Open Your Heart

‘I didn’t know love, until I knew you.’

– Parzival –

So I enjoyed yet another truly wonderful Dru Yoga class today. Words literally cannot describe how fantastic and powerful this style of yoga is. The practice that my teacher put together today was nothing short of amazing, and I was in a flood of tears by the end of it. Some would think that’s a bad thing, but I was obviously shifting something, which I’m incredibly grateful for.

At the beginning of every year I set an intention. Last year it was to improve my relationship with money, little did I know that I would end up enduring 7 months of not making any money at all through my business, in order to learn the lessons that I needed to learn (including the importance of being able to receive). However, the tricky stuff aside, the Universe definitely delivered and I have definitely improved my relationship with money, and am continuing to perfect it day by day.

This year I set the intention to really, truly and honestly understand what it is to unconditionally love, knowing full well that that would begin with myself. Because once I have unconditional love for me, I will then experience it with all of the other people and relationships that I have in my life, as they’ll be reflections of me.

And the Universe, being true to its word has already set about helping me out with that one. First and foremost, it has required me to be single, so no more boyfriend for me right now. In fact, no boyfriend until I love myself completely and unconditionally and don’t need anyone else to fill in the holes that I haven’t filled myself.

The next few months of this year is going to be a love affair with myself and opening my heart as far and wide as possible. And there are so many beautiful things and experiences that are showing up to help me with that. Dru Yoga, heart opening meditations from Mind Valley, amazing energy work from Heart Centered Living expert Mr Robert Kirby, Sound Healing to open up my heart, the list is endless. In fact, my intention of every day is to open up my heart as wide as I can, wider and wider with every day that passes, so I can let as much love and light in, and give is back to the earth in equal measure.

Also, very interestingly, this is an 11/2 Personal Year for me in Numerology. The 2 representing a year of relationships, balance and emotions. A year to create harmony in my life and work on relationships, including, most importantly, my relationship with myself. And the higher vibration of 11, means I’ll experience a year of illumination, inspiration and personal growth. A year where I will be given opportunities to reach a higher level of awareness and experience growth and further enlightenment. To calculate your personal year, you add the day and month that you were born to the current year.

So for me this is 2 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 4 = 11 As I was born on 2 Nov.

And so, as I write to you from the comfort of my sofa at home, a cup of rooibos tea, some cadburys chocolate and a couple of candles flickering beside me, I’m enjoying a very lovely date night in with myself and I couldn’t be happier. Once this post has been written, I will probably enjoy a lovely soak in a epsom salt + lavender oil bath and then snuggle down for the night.

So, I guess the purpose of this post is to encourage all of your beautiful people to open your hearts too. Whenever life sends you a slightly tricky situation or an experience that perhaps isn’t ideal, just open your heart and let love out and let love in and see what happens next. I’m doing this as much as I can every day and I’m getting some pretty beautiful results.

And to close, here is a very beautiful song ‘Til I Knew You by the very wonderful Parzival.

 

Here’s to love, light and opening our hearts to all the love that is there for us to experience.

Open-hearted love, hugs and light,

Kat x x x

P.S. If you want to fin out what the meaning of your Personal Year is and have a 60 minute Numerology reading, I do these in person in Manly, Australia or over Skype for $220. Just drop me an email at kat@thoughtcloudcollective.com to book a time slot with me. 🙂

Image gratitude – http://poemsprayersandponderings.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/let-your-heart-be-known/open-your-heart/

 

Anything is possible

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

– Napoleon Hill –

So, it has been a little while since I have written a blog post, but I have an excuse. In fact, I have several. Firstly, I have moved house recently, secondly, my business has been flourishing, for which I am incredibly grateful. At the moment I have more clients that I know what to do with, which makes me very happy. And thirdly, I have launched a crowdfunding campaign page through Indiegogo for a conscious business idea that I have been working on for the last year.

