Dale Curd - Living Lightly: Bring Happiness and Calm to Your Everyday

How Did We Get Here?

We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us. Rumi

You may be looking at this book for yourself or for a friend. Why have you picked it up? What are you hoping for?

How to begin? or Where to begin? are the questions most of us ask when it comes to making changes in our lives. We start with a distant murmur or a hint that something isnt right, that we need to move away fromor towardssomething. Were not happy; were tired, overwhelmed, distracted, stressed, bored and lonely.

It wasnt supposed to be this way. We were going to be different. Yet somehow our lives just crept up on us, and now were anxious to get away from it all and begin again. We are awakening to a deep need to make a fresh start. We can remember a time long ago when we felt like we were floating, and we want to feel light again.

So we start to search.

More often than not, I secretly wish that the coming year will be different, that I will be different. I long for lightness and freedom, yet the idea of doing more or willing myself to change produces a whisper inside of me asking, Am I not enough already?

This is a chronic condition in our modern world; so many people are searching for an answerthe answeror the master, guru or self-help expert who can fix them and help them get their lives back on track. As therapists, my partner and I are part of that group of expertsalong with counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and life and success coachesthat others reach out to for help when they need or want to make a life change. They come to all of us looking for answers or solutions, support and help. And what most discover over time is that what they were looking for was always inside of themit was just tucked away, ignored or forgotten.

Living Lightly is truly a self-help guide. The writing is steeped in our belief that you are the answer, that you always have been and always will be. If anything has been missing, it is your connection to, or communion with, your self. We want to see you build a strong belief in your selfto journey back into an intimate relationship with your self. Some pages in Living Lightly will feel like new terrain, featuring the latest thinking about being human, drawn from neuroscience and natural holistic therapies. Others invite you to explore the mechanics of how our psyches work, and still others offer tips on how to recognize, understand and express your feelings.

There are daily entries that evoke emotion through our personal sharing, through poetry and through instances of the sacred in everyday moments. And there are days when we park a thought or a perspective with you that we hope youll be enticed to turn over and over in your mind like a Rubiks Cube. In the end, we hope you will find lightness and possibility while deepening your emotional intelligence and your intimacy with your self.

This year of living lightly offers opportunities for you to commune, in the deepest and most beautiful sense of that word, with your self and your life. For you to really get to know you through all of the many relationships that are available to us simply by being alive.

The simple truth is that we are always in relationship with something, everything and everyone around us; we are never completely alone. Indigenous peoples have known this for millenniawe are part of, and therefore always in relationship with, all that surrounds us, and being connected deeply to our self happens when we accept and embrace this truth. The most beautiful part of being alive is having a deep connection to who we really areknowing ourselves. When we know who we are, its almost impossible to become overattached or be in need of someone else to fix us, fill us up or make us whole. When we are connected to our self, we also see how we are a part of all that is around us, and we finally overcome our ego, which has tried to convince us we are separate.

Each day provides an opportunity to commune with our self via one of lifes seven main relationship doorways: the nature around us, our inner nature, our work and purpose, our bodies, our minds, our community and our spirit. We are all in different places relative to each of these doorways, and reflecting on our relationship to one area can bring to the surface insights into the ways we relate to the whole of our lives. We have done our best to avoid being prescriptive. You have enough to do already. Thus, Living Lightly is ultimately an invitation. Whether you enact the specific scenarios we describe is secondary because the seed of possibility will be planted inside of you. Our hope is that you experience Living Lightly as both light and rich and that reading each day becomes a gift to you from you, as if you are planting seeds that nestle into the garden of your soul.

As guides who are with you every day, we too have waded into the waters of self. Like you, we are soul travellers. By opening our own hearts and offering therapeutic considerations from our journeys, we hope to inspire you to bear witness to the discoveries and learning of another as you progress towards living lightlyespecially in those moments when life is not light.

So how do you work with this book? Again, the answer is deceptively simple. Form a connection with Living Lightly as you would any other relationship in your life. It makes no difference whether you read it all at once, a little every day, or pick it up and put it down occasionally: Living Lightly is always there for you, inviting you to connect. Feel free to doodle and dream in the margins and blank spaces, to ruminate and reflect. As you read and discover and experience new insights and awareness, you may become more self-assured, self-loving, open and accepting, and even grounded. The deeper your relationship to the book, the more aware of yourself youll become. Youll feel a genuine relationship building within youan intimate friendship like no other.

At times, Living Lightly also illuminates the paradox of being alive: that by living lightly, all that is not light within us is also revealed. We cannot escape such moments by distracting ourselves or chasing happiness. In these moments, we are with you, with guidance and presence, knowing that life can be hardand sometimes, almost more painful than we think we can bear. At these times, we are here to remind you of the truth: that we are much, much stronger than we know. All of us are far more resilient than we might imagine, and we are all at various stages of entering or emerging from dark waters.

Living Lightly is not therapy, and yet you will read about our love of and belief in therapy. To hold space for another person while they journey back to themselves is an incredible offering, one that today is limited to professional listenerstherapists, healers and counsellors. We hope that holding space will one day become a way of life for all of us as we make the shift from aloneness to togetherness and from indifference to empathy.

You have our hearts with you in these pages, and we send you love and light for your own journey.

Much love,

Dale and Kim