The Anne Report, Dealing With Life's Health Challenges, reminds us that life can be EZier even during stressful times. The Main article, Finding Love, shows how to find love by simply accepting the love that's ever-present. The Healthy Living article, Driven by Perfection, offers some tips for dealing with perfectionism. The Anne Talk, The Greatest Prosperity Affirmation, provides a simple prosperity mantra to keep you focused on abundance. The Featured Product This Month highlights all 5 of Anne's books. Click to read What is EZosophy? Click for Shareables From Anne. Click for Abundance Affirmations.

The EZ Mantra: "Everything can be EZ or at least EZier." -- Anne Sermons Gillis

Living EZosophy, August 7, 2018
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

Phone: 713.922.0242
Email: anne@annegillis.com

Anne's Websites:

  The Anne Report

Dealing With Life's Health Challenges

Dear ,

My sweet little Reynolds had his tonsils out last week. His brother, Thomas, had the same surgery last winter. It was what some refer to as a "hairy ordeal" for Thomas. There was pain and fear, but when you are four and have life threatening sleep apnea, this is what one must do: get the breathing obstruction out. He had the worst case anyone had ever seen. The doctors, the interns, and the medically curious, were called in to see his unique case.

Grandpappy and I watched Thomas, while mom and dad took Reynolds to his Waterloo. The exhausted parents returned with a tired, but smiling, little boy. Hospitals seem to bring out the worst in healthy people. If you are doing fine when you go in to help a friend or loved one, you come out bleary-eyed and bushed. Elizabeth, my daughter, remarked on the parents waiting while their children underwent surgery. She asked one woman, "Is your child in for surgery?" The woman replied, "Yes, she has a brain tumor; they are removing it." Heartbreak.

For the most part, we are insulated from the terror a mother feels when her child is in jeopardy. My daughter brushed the tip of this pain in the hospital. How fortunate we are that we rarely have to deal with intense and debilitating emotion. One encounter with another's tragedy brings out compassion and gratitude. We have compassion for another's agony and yet we are grateful that what we face is not so daunting.

My friend Holli, whose husband recently lost his job, sent the following quote. Her husband found a job almost immediately, their home sold in record time, and even though her life was capsized by having to leave a community where she was loved and cherished by so many, she is full of wonder and appreciation. "Gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing.... It moves us away from the narrow-minded focus on fault and lack and to the wider perspective of benefit and abundance." The Book of Joy, page 242, co-authored by The Dali Lama and Desmond Tutu. As for me, I think gratitude takes us from pain to gain.

Thomas at the Beach

I'm including a picture of Thomas. We went to the beach while his brother, Reynolds, was in the hospital. Even though the life-guard cleared the beach when lightning was spotted on the horizon, we had fun for 45 minutes. I was thankful we had those 45 minutes. It beats being in the hospital. As a grandmama, I get the glamour parts of parenting. I love grandmama-ing. And one more thing, sending out thanks to all who spend their working hours in hospitals, helping us recover from life's illnesses. And that's it for the Anne Report.

Anne

  Main Article

Finding Love

Today, as I sat quietly, I felt waves of love. I sensed a love that was baseless - no reasons for it. This love is a radiating, moving force. This love is intimate: it slips past my intellectual schemes and draws me gently into itself. It visits me and takes me to a space that transcends everything I know. In this place, gratitude flies on the wings of my heart and I am thankful for it all. There is no criticism, just radical acceptance. It brings clarity and shines a gentle light into the unloving parts of myself, into this little character I call Anne. There is no self-recrimination, only illumination. I'm thirsty for this love. It is the only thing that satisfies, and I drink with pleasure.

I've been in love many times, but much of the love I've sipped has been conditioned love and conditional love. This slippery, shuffling, impermanent love is more about approval than love. If someone does something I like, something that fits my models of acceptable behavior, or something I approve of, I can see and feel the love. When they behave contrary to my self-defined emotional manners, my mind goes off into a droning, judgmental, inner conversation. But all hope is not lost. When this conversation starts streaming in my head, if I stop, and tune into something deeper, there's a lifting in my spirit and the love returns. I'm not creating the love; love is not a verb at this point. It's not an efforting to be nice love; this boundless love comes though my awareness and loves through me. I become a vessel for this unlimited, ever-expanding expression when I tune into the Love Channel.

Gerald Jampolski wrote a powerful book entitled, Love is Letting Go of Fear. The title conveys the truth. When all fears are released, both conscious and subconscious fears, only love is left. What the title doesn't convey is that we can't always let go of fear. Fortunately, love is so powerful that it creeps into those dark places and shines away the fear. As A Course in Miracles says, our job is to be willing to let go; we don't have to figure out how to let go. It seems our figuring it out mechanism is fraught with dead end choices, trite sayings, and impossible tasks. Isn't it wonderful we don't have to rely on it.

The movie Love Story coined this catchy phrase, "Love is never having to say you're sorry." This phrase dripped with awe from many lips. But really, why would I not want to apologize to someone I love, if I harmed them in any way? Our cultural expectations for human love are bridled with so much dysfunction, it's no wonder we are not prepared to love one another. When it comes to love, we need assisted living and assisted relationships! Wouldn't that be great? A personal love assistant to talk us down from our conditioned responses to others.

We all want love. Life is a search for love. The words love and God are synonymous. The song Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places is another song that says it all in the title. We are looking in the wrong places. But, we don't even have to look. We only need to settle down. We need to give up the hope that someone will love us the way we need to be loved, that we will one day have someone to shower our love upon, and that the missing developmental stages of our early childhood will be restored. Any one of these things might happen, but the fulfilling of these human longings will not resolve our existential dilemma. As the old saying goes, we will not be able to solve this problem on the level in which it was created.

That's where surrender comes in. If we keep going down the endless mental mazes of consciousness, we will continue to struggle to discover what we are already immersed in, love. Our culture harbors so much guilt and shame that we don't allow ourselves a passage of innocence. It is this innocence, this childlike wonder, that delivers us to a state that supersedes the intellect. It is a state that doