pinkchronicity

I recently bought something on-line and in the box was a little card, smaller than a postcard. It said simply, “Thank you very much”. It made me smile and I felt a little warmth grow in the pit of my stomach, and it got me to thinking about the power in those words. I thought of all the times I’ve seen or heard or been a parent automatically encouraging a child to “Say Thank You”, more from trying to teach manners than any other reason. But, learning to be grateful is an important life skill so I bought a package of thank you notes for my granddaughter during a spontaneous shopping trip several months ago. When I opened the box of cards, I found listed inside 3 reasons why teaching children to give is important:

1. It’s a gift (we give our children)

2. It’s one of the most important social skills

3. It’s a key to lifelong joy and happiness (for your child)

Then the three Golden Rules for giving thanks:

4. Be timely (within 1-7 days)

5. Be specific (describe what you are thankful for)

6. Have fun (feel free to express your feelings)

Being grateful, truly-from-the-bottom-of-our-hearts grateful should be easy and automatic, but it’s not. It’s hard, especially when we’re upset or worried or angry. I have a corny little audiobook on my phone called “Meditations for Creating True Prosperity” by Shakti Gwain and in part 2 the meditation always begins with gratitude. It’s silly to think I need help remembering to be grateful, but I do. We all do. Because our world is decidedly pro the ‘half-empty’ mentality, its easy to cry for what we don’t have instead of appreciating what we do.  We need to be reminded to say our ‘Thank You’s’. We need to be reminded to stop complaining and teach our children this as well. A prosperity consciousness demands we must first begin with expressions of gratitude for what we already have. Gwain’s audiobook on prosperity organizes our ‘Thank you’s’ into this order:

1. Take a look at and appreciate all the things to be grateful for in the area of your body and your health.

2. Think about anything in your life to be grateful for in the area of relationships. Remember to include friends, family, romantic partner, co workers, pets, ect.

3. Give thanks for the prosperity you are feeling regarding your home at this time.

4. Now bring to mind your work, or your career. Look to see what you can appreciate right now in the area of work and career in your life.

5. Then think about the area of finances. See if you can bring to mind something you feel appreciative for at this time in your life in the area of money and finances. Give thanks for the level of financial prosperity you have created thus far in your life.
6. Think about your creative expression, any particular interests, enjoy nets and hobbies in your life, and notice anything you feel especially appreciative about or grateful for, and bring hold this in your mind for few moments.

7. Are there ways you make a contribution to other people, or to the world, even in very small ways? Take a moment to appreciTe and be grateful for the opportunity you have to serve others and make a difference in the world.
8. And, if there is anything right now in your life you feel truly grateful for, take a moment to fully appreciate whatever that is, and give thanks for how that contributes to your experience of prosperity.

Now, get a sense of the whole picture and notice how many things you have in your life to feel grateful for, how much richness and prosperity you already have created in your life. Allow yourself to open up and enjoy that feeling. Experience gratitude for that as deeply as possible. Don’t forget to express your appreciation to everyone in your life who contributes to your experience of true prosperity. Notice you do all this before your meditations to increase prosperity in your life. Gratitude and thankfulness comes first.

So, say your “Thank You’s”, even to those closest to you, especially those close to you. It will do you good.

By Deborah Carter Mastelotto

http://www.pinkchronicity.com

According to urban legend Oscar Wilde spoke these words on his deathbed–just one example of what a powerful force home decor can be. This explains in part the nations’ current obsession with the remodeling show “Fixer Upper” or more specifically Chip and Joana Gaines. Their first book “The Magnolia Story” made number one on Amazons best seller list the day it went on sale as a pre-sale. A pre-sale. So apparently it’s not just me. It seems the whole country follows them around virtually. I’m telling you this in an attempt to excuse my personal (some might call it excessive) appreciation for all things Joanna.

My husband and I recently took a small trip into home remodel world, and I have to say we barely survived. Chip and Jo Jo saved us and it was a revelation. I love my husband and I think we have a good, solid, loving and mutually respectful marriage, but there were definitely times during this process when I fantasized about walloping him with my cast iron skillet. So we found it useful to use Chip-and-Joanna-isms like “Trust your wife”, and “You’re right, Chip, I’ll leave the construction to you”, or, “Good job Buddy!”, and my personal favorite, “Whatever you want, Jo Jo”.

