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Enriching Lifestyle stories

Last update: April, 2007




The Enriching Lifestyle Compass was developed, as an instrument to bring you back in contact with your Self, and increase the meaningful connections that you already experience, so that you can lead a richer, more satisfying life in accordance with your real needs.

In addition, we have collected some inspiring stories and links to examples of Enriching Lifestyle. If you have an interesting story to share, please contact Garsett Larosse.

A Message from Mrs. Leonard

By Mary Ann Bird

I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started to go to school, my classmates-who were constantly teasing- made it clear to me how I must look to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and hollow and somewhat garbled speech. I couldn't even blow up a balloon without holding my nose, and when I bent to drink from a fountain, the water spilled out of my nose.

When my schoolmates asked, "What happened to your lip?" I'd tell them that I'd fallen as a baby and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. By the age of seven I was convinced that no one outside my own family could ever love me. Or even like me.

And then I entered the second grade, and Mrs. Leonard's class. I never knew what her first name was -- just Mrs. Leonard. She was round and pretty and fragrant, with chubby arms and shining brown hair and warm dark eyes that smiled even on the rare occasions when her mouth didn't. Everyone adored her. But no one came to love her more than I did. And for a special reason.

The time came for the annual "hearing tests" given at our school. I was barely able to hear anything out of one ear, and was not about to reveal yet another problem that would single me out as different. And so I cheated. I had learned to watch other children and raised my hand when they did during group testing. The "whisper test" however, required a different kind of deception: Each child would go to the door of the classroom, turn sideways, close one ear with a finger, and the teacher would whisper something from her desk, which the child would repeat. Then the same thing was done for the other ear. I had discovered in kindergarten that nobody checked to see how tightly the untested ear was being covered, so I merely pretended to block mine.

As usual, I was last, but all through the testing I wondered what Mrs. Leonard might say to me. I knew from previous years that she whispered things like "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?"

My turn came up. I turned my bad ear to her plugging up the other solidly with my finger, then gently backed my finger out enough to be able to hear. I waited and then the words that God had surely put into her mouth, seven words that changed my life forever.

Mrs. Leonard, the pretty, fragrant teacher I adored, said softly, "I wish you were my little girl."

Forgiveness as a Gift to Yourself

Imagine that you are standing with hose in hand ready to water your favorite outdoor plants. You turn on the water and only a little bit comes out. You know there should be more water pressure, so you look and notice several kinks in the hose. As you untangle them, the water gushes forth in a full stream. You are able to give your precious plants a full supply of water. Now imagine that the water is the flow of God's love that can come through you. You are the hose, the vehicle through which that love can flow.
It is a beautiful and powerful feeling to allow God's love, the waters of life, to flow through us. One main way we kink our hose is by closing our heart to another.

Feeling resentment or carrying a grudge toward one other person inhibits our flow of love to even our closest relationships. Put in another way, the weakest link of a chain determines the strength of the whole chain. Some people carry a grudge for many years and put tremendous energy into justifying their resentment. This kinks the flow of love and energy in a person's life.

Forgiveness is not about seeing a person's action as right. It may well be that the person acted wrongly. Forgiveness is about seeing past the action or behavior to the part of that human being which is love. Forgiveness is really a gift we give to ourselves. There is a tremendous lightness and energy that can enter our lives when we let go of the grudges and resentments we carry.

A powerful way of forgiving is to see past the adult form and behavior to the little innocent child within the person we would like to forgive. Betty was having a particularly hard time forgiving her father for certain abusive actions done to her as a child. She had fallen into blaming her father for the ways her life was not working. True, her father had acted wrongly, yet continuing to hate him was causing much unhappiness in Betty's life.

I asked her to find a picture of her father as a young child and put it in a place where she could see it often. She found a photo of him taken at age six. As she more and more studied the photo, she began to see the sadness and loneliness in his eyes. He himself was abused as a child. Betty was able to open her heart to her father as a little boy. She felt like reaching out and holding him in her arms.

