Blog-a-thon Day 5

It's a Good Friday. Kyle has a life!

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Blog-a-thon Day 4

I've been playing around with The Pause a lot lately. I  believe it has the potential to help create some positive life shifts.

It's very applicable to our interactions with our kids with autism. It enhances our ability to respond rather than react.

I hope it will help my friend who has recently quite smoking.

I'm using it to stay focused when I write these days. It's effective but requires awareness and mindfulness. It's all about noticing, paying attention, and making mindful decisions. I completed this blog without checking email, getting on facebook, or rummaging through anything on my desk. Not bad, eh?

The Pause is from Leo Babauta's Zen Habits blog.

There is one little habit I’ve learned that has changed everything else in my life.

The pause.

When we fail, it’s because we act on urges without thinking, without realizing it. We have the urge to eat junk, and we do it. We have the urge to check email instead of writing a chapter of our book, and so we open our inbox. We have an urge to smoke, to drink, to do drugs, to chew our nails, to play a Facebook game, to procrastinate, to skip a workout, to eat more fries, to criticize, to act in jealousy or anger, to be rude … and we act on that urge.

What if instead we learned to pause after each urge? What if we stopped, looked at that urge, paid close attention to what it feels like inside our bodies, but didn’t act?

The urge would no longer control us. We would be able to make conscious choices that might be healthier for us, help us be happier.

If we can pause, we create space. Space to breathe, to think, to be without acting.

The pause is the answer to so many of our problems. Such a small thing, and so powerful.

To develop the pause, notice your next urge. Is it an urge to go check something online? Or eat something you know isn’t healthy for you? Pay attention to the urge, learn as much as you can about it. If you act on it after the pause, that’s OK. Just notice it, and pause, and pay attention.

Do it again for the next urge, and the next. You will get good at it with practice, and you’ll have lots of opportunities to practice.

The urges won’t go away, but your ability to pause will get stronger. And when you have the pause, you have everything.

Blog-a-thon Day 3

People  ask me where I got my inspiration to begin writing  books.  I often share how day to day life with Kyle inspired many of my stories. I guess that's somewhat self evident given the types of stories in both books. Going back further than that, my friend and coauthor, Kathy Almeida inspired me to find my writing voice long before the first book was a twinkle in our eyes.

Another souce of inspiration has been my sister-in-law, Sylvia Nobel. She writes Arizona mystery novels and has written six books. She's a dynamo when it comes to talking to people and convincing them they must read her books. For a few years, I worked events with her and marvelled at her selling savvy.  Sylvia's books are light reading and just plain fun. Often parents, myself included, can fall into the trap of only reading about autism or ways to help themselves. We forget how gratifying it is to get lost in a fiction book simply for the sheer joy of it. Sometimes this is because we don't get a lot of "me" time to read. But it's also because we become distracted by our children and all the challenges we face. It's easy to let the "just for fun" stuff slip out of our lives.

Lately, I have gotten into reading more fiction again. It has been very enjoyable. I love the feeling of not being able to put a book down. A page turner is a perfect vehicle for transporting oneself into the present moment. I'm pretty sure this is another "oxygen-rich tool for loving and living well with autism".... particularly if the book has nothing to do with autism.

Sylvia's books are definite page turners.  Her first book in the Kendall Odell series, Deadly Sanctuary, comes to life in this short book trailer . I invite you to check it out.