I had the idea to start hand painting designs on to bamboo t-shirts and organic cotton tote bags last November. I started off with some words like ‘hipster’ and ‘fashionista’ which looked good, but when I came back to thinking about them at the beginning of the year they didn’t resonate with me 100% any more.

As most of you will know, I have been on an incredible journey of spiritual awakening this year, and the more conscious I became, the more important it was for me to be putting this new business together in a way that would serve humanity, as equally as it would serve me.

The name that had come to me for the business was Katkin (my Mum’s affectionate term of endearment for me, and also the first three letters of my name). For a while I tustled with this, because I didn’t want the business to be coming from a place of ego. And after a while, I made my peace with the fact that it was just a really great name. And every time I shared it with people, they loved it, so I have embraced it wholeheartedly.

Secondly, I wanted to ensure that the messages that I was putting on the t-shirts and totes were words and phrases that would uplift people, that were positive, and inspiring, messages of peace and love. And messages that reminded us that we are all infinite and connected beings. So I started to create new designs that I was more congruent with.

They were just flowing out of me. At the moment I have hundreds and hundreds of ideas, but I knew, in order to kick things off, I needed to keep everything simple. So I shared a shortlist of 11 designs with friends and family via Facebook and email and invited people to vote for their 4 favourite designs. The top 4 would then make it into the crowdfunding campaign and would feature in the first run of tees and totes that we created.

Here are the top 4 designs that were chosen by my family and friends.

After I was clear on that, Darren and I started to take photos of them (and us in them) and we created a video for the crowdfunding campaign page, so that people could learn what Katkin was all about, and ideally want to buy a tee or tote and contribute to our cause. 🙂

The other thing that was important to me in creating the business idea for Katkin, was that it would be a profit for purpose business. As wonderful as I think charities, foundations, and not-for-profit organisations are, I had picked up a copy of Blake Mycoskie’s book ‘Start Something that Matters‘ while I was in LA this August and I had been inspired by his TOMs One for One approach to business. For every pair of shoes that they sell, they will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. With a profit for purpose business, the more you sell, the more you can contribute to a good cause. 

I also became a Lifetime Member of B1G1 (Guy 1 Give 1) earlier this year and I am lucky enough to have their CEO (the wonderful Mr Paul Dunne) as my mentor. I love the fact that their organisation help businesses give to charities all over the world, by sharing a small amount of what they make for every product or service that they sell with their preferred project.

I spent a lot of time researching all of the causes that they support and are associated, until I found The Katja House Foundation in Kathmandu, Nepal. Apart from the fact that there is a synergy with the reference of ‘Kat’ in their name, I also loved the fact that they are a small organisation in Kathmandu currently offering help, support, clothing and shelter to around 50 street children in the city. At the moment there are around 30,000 street children in Nepal and around 500 children are added to the streets of Kathmandu every year. So I thought this would be a great charity to help and support through Katkin.

Therefore, for every t-shirt that we sell, we will clothe an orphan at Katja House and for every tote bag that we sell, we will provide shelter for one orphan for one night.

The other very important part of Katkin to me is the quality and organic nature of the products that we are selling, especially the t-shirts, which are bamboo. I spent a lot of time researching, what fabric we should use for them, and despite the fact that organic cotton is fab, and we are using them for our tote bags, bamboo is definitely the way to go for the t-shirts. And I will be looking to create as much of our clothing as possible from this fabric as the business grows.

In doing the research I learnt a lot of really wonderful things about the benefits of using bamboo. Not only is it great for our skin, because it is antibacterial and allergy reduced for people with sensitive skin, but it is also great for the planet, being one of the most sustainable and environmentally responsible fabrics in the world today.

Our t-shirts are also endorsed by the Fairwear Foundation (FWF), which is pretty much like Fairtrade (for food), but for clothing. The FWF represent Ethical Trade & Justice for Workers. They exist to promote fair labour conditions in the garment industry worldwide.

Our t-shirts are good for you, they’re good for the planet and they’re good for the people who are making them.

