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#reverb 2010 (week 3)
I'm back again with Reverb#10!
REVERB#10 is an online initiative that encourages participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. It’s an opportunity to retreat and consider the reverberations of your year past, and those that you’d like to create in the year ahead.
This year, 31 authors were asked to write prompts for Reverb10. My prompt is today (see the bottom of the list)!
Most of the #REVERB10 sharing is done on Twitter using the hashtag #reverb10.Because everyone isn't on Twitter, I thought it would be fun to have a space to REVERB! Here are the seven most recent prompts and my answers. Please feel free to share your answers in the comments section OR leave us a link to your blog!
December 21 - Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Author: Jenny Blake)
Love with your whole heart. Have fun. Be strong. Stay grateful.
December 22 - How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year? (Author: Tara Hunt)
In 2010, I traveled solo for work A LOT. I'd love to make more family trips in 2011. This a collection of pictures that I took during one of my 2010 work trips. I was snapping for Ali Edward's Week in the Life project!
December 23 - Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why? (Author: Becca Wilcott)
I'm pretty attached to my name. I can't imagine another one.
December 24 - What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead? (Author: Kate Inglis)
Learning how to borrow a little courage from the people who love me and believe in me. It's changed everything.
December 25 - Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you. (Author: Tracey Clark)
This was taken in Maui in May 2010. It was a work trip that turned into one of the best family vacations of my life. I was relaxed and giddy-happy the entire time. Family + nature + technology-free is the winning combination for me.
December 26 – What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went into your mouth & touched your soul? (Author: Elise Marie Collins)
Fun question! I have two answers.
1. The Sashimi Napoleon from The Hali-imaile General Store (the wasabi vinaigrette was AH-mazing).
2. The dark chocolate and sea salt bar from Fine & Raw Chocolates. It was the best chocolate I've ever tasted.
December 27 - And my prompt! Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year? (Author: ME!)
Six years ago, when Ellen was five years old, the two of us were riding paddle boats at Hermann Park. We were laughing and feeding the ducks from the boat when she suddenly got really quiet. She threw her head back until the sun washed over her face and she closed her eyes. She stayed like that for a few seconds then she opened her eyes and turned to look at me. When I asked her if she was okay, she explained, "I'm great. I was making a picture memory. That's what I do when I'm so happy that I want to remember it forever. Sometimes it helps to have picture memories when I get sad."
Now, when I have ordinary joyful moments I always stop and make a picture memory. One of my favorites this year happened on a Sunday afternoon. I was cooking chili, Steve was piddling around the house, and the kids were playing outside. The kitchen door was open and I could hear them laughing and jumping on the trampoline through the screen door. I remember thinking, "God, I'm so, so, so, lucky." I closed my eyes and made a picture memory.
#REVERB10 Giveaway!
To celebrate my prompt today, I'm giving away both of my books (The Gifts of Imperfection and I Thought It Was Just Me) and the Hustle for Worthiness DVD. Just leave your answers to the #REVERB10 prompts in the comments section OR leave us a link to your blog so we can check out your answers. If you're leaving a comment you can answer all of the questions or just one - whatever inspires you!
Happy REVERBING!
Brené Brown
Congrats to Tracy G! You won the books and DVDs!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Reader Comments (114)
Fantastic trip to Kripalu. Hope for more of the same this year.
I'm good with my current name.
In the middle of a problem focused discussion with a lot of people who got together to work on their problems, a realization that all in all, life is pretty good, even with all the problems in the world.
I won't post it here, but my short video of me singing Om Namah Shivaya in the spa at Kripalu is way up there.
Steamed Kale for Breakfast - again at Kripalu.
Thanks for this. I have a smile on my face now and realized that I have much to follow up on from my Kripalu trip. Happy New Year to all.
Happy New Year.
Some of my most joyful ordinary moments this year have been when I've been hiking on the trails in the hills just on the other side of the river from town. I can leave on foot from my house. While hiking with my husband, I look out and see the views of the valley where I live and the mountains that surround it and think I am the luckiest gal in the world.
