Tracy Lapreziosa (00:02):
Welcome to Networks for training and development's Healing Circle Call February, 2025. As you may notice, our format has changed a little bit. Instead of doing our Healing Circle calls live, you now receive the link on the first Monday of the month in order to be able to listen to it whenever it's convenient for you. So we're glad that you're tuning in. I'm Tracy Lapreziosa and I'm going to be guiding us through some thoughts. This February, 2025. I always have a book that I read a few things from every night to just kind of bring my clothes to a day, meditate a little bit, have some thoughts to reflect. And as I was preparing for this, I looked down at the book that I had recently chosen from my bookshelf, and the book is called What Now by Anne Patchett. And I opened up the front cover and inside the cover there was a little note to Tracy from Dave, who's my husband, happy Mother's Day 2008. So I started to think, why would my husband have purchased me a book that says what now in 2008? So I had to think a little bit, but then I realized that 2008 was the very first Mother's Day that both of our daughters were in college and were out of the house.

(01:58):
Definitely a what now moment. Think about it. What? Now my household has changed, my life has changed. My kids are grown up. What now? And that got me thinking. Maybe our life story starts with once upon a time, but as we grow and life unfolds, we come upon many what now? Moments. And first I started thinking back, yeah, what now? Moments tend to be maybe those times when you really have to make some choices. Which way am I going in life? I thought about it mostly initially like, oh, as you get older and you're going into high school, what am I going to study? What direction do I want to take? What now I'm going to high school, my life's going to change.

(02:52):
Or when you graduate from high school and you have to make a choice. Am I going to college? Am I going to get a job? Am I going to do a trade? Am I going to move out of my parents' house? What now what? Now I'm an adult. What now, what kind of people do I want to associate as I leave the familiar? What organizations do I want to align myself with? Do I want to enter a relationship or not enter a relationship? Do I want to live by myself or have a roommate? Do I want to have children or not have children? I do. I want to have pets or not have furry family.

(03:44):
What now? Moments, big decisions. What now or a what now moment? Like do I want to learn how to drive? Or do I want to get in a car with someone who may not be safe? A what now moment that may not seem too big at this time, but could have serious consequences. There are so many. What now moments as we look back in life and we think about them typically as during those crossroads where we have to make some major decisions of what's going to go on with our life, right? But in reality, we have what now? Moments. Every single day, every little decision that we make determines what our day will be like, what our week will be like, and maybe even what our life will be like.

(04:47):
How do we react to other people? How do we approach people? Those simple decisions create a path to a destination in our life. If we want to receive kindness, we need to be aware that we need to be kind to make that decision to be kind to others. Sometimes we don't realize what we've done to land us where we are at the moment. And only by reflecting back can we see how we've come to this particular moment in time. Paying attention to our environment and others helps us make better. What now? Decisions. We need to be open to hear others from a variety of backgrounds. Taking it as much information as possible helps us make better decisions in what now? Moments? For the most part, wisdom comes in bits and pieces from all of our life experiences. It doesn't come in a neatly wrapped package. No one piece gives you all the answers, but collecting all the bits and pieces through life helps us with the what. Now, questions and moments in our life.

(06:31):
Sometimes we respond to a what now moment with a decision that takes us somewhere other than what we intended. And the secret in finding balance, the secret is to find balance between going out to get what you want and being able to be open to what actually lands in your lap. What now? Moments can be a joy rather than an anxiety. If we acknowledge our future is open to possibility. And when I think about being open, I think about being in tune with our environment. How much time do we spend distracted and not in the moment. If you look around you, you can definitely see other people who are distracted and not in the moment.

(07:35):
See people, you go out to dinner and you see a couple out to dinner and they're sitting facing each other and instead of looking at each other and engaging in conversation, they're both looking down at their phones, they're missing all that's going on around them. They're missing maybe people smiling at them or walking by them. Maybe there's someone trying to get their attention, they're missing it. Or that mother that's their children at the playground and she's on her. She's looking down at her phone rather than watching her children play or engaging in the play. Sometimes just observing your children is engagement. Just to see what they're doing, how they're responding to other children, how they're playing. The saddest. One of the saddest examples that I observed was a young mother in a target and her three or four month old baby was in an inf infant seat in the cart facing the mom.

