Week 9 | Naked with Mara | Let’s keep it simple | My spiritual partners
Since my return from my two month workation my life hasn’t stopped. I’m more busy than I rest. This week I also achieved and experienced much. Working on (new) projects, expanding my business, interviews, making time for my daily ‘spiritual practice’ and enjoying fun. How I do this? You’ll read about this here.
Friday – Happy & healthy @ work
During the day I did standard LightWorks tasks and in the evening I was working on one of the LightWorks projects: the production of a macrobiotic Surinam’s cookbook that will be launched on the 24th of June.
My highlight today was the meeting for this book with Elze (design-artist) and Maurice (friend, coachee, project partner and potential business partner). These two whirlwinds combined were even to me too much (and I’m a whirlwind myself). They were working from their heads and I couldn’t connect with their hearts. This changed during the evening and it ended up feeling like I was talking with old friends who hadn’t seen each other for years but still had an amazing connection. Which was special because I don’t know both of them that long. I felt so comfortable and enjoyed myself that I asked Elze if I could interview him for my documentary and book about love. At first he didn’t want this, but he did it. You can see the result here. Seven hours later I got back home: happy and filled with a grateful feeling. Mission accomplished and a night that was more that great.
Saturday – Storm alert
Today I had my first day since I came back without ANY appointments and without a Shanti-day. On days like this I like to see a movie on my own or catch up on tasks. These days are the days where I rest, am at my most creative and automatically reflect. Today I realised that the last chapter of this phase of my life started in my ‘summer of love’ and ended during my workation. In my summer of love, I met my first spiritual and business partner Jasper. He is a spiritual teacher who trains forty yoga coaches a year and teaches yoga. When Jasper and I work together we produce ten times as much as I ever did with anybody else. To me this is very special.
This year I also met a man with whom I experience intimate spiritual partnership for the first time. This is a man who challenges, inspires and loves me in a beautiful way. I call him ‘half god, half man’. Never before I met somebody with so little ego and so much love and care for food and spiritual nurturing.
Besides these men there are more people who came on my path this year or that I already knew who made a difference in my life. All of them have in common that they are spiritual giants. I’m grateful and feel blessed to be surrounded by so many beautiful people!
Sunday – Tantra-not
Last night I recorded my very first blog about tantra on Facebook live. After this I went to a party of one of my friends from Scheveningen who I also met in Bali. It was a special party which I will write a separate blog about.
Today I planned to go to my first full day tantra workshop. But because I got home late the night before I really wanted to listen to my body and rest. I’m proud of myself for making the decision to sleep in and do tasks that were piling up instead of being somewhere with half a mind where I want my full attention. To me this was a victory, because normally I would push myself to do it anyway.
By creating this space for myself I got great insights that day of things I want to do, be and achieve:
*I will stop with focussing on ‘MAKING things happen’ and will focus on ‘LETTING things happen’. I learned this from my soul sister who I met on my workation in Australia.
*Launch the Happy & Healthy @ Home cookbook.
*Finish the Expedition Self Love book, episodes and documentary.
*Expand LightWorks as an inspiration label.
*Live somewhere remote in the jungle or on a nearly deserted island for a couple of weeks or months.
*Become a mother in the next two years.
While I’m writing this down I get excited and look forward to the future.
Monday – Attract instead of promote
Today I worked together with part of the core team on the fifth edition of the ‘LICHTpuntjes’ Festival. It was great to be working with Sabine and Monique. Sabine thought of the theme: Keep it simple. We have all these ideas and inspirations that we normally want to organize and do too much for the festival. Last year instead of organizing one day we organised two days with different programs in different cities on different locations. THAT was exhausting. Because we started late with the organisation of the festival last year we felt that we had to ‘pull’ and promote the festival a lot. That didn’t feel right. So for this edition we decided that we are going for the effortless way of attracting and not promoting. I’m curious how this is going to look and work out. At least we started organizing in time this year!
Tuesday – Your concepts are timeless. What’s the rush?
Today is a Shanti-day. Just me, myself and I and no interaction with my phone or computer.
This is a day on which I do what I feel like doing. Today I walked around in my robe all day and did nothing. The only thing I did was clear up some of my stuff. The entire day I had the desire to go outside or visit a yoga class, but I didn’t feel like changing into an outfit that suited this. In the end I decided to ignore my own rules for my Shanti-day and asked a friend if he wanted to come and have some ice-cream with me. He said yes! We spoke about everything until late in the evening, but mostly about all my crazy (business)ideas. He asked me a brilliant question: “What do you like to do most? Where do you shine? What holds you back?” I added the question: “In what way of form do you work best?”
He told me that it might be a good idea to do less projects at once. This is something everybody is always telling me, but this time it was different. He suggested a very pragmatic solution and a point of view that I never considered. It’s all still really fresh and I need to let it sink longer to share more about this. To be continued.
Wednesday – Naked with Mara
Crazy! That is the way to describe this day! My day could not have been more full: I had to get up at six in the morning for a radio interview, had three meeting on Skype, two on the telephone, a visit to one of my best friends, yoga teacher and LightWorks-entrepeneur and a yoga class. Just reading it now, makes me tired again.
The interview with Mara on the radio was one of the best I’ve ever had! You can see it here or listen to the entire interview here. Mara and I are both strong women with life experience who are not afraid to be vulnerable. I loved it!
After the interview my meetings came. The best one today was to work on my graphic novel ‘Expedition Self Love’ which I’m going to release on the fifth edition of the ‘LICHTpuntjes’ Festival. I am happy and proud with the result and that we’ll start the pre-sale next month. My last appointment of the day was a visit to Chiara and her yoga class. The class that Chiara did that day was the best one I ever had. Ever since giving birth it feels like her yoga powers are out of this world. Her classes are that good and have so much impact. She explained to me that when you become a mother you brain sometimes just doesn’t work and that she stopped preparing her lessons and did everything on intuition.
Thursday – Work hard, rest hard and play hard
Finally the day came where I was going to meet a real tantra king who was in the Netherlands for a couple of events. Unfortunately, the appointment didn’t work out because we didn’t agree on an exact time and I had another appointment. In the afternoon I was meeting Jasper, my business partner for ‘Verlicht Werken’. We spend the entire afternoon going through the website. We were also supposed to do a Facebook Live, but after spending all that time behind the screen and working hard we didn’t look that enlightened anymore. We did do it the next day and you can see the result here. For me Jasper is an example of how work and home can be balances. He works three days a week. He doesn’t live to work and he doesn’t work to live. He spends 10% of his time to his ‘spiritual practice’. Every morning he gets up at five and starts his day with 2,5 hours of yoga and meditation. He’s doing the things that I aim for and that I’m well on my way to. If you are curious what ‘Verlicht Werken’ is and if it could be something for you, take a look at our website (in Dutch) which is now done for 80%. At the end of next month we will launch the definite website with proud at our second workshop this year.
How is your work and private life balance? How Enlightened are you working? On the website you can do a test (in Dutch) to gain insight in this. Do you want to see more episodes of ‘LICHTpuntjes’ or Expedition Self Love? Check out my YouTube channel where I upload new episodes regularly.