Although it is fun to go to 'exotic' places, I love that I live in such a beautiful spot - it is exotic!
I think I'll just continue at my own pace since all of the prompts have been so good!!
But this? Being married to the same man for 36 years and still, amazingly finding myself knocked over silly with something he said that struck us both as hilarious? I just asked him and neither one of us can remember WHAT IT WAS HE SAID (and we're not THAT old) but the from the gut, falling down, I can't believe you're making me laugh this hard JOY of surprise and love was priceless.
The extraordinary IN the ordinary don't you think?
Thanks for the opportunity to think about a wonderful topic, today,
Jody
I hope this works - this photo is from my flickr account taken by my sister with my blackberry.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/grrl/5256014937
Love this photo of myself and my niece as it was taken on a morning where my sister, niece and I woke up very early to go to a scrapbooking crop together. My niece was excited, I was anxious to have her attend her first crop with us as she is 8 years old. It was a very fun day full of laughter and friendship. This photo captures a new me as my whole life I have had issues with my teeth and this is my first photo where I haven't had the need for a fake smile after dental work in November gave me a reason to feel more natural in my smile. This photo reminds me to try to enjoy every day life with my family.
Over the past few weeks we have been gently introducing our love of skiing to our son. I spent yesterday afternoon watching him go up and down the rope tow perfecting his new skills on the slope. Everytime I looked over at him I just smiled, so full of joy that we are on our way to explore this sport together as a family.
http://juliewehrkamp.blogspot.com
Thanks for encouraging me answer them. It was a nice insight into myself and 2010.
Blessings,
Julie
1) listening to my kids reaction to the ocean when we went on a family vacation (extended family) to pensacola florida...
2) my kids asking to do yoga with me
3) hearing my daughter say "on namaste" as i leave her at "school" as our "special" goodbye
blessings,
ashley
Love yourself deeply no matter what, you´re so much more (beautiful, strong, wise...) than you can imagine.
Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?
There are too many, but one that comes strongly into my mind is the day we took my son to a park full of games, the three of us, my husband, my son and i, were so happy, smiling and laughing, my son was incredible excited, we were playing so happily we felt like kids again there joining my son´s lead!
Thank you so much for this opportunity, i want your books so much!
Blessings.
One of my favorite picture memories is when my son was three years old. We were playing in the sandbox on a warm early Spring day. A siren went off at the fire house two blocks away. I asked Seth "What do you want to be when you grow up?," knowing the answer would be "A fireman!" Seth looked up at me with the biggest, most sincere eyes and said "A Paleontologist... and I want to dig up the Cretaceous period!" I was surprised, proud, and encouraged to give him more of the same self-confidence all at the same time. I couldn't believe those words had come out of his little three year old mouth either. It was a good picture memory... and I'll remember it forever.
http://sentosa-wind-photo.blogspot.com/2010/08/not-typical-lowell-post.html
This is a link to my photo blog and to a self-portrait I did on a particular night in August of this year.
The image caught me by surprise because I have never really liked photos of myself. But in this particular photo I really liked "me" a lot. I just didn't recognize "me". I had been through a "bring me to my knees" devastating break-up months before and at the time of this photo I was in recovery mode. I had changed a lot in physical appearance, but I think that the strength and belief in self was what I really captured in the photo.
I like the photo because it is a self-portrait and it is of the new me. Some of my talent as an amateur photographer came through: I knew how to make the best of the available light and I knew what post processing techniques would be best. I like that I wasn't afraid to expose the contemplative side of me. I also like that even though my heart was truly broken, it represents a period of time in my life that I learned many, many lessons and that the time and effort I was putting into my healing was worth every moment.
I am truly real and truly authentic in this photo. It feels good.
I arrived at the campground very late at night, but as I knew there would be, a man came out of the shadows with his two daughters to help me take down the kayak so I could slowly make my way across the inky Adirondak lake to my favorite camp site, which was--of course--open and waiting for me. The loons greated me as I pulled up to the dock. Pure joy!
