This peaceful pause concludes 14 days of trail marker motivations and pauses in your day. Inspired by a few special people who shared their journeys with me and dedicated to many people who expressed to me that they just wanted to feel more peace. It’s right here. It’s yours. Sit with it. ❤️

This is a special one. The last trail marker in this series, giving gratitude to those who inspired it. A reminder to leave a piece of ourselves behind, our contract with those who’ve gone before us and those who may follow, this trail marker is the story of a life well lived.

Content. A state of being.
Santosha is a Sanskrit word meaning contentment and one of the Niyamas in the 8 limbs of yoga. A simple concept in actuality, which is what makes it hard. Our brains like to assign meaning to things and they are programmed to be on most of the time. To stop, to pause, to re-wire them to allow some space and for the off switch to operate again is what we are working towards through meditation, and these pauses. If we are successful (through practice) we can experience that contentment.

When the going gets tough, what do you do? What do most people do? This trail marker is where you might find yourself differentiating from “most people”. This trail marker might be a defining moment and the opportunity to get tougher. Taking a page from “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, if our “tough” is like the wall he writes about, then it is there for us. Not everyone will cross this trail marker, but for those who do, what’s on the other side, and more so, what it takes to get there, will change you.

When you become the observer, you are in the practice of meditation. It doesn’t require anything elaborate other than the choice to step into you. Chances are, even in a created quiet space, there is still a lot going on around us. This is the opportunity to be in that reality AND to allow the awareness to fall on what’s going on inside of us. In this pause, we start with the breath.

This is a fun one! This trail marker is inviting us to live and to live out loud!

A single pause is all it takes for about 30 trillion cells in our bodies to say thank you and experience a moment of ease. You’re worth it!

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? We are the experiencer and what we experience is determined by our thoughts. The thoughts that we regularly entertain and hold onto become our reality. We can imprint them pretty deeply. This trail marker is a pretty introspective one, encouraging us to evaluate our thoughts.