So, in short, Darren and I have created a campaign page to raise $10,000 by 19 January 2014, so that we can kick Katkin off at the beginning of the year. And we would LOVE your help.

Here are the ways that you can help us make our dream come true:

1. Visit our crowdfunding page and buy a t-shirt or tote, or more if you fall in love with them! Share the link with friends and family on Facebook > http://igg.me/at/katkin
2. Share this blog post through your blog, your Facebook or email with people who you think would like to support us and contribute
3. Like our Facebook page and invite your friends and family to like it
4. Attend our event on Facebook to #helpmakekatkinhappen and invite your friends and family who you think would like to support our campaign

So far, we have raised a wonderful $1,100 and we have 29 days left of our campaign, so a good amount of time to raise the remainder of our target.

We would be very grateful for any help and support that you can give us to help spread the word about our campaign and #helpmakekatkinhappen and prove that anything is possible.

Sending you love, hugs and light and a huge amount of gratitude in advance,

Kat x x x

Everything will be OK (Part 4)

‘Someday everything will all make perfect sense. So for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears and keep reminding yourself that everything happens for a reason.’

– Anon –

Here is the final and fourth part to my mini blog post series. Enjoy, and remember, no matter what happens to you in life, trust that the Universe is looking after you and that everything will be OK.

. . . . . So, this has been a pretty long blog post. It wasn’t my intention for it to be long, but I’m hoping that anyone who has managed to get to the end of it has found it useful.

And most importantly, the whole reason why I write my blog is to share the learning’s that I get from the things I go through in my life, in the hope that even if I help one other person out there with a challenge or problem they might be having, it was worth going through what I went through.

Life is like one big educational system. We’re here to learn. And the more we learn, the more we evolve. We can’t skip grades, and if we keep making the same mistakes and failing at the same things, we will just have to keep repeating the class or the year until we learn what we have needed to learn in order to be able to graduate to the next level.

I feel as though I absolutely needed to learn what I have learnt this year. At times it wasn’t easy and it’s going to take me a little while to pay Darren back, but I know that I will and I am committed to doing so, so that is all that matters.

My business started to pick up right around my 33rd birthday in November. Some people would say it was luck, other people would say that I had learnt what I needed to learn, and therefore, I was ready for the next stage in my soul’s evolution (I’m with the latter one, in case you’re not sure).

I’ve learnt that, my business not making money, was nothing to do with the bunch of questions that I mentioned in Part 1. Quite simply, it had to happen. And now, I have my confidence back, and my relationship with and understanding around money has changed and it is flowing into my bank account like never before. And for that I am truly grateful and thankful.

So, no matter what is going on in your life at the moment, I hope that this blog post will go some way to helping you know that whatever is happening is happening for a reason. That reason might not be clear right now, but I promise it will be in the not too distant future. And when you get to that point and look back, you will realise that the Universe had your back the entire way, and that with a bit of perspective, you’re much better off for having gone through what you went through.

Importantly, trust that you are unconditionally loved and supported by the Universe and as long as you are willing and open to receive that love and support in whichever way it shows up in your life, you don’t need to worry about a thing, because every little thing is going to be alright.

Sending you love, hugs and light,

Kat x x x

Learn more and continue to be inspired

Read Everything will be OK – Part 1

Read Everything will be OK – Part 2

Read Everything will be OK – Part 3

Live beyond limits

“If your life was a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?”

– Amy Purdy –

I stumbled across the most beautiful TED talk this morning thanks to You Tube suggesting it to me after having watched Shaun Anchor’s talk on The Happiness Advantage for the umpteenth time (it’s SO awesome!).

Amy, a keen snowboarder and lover of life and travel, sadly lost both of her legs below the knee at the age of 19. However, her story is not that of sorrow or sadness, but one rather of a celebration of what happened and how it forced her to push through the boundaries and limitations in front of her. And most importantly, her choice of embracing the magic of her imagination to create the kind of life she wanted to live.

