Tanya McGinnity

How are you feeling right now?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/perpetualplum/3995210073/

For so long I never asked myself that question and I was carrying around a sense of general, genuine and perpetual unhappiness. A real dis-ease. That dis-ease started to manifest itself not only in my mental state but physically with some nasty allergies, gut rot and a sense of constant nervy-ness.

As a child who came out of a broken marriage, I never felt a sense of home. Many of us come from parents who were ill-equipped to dole out love in the ways we’ve all craved. Not having a Halmark card kind of life means that you have to work a little harder on yourself – mainly in being gentle with yourself and not listening to the negative self talk that we come to cultivate over time.

Breaking these negative pattens has taken time and I’m now an advocate for helping people break from their conditioning and discover new ways to heal themselves. I’ve been teaching meditation classes to a small group over the past month and have felt empowered by being able to educate people on several tools they can use to help calm their minds. I’m looking to deepen my teaching experiences over time and will be taking teacher training to work with inmates who wish to learn meditation to help them pacify their troubled minds.

I’ve also been lending a hand with the NHC Institute which teaches holistic health care here in Montreal and have been working with this group on various upcoming initiatives. As a cause I’m a full believer in, I’m thrilled to be surrounded by passionate folks who are dedicated to healing and helping alternative health to become an accepted form of medical treatment. I’ve used alternative therapies as a compliment to the advice I’ve received from my traditional doctor and have found it to have helped me immensely.

I’d encourage you to take some time to ask yourself how you’re feeling. Make it a date and pick your brain. Note if any of your physical ailments can be tied in with your mental state.

Are you feeling OK?

Thanks to Dot Wojakowski for inspiring me to write this post.

I just finished reading this article on ‘Nine Trends for 2009 for a World in Flux’ and while I do agree with many of the projections, there is one in particular that resonates with me. “Micro-blogging meets meditation” calls upon the need for a balanced approach towards social media, with all of it’s merits and drawbacks.

It’s easy to feel bombarded by all of the comments, posts, tweets, status updates, photos, videos, shared links and other miscellany of messages that come flooding in. I’d love some suggestions on how you work with this. Any tips, tools and techniques you use to kung-fu chop the tidal-wave of info-data-bits would be greatly appreciated.

A valuable blog for me these days is the revamped ’43 Folders’ where Merlin Mann has changed his focus from productivity to finding the time and attention to do your creative work. In so many ways, this is where my mind is at. Rather than read a tweet about someone eating a plate of Kraft Dinner, I want to be producing, sharing and collaborating great ideas.

Now I can doodle on all of those GTD books!