Creating a Charmed Life
Sensible, Spiritual Secrets Every Busy Woman Should Know.
With a foreword by the late Richard Carlson, Ph.D., author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
We all know - and envy - women who appear to live "charmed" lives. They seem to unhurriedly and effortlessly manage the whirlwind of their busy lives with grace and poise. Good things happen to them, and their lives are filled with more than the average amount of serendipity and joy. But a charmed life isn't something that happens to you, it's something you can create for yourself.
Creating a Charmed Life is a guide to doing this. In it you'll learn to slow down, look for miracles, nurture your dreams, savor simplicity, invite adventure and nourish your spirit.
(Note from Victoria: If you haven't read any of my books, I invite you to start with this one. It's a favorite of mine and makes a great gift.)
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Create A Charmed Life
2. Follow Your Heart
3. Get Ample Shine Time
4. Play Your Free Square
5. Take Ten
6. Practice the Vacation Principle
7. Conserve Your Energy
8. Give Up Your Mountain
9. Coexist Gracefully with the Unresolved
10. Invite Adventure
11. Acquire Discretion
12. Enjoy Your Eccentricities
13. Enhance Your Environment
14. Retire Your "Too-Too"
15. Do the Next Indicated Thing
16. Live Your Life in Chapters
17. Enlarge Your World
18. Change with the Seasons
19. Factor in Down Time
20. Complicate Selectively
21. Drink Good Coffee, Eat Good Food
22. Razzle-Dazzle on Occasion
23. Age Exquisitely
24. Stop to Realize
25. Obey the Laws
26. Breathe
27. Designate a Little Sacred Spot
28. Put Up with Some Discomfort
29. Draw from the Past
30. Watch Your Words
31. Ask for What You Want
32. Become an Unhurried Woman
33. Seek Compatible Frequencies
34. Study Method Acting
35. Grow Through the Hard Times
36. Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk
37. Be Specific
38. Decide That You're Beautiful
39. Form a Mastermind Alliance
40. Delight in Details
41. Prosper
42. Cultivate Compassion
43. Dance with Your Shadow
44. Raise Your Awe and Wonder Quotient
45. Add a Little Romance
46. Recruit Solutions That Work
47. Acknowledge All Blessings
48. Choose Actual Over Virtual Reality
49. Cooperate with Benevolence
50. Keep a Journal
51. Make the Bed
52. Prevent Predictable Annoyances
53. Be True to Yourself
54. Install Necessary Upgrades
55. Boost Your Vitality
56. Sanctify the Ordinary
57. Check In: Are You Being Served?
58. Dig in the Dirt
59. When Heaven Knocks, Open the Door
60. Ban the Buzz
61. Welcome Yourself Home
62. Call a Truce with the Clock
63. Come Up with Quick Connections
64. Redefine "Lady"
65. Midwife Dreams
66. Build Soul Equity
67. Honor Your Cycles
68. Stand on Ceremony
69. Allow for Miracles
70. Work a Charmed Job
71. Walk
72. Enroll in Renaissance 101
73. Accept Things as They Are
74. Trust Your Instincts
75. Embrace Imperfection
Read a Chapter - Play Your Free Square (Chapter 4).
In the game of Bingo, every player starts with a bonus: the free square in the middle. Because everybody gets one, nobody thinks much of it, but the free square is just as valuable in winning the game as B-7 or O-69.
We have "free squares" in our lives, too: talents, abilities, and inexplicable aptitudes that make certain things almost effortless. Maybe we can sing, or we're good at math, or children warm to us and listen when we talk. But when someone comments on our free square, we tend to say, "Oh, that. It's nothing." Because we didn't work hard to get it, the same way a player doesn't have to perform to get a free square on the Bingo card, we undervalue what may be our most serviceable attribute.
Without the benefit of our free square - or squares: you can certainly have more than one - we run ourselves ragged trying to be something we aren't. We work diligently to fit our round pegs into square holes, or to fit our round selves into the media's angular ideal. When we recognize and appreciate our own free squares, though, we can see that the key to our success and fulfillment is inside the person we are, not the one we think we're supposed to be. We can use, trade, barter, and build on the assets that are inherently ours to flesh out our lives with other good things that don't come so easily.
If you're unclear about your own free squares, answer the following questions: Is there an area of your life - even one you may have regarded as insignificant - in which good things tend to happen repeatedly and automatically? Do you have an aptitude for something that seems so natural you can't understand why other people struggle with it? What do you get compliments about? How would you finish the sentence, "I've just got a knack for..."
Your answers may indicate that you, like my daughter Rachael, have a free square for money. This child has always had an affinity for cash, both acquiring it and hanging onto it. When she was only three, she once interrupted a grown-up financial discussion to say, "If I had a savings account that was drawing interest, I could make you a loan."
Or, like me, you may have a free square for meeting people. I constantly run into people who are helpful, fascinating, and sometimes famous. I meet them on buses, in cafes, riding elevators. It just happens.
Perhaps you, like my friend Francesca, have an uncanny penchant for winning things. Since I've known her, she's won a fax machine, a Ford Escort, and a trip to Disney World. What she doesn't win, she can usually get wholesale.
Once you identify your free squares, play them by using what's easy to help you with what isn't. When Francesca won that fax machine, for instance, she had been unsuccessfully looking for work for several weeks. She thought about selling her prize - she could have used the money - but Francesca is a woman who takes her free squares seriously. She decided that the universe wouldn't have supplied her with this techno-toy if she wasn't supposed to use it. To try the thing out and see how it worked, she faxed her resume to some personnel directors. Her top pick responded and hired her.
The next time you think you might not have what it takes to get the kind of life you're after, enlist the help of your free square. Your particular gift may not look like what you need at the moment; Francesca's fax machine didn't look like a job offer either. Use your free square. Let it work for you. Be proud of it and grateful for it. Bingo!