Making Magic by Aligning Actions With Values

the not-so-mysterious secret to a fulfilling life

It’s a good time to live very consciously. The stars are watching, the clouds perceiving.

All of life is not such a mystery. Not nearly so much as we make it out to be.
Most of it comes down to simply being present with being. Making choices in alignment with our values, the ones that swim in the pool of where we love.

I strive to be better in my off-days and achieve due greatness during my at-peace ones–the ones where I align my focus and my courage with my honor and my acceptance of what is rather than what ought to be.

Courage. A very underrated value in this day and age. So often, its worth seems to get lost in the way of independence or self-preservation.

I am going home to Hawaii tomorrow to pack up my family home and bury both of my parents. My Father’s ashes have been sitting on the kitchen counter for ten years now, waiting for my Mother’s, who joined him on the other side this May. Just before Mother’s Day.

We are burying them at the Valley of the Temples. It is going to be beautiful. I wrote about the plans I made for this event years ago, here.

I am bringing my flower essence of courage to mix into my water while I go through these next motions. I fear the disappointment that rises in me like a tide when the moon of certain family members grows near. So, I call upon courage. I call upon the courage to breathe through my fears and reactive potential and, in moments of duress, to act in accordance with my values rather than my grief.

I call upon the courage to hold space for The Four Agreements within each step ahead. To be impeccable with my word, to not take anything personally, to not make assumptions, and to always do my best.

The flower essence that supports courage is Rock Rose. I appreciate the product description I just now discovered: “The positive potential of Rock Rose is courage and presence of mind in tricky situations.”

Presence of mind in tricky situations. What wonderfully actionable advice when it comes to calling upon courage.

Got any hot tips for keeping presence of mind?

I have a little wristwatch I put on for three to five minutes for meditative moments throughout my days.
I write morning pages.
I look out into the distance to calm my nerves.
If stress induced by another gets real bad, I write out the DBT steps of a DEARMAN worksheet for a faux-conversation. Those really do help regulate my emotions around a situation while grounding a perspective of it in facts. If needed, I’ll take that conversation from faux to the land of actual.

I’d like to not default to my less-than-better, sometimes habits of a smoke or a drink or time spent lost in the land of scrolling a web forum or devoted to gamified screen time.

Hence, I am bringing my flower essence support on my journey ahead. It’s a small token, but big magic doesn’t always mean big ritual. I think magic has everything to do with intentions acknowledged by actions. By adding this little droplet of support to my water every day, not only do I get the benefits of the flower essence but I will have done something actively to remind my mind/body/spirit that I have a goal right now. And that goal is to have courage: to have a presence of mind in the tricky situations I will inevitably come face-to-face with again and again in these coming days.

The wind is picking up outside, the rain pummelling the windows. The pecan tree in our front yard is tossing its branches about in a manner nearing fury but closer to play.

I’ll miss my Texas and its unpredictable weather. The sun beat down all day, and now we welcome the rain.

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I’ll leave you with a little poem of mine, written some years ago. One that seems fitting for the moment, and inspired this very substack post:

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Pupa

I am open to my un-opened-ness
Cracked eggs don’t come out cooked
Flamingos are only pink
because of what they
eat

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A hui ho,

Julia