Arminda Lindsay

Being On Purpose

Stuck is Optional

By

We’ve all experienced those times when “stuff” happens, stuff that’s outside of our control, yet its impact is significant. And when those times happen it’s easy to feel discouraged, disappointed, frightened, out of control, stuck, miserable, alone, or even resigned.

During this Ask Arminda session I talk about how okay it is to feel that full range of emotions listed above (and please add the ones I’ve left off the list), but stuck is optional. Every time.

Let me know your thoughts and what your personal experience has been when you consciously rise above your circumstances to create something different.

Loving you,
arminda

Willing to Bloom

By

Willing to Bloom

Nothing in the universe thinks there is anything wrong with you. 
— Robert Holden, Ph.D.

I love living into my magnificence and supporting others in their desire to do the same in their lives. Those “others” are my loved ones: my family, friends, neighbors, clients, workshop participants, retreat attendees, readers of my articles, viewers of my videos, vendors, store clerks, peers, classmates, followers on social media, and anyone with whom I come in contact.

What does it mean to live into your magnificence? To be exceptional? It means you are open to continuous expansion of self and that expansion is achieved through a willingness to surrender your belief system, to be open to another story, another possibility, to be vulnerable.

How do you commit the surrender? You expose your old stories, one at a time, and write new ones. You own your vulnerability. You face your fears. You make courageous self-honoring choices rather than constantly seeking to please those around you. You see that you cannot possibly be in service to others without first being willing to be in service to yourself.

“Can you see what’s really happening here? You are the actor in your own story, but you are acting as if your story about you is a biography, not an autobiography.” 
— Robert Holden, Ph.D.

What does this surrender look like? 

  • not resisting
  • not defending
  • not justifying
  • not hiding
  • not puffing
  • not pretending
  • not covering up
  • not excusing
  • not deferring
  • choosing YOU

Dr. Brene Brown teaches that “vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.” This living into magnificence takes courage, for it is a scary thing to face your fears. Why is that, you might wonder? Because fears cover up our deepest hurts and if our deepest hurts were to be exposed, well, that might be embarrassing, or painful, or lonely, or true, or all of the above! In fact, you might fear the greatest fear of all: that you’re not lovable or worthy.

“The real you is not afraid of love, because the real you is made of love.”
—Dr. Robert Holden

Dr. Ron Hulnick suggests that the easiest way to overcome a fear is to do the very thing that scares you while fully in your fear of doing it!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Marianne Williamson)

Step into your fears. You are courageous. Liberate yourself from its grasp on you. Believe in your own magnificence and not in your limitations. Be willing to blossom. One petal at a time.

Loving you,
arminda

Serve It Up

By

Serve It Up

Red Eye Flying

Ever taken a red-eye? They’re not my personal travel preference. But I’m so glad I was on this particular overnight flight.

There were just the two of us: me next to the window hoping to use said window to my sleepy advantage, and the complete stranger seated next to me on the aisle. No talking, just a brief hello and goodnight as we both did our best to comfortably position ourselves for an attempt at a five-hour rest.

Sometime around 2:00 in the morning, between awkward (and not very restful) head jerking sleep, I was awakened by my seat mate abruptly leaping to his feet and I watched him successfully catch a fellow passenger who fainted in the aisle next to him. After flight attendants had been summoned and the ailing passenger assisted back to his own seat (and administered oxygen), my seat mate calmly sat down again and fastened his seat belt and smiled at me as he apologized for waking me.

A bit wonder-struck at all I had just witnessed, I only smiled and assured him all was well. We said goodnight again, and both fussed around unsuccessfully to find another sleep position, and a moment later he invited me to use his shoulder. He said we both might sleep better propping each other than trying to figure it out alone, and at 2:15 in the morning, who can argue with that logic?

I slept soundly until the wheels touched down three hours later.

Fast Track Tip #4

And here is my fourth tip for you to instantly increase your emotional well-being: SERVE.

Service opportunities are rarely convenient, oftentimes they’re not fun (although not having fun is not a prerequisite to qualify for service), and they usually require a tradeoff of time for something else you’d rather be doing. . . until you show up for your service opportunity.

My airplane friend demonstrated selfless service — at the “inconvenient” hour of 2:00am — and because of his service a complete stranger was helped and I was gifted the most restful sleep possible in a most “inconvenient” and undesirable circumstance.  He also generously donated his in-flight blanket to me after witnessing me shiver (for longer than normal humans).

