Empowered Perspective: Daily chaos keeps us disconnected and robs us from experiencing the evidence of unwavering support and limited possibility that is all around us. When we intentionally reconnect with the truth of the moment, and stay curious about all that is around us, it becomes much easier to slide through the chaos and come out anchored and peaceful on the other side.
In this episode I share several recent experiences that snapped me out of stress and into the present moment and truth of the support I could not see.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos. Looking beyond the obvious. That's what I'm talking about in this empowered perspectives. Episode number 83, I'm Dr. Cari Wise, and this is the Joyful DVM podcast. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Episode 83 and today's empowered perspective episode. We're going to talk about looking intentionally beyond the obvious for so many of us, our days are just chaotic. They're full on from the moment that we wake up until the moment that we go to bed. And when we are constantly in that reactive kind of mode, reacting to our to-do list, reacting to our obligations, reacting to our appointments that are scheduled. It's hard for us to take the time to pay attention to what's in front of us. Now it's easy to pay attention to the things that are grabbing our intention, the things that we have already slated to get some of our time. I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about all the other things that are going on around us. And as I spent time over the last week, really intentionally paying attention and being super curious about the birds that have been around our house. This point has been made more strongly than ever before. So I want to take a few minutes here and share my experience of intentionally paying attention and share with you what I have actually gleaned from that in recent days. Now, this idea of watching the birds around my house is something that I've been doing for awhile. And if you've been listening to the joyful DVM podcast or any period of time, you've probably heard my episodes where I shared the drama and the struggles and the sorrows and the excitement around the Eastern Bluebirds that made their home here for several years. Now. Unfortunately, despite one little siting of them early last spring, I haven't seen them since I know they're somewhere here on their property. Still, my husband sees them when he's out in the pastures with the livestock. But as far as up here around the house and taking up residence in the bird house that they had been using, they've just moved on. It's a bummer. And I've really tried to come to grips with that, but I'm always watching for them. And as I've always watched for them, what's happened is that I'm starting to see even more of what's going on all around me, things that may have been going on all the time, but I was just missing this really first started over the winter time. So during a period of time here in the early, earlier months of this year, our pond froze over. Like it often does when we get down into the single digits. And it's beautiful when the pond is frozen and there's snow everywhere, it just looks like a completely different place. Like it does everywhere in the world when this happens. And as I was walking into the kitchen, I glanced out the front windows to the pond and I saw birds on the pond. Now my first instinct or that these were Turkey vultures, we have a lot of those. We live in the country and you know, they love to come in and swoop down and eat up any kind of small animals, squirrels, rabbits, possums, things like that. They get hit by cars. So my first instinct was that they were Turkey, Turkey, vultures, and that they had landed on the pond. And I thought it was a little bit interesting, but you know, whatever. So I grabbed my binoculars and I picked him up and I looked out at these at these birds. And they had initially there was just like one bird. And as I was looking at this bird, another one swooped in and they had a bit of a fight going on and I was stunned because they weren't Turkey, vultures. They were bald Eagles and they were freaking huge. I don't know if you've ever seen a bald Eagle in person, but all my goodness are these big birds. I was both like shocked and excited and elated all at the same time. And I'm like, Ken, you gotta come over here. You gotta see this. And I handed him the binoculars. So he could look out and see these bald Eagles as well, because I know how much he loves them. Now it's not common for us to see bald Eagles where we live. We don't live right near the river, which is where you typically see them here in Missouri. We live in the center of Missouri in farming country. So it was such a gift to see these bald Eagles. And what's been really interesting is that now that we know that they are around here, we keep an eye out. And just last week, my husband sent me a picture of a bird that he took a picture of. They took a video of that. His was flying over his head when he was out in the pasture and it was the bald Eagles. So around here, somewhere, they have decided to nest. And that's exciting now that we are aware of what's going on around us and that not all big black birds in the sky or Turkey vultures, we're paying more attention. And we're seeing how, what we have around us is so much greater than what we believe to begin with along those same lines, as I've continued to watch the bird feeders. And I've seen the things that I expect to see if like blue Jays and Cardinals and chickadees and sparrows, as I've watched those guys come and go with their feeding. It's been really interesting this spring to see some new birds frequent the feeders. For example, one of the most amazing birds to see so far this year was an indigo bunting. There are dark blue, beautiful bird, and we don't see those very often. I think in the six years that we've lived in this house that I've seen indigo buntings twice and definitely not within the last year. Well, this year they are being more and more frequent visitors to these feeders. And as I started to watch with them and pay attention to them, I'm starting to notice maybe they're around more than I saw more than I ever realized, because I wasn't looking for them. I was always too busy looking for the Eastern blue. They're looking for maybe Cardinals, but they're here. And when I start to pay attention to what's here, then like anything else in our lives, what we focus on, we would create more of, we just become more aware of what's actually always there in addition to the indigo bunting, something else that has been a frequent visitor this year. That again, I've only seen once or twice, maybe the entire time that we've lived on this property is the rose Crested. Grosbeak. Now these are beautiful birds, and they've been at the feeders for several days in a row. Now I find this all to be very exciting. And I know I'm a bit of a crazy bird person, and you may wonder what is it about the birds