Olivia-ing
Living out an inspiration. Pure inspiration. Living the breath of my life.
That is all that was behind the art project I took on the prior weekend. It wasn't for anything else.
Not about what would people think, would they like it or not. I came from my heart’s true calling and let an inspiration become real in the world around me.
My inside experience of my heart is intense. It’s easy to ignore it at times. Tell myself it is not real. Discredit it. Ignore it. Override it with what I “should do” or am “meant to do” or what “makes sense.”
Does it “make sense” to put paint all over myself and roll around on a canvas?? Most likely not!
But it makes me to do that. It makes “Olivia” to do that. "Oliviaing."
Birds, dogs, etc, they are just going around the world “birding” or “dogging,” being a living animal. No plans about the next meal or the weather or the outcome. And life continues and is beautiful and flourishes.
Think what the world would be like where people just “Olivia” or we just “Mary” or we just “Ed.”
Self expression. Living to Live. Not to accomplish or succeed.
Often it seems success means to figure out what someone else would want us to do and fulfill on that.
If my friend loves mint chocolate ice cream and I bring him some when he was craving it... that’s success. Or my client needs an improvement on her site and I deliver it with flying colors... that’s success.
Let’s consider that success could be getting back to just Oliviaing. Living in a natural way. Listening to our body and our surrounding and our environment. Listening to the natural callings inside of us.
I am an emotional creature. I have an ocean inside of me. I feel at times that it's a calm sea. And other times, it’s a storm of turmoil and tumult. There are days I show up to yoga with tears on my face and gasping breath, and other days I show up with a smile and ease.
It’s feels hard to BE just as my heart is. I often want to shape it and guide it to be calmer, or quieter, or refined, or not cry. But if I truly let myself OUT, things happen like the painting above.
When I really Olivia in the world, people get to know me.
Oliviaing seems it would be easy, natural, but letting myself Olivia can feel hard. If I really look, I believe that it started when I was a girl, all the things I did seemed so different from the people around me. I felt that the people around me didn’t Olivia like I did. The kids didn’t build elevators for their stuffed animals like I did. Or climb to the tops of the highest trees in the neighborhood as I did. Or put paint on their bodies the way I did.
But of course they didn’t. They weren't Oliviaing. They were Dianaing and Alexing and Lucying. And I thought for a long time that maybe I had to stop Oliviaing.
It took me till this year to realize I could Olivia and it be ok. The full thing. And I am still learning that.
Through this blog, through conversations, through personal development, through expressing myself and then life flourishing. I continue to grow into Oliviaing. And I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.