I spent two glorious days sitting in the sunshine reading, making gratitude lists, jumping into the lake for a brisk swim, kayaking the seven mile lake, and listening to the call of the loons. This was such an ordinary trip, my family had done it many times, but I had never braved the experience alone. While I was alone, I was never lonely. I closed my eyes many, many times that weekend to make memory pictures to get me through the gray Upstate winters.
It was an extraordinary, ordanary adventure and was surely one of my most joyous moments of the year!
Seize the day, I say!!
Karen
It happens two or three times each year. Maybe it happens to real poets more often, but for me, two or three times a year and for some years never. The poem writes itself. It’s an ordinary moment because each evening you sit down with the blank page and try to write something. Most evenings, you’re lucky indeed if what comes out is a poem that can be massaged into something beautiful with multiple revisions. But sometimes, a poem ventures forth that writes itself. You are the holy conduit for this poem; it courses through your pencil and onto the page and you are a spectator cheering from the stands.
You lift your pencil from the page and read what you’ve written. It feels almost like someone else wrote it, but notice, that’s your syntax, your rhythm, those are your words it’s strutting. You feel as if you have created something whole from your broken self and the ether. Those words that you are sure will make other people feel just like you felt, you wrote them. You fashioned them from your life and your hard work, but this time it was easy.
Many people imagine that all writing is like this – a transcendent moment when poems come out whole. They don’t want to believe that you are sweating it out in the trenches every night, reading other people’s poems, studying the building blocks of poetry, writing crappy first drafts and then revising revising revising.
Writing is my most profound ordinary joy. Because writing poetry is a practice for me, one that I pursue on a regular basis each week, it is quotidian. Because it yields moments in which I feel connected to the world around me, it is joyful. A blessing, more than anything else, I feel like writing poetry is a blessing that I would visit on everyone in this wide and gorgeous world.
https://kristinsnotes.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/reverb-10-reflect-and-manifest/
Kristin
I would have to start with the ordinary every day moments with my kids. Whether it's sharing fairy tales with my four year old and talking about them or talking to my 14 year old about her friends. The little things they pray about...
Running with my best friends. We run together on Saturdays and share our lives with each other as we run. I am the slowest and am so touched that they are willing to run my pace.
Quietly enjoying a moment with my husband.
I also think I have found one secret to life.....find joy in the ordinary. When we do that....we have no time to think about what is missing, lacking, not meeting expectations. Instead we focus on all that is happening right then and there and we find ourselves not only joyful but complete!
I would tell myself to be like that always. Wholehearted.
So many to tell me everything will be alright. My work displayed, held heartfully, gladly, joyfully.
My mission to bring love and lightheartedness fulfilled.
The trip, being where I have lived before and left. Being there with my heart full, with friends still loved, sought, gifts and given. No holds barred, all out, open. Joy in the wind and waves, scattering ashes of past dogs and loving them in every particle of my being.
Discovering - right around the corner - a maker of flourless chocolate cakes so good as to be worth going miles to get.
Ordinary is the extraordinary, the feel of the color on the paper, the pen, my mind doing cartwheels in poem and song. And finding something, a color, a scrap, a figure done by me, put aside and leaps to me at the moment when I wasn't looking but was so good that more good wanted me.
Am I missing something? I can't find your answers to days 8 - 20?
I posted my week one reverb on my blog and have been waiting for your next prompt to follow along too.
The rest of the entries that have made it to the internet can be found at my blog as well. I loved your prompt, and I am really intrigued by your book!
December 23 - I feel comfortable using my name... :)
December 24 - It was a moment during public speaking workshop when other participants shared with me that they felt the true energy and passion when I, as part of the workshop practice, spoke about a topic I wasn't sure at the moment I should continue pursuing. I realized that I should relax and trust my gut feeling, the passion and energy as well besides the mind since is often the case that I lack this extra energy for final push to closure. I learned to say "No" to opportunities, job and project offers I don't feel they grab my attention and interest.