that really gets my attention? Well, birds are very spiritual type animals. If you do any research into spiritual meanings behind animals, which I definitely recommend as animal loving people that you do, you'll be surprised how much more supported you are in your journey here in this lifetime than you ever realize. And animals are natural supportive type beings for us as humans. Now, all of these different kinds of birds have all of their different kinds of meetings. The indigo bunting is all about wisdom and spiritual realization. It is an animal that really helps this communication between people and the rose breasted grosbeak. They symbolize things like faith and adaptability romance and good news. They are also a source of wisdom and they teach us to appreciate the beauty and the blessings of the natural world. I just love that reminder, that reminder, that there's so much more always going on than what we see in the moment and where our attention and our focus is. And in our world, that is so busy, that is so on demand. And in this profession, that by nature has us just responding over and over and over and over again to the things that are brought to our attention. That's the nature of any service-based appointment-based business. When that habitual way of interacting with the world becomes the only way that we interact with the world. We miss so much that's going on around us. And as we miss what's going on around us, the greatest thing that we miss is how supported we are. There is so much evidence that you are supported in this lifetime. If we will just slow down and open our eyes and take a listen. It's amazing what we will see just last week I was sitting in the afternoon, I had, was feeling particularly stressed out kind of day, which was a little bit unusual for that to carry on throughout the day. And I mean, anxiety, you know, like we're best buddies. So I'm not so concerned about anxiety, but this one particular day, I think it was on Friday. I was just feeling really stressed out, kind of from head to toe to the point that once we got through lunchtime, I thought, you know, I'm just going to need to take a few minutes to meditate, which is usually something I do in the morning for a few minutes before I start my day. But I just knew that I needed to get grounded. And so I sat there and I was doing a meditation and I was doing a meditation that was a guided meditation. And then once it kind of ended, I was, I had some music playing and I was just doing unguided kind of silent meditation with this music. And I, this is important because when I was doing this, I had on my earphones that were noise, canceling earphones. So, so get the mental image here. I'm sitting here on my couch, in my living room. I've got a noise canceling headphones. There's nobody else in the house except for the animals. And I'm meditating. And I'm a few minutes in and all of a sudden I become aware of a noise and yes, the noise canceling headphones. And nothing's perfect. So it became aware of this noise. And because I pay attention to the sounds around me, I knew immediately what it was. I knew immediately that it was a tree frog and I was completely intrigued by this because we're talking, it's like two o'clock in the afternoon. What on earth was a tree frog doing out at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I didn't even know that they were out yet in the spring. I hadn't seen him at all. And so I listened for a minute and I just kind of dismissed it, but it was very persistent. And so vitally, I took off my headphones and I turned around because I'm like, where on earth could this tree frog be that I can hear it. So clearly inside my house with the windows closed with noise, canceling headphones on with music playing, where is this? Why is this so important that I see this? And as I turned around, I looked and on the railing, there you walk up the steps to the deck, to the front door here. He was, he was just sitting there by himself, just singing away this little tiny tree frog, two o'clock in the afternoon. And for me in that moment, it just really brought me back to that grounding, to like, what was real. It really brought me back to the present moment, which was my whole intent. If you'll remember for meditating at that time in the first place I had realized how disconnected I was. I recognize how stressed out I was feeling. I saw how it was blocking me from being able to get anything else done that day. And so I took a few minutes to disconnect, so I could reconnect with the truth of who I am and with the present moments of this life that I'm in. And in that I was given this beautiful gift, this beautiful reminder, that the world is so much bigger than whatever I'm focusing on at this, in this specific moment, I may do that with some intention with the birds, and I'm starting to see more and more different species of birds. And maybe they've always been there and I didn't see them. We know how the reticular activating system works. Once you start to pay attention to something, then your consciousness makes you aware of it more easily. But even with the bird practice in play, sometimes it's important for us to continue to look always. I would say it is important for us to continue to look and be open to what's beyond what we see. So even when we think that our perspective is wide, even when we think that we are taking into consideration everything outside of ourselves, when we give ourselves just that permission to open up a little bit more, what we will find is more and more truth of just how miraculous and supportive this world is. So if you're feeling really stressed out this week, if you feel like you're on a hamster wheel and you just can't get a grip on what's happening day in and day out, if you're exhausted, if you're on autopilot, I know that the instinct is to just curl up on your couch, flip on some Netflix, eat some junk food, scroll on social media and just wait the day away. I know that is what our instinct is to do because I've done it so many times myself, but my friends, I promise you, if you will just start trying to give yourself a few minutes, every single day to be present to what's around you to intentionally look beyond the obvious. I think you will be amazed at how much is out there, how much is going on. And as you do a little bit of your own research to look into the spiritual meanings of the things that you're seeing, you're going to be blown away by how supported you are by the parts of this universe that we can't see with our eyes and touch with our hands. Look beyond what's obvious intentionally look beyond what's obvious and realize that your life is just as important as everything else around you. And that when you take the time to be present within it, what's possible for you begins to expand and your peace and wellbeing become anchored in the truth of what's real and not the chaos that is present in the moment. All right, my friends, I'm going to leave you with this and I'll see you soon. Bye for now.