She didn’t allow herself to be held back by anything in her quest to get back on her board, and after years of rehabilitation, hard work, effort and sheer perseverance, she became the top ranked adaptive female snowboarder in the world. And rather than be held back by the seeming limits of having lost both of her legs, she used these as a jumping off point to transcend them.

She also now spends a great deal of time helping others, especially those with physical challenges get involved with adventure sports like snowboarding, skateboarding and wakeboarding. And she has set up a Not for Profit organisation called Adaptive Action Sports.

The beauty of this story is that Amy is has not only challenged herself to be able to continue to do what she truly loves, but she has made a wonderfully positive impact on the world at the same time.

So the question for you today is, what boarders do you need to push off of in order to ensure that the story of your life goes the positive way you wish it to go?

Inspiration for today’s post

TEDx talk – Amy Purdy – Living Beyond Limits

 

It’s OK to have a wobble

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” 

– Dalai Lama –

We all have them.

Days when we’re not feeling 100% ourselves. Days when we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see there. Days when things just get on top of us and don’t seem to be going our way.

After all, we’re human.

The important thing to know is that everything will be OK. It’s fine to feel like this. In fact, really feel it. Really embrace whatever rubbish feeling you might have. Sit with it. Have a good cry, or get angry if you need to. Let it all out.

And then move through it and move on.

Move on and fill your body and your mind with good things. Healthy food, water, nice long deep breaths. Surround yourself with positive, happy people who you love or give someone a call who you know will make you feel better. But choose to let everything before it go, and be in this new positive moment.

Go and do something that you love, listen to your favourite music, go for a walk to your favourite thinking spot, somewhere that will inspire you. Watch a clip of one of your favourite comedians on You Tube, a video of cats doing hilarious things or one of a baby laughing hilariously at ripping paper. Anything that will remind you of the lighter side of life.

And remember that it’s OK to have a wobble. You’re human after all.

Inspiration for this post

My day today

Change your mindset, change your life

“What you think and what you believe is what will come true for you. Your thoughts create your life. It’s that simple.”

– Louise Hay –

I have just watched the most incredible movie that has taken what I already know to be true about The Universe, The Law of Attraction, The Power of Intention and a whole tonne of other stuff and taken it one step further.

The movie of ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ from Louise Hay is absolutely fantastic. And if you do nothing else today, I beg of you to indulge 90 minutes in watching this film, because I am certain it will change the way that you look at life forever.

I don’t even want to paraphrase anything contained in the movie, just watch it and trust that your life will never be the same again after watching it.

I’m so happy to share this.

With big hugs, love and light,

Kat x x x

Inspiration for this post

You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay – The Movie

You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay – The Book

Take responsibility for your life

“The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life, is the moment you can change anything in your life”

– Hal Elrod –

This has been a really big learning for me over the last few years, and continues to be something that I am always striving to do in my life. So I just wanted to share this sentiment with you today.

In my previous life (as I now refer to it) I spent a lot of time blaming others for why I wasn’t happy. And at the time, that was absolutely perfect, because I didn’t know any better.

Now a few years later, after having done a lot of work on myself and my psychology, having studied NLP, life coaching and having read a tonne of books, I am now aware of the notion of Cause and Effect or causality as it is also known.

According to Wikipedia causality is a philosophical concept ‘in which an action or event  will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event.’

Buddhists also refer to this as karma. Literally karma means ‘action’ or ‘doing’, and it can also be described as (also according to Wikipedia) ‘whatever one does, says or thinks is a karma.’ and it ‘is used specifically for those actions which spring from the intention of an enlightened being.’

So, why is it important to know about Cause and Effect and karma and how can it improve your life?

Living in Effect

When we live in effect, we have basically submitted ourselves to the fact that we are not in control of our lives and whatever happens is nothing to do with us.

