Tag: email

Moving Parts

What didn’t happen yesterday in our little Rescue world?  I’ll just timeline it for you:

7:21 am: The first email inquiry of the day from a parent wanting a rabbit as Christmas gift for a young child arrived in our inbox.

NOT Holiday Gifts
Photo Credit: D.C.

8:15 am: Assembled a team of volunteers to standby for the potential influx of emails like the aforementioned, in effort to educate these well-meaning families that living things are not toys.

9:00 am: Volunteers cleaned, fed and snuggled buns at our main foster home.

10:00 am: Ontario, adopted out last year, was transported back by volunteers to our main foster home, as her family could no longer care for her.  Welcome back, sweet girl.

Ontario
Photo Credit: LIRRG

11:00 am: Secured a foster home for the “Frat Party Rabbit.”  A father contacted us during the week that his daughter saved a rabbit from a college fraternity party but they could not keep the rabbit long term.  Volunteers then sprung into action, once foster home was secured, to transport rabbit from rescuer’s home to foster home.

Throughout the Day: Emails are thankfully and surprisingly slow… or it just felt that way because I had a lot of great help!  Connected 4 potential adopters to volunteers for screening and helped a few other emailers with questions.

3:33pm: Lil’ B, a boy from our recent big rescue in Baldwin, is adopted as husbun to LIRRG alum Brooke.  That makes 51 adoptions in 2017, just one shy of our goal.

4:00 pm: “Frat Party Rabbit” picked up by loving volunteer and father of rescuer gave very generous donation.  Bun is transported to foster home and is now a member of our sorority; she’s a young lop-eared lady.

Frat Party Bun
Photo Credit: N.S.

6:23 pm: Two strays that a former adopter has seen in her neighborhood (and offered to foster if we help catch) are spotted.  Team springs into action and heads way out east.  One rabbit is brought to safety… turns out this case is far more complicated than two abandoned rabbits and the authorities are called in.

6:33 pm: Compiled the volunteer coverage schedule for the upcoming week.  Grateful to the solid team of helpers!

8:01 pm: LIRRG alum (and my tiniest niece) Laila Bunny is not eating and her temperature is low.

8:55 pm: I leave the house (in my pajamas) to medicate Laila Bunny.  She seems to be getting better (but she didn’t get better overnight and has been hospitalized this morning).

9:43 pm: Volunteer who sustained scratches at the evening catch texts me to ask if Sacred Frankincense will work on her skin like “regular” Frankincense will.  Yes… and I love the crossover between my Rescue and wellness worlds, lots of people living lives of wellness and purpose.

 

I think I got everything… and that’s just the “stuff” that I helped with; we have quite the kick-ass team out there, saving as many as we can!

Advertisements

Accept Yourself

Madonna sang “Express Yourself” (still one of my all-time favs) and today I’m remixing it to Accept Yourself.

I do my best work in the morning.  I’m undeniably a morning person and I’ve allowed myself to create this detrimental thought pattern that I can’t write well, don’t communicate at my best and won’t perform at my highest potential later in the day.  When you get up as early as I do, later in the day is comparatively early for most people.  So I find myself at a challenge, right at this very moment.  I’m sitting here, at the keyboard, at 7:08pm.  I’ve convinced myself over the course of decades that I can’t write this late.  It’s clear to me that I am more focused in the morning hours, so I accept that about myself—truly I celebrate that.  This morning, then afternoon, then (my version) of early evening flowed by with lots of productivity in other arenas, but the blog still isn’t written and the emails aren’t answered.

And then the brain starts going: You can’t write at night.  You won’t produce with quality.  It will take you 10 times longer to answer emails.  And don’t forget about that pile about day-job work on the table…

I can play out those limiting beliefs or I can choose a new pattern, choose to “unstick” myself from thoughts that are holding me back from tasks that need to be done (those Rescue emails aren’t going to answer themselves!).  Instead of walking circles around the house, stumbling through smaller tasks while the mind swirls around the writing, I chose to accept myself, wrench open the laptop and write to you.  And I will answer the unread emails as soon as I’m done here.  And I’ll try not to beat myself up if I have to stay up past 8pm or if I leave a task undone tonight.

I took a class Friday evening on the Aroma Freedom Technique (I totally did not anticipate writing to you about this! I sat down intending to write about this week’s 2 rescues!).  My mentor Gina Califano taught about the technique and guided attendees through this powerful practice.  In her introduction, during which I took copious notes, Gina talked about overcoming our resistance.  She talked about how experiences create our beliefs; our beliefs create our behaviors; our behaviors create our experiences.  There’s the cyclical nature of it all.  The Aroma Freedom Technique is designed to get us “unstuck,” to facilitate release, to help us reach new heights.  I had such an incredible response personally to the technique that I’ve chosen to seek certification in Aroma Freedom so I can share it with you and your fur-babies too.