(08:40):
But instead of engaging with her child, she had an iPad strapped to the seat where an older child would sit. So the baby in the infancy could be watching a screen and the mother was not engaging with the child at all, and the child wasn't even able to really engage with what was out and about them because the screen was right there. So we see many examples of how others are not engaged, but think about yourself. Think about when you are out and about. How are you engaged with your environment? Are you engaged with your environment?

(09:24):
So we're going to take a moment now to just do a small meditation to help us to be aware of our environment, to help us make those good decisions. So wherever you are, and you can do this meditation where you are right now, or you can do it when you're out in a park or at a playground or waiting for the bus anywhere, anytime you're out and about. This is a great meditation. Rather than focusing on your phone or reading something, just sit and observe. So let's take a moment now to wherever you are, whether you're in your house or you're out and about to just observe, use your eyes. We're not going to close our eyes for this meditation. We're not going to focus on the inside of our body. We are going to focus on what's outside. Where are we? Look around you, what do you see? Who do you see?

(10:35):
If you're in your house, what's the environment like around you? Are you seeing clutter? Are you seeing an open blank space with nothing there? Do you see other people? Do you see your family? What are they doing? If you're outside the home, what are the people doing around you? Are there people around you or are you in the woods? And if you're in the woods, what do you see? Look around you. Look at every little thing around you. Look at the details. Look for details. What do you see? Pay attention to every little thing that you see. Continue to scan your environment and look at what's going on. Are you observing interactions or traffic or nature or stillness? What do you see? And now you can close your eyes if you want or not, but I want you to really turn on your ears and focus on the sounds around you. What sounds do you hear? I clocks ticking. People chatting, tv, radio, a car. Workers outside your window. Wind, rain. Do you hear laughter? Arguing? Clanking, traffic sounds, conversations. I just listen. What do you hear? Listen with an open ear.

(13:53):
Now let's keep those ears open, but let's also turn up the volume on our nose and our sense of smell. Take a deep breath in. What do you smell? What smells are around you? Are you smelling food, perfume, cleaning solutions, industrial smells, rain, wetness. You smell wetness. I What do you smell? Dogs, cats. Babies, grass, freshly mowed, grass exhaust fumes. What do you smell? Tune in on every little thing that you smell at this particular moment. Do those smells evoke a taste? If you're smelling food, do those smells evoke any memories of your past, from your childhood, from previous situations in your adulthood?

(15:33):
And knowing that everything we see and we hear and we smell, and we taste and we touch can bring back memories from former What now moments in our life? Bring those pieces together into the now for the what now moment that we're in. Now let's take a moment to focus on our body's position in this environment and where it is through our sense of touch. Are we standing? You feel our feet on the ground? What kind of surface is under our feet? Is it hard? Is it soft? Or are we sitting? Are we sitting on a hard surface? A soft surface?

(16:31):
What is our body's position? How does our body feel in this particular environment? Through a sense of touch. Are we feeling some cold or some hot? Do we feel the breeze blowing across our skin? Are we feeling perspiration because it's hot outside or in our house? What are we feeling in relation to our body? Is our body still or is it moving? So we're taking this moment to feel where we are right now in this particular moment in time, focusing on what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, what we touch, this particular moment in time. And you can take this a step further and reflect back through your past and think about the what now, moments that brought you to this moment in time.

(18:07):
What decision did you make to get you here? You made the decision to join our healing circle call. What decisions have you made along the way to get you to this particular moment in time? And this could be a point where you can just reflect for quite some time, reflect on your life, where you are in your life at this particular moment, and how did you get there? What now moments have you gone through to get to where you are and how are you going to continue to shape where you're going? You want to remain mindful to your environment, be open to everything going on around you. Be curious. Be curious. It takes work and conscious effort to be open to our world takes lots of work. So while we need to meditate sometimes to feel what's going on in our body, we also need to meditate on what's going on around us so we can take in all that information and help us in those what now moments. So I encourage you once again to remain mindful and open to everything that's going on in your environment. Thank you for joining us for today's Healing Circle call. I please remember to join in for each month on the first Monday of the month for your recorded meditation. Have a lovely tomorrow.