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”  ― John Holmes

When I’m feeling sad, sorry for myself, lonely, upset, and generally hanging out at the bottom of my ladder, laughing, singing, and dancing are certainly useful tools for improving my emotional well-being, but acts of service have a magic all their own: they get me outside of myself.

Being outside of myself allows me to see how incredibly fortunate I am to be able to choose my interpretation of the events of my life. And when I see that I’m the one choosing to be miserable (every time), I make better choices.

If you were to serve at your earliest inconvenience AND to do it regularly, what might that do for your emotional wellness? What would you choose? What acts of service ignite joy in the gifting for you?

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

If you want to be happy, be of service to others.

Fast Track Tip #3

By

Fast Track Tip #3

Curtain Rising

The auditorium was filled with a collective anticipation as the curtain rising revealed nine sequined bumblebees fidgeting in their leotards, buzzing to begin moving their newly-painted gold tap shoes to the well-rehearsed chords of the baby bumblebee song. It was the day I had anxiously anticipated for months and months, through all of our rehearsals and costume fittings and here I was: on the BIG stage.

Seated in the audience with my parents was also my Mom-Mom, my paternal grandmother, and she liked cats and monkeys, but I was nervous she might not be fond of bees. With each tap of my toe, hands firmly on my hips, I scanned the unseeable rows of seats for my people, certain that if Mom-Mom were there and I could see her seeing me, some magic might happen. What magic, I didn’t know.

And something magical did, indeed, happen, despite my not seeing anyone in the audience that night. As I tapped my way through the baby bumblebee song, arms and hands and head and feet all moving in rhythm and time to the beat, the anticipatory nerves and anxiety and fear of messing up my performance all lifted up and out of me, released into the nothing of dust particles scattering in the heat of the stage lighting. I WAS a bumblebee and I danced free — without nervous energy, or anxiety, or fear, or failure. I was pure bumbling joy and exhilaration.

After the performance when I did finally see my grandmother, she and I met each other in an embrace of bumblebee love and she gave me a slender glass vase that held three carnations (two pink, one white) and a tiny bumblebee, attached with wire to the stem of one flower, hovered just above the carnations.

Fast Track Tip #3

What I learned as a five-year-old bumblebee, I share with you now as the simplest method to increase your emotional well-being: just DANCE.

Skip, wiggle, do the Hokey Pokey, bring back the Electric Slide, or pick a decade whose dance moves resonate for you and duplicate them.

You don’t need a special someone watching from the audience. You don’t need an audience at all! This tip doesn’t even require gold-painted tap shoes, although if you’ve got a pair, definitely wear the tap shoes.

Spontaneous Dance Parties happen on the regular in my world.

Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before. —Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

And for your viewing pleasure, me: dancing.

Fast Track Tip #2

By

Fast Track Tip #2

I Was Raised On Music

I have no memories that don’t include music.

None.

My parents loved music of all genres and had a record collection that I’m sure would be the envy of many vinyl collectors today and there was always music playing in the background of my childhood.

As a little girl, I loved accompanying my dad to the Southern States Feed Store early on a Saturday morning before the sun had had time to take the edge off the leftovers from last night’s dark. We’d climb into his red Ford pickup truck and he’d cinch the middle seatbelt snugly around my waist before clicking his own in place.

Then with his right elbow always slightly bumping me as he shifted gears, my dad would sing. His was an audience of one open-eared adoring fan with long blonde hair pulled into two ponytails on either side of her head. I knew every word to every song in his repertoire: from all the campfire funny songs to my personal favorite, “Old Man River,” sung in my dad’s beautiful deep bass that I could never match as I sang along.

Everything was always right in my world when my dad sang out loud.

One night — long after my sister Melanie and I had been tucked into bed — the finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture came crashing through our bedroom door and giggling with delight, Melanie and I snuck down the hall and into the kitchen, grabbed the broom and galloped through the living room riding the broom in our nightgowns and laughing so hard we fell off our “horse” and Dad laughed and applauded our interpretation of the piece before sending us back to bed.

Fast Track Tip #2

Buddy the Elf is the ideal example of how this tip works and its effectiveness. Buddy teaches us that “the best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.”

I’ll amend his wisdom in the interest of making this very important second tip usable year-round and irreligious:

The best way to spread inner cheer is singing loud for YOU to hear.

And in case you’re worried you can’t or don’t know how to sing, Buddy has some helpful advice for you: “. . . [singing] is just like talking, except longer and louder, and you move your voice up and down.”

