I happened to spy this leaf on the path the other day.  I was on my way to somewhere else and had my mind on other things, and could easily have walked right past it. Yet there it was.

Torn.
Battered.
Lost.

And now found.

(And in the shape of a heart because of all those things, not despite them).

On Valentine’s Day, it’s usually the big, shiny, idealised loves that get the spotlight. But that’s just one variety of many. There are all sorts. All worthy of beholding and remembering and appreciating.

Even the ones that feel torn.

Even the ones that feel broken.

Even the ones that are shaped or constrained by loss or death.

For maybe it’s simply the fact that we can love that could be celebrated on Valentine’s Day.

For even if you’ve been hurt or feel a bit broken yourself, maybe just when you’re not particularly looking (like finding this leaf in the picture), you might just stumble upon some love that’s already around you. Maybe it’s not the big shiny bubblegum romantic ideal just yet. But maybe it’s enough. For this moment. A moment of seeing the love that’s here, in whatever guise it takes – from friends or family or even yourself. Even when your heart’s been broken. (Perhaps especially then).

Lost and found love. Maybe that’s something worth celebrating today…

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Text and photos copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

Well, how did that happen? It’s February already…

So maybe you’re already right back into the swing of things, drawn back to the thousand appointments and meetings and obligations calling your name – just like all these little Post-it notes stuck to the window in the photo, above, practically obscuring the person who put them there.

All that stuff that wants to be done. Now. (Or maybe even wanted to be done by January…)

How do you approach it all? Whether it’s your salaried work or your parenting or managing your health or keeping up with friends and family (and somewhere in there, also living the rest of your life). How do you do it?

Do you multitask? Throw a few things in together and return to a juggling routine you maybe know all too well?

Maybe it feels like you do. But do you really?

What if some of the research thinks that’s impossible?

When I went to the Mind And Its Potential conference late last year, one of the many inspiring speakers there was a guy called Rasmus Hougaard from The Potential Project. He thinks multitasking’s a myth. And he pointed to a slew of research to back that up (some of which is outlined here and here).

Basically, the theory is that even though it feels like you’re doing a stack of things at once, you’re actually just switching between them. At lightning speed.

And every time you switch, it robs more energy from you. More focus. More “brain power,” until pretty soon, you’re spending significant amounts of time and effort just in the switching back and forth, rather than on the tasks themselves.

And it can leave you fairly frazzled…
(Know the feeling? I do. Even though it’s only February.)

Instead, Hougaard advocates turning towards mindfulness.
Just to do one thing at a time.
And to do it consciously.

This.
Here.
Now.

So what would it be like to pick just one thing?
To give it your whole focus.
To complete it if you want.

Or, if there are suddenly multiple distractions – if your boss or a new task or a deadline wanders in and “interrupts” your flow – then to just choose which singular thing you’ll focus on now. Either your original task or the “distraction.” And just do that.

The idea is not to try to do everything at once: not to try to listen to someone while another part of you just wants to finish an email you started (as you flick between catching snatches of conversation and then remembering bits of what you want to write).

Just pick one thing. And a whole lot of space might just open up for you. And energy. And maybe even time.

Well, that’s the theory anyway.

What’s your experience?

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Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

I came across a little piece of eternity the other day (there it is in the photo, above). Or, more precisely, it came across me. Tumbling towards me on the footpath. Blowin’ in the wind*.

Ok, so it was also just a loose page of a newspaper, blowing around the street, with an advertisement on it featuring a stone angel pointing towards a single word: “Eternity.”

Just a banal moment of dodging some floating flotsam on my way home. And a bit of a wake-up call.

What do you do when eternity comes barreling right down the street at you?

I picked it up. And could suddenly feel my heart beating. I took it with me.

What will you do with yours?
(Your eternity).
(Your heart).

There’s a saying that you might have heard floating around a bit like that:

“Eternity is now.”

If it’s true, then what will you do with this gift of now that’s somehow, miraculously, inexplicably, landed in your lap?
This now.
And this one.

These are the sorts of questions that existential therapy asks you to ask yourself. To remember the paradoxical finiteness of this particular kind of eternity. Of you. To really sense yourself, in your life, in your relationships, on your timeline; and to feel the gravitas and the infinite joy of being alive to it all.

And gestalt therapy, too, asks you to step into your particular “now.” To be aware of the unique field you’re in. Of your body. Your senses. Your environment. The people whose lives weave through yours. All the things which touch you and all that you’re in relationship with.

As does mindfulness… eternally bringing you back to this moment and all that it holds. And this moment. Awakening you to the treasures you have right before you, rather than letting you pass them up for the mirage of “later.”

So what will you do with yours?
Just this little bit of it that’s right here?
Not necessarily the whole thing – not the crazy pressure to live a whole life “well” or to “get it right” or anything quite that mad or maddening.

Just this tiny moment that’s happened to blow your way down the street…

How will you inhabit it?

And how will you let it inhabit you?

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*With apologies to Bob Dylan.
The ad that was on the newspaper was for Waverley Cemetary, which featured in a guest blog post I wrote for The Daily Undertaker, here.

Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

I was walking in the park this morning. Past the hundreds of thousands of millions of leaves, all applauding each other in the wind.

Which one of them isn’t perfect?

Which leaf hasn’t “lived up to its potential”?

Which has “fallen short”?

They seem like slightly ridiculous questions. (And yet, are there times that you ask them of yourself?)

In light of all of these leaves, the idea of “perfection” seems suddenly a bit lifeless and arbitrary next to the endless, vibrant variations dripping from the boughs. 

Take this particular leaf, in the photo above, that I picked up off the path where it had fallen in front of me.

Not really “perfect” by any conventional measure. It’s not symmetrical, there’s bits that are brittle and brown. And even the odd hole in it.

But if you look closer…

And closer still…

…it starts to become its very own artwork. Unpredictably beautiful. Offering so much more than perhaps “perfection” ever could.

So what can you take from all of this?
Are there any questions you’d like to put to your “inner therapist” about it all?
Maybe something like:

Which parts of you want to stop having to live up to some arbitrary ideal you insist on moulding yourself to?

Which parts of you are tired of having a standard laid down for them which is unrealistic (and possibly someone else’s standard anyway) and might never be reached?  

And which parts might you start to see a kind of artistry in instead of “failure” or “imperfection”?
Where you might be able to appreciate the unpredictable nuances of life, growing and showing its unique patterns in you…

Text and photos copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

This little duck (in the photo, above) was swimming in the clouds in my local park this morning, rippling the upside-down sky in the pond.

It’s moments like these I want to remember to see. To live. To pause and breathe into in the midst of the day.

That’s about as close to a New Year’s Resolution as I got this year. Just to stop. To look. And to remember to see the small stuff.

And this morning there seemed plenty around to see: little crystalline moments of inexplicability that you can climb into and rest in if you just get down to their level.

Do you want that sometimes?

Just to see the sky-soaked ducks…?

To catch the everlasting daisies while they still last…?

To pause from flying through the day and just land somewhere and let your wings dry out for a moment…?

What’s around you right now that you might just notice? 

What small things are there – here – to sustain you, if you’ll take the time just to see them?
Even in times of sorrow.
Even in pain.

(Just now, while scribbling this in my notebook, a miniscule bug landed on the page and wandered across it in zig-zags).

Miniature moments of zen and replenishment unfolding all around us… Sometimes, perhaps, they’re the best kind of therapy.

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Text and photos copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

For many people I know (and for myself at times), 2011 has been quite a hard year. It’s held times of real challenge, times of worry, times of loss. Yet there were still beautiful bits that sparkled through it in the light.

Has it been that way for you?

As we all get ready to farewell 2011 and open a new calendar for 2012, perhaps it’s worth reviewing, for a moment, what we’re actually leaving behind. And what, if anything, you might like to carry forward with you into your future.

For there are clues written into this past year that can help you uncover what’s important and fulfilling to you, how to invite more of that in, and how you want to live your life.

Let’s take a look…

If you take a minute just now and let your mind wander where it will over the last 365 days or so, what are some of the images that flash before you? Just get a small sense of the plot of this particular book, this particular year - what happened?

And then what are some of the lessons or learnings or meanings you drew from those events? How did you make sense of things? Which storylines seemed easiest to focus on?

Which new parts of yourself did you discover in the process of living this last year?
Maybe an unsuspected strength.
Or a growing flexibility that helped you bend and not break.
Or a new softness of compassion within – compassion for others and maybe even for yourself…
What were your “growing edges” this year?

And what did you learn about the process of living, itself? It seems a bit of a weird question in a way. But as this is your life – uniquely yours - there might be areas in it that science or common sense or general knowledge or statistical probability may not be able to cover. Areas that you, alone, get to discover and make sense of. Areas that also might help you decide how you want to live this life of yours – what your guiding principles or values could be.

So what are some of the values or principles or meanings you lived by this year that helped you create the kind of life that feels fulfilling for you? What steered you in the right direction when all else was veering off-course? What took you to the places your heart could say “yes” to?

It may help to look at when you were proud of yourself this year.
And what you were doing at the time.

Or when you were graced with the gift of happiness (however fleeting it may have seemed).
And what ingredients contributed to that moment – maybe who you were with, and what they mean to you, or what you were undertaking at the time.

Or even when the chalice of pain was passed to you.
And what helped you through the tough times you faced.

All are pointers and clues to what might make a meaningful life story for you.

And perahps all are things to look at again, mindfully weigh up and decide if you’d like to take any of them with you into 2012. And maybe even beyond…

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Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

It was on this same trip to work the other day, walking a different way, seeing different things, that I spotted this sign:

“FEED YOUR MIND.”

And it led me to wondering… What are you feeding your mind?
Are you nourishing it?
Or mindlessly stuffing some junk in for a quick bit of rush?

What are you putting in there?

(And what are you hoping to get back out of it?)

In his book, “Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life,” world renown Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes about mindful consumption. Not just of food. But of everything you ingest: television, conversations, images, thoughts.

So, if you were to look at the typical “diet” you feed your mind, what might you find?

Are you letting a lot of toxic worry find its way in?

Does stress try to sprinkle a salty layer onto everything you “eat”?