But binge-watching Fixer Upper taught me a few other, more important things about creating a home filled with light and love. Below I’ve compiled a small list I call ‘The rules of Joanna:

1. Cool it down.

Studies show your surroundings may be influencing your emotions and state of mind. If you find certain places irritate you, or are especially relaxing and calming, there’s a good chance the colors in those spaces are affecting you in a subliminal way. For some people the color red triggers a spiked heart rate and additional adrenaline pumped into the blood stream. I don’t know about you, but I certainly do not need to feel heart-poundingly anxious at home and if you find yourself feeling that way, maybe color is the culprit. Joanna Gaines has an identifiable style—cool farmhouse. But adopting this turned out to be a difficult thing for me–after all, red is my color. But could I live without it in my home? I was willing to try her cool pallet thing. “Trust Jo Jo” I told myself.

So I went through my house and packed up red dish towels, orange pottery bowls and russet throw pillows. I put pale gray slip covers on my slipper chairs. I stashed everything I could find in the range of warm colors and the result was startling. My living room suddenly became calmer. I felt calmer. Even in my outside flower beds I kept my seasonal plantings to a cool palette this year so now we’re engulfed in scent and cool, calm color as soon as we walk through the front gate. And in our frenetic culture isn’t a calm home a powerful gift to its occupants?

2. Pay attention to your curb appeal.

Curb appeal is my business. It’s my Dharma, you might say. And while I appreciate the search for inner value, if your outside doesn’t match your inside everyone you meet will sense a disconnect. Sometimes the longer we live in a space (or clothing style or hairdo) without changing it the more blind we become to it, in decorating and in life. Exteriors can either encourage people or put them off. Ask any realtor. The first thing Chip wants to know when showing a new house to new clients is “What’s your first impression?” Clients always have a hard time getting past that first impression, but Joanna never met a house too old or too dilapidated she couldn’t make beautiful. Chip and Jo Jo appreciate age, history but also potential. The ‘Reveal’ at the end of each episode shows their clients’ shock and happiness with their newly beautiful home, sometimes bursting into tears before they even step through the front door. First impressions may be hard to shake but fresh paint and petunias, or a new haircut, can change your whole attitude.

3. If your partner does something really stupid in front of a bunch of people, laugh.

And say something sweet. It’s one of those things Joanna does in every house, in every episode and she probably does it every day in her real life. No matter how ridiculous or inappropriate Chip acts, she smiles and pats him on the back. As she leaves she says “Good job Buddy”. She looks up at him as him as he clambers over rooftops and under floor crawl spaces and coos “You look real cute there Bud!” She compliments her carpenter Clint when he brings her the 10′ kitchen island she designed. She fusses over her favorite metal artist Jimmy Don telling him how amazing he is, though she micromanages every detail of the cute little signs he makes for her. Jo Jo thanks and compliments and fusses over everyone all the time and she even thanks her children when they do what she tells them to do. She is grateful and thankful and complimentary. So I learned this from her: If your partner tries to karate chop his way through a wall, let him. Then smile and give him or her a compliment.

2. Open things up to nature.

Joanna believes in the healing power of nature, and so should you. Science has proven that women who are surrounded by nature live longer than those who do not (Environmental Health Perspectives). Women who had the most vegetation within 820 feet of their homes had a lower mortality rate than people living in the least vegetated areas. Whether Joanna read this study or not, she’s intuitive about what makes us feel closer to nature. She creates new door and window openings, removes blinds, takes down dark draperies, knocks out walls. She brings the outside in and the inside out with pergolas and outdoor dining areas. Pretend she’s standing behind you whispering, “let me help you love your home” and clear junk from your back porch, add a few tables, chairs, and hanging plants. Have your coffee outside in the morning and wine there after work. It’ll start and end your day and put a smile on your face and peace in your heart.

4. Give yourself an amazing master bedroom suite. 
It’s one of those design things Joanna does in every house too, and we need to pay attention. She knows it’s important to give yourself a private space, a place to recharge or retreat so while most of the other bedrooms in her remodels get a cursory cosmetic upgrade she spends quite a bit of her mental energy and dare I say it, budget, on the master bedroom suite. Standard Feng Shui practitioners ask you to consider your view from each side of the bed. What is the first thing you see on awaking? The last thing you see just before you nod off to sleep? These questions seem trivial but consider this physics principal: “The observer affects the experiment, always.” So if your life is an experiment, shouldn’t you program it in the most positive way possible using the tools you have available? Consider your master bedroom suite a powerful life tool.