A month later, as her next step, she found a photo of him at ten years old. His eyes were still full of sadness and loneliness, but now he was starting to try to hide his pain. Betty was again able to feel compassion for him as an older child. A photo of her father as a teen showed an unhappy youth trying to act tough to further cover up the pain inside.

Through studying these photos, Betty was able to feel compassion for her father's childhood. This compassion did not make her father's actions right, but Betty could now understand the pain in her father that had led him to pass the abuse to another generation. Armed with this understanding, she was able to reach out in love to the sad little boy still within her father. Through feeling compassion, Betty's heart was freed of the bitterness and hatred she had carried for most of her adult life. Her health improved, she felt years younger and found she had more love to give to her husband and children. Forgiveness of her father was a gift she had thus given to herself.

Perhaps there are similar gifts you could give yourself? Is there someone you are needing to forgive? Is there a way you are needing to let go and move on in your life? You deserve the gift of more freedom and peace in your life. You deserve to fully feel your love and not have it covered by past resentments and grudges. You deserve love!

More inspiring articles by Joyce and Barry Vissell can be found at http://www.sharedheart.org/pages/columns.htm

The breeze

Two years ago in downtown Denver my friend, Scott, and I saw something tiny and insignificant change the world, but no one else even seemed to notice. It was one of those beautiful Denver days. Crystal clear, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky.
We decided to walk the ten blocks to an outdoor restaurant rather than take the shuttle bus that runs up and down the Sixteenth Street Mall. The restaurant, in the shape of a baseball diamond, was called The Blake Street Baseball Club. The tables were set appropriately on the grass infield. Many colorful pennants and flags hung limply overhead.
As we sat outside, the sun continued to beat down on us, and it became increasingly hot. There wasn't a hint of a breeze, and heat radiated up from the tabletop. Nothing moved, except the waiters, of course. And they didn't move very fast, either.

After lunch Scott and I started to walk back up the mall. We both noticed a mother and her young daughter walking out of a card shop toward the street. She was holding her daughter by the hand while reading a greeting card.
It was immediately apparent to us that she was so engrossed in the card that she did not notice a shuttle bus moving toward her at a good clip. She and her daughter were one step away from disaster when Scott started to yell.
He hadn't even gotten a word out when a breeze blew the card out of her hand and over her shoulder. She spun around and grabbed at the card, nearly knocking her daughter over. By the time she picked up the card from the ground and turned back around to cross the street, the shuttle bus had whizzed by her.
She never even knew what almost happened.

To this day two things continue to perplex me about this event. Where did that one spurt of wind come from to blow the card out of that young mother's hand? There had not been a whisper of wind at lunch or during our long walk back up the mall.
Secondly, if Scott had been able to get his words out, the young mother might have looked up at us as they continued to walk into the bus.

It was the wind that made her turn back to the card - in the one direction that saved her life and that of her daughter. The passing bus did not create the wind. On the contrary, the wind came from the opposite direction. I have no doubt it was a breath from God protecting them both.

But the awesomeness of this miracle is that she never knew. As we continued back to work, I wondered how God often acts in our lives without our being aware. The difference between life and death can some time very well be a little thing. A little whisper of breeze may be!'



How you can lead an Enriching Lifestyle

An enriching lifestyle is focused on wholeness and healing experiences, that allow us to make the most of our potential and find our best possible place in the world.
As ordinary people we are often distracted and lose our Selves in conflicts of all kinds: from sickness to problems at home, school or work.
We have a natural tendency to heal. By listening to our intuition, and by using our support network, we can overcome these problems.
But in this fast moving society, and with many sources of conditioning (advertising, education,...), it is not always easy to hear the voice of our intuition.

This is why the Enriching Lifestyle Compass was developed, as an instrument to bring you back in contact with your Self, and increase the meaningful connections that you already experience, so that you can lead a richer, more satisfying life in accordance with your real needs.

In addition, we have collected some inspiring stories and links to examples of Enriching Lifestyle. If you have an interesting story to share, please contact Garsett Larosse.


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