Soulful Marketing Blog

It’s early in the morning, and the sun will be up in a bit. I’m sitting at my kitchen banquette. There’s something about being in this expansive space with just my journal and my thoughts. And memories of my dog Emma, who loved to snuggle with me here in the cold mornings of winter. It’s my favorite writing space, where I get a lot of my ideas. Even when it’s hard to pick up my pen, I try to do it anyway.  I pick up one of my favorite daily reading books by Melody Beattie, More Language of Letting Go. As I read her words about grief, I notice how…

As I was walking through the woods yesterday, stepping on and around the rocks on the trail, I thought about one of my favorite classic Zen stories. It feels like a good continuation of last week’s eNewsletter, where I wrote about what happens when feelings move through us, and then our thoughts jump in and start building whole stories around them. Two monks were traveling together and came across a river with a strong current. They also came across a young woman trying to cross the river, and she asked them for help. The monks looked at each other because they had taken a vow not to touch women. Then,…

Have you ever noticed how one thought can hijack your body so quickly that, before you know it, you’re not just having a feeling anymore, you’re living inside a whole story? I wrote a previous newsletter about Jill Bolte Taylor’s work and what happens when your brain just gets too loud. In that eNewsletter, I shared her explanation that an emotional reaction can move through the body in about 90 seconds, unless we keep reactivating it with thought. And that’s the part I keep coming back to. Because the first spark may be a thought, a memory, a perception, a sensation, or something your body picks up before you even…

This has been a hellish week, not sure what’s happening in the Universe, but grief and work are kicking my ass. I’m writing this short note to you because I didn’t want you to think I forgot about you this week. It’s about keeping my commitments from now on. I had this really good article for you, I wrote about “When you think feeling is the problem…” My therapist this week said I needed to listen to Ezra Klein’s podcast from last week, in which he interviewed Pema Chodron. I’ve been learning from her for over 30 years. I’ve read almost all of her books. And I did a book…