5. Embrace “Demo Day”.
When it’s Demo Day on Fixer Upper, you know it. Chip gets excited. He hammers walls, rips out cabinets, sweats and makes a loud, noisy mess during every job. Joanna could resist Demo Day, or avoid it, or complain about it. But she doesn’t because she knows you have to kick up some dust to create big, positive changes. Don’t be afraid of changing your house or an old habit pattern or job. Kick up some dust, tear down a few walls, replace windows with doors. Don’t fear the process of remodeling either your home or your life. Change is a necessary processes for growth, and radical change is crucial to radical growth. Embrace it.

6. Make family the most important thing in your universe.

You may not get this fact while watching “Fixer Upper” but nothing gets in the way of Chip and Joanna’s family time. Nothing. You have to wonder how those California TV producers handled the first season when they learned that Chip and Jo Jo go home every day between 5:30 and 6:00. They have their own TV show but no television in their house. But their commitment to family doesn’t stop them from working. Joanna tells a story about her first little shop, how she brought her firstborn son to work with her every day and it reminded me so much of my first little plant shop. My eldest daughter Brooke took her first steps in that little shop. Chip and Joanna bring their kids to work with them all the time. If you work a lot and love your kids, you might be able to find a way to combine them. I still like to keep my kidletts close to me and they are all grown up now.

On Facebook recently I saw this: “In a world of Kardashians, there is Joanna Gaines.” So my new goal now is to be Joanna a little more. I think it just may work.

pink-chronicity Pyn·chro·nic·i·tyˌpiNGkrəˈnisədē/noun The happy certainty that something is just meant to be.

“I Stop Writing the Poem
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.”
~ Tess Gallagher

Tess Gallagher wrote the poem above at what was probably the most fragile period of time in her life. Her life partner Raymond Carver just died six months after marrying her and she was in the vortex of writing poems for the soon-to-be-iconic collection “Moon Crossing Bridge“. Her poetic pause for reflection on the healing nature of mundane tasks and the importance of continuing with the seemingly endless chores life demands of us was profound for her. We can feel the grief behind her words. As she describes the ordinary yet necessary chore of folding clothes, we get it.

Sometimes, when it comes to ‘being of service’, we can’t even manage to be of service to ourselves. We are forced by the worst circumstances to sort through closets we don’t even want to look through, clean up after an endless barrage of visitors we don’t want to visit with and return a myriad of well-wishing emails and phone calls, when our driving need is to curl up under the blankets and never leave our bed. But that’s exactly why it’s important to make ourselves a cup of coffee and do the laundry.

It’s important for us to put one foot in front of the other, scrub a floor, make a pot of soup, fold a shirt. “No matter who lives or who dies”, we always have laundry. We can either avoid these small, repetitive acts of mundane service or use them to ground us and remind us: There will be a tomorrow and life goes on.

pink-chronicity

Pyn·chro·nic·i·tyˌpiNGkrəˈnisədē/noun The happy certainty that something is just meant to be.

We are all Stardust

“The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded…the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron… were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust.”

~ Lawrence Krauss

When we find ourselves in the presence of synchronicity, we sit in wonder and awe as if the experience is unique, or unusual, or special. We share anecdotes about coincidences, “I picked up the phone to call my sister and she was in the process of calling me.” Or, “I don’t know why but I had a feeling I should call home so I did and sure enough, an old friend stopped by.” Or, you open a card from your husband at Christmas and it’s the same card you gave him. 

I like to call that sort of thing “pinkchronicity”, and I smile knowingly when it happens, which is often. And when we read our horoscope in a magazine and it’s right on, we act surprised and sometimes shocked. But what if that sort of thing isn’t unique, or special, or even unusual? 

As Lawrence Krauss reminds us, “Every event that happens has small probability…but it happens…if it’s weird, if you dream one million nights and it’s nonsense but one night you dream that your friend is gonna break his leg and the next day he breaks his arm… So the real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it’s big, and rare events happen all the time — including life — and that doesn’t mean it’s special.”

It’s a big universe out there and we are all, you, me, the stars, we are all made of the same stuff. We are all connected. We all vibrate with the energy, rhythm and movement of the big, swirling explosion that is our universe in a most intimate way. It shouldn’t surprise us at all that this most accurate and perfect clock can mark not only the time on our world, but also moments, events, and yes, thoughts and moods. It happens all the time. 

