hurts and consent to being broken hearted sometimes? What if we could remind ourselves that we can be broken hearted by life and still cultivate gratitude and joy?

I challenge you to allow yourself to have a full range of emotions and experiences to meet life as it comes, and to practice showing yourself love in small and big ways, every day. I’m here to tell you that joy and ease can be armors against a future that feels so uncertain.

Here’s to brighter days ahead and the promise of spring.

With all my love,
Vesna

The love list:

Watching: Somebody Somewhere

Reading: This article in The Atlantic about friendship

Listening: Oliver Burkeman talking about time management with Krista Tippett