December 27 - One summer evening I was sitting on the garden bench by the house while enjoying a cup of black tea and reflecting not a very successful day. Than I've heard a noise in the bushes and noticed a hedgehog coming out of the bushes. I kept silent while watching it searching for the food for a while (I think he found some bugs or something, am not sure) and than it wondered away passing not far away from me. When it vanished back to the bushes and I "switched back into this world", a solution to the problem that bothered me almost all day long popped up in my mind. It was an experience of relaxed inner joyful drawing a smile on my face. A perfect reminder of not forgetting simple things and joys and knowing to stay relaxed and in peace with yourself while pursuing larger goals since it might be exactly these "simple" moments that will pave the way to "larger" goals.
Best wishes for the year ahead! Thank you for interesting readings and keep doing a great work! :)
I met a wonderful lady this year at a local weekly market. We hit it off immediately, she just took a liking to me. We chatted like old friends. Every time she would see me she would say things like, "there is my sunshine, there is my inspiration, you add joy to us, and you are the most positive person I know, you are always so happy." If she only knew... I don't feel those things after I leave. I know that person she sees is there somewhere.... just wish I could find her and really hang onto her. So I keep here voice near when I need it. Kind of like the mental pictures your daughter keeps. I am going to write this down, because I can't beleive I even posted it. Thanks for the inpiration, so needed it today. Glad I read your blog.
Michelle~~~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf2vRJxbJdk
So, on the weekends I started joining her for a nap. I was stuck on the idea of "creating bad sleep habits" so she has always napped in her bed. I know now that this time is so fleeting, that I need to enjoy it while I can. A year or two from now, she won't nap anymore and will be exploring her independence even more. In the last few months I've learned just how much we both need this quiet time together...to connect and recharge. I have come to look forward to our nap time.
Today, my husband joined us for a nap and after a few minutes, I looked over and he and Grace were snuggled up and fast asleep. I thought my heart would explode with joy. Tears started streaming down my face and I thought about today's prompt. This was it ...absolutely extraordinary joy in the simplest of moments.
Thanks for the prompt today and for all you have written. It has been truly life changing for me.
http://writemuch.blogspot.com
Travel: mostly for family visits, which sometimes feel a little like a duty. I also a blissful unplugged week at the beach with my immediate family and close friends. In the coming year, would enjoy another beach trip and the funding to make a more exotic trip, preferably to Ireland, Montenegro, Paris, or London.
I like my name, so I'm not sure what I'd pick as a temporary replacement.
My best moments this year were many, watching my daughter grow and learn and appreciating the great husband and father with whom I share my life. My personal bests were sharing joy with them, and especially when I could turn a setback into a smile--for myself or for one of them. So the lesson is, find more joy and let go of stress and upset whenever possible.
My image is my profile photo on Facebook, which is of me and my husband on date night at the beach. It shows how much I honor our commitment, and we are both relaxed and joyful. I also realized as we were choosing photos for holiday cards that there are few of me in a year, so I want to work on that in the coming year.
Transporting food experiences of the year: whitefish spread on crostini at Passionfish, sherried she-crab soup at the Blue Point, pecan butter balls my husband and daughter made, custom doughnuts, and Mrs. Scala's buckeyes.
One of my joyful ordinary moments was sharing two stunning, stop-in-your-tracks moon-rises in a row with my family.
"There's never nothing going on. There are no ordinary moments."
My most profound joy is when I remember and recognize this. Every moment contains such a wealth of beauty and depth of feeling. No single moment holds me but every single moment touches me. If I let it...
as a family we took our first international trip, spending almost six weeks in Jordan as part of an archeological dig. we learned we didn't miss a calling to unearth early iron-age pottery -- real archeology is NOTHING like indiana jones :D however, we also learned we love traveling together and experiencing another culture and the hospitality of friendly people.
this year i long for further discovery. i'll keep working with my counselor to navigate more interior stuff and travel toward the happiest, most joyful me i can be. i'll keep walking with my husband ken, as we find our way through this interesting stage of parenting. finally, more travel together with the fam before the kids set off on their own is my wish for the coming year.