On Saturday, March 5, 2016, International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) Texas, the City of Dripping Springs, and the Hays County Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist hosts the Texas Night Sky Festival, at the Events Center space of Dripping Springs Ranch Park. Look for us at our booth: We are all Stardust and let me give your your personal Stardust as Elements cards. There fun and accurate but please…Don’t be surprised.

At the beginning of every year I take a look at the year ahead and recommend a book for each astrological sign. I usually publish my list in the January issue of Austin Woman Magazine, but this year Dripping Springs own magazine “The Outlook” gets it. 

So, here goes:

Aries (Mar. 21-Apr. 20) This year is an extreme about face from what you thought you wanted, so read “Shattering The Belief Code: How to Change the Beliefs Which Prevent You from Discovering, Transforming and Igniting Your True Self” by Wendi Francis.

Taurus (Apr. 21-May-21) Change is what you need now. So read “Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation” by Daniel J. Siegel.

Gemini (May 22-June 20) This year your focus turns to relationships. So read “Relationships: How to Find, Create, and Sustain Loving and Fulfilling Relationships – Dating, Friendship & Relationship Advice” by Angel Greene.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) This is the year for your career to shine, but don’t play it safe. “The Secret of Transitions: How to Move Effortlessly to Higher Levels of Success by Jim Manton” is your book.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 23) Money issues: The number one cause of relationship problems. So your book is “The Heart of Money: A Couple’s Guide to Creating True Financial Intimacy by Deborah Price.

Virgo (Aug. 24-Sept. 22) May I suggest you read “The Monocle Guide to Cosy Homes” by Monocle. You’ll do a lot of cozy-home creating in 2016.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Communication is your main focus this year. “Saying What’s Real: 7 Keys to Authentic Communication and Relationship by Ph.D. Susan Campbell”.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov.21) Success at work is what this year is about for you, so read the book “People Styles at Work…And Beyond: Making Bad Relationships Good and Good Relationships” by Dorothy and Robert Boulton.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Dealing with your work and work environment creatively is your job this year, so the book “The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace” by Ron Friedman PhD can be the perfect manual for 2016.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) You guys are entering an exciting phase, and it’s not necessarily comfortable. Thats why you need “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are” by Brené Brown.

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb. 19) The intricacies of social media is your project this year. “Navigate the Noise: Investing in the New Age of Media and Hype” by Richard Bernstein.

Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20) So much is going on with your partnerships, your friends, and your career I’m recommending “The Best Advice So Far” by Erik Tyler.

And, take notes.

Deborah can be contacted at:

http://www.pinkchronicity@gmail.com

Pink West

511 Old Fitzhugh Rd.

Dripping Springs, TX

(512) 447-2888

I seem to be permanently and professionally attached to the color pink. I chose it in 1999 because I thought the color was on the edge of a fashion trend, a single syllable name, easy to spell, and you get an immediate emotional and mental imprint. You remember it. But since the afternoon on South Congress when I scurried to name a new salon, I’ve come to appreciate the words unconscious value. 

So, why pink? In our world, things can be chaotic and aggressive. No judgment here, but we as humans always need to balance what we take into our bodies, physical or energetic, or we may easily become imbalanced. The color pink balances energies. Pink is the color of the feminine principle…and love. Pink is the sweet side of red, softer and less violent. It generates feelings of caring, tenderness and self worth, love, acceptance, playfulness and tenderness. Pink is a quiet color. It soothes and fills the heart.

 

• ‘Pink’ is a fragrant flower

• ‘Pink’ is the highest degree or perfect example of something

• ‘Pink’ is light, repeated taps on a surface

• ‘Pink’ is the sound of a drop of water

• A ‘pink’ is a small sailing vessel

• To ‘Pink’ is to cut in a zigzag pattern

• To ‘pink’ is to decorate with perforation

• To ‘pink’ is to point lightly with a pointed object: to prick

 

Feng Shui masters use the color pink to enhance the love and relationship Bagua area of your home. Color therapists use shades of pink to enhance feelings of love and wellbeing. When I embraced the color and attached it to my work, I took on a commitment, a calling if you will, whether I was aware of it or not. It became the most important thing for me, to make everything in my immediate vicinity as beautiful as was in my power to do. By accepting the concept of ‘Pinkchronicity’ I also accept of this idea: Beauty changes the world, one hopeful, optimistic person at a time. So, my advice to all this year is, expect the unexpected.