Louise Hay
To start off this month of posts and emails I want to talk about something that has been a life-long challenge for me. To frame that, let me tell you a personal story.
About 40 years ago, I did part-time bookkeeping and business organization. One of my clients was a beautiful and interesting woman who was just starting out her career. Her name was Louise Hay. Louise had overcome many personal challenges and traumas, including sexual abuse as a child and uterine cancer developed in her teens, from which she healed herself without medical intervention.
She wrote a book about how our belief systems contribute to illness – and to our health – that became a best seller (Heal Your Body) and started her on the lecture circuit.
She eventually founded a company called Hay House, the most successful self-help publishing company in the world. And she published two more books, You Can Heal Your Life, and a workbook entitled Love Yourself and Heal Your Life.
As a partial payment for my employment, Louise offered me some private healing sessions. I can’t remember exactly how the subject came up, but one day I mentioned an old electric blender that only worked at the very lowest setting and the very highest. Everything in between was inactive.
Louise looked at me and in no uncertain terms said: “Throw it away! Buy a new one.” She then suggested that the blender was a perfect metaphor for how I was living my life: either at high speed or at complete exhaustion. I bought that new blender, but for a long time I was resentful: “why waste money on a new one if that one at least does the job?” (She also worked with me about healing from poverty consciousness.)
And of course, she was right. I was running on empty, almost all of the time. And I knew it. I knew that someday it would catch up with me. I came to understand that my “zoom/crash” MO was simply a form of avoidance. I was avoiding just being in the moment and experiencing what was happening.
Instead I camouflaged it with a flurry of activity or I completely zoned out. But eventually, I came to deeply appreciate the lesson. I figured if SHE could sit with her feelings, I certainly could sit with mine.
Photo by Joshua Yu courtesy of Unsplash
What Louise opened my mind to that day was the idea of living and moving at the speed of Nature. Doing this is a way of honoring life and the natural rhythms in our lives. It took me many, many more years to fully embrace that lesson. But it made me a much more balanced person, physically and emotionally.
I have made “moving at the speed of Nature” a very big priority in my life. I walk more slowly because doing so keeps me connected with my soul.
I have learned to eat more slowly. That has made my food more delicious.
I have learned to pause and think before I speak and act. My speech has become more effective. And that has made my relationships better.
So, where in your own life might you overworking? Do you just call it “multi-tasking?” Or have you also learned to connect with Nature’s rhythms? Has that been easy or difficult? In what way? Do other people in your life respect your “rhythm”? Drop me a line. I’d love to hear your answers and know if this resonated with you and why.
Here’s to a beautiful New Year and a month of self-care. 
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