And here I am, two nights later, needing to release the limiting belief about when and how I can accomplish tasks.  I accept myself as a morning person and producer but it’s time for me to embrace other moments of me, not just the top-speed, ultra-effective version.  Gina said, “Once you’re aware of it, you can start to move it out.”  It’s time for me to breathe, to loosen up the rigidity I enforce on myself, and to keeping hopping my hop toward my highest potential with grace.  Much Love.

Acceptance

Take Action

People sure seem to find a lot to complain about.  Now, I can get all cliché-crazy here (You can’t have a positive life with a negative mind!) but I’ll try to keep it my voice, as much as possible, today.  Through Rescue, I don’t hear many complaints from the volunteer team, but when I do (or when I’ve made them myself in the past!), those complaints generally center around the perception that someone wasn’t contributing as much as the others were contributing.  But I’ve been able to shift my own focus and the focus of the team as necessary, reminding myself and reminding them that we all play different roles.  Some roles are more public, more obvious time working with foster rabbits or educating the community.  Some other roles, the behind-the-scenes roles and even the sending of positive, supportive vibes and spreading our Rescue message, may not be as obvious but are just as important as the physical tasks.  We treasure help in all its forms, from all givers.  We are all taking action, whether you can see it or count it or not.

Also through Rescue, I’ll have the occasional “dumper” (someone who is trying to “dump” his/her rabbit on us) complain that we aren’t helping them.  No, I can’t just take your rabbit.  We do offer help, to anyone who asks—just not necessarily the kind help they anticipated or wanted.  I’ve found that posture is huge with handling and even avoiding these complaints entirely.  I’ve taken what I’ve learned about posture from my entrepreneurial reading and mentors and applied it to Rescue.  I never tell anyone we can’t help them.  I clearly and firmly show them how we can help.  Then, if they still complain, that’s on them.  I can’t control that crap.

So, let’s shift this idea into our lives, our experiences in general.  Are you complaining?  About what?  Why?  Or, perhaps the better question: Why aren’t you doing anything about it?

You can wish, want and whine forever.  But change comes through action.

Are you surrounded by complainers?  At work?  Walk away.  On social media?  Unfollow.  At home?  Well, spray some White Angelica and do something uplifting for yourself.  That positivity will spread, but even if it doesn’t, you’ll be in a good space.  In Miracles Now, Gabby Bernstein writes, “Say to yourself, ‘I choose to remove any negative energy I’ve been holding onto.  I choose to retrieve all the positive energy around me and within me.  My intention is to share my positive energy with the world.’”  So start there.  Take action through your intention.  Speak it into existence.  Keep it as positive as possible.  There is nothing, seriously NOTHING, about you and your circumstances that cannot be met and overcome with action.  Much Love.

Now Ang

All Quiet on the Rescue Front

It’s amazing what freedom you can attain when you release things, habits (and people) who no longer serve you in a positive way from taking up space in your life or even just in your head.

Confession: I checked my email, on average, every 9 minutes from the time I took over the communications for our Rescue group up until just a few weeks ago.

Do you know how mentally crippling it is to check every 9 minutes?  Can you fathom how much time I wasted refreshing and clicking?  Guess what—we NEVER get emails every 9 minutes.  But there I was, for years now, ineffectively using my time, checking and checking for responses, for new communications.  A purely addictive behavior that served me, or Rescue, no positive purpose.

Compulsion is definitely in my nature but I think this particular compulsion started as a result of taking on such an important task, a task that I deemed highly time-sensitive.  Combine that with an aggressive overachiever and solutions maker and BOOM: you’re checking for emails 6+ times an hour.  Sometimes, I’m sure it was more frequently.

Sure, urgent issues in Rescue pop up (or should I say hop up?).  But thankfully, they don’t occur every day and they certainly don’t happen every fraction of the hour, daily.  Through consistent personal development, mindfulness and my precious oils, I am proud to say that I check my emails 2-4 times per day now.  Massive difference.  And when I check them at this frequency, I respond with more clarity and delegate more effectively.

In response to my energetic shift, “things” have quieted down on the Rescue front.  Our educational efforts are wide-reaching.  Our communication with perspective adopters or struggling owners who didn’t adopt from us still happens but, as I don’t feel the (although sometimes quiet) mania I used to, the intense situations just don’t show up any more.  And when urgency arises, my clear mind and focused intrapersonal and interpersonal skills enable me to handle the necessary steps with much more ease than ever before.

As easy as it sounds to check one’s phone less, it wasn’t easy for me to cease the compulsion.  But I did it.  All is peaceful on the Rescue front.pc-clarity