There you go.

That’s your second of four fast track tips!

SING!!

Sing alone, sing along, join a choir, make up songs, create your own playlist for singing, sing to your children, perform for your dog, make your own microphone for car performances (and an extra to keep in the house), just sing.

Can you sing and be unhappy at the exact same time? Try it. I dare you. I double and triple dog dare you. Yes, I just went there.

You cannot remain emotionally low if you are singing. Fast track your emotional self up through song.

If you need one more “note” of encouragement, please watch my all-time favorite song about singing:

Fast Track Tip #1

By

Fast Track Tip #1

Avocados Are Trouble

It started with the avocado incident; slicing open my own finger is always* laugh-worthy to me.

But it wasn’t until right after we two friends posed for the above super-imposed shot “in front of” the Empire State Building that I noticed it: a spray of blood just below the words, “I ❤ Hass” on my white t-shirt. Oh, how we laughed and laughed and waited in line to distract the sales rep while we took this contraband image of our own picture.

New York City never looked so funny to me as it did that night from the top of it all.

Fast Track Tip #1

When you find yourself at the bottom of your emotional ladder you might feel sad, frustrated, angry, lonely, resentful, hurt, overwhelmed, or judgmental.

Fast track yourself toward the top of your emotional ladder by laughing. Laugh intentionally. And laugh quickly. Find something that is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and do it immediately.

Some of my favorite easy laugh options include:

  1. YouTube videos — they’re short and convenient for a quick pick-me-up
  2. Talking on behalf of my dog, Eli — seriously one of the funniest things I do (just ask me)
  3. Skipping — I was the champion skipper ages five AND six, no small feat I assure you
  4. The paperboy from Crazy Off Dead
  5. And the paperboy from While You Were Sleeping
  6. Basically the entire movie Elf — or this brilliant line will suffice
  7. Also, the entire movie The Emperor’s New Groove, but especially the Smash it With a Hammer! scene
  8. Hilarious Gandalf intervention — only Lord of the Rings fans need click this one
  9. Dramatic readings by the Muppets — what’s not to love about the Muppets?
  10. Reading my own Happy List — I keep a written daily record of things that make me laugh, smile, and that cause joy, and I’ve been tracking this for decades now.

Take some time right now to jot down your known methods for inducing laughter, and the next time you find yourself down, go straight to your list to get yourself back up.

If we’re going to laugh about it later, we might as well laugh about it now. — Dr. Mary Hulnick, Ph.D.

*Don’t worry; I have many stories I won’t be sharing with you in this forum.

Sell From the Top

By

Sell From the Top

Let’s play a little game of pretend. Picture with me that your emotional life is lived on a ladder.

If at the top of the ladder are joy and happiness, then you’ll find things like fear and obligation hanging out at the bottom.

In order to “win” this pretend game I just made up, you’ll need to be aware of some rules:

  1. Your objective is to move yourself as far up the ladder as possible
  2. The more time you spend in the top half of your ladder, the better you’ll feel toward yourself and toward others
  3. All of your interactions with clients (family & friends) will have the best outcomes if the other “players” are also as far up their ladders as possible
  4. The only person you can move up or down the ladder is yourself
  5. There are four fast tracks* to the top of the ladder; you are free to use any of them alone or in combination

The best sales advice I can give you is to sell from the top of the ladder. If you come from a place of fear and worry and needing the sale (bottom of the ladder), then your prospect intuitively knows it and won’t buy. Ever.

Move yourself up the ladder. Come from joy and pure service (not a variation on a theme of service) and you’ll astonish them every time.

*Four fast tracks:

  1. Laugh
  2. Sing
  3. Dance
  4. Serve 

008: Sing Out Loud

By

Sing Out Loud

The All Arminda Virtual Show, episode 8

Singing a song out loud and with enthusiasm does something magical and moves us up our Ladder of Consciousness.

And nothing beats Buddy the Elf‘s wisdom on that one, folks:

The best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.

If you haven’t seen my video about that ladder — now’s a great time to have a look!

Loving you,
arminda

Failure

By

What if there was a different option to pass/fail? Let’s EXPERIMENT with what we do every day instead of succumbing to the personal low of failing if something doesn’t turn out the way we want or expect.

I reference the Ladder of Consciousness during this video, so be sure and watch that other Ask Arminda if you’re unfamiliar with it!

allarminda.com | 2024