Are there times you get a double-dose of self-doubt?
Or anger?
Or despair?

What ways might there be of protecting yourself from these things? Of mindfully noting them before you launch into a full-scale “feast” of them? Of choosing when you’ve had enough of them – before they make you feel ill inside…

And what might some healthier, more life-affirming “foods” be for your particular mind? What sort of thoughts could help you feel soothed or relaxed or worthy or restored?

Sometimes it’s worth just practicing how to notice what your current habits are – what are you actually feeding your mind? And then, when you’re ready, noticing what other options there might be available in this banquet we call “life”… Noticing what other dishes you might like to try.

Maybe just tasting something just a little different, trying something just a little different, is all it takes? And who knows what might flow from there…

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Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

I took a different route to work yesterday. And I saw different things.

Suddenly, in a gap between buildings, I spied this view in the photo, above: stairs and a distant clock face above them.

A thought struck immediately:

“Take the steps to make the time…”

And then, a heartbeat later:

“… time for the things that matter.”

I had to stop for a second, to drink it in and let all the bustling commuters around me blur on by.

So what are those things for you? The things that matter?

Life can change at a moment’s notice – we all know this. Profound, unexpected change where the things we previously took for granted become the things we miss, for we can no longer experience them in quite the same way again. At least for now…

At the moment, I’m getting lots of reminders of this. Lots of losses, big and small, in my own life, and in the lives of those close to me.

I guess it comes back to our fragility. Our mortality. Our passage through the (limited) time we have. And our ability to recognise what really matters to us, so we can live it, love it, while it’s here in our hands. 

It’s such a powerful lesson. And one so easily forgotten. For, drawn along in the slipstream of everyday busy-ness, you can forget this fundamental stuff and get tangled in the red tape of frustration or indifference instead. You can be bored by the bureaucracy of the daily grind. Hypnotised by what seems like endless “repetition” of the tasks or habits you engage with.

But maybe there is no repetition. Maybe there’s no treadmill. Maybe we’re walking on a one-way path that will one day find its ending – a path which can lead you to places that feel sacred or numb, depending on where you walk it.

So where will you walk in your life? Today?

Will you take the steps to make time for the things that matter?

And, if so, what would those steps look like?

What will bring you closer to what’s meaningful for you? Closer, perhaps, to the people you love, or the experiences you thrive in, or the dreams that keep your secret fires burning within.

What steps could you take to connect with them?
Nurture them?
Treasure them?

And how might you take those steps even amid the bustling busy-ness of this time of year?
(Or of any other…?)

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Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

Grief. It comes to fill our hollows of loss. To accompany our loneliness. To be with our pain.

So when you’ve lost someone important in your life, by death or distance; or if you’ve lost a certain hope for the future; you may find a sense of grief. Or maybe it finds you…

It’s all a bit of an enigma sometimes. For grief is a something in the middle of a new nothing. A heaviness in the emptiness.

And, often, with grief can come tears. Even if you don’t always let yourself cry them…

At this time of year, with all the special occasions and anniversaries and expectations, all those un-cried tears – both old and new – can make themselves felt all the more.

So where do you keep yours?

Where do you actually carry them, your un-cried tears*?

If you sit for a moment, just you and your sorrow in some stillness, whereabouts in your body do you sense that sadness residing just now?

And what might it be like not to feel under pressure to fix or placate or silence or hide it? But just to acknowledge it? Just to see it? Maybe even to accept it?

How might you and your grief help one another through this loss?

It seems an odd question, I know.

But even though it’s a bit counter-intuitive, sometimes it’s worth getting closer to your grief like this.

For though grief can seem painful from a distance, like something to steer well clear of, when you actually give yourself a chance to get to know it better, your grief – and your tears – can also offer you a path towards healing. At whatever pace feels right for you…

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*Thanks to my friend Jo for sharing the term “un-cried tears” with me

Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.

So much is unknown about this mystery we like to call “life.”

We have our theories and ideas about it, our values and beliefs that may help guide us through it, but watertight certainty about any of it is hard to find.

Except for one thing:

This is probably the only time your life will be lived.

Just think about that for a moment…

This is the only time when your unique talents and abilities and yearnings and experiences and even your pain can mix together in quite this way. It’s more than just the chance of a lifetime…

So it’s also probably the only time your dreams have a chance to be lived out in quite the way that you – and only you – could live them. So will you let them live?

Or will you let the everyday obligations and sensible “safety” take over? Will you let your dreams or hopes or aspirations get lost amongst the letters that spell out a life much blander? (A bit like in the photo, above).

It’s important to think about.

For you’re the custodian of your dreams.

You get to decide if they even have a chance. And no matter how fanciful or frivolous or straight out mad they may seem to others – or even to the more buttoned-down parts of yourself – they’re still real. They’re still there. For now…

They can still make your heart beat faster (if you let them). They can still infuse your day with passion and purpose (if you let them). They can still rescue you from a life that’s been proscribed by someone else’s “norms;” someone else’s “sensible.” And paint your world in vivid colours where once was beige…

All they need is a chance to live. While you still do.

So will you let them?

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Text and photo copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.