I have spent the majority of my life living in effect. Not ever being very sure about where I’m going and what I want to achieve. Just bumbling along, allowing life to happen to me, rather than take control and making it what I want it to be.

I would react to things that would happen to me, and generally believed that my lack of happiness, satisfaction and contentment in life was a result of things outside of me. I wasn’t taking responsibility for the design of my life.

This all came to head around my 30th birthday. I was in a job that I hated, I was in a relationship with someone who I didn’t want to marry or have children with, I didn’t like the city that I was living in, and I was feeling completely and utterly hollow and unfulfilled.

I blamed my boyfriend at the time for how I felt, I blamed my job, I blamed London, I blamed the weather, I blamed pretty much everyone and everything apart from myself. When in actual fact, I was the only person that had created this situation and I was the only person who could change it.

Living in Cause

This is when we take 100% responsibility for everything in our lives. We are aware that everything we are attracting has been caused by our thoughts and actions.

When I first learnt about the notion of Cause and Effect last year it was pretty confronting. It meant that I had to take complete responsibility for everything in my life, the good and the bad (this is especially tricky).

I had to take responsibility for the fact that I had attracted a toxic relationship, because I was in a toxic place. I had to accept that I had attracted a frustrating job in a negative space, because it was just a reflection of where I was in that moment. The list goes on . . .

It was pretty tough to accept and understand that I created a really unhappy, angry, frustrating and pretty darn rubbish life situation for myself. But more importantly, on reflection, I was also responsible for deciding to take control, put myself in the driver’s seat of my life, choose to live in cause and make some positive changes.

Not only did I leave my job, break up with my boyfriend and leave London, but I went travelling for 6 months, moved to the other side of the world, got a new job for a while, then started my own company and set up shop in beautiful Sydney where the sun shines pretty much every day. And best of all, I live with the man of my dreams.

I took responsibility for my life. And most importantly, when I started to get really clear about how I wanted my life to be, in a positive way, rather than focussing on all the things that I didn’t like about it and blaming others, things started transform in a really magical way.

There is a great book called the 100/0 Principle that supports the notion of Cause and Effect and is a formula for developing effective relationships in our life.

According to Alan Ritter, the author of the 100/0 Principle, you take full responsibility for the relationship (the 100) and expect nothing in return (the 0). The paradox is that as you take authentic responsibility for the relationship, the other person does as well. Therefore the 100/0 Principle quickly transforms to something approaching 100/100. There is a short You Tube video that explains how it works and the 3 simple steps to follow to implement it in your life.

And this can all be linked to the idea of karma in that, if you do good things and treated others well with kindness and compassion, then it will come back to you in equal measure.

So, I guess my question for you today is, what do you need to take responsibility for in your life? And what positive changes can you make today about the things you have been complaining about or making excuses for, for too long?

“The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.”

– Brian Tracy –

Wishing you big long warm hugs, love and light. x x x

Inspiration for this post

The 100/0 Principle – You Tube video

A blog post about Cause and Effect from a guy I love to follow called Myrko Thum

Just Live

“I think the thing to do is enjoy the ride while you’re on it.”

– Johnny Depp –

I think we can over-complicate life in our heads, when in actual fact the truth of the matter is very simple.

I was talking to Darren (my beautiful boyfriend) the other weekend about the meaning of life, and why we’re all here. It was after I had watched The Secret and I was super excited about adding an important piece to the puzzle in my head, the importance of The Law of Attraction and The Power of Intention.

I was especially excited about the notion that life really can be what we make it, and that all we need to do is decide how we want our life to be and what we want to fill it with.

And this was when he blew all of that out of the water (which he is pretty good at doing) and said something pretty profound.

“I actually think the meaning of life is much simpler than that”, said Darren.

“Go on”, I said.

“Well, I think it’s just about experiences.”

And this completely and utterly dumbfounded me. So simple, yet so true.

All we need to do is focus our energies on just enjoying the experience of living.

Stop thinking about what we should be doing and where we should be going. And rather focus our energies on doing things that we love, being with people that we love in places that we love and life will take care of itself.

And that is my thought for the today. Just live.

Inspiration for this post

My awesome boyfriend

Put your head through the clouds

 

blue-sky thinking

World Dictionary definition – (n) ‘creative ideas that are not limited by current thinking or beliefs’

I’m a big fan of meditation, and I’m always looking for new techniques and advice. So when Leonie told me about Cloud Meditation over a deliciously cold Ginger Ale on Friday afternoon, as we enjoyed the Sydney sunshine down at Circular Quay I got pretty excited.

When I asked what Cloud Meditation was, she told me that all you needed to do was simply focus all of your energy and attention on a cloud in the sky and it would gradually disappear into nothingness.

Now when she told me, in that moment I felt a little torn. Part of me thought that it was an amazing concept and notion, the other part of me thought it was a little bonkers. I mean, come on, how could you make a cloud disappear, by just focussing your mind on it?? And despite my slight scepticism, secretly, I wanted it to be possible.

So, being the ever curious bunny that I am, I tried it out on the Manly ferry as I journeyed into the city to TEDx yesterday. I was in a very happy place, sitting at the back of the big boat, enjoying the trip as we swung into the harbour and headed for the wharf. The sun was on my face, Ellie Goulding was in my ears, I was just about to head to TEDx and all was right with the world.

So, what better an opportunity to see if I could do a spot of Cloud Meditation and see if I could make a cloud disappear.

I thought I would start with an easy one, so I focussed on one that was pretty small. And, sure enough, after a few minutes of careful focus and concentration it had disappeared. Wow! I could barely my eyes! Maybe it was a fluke? Maybe that cloud was going to disappear anyway? So I tried a bigger one. Again, I focussed all of my energy on it, and sure enough, the more I focussed on it, the more parts of it started to break away and disappear into nothingness. And minute, by minute as we pulled into Wharf 3, the cloud was disappearing before my very eyes.

Now, anyone sitting next to me would perhaps have started to wonder why this bespectacled blonde girl was sitting with her mouth and eyes wide open, staring at the sky in disbelief. In fact, the two ladies sitting next to me started to look up at the sky to try to work out what it was that I was looking at. And when they couldn’t work it out, got up to leave the ferry.

I was on the brink of tears, I honestly couldn’t believe that just by concentrating my mind, I had managed to make clouds disintegrate. It was so amazing, and further proof that The Law of Attraction does indeed work, and that we can achieve anything if we put our mind to it.

Still, feeling a tad sceptical and disbelieving today, I told my boyfriend about what had happened and for a few minutes focussed my attention (and his) on some clouds in the sky and watched them disappear too.

So, I just wanted to share this really beautiful meditation with you as I know it is something that I will start to do much more regularly. And invite you to give Cloud Meditation a try for yourself.

Inspiration for this post

My beautiful friend Leonie & Cloud Meditation

Spread ideas

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”

– Swami Vivekananda –

As most of your will know by now, I’m a pretty big fan of TED. And I was lucky enough to attend TEDx Sydney at the Sydney Opera House today, which was truly awesome and incredibly inspiring.

Furthermore, being true to the promise that I made to myself when I started writing this blog of writing a post every day, even though I’m ever so slightly tipsy, and it is 11.44pm, I am writing a blog post before the day is out.

I think the thing that was most profound about today, was that throughout the ecletic mix of people that spoke from Tom Thum the human beat boxer from Brisbane, to George Khut who uses heartbeats to create art, from Adam Spencer who spoke about his TED talk in California about Prime Numbers that brought about a standing ovation to Mr Mark Newson being interviewed about his contribution to the world of art and design, everyone had ideas worth spreading.

And so I guess the conclusion for today is, no matter how random a thing it is that you’re interested in, or have an idea about, have the conviction to spread it. Because you can bet there’s at least a few thousand other people out there that care about what you have to say.

Inspiration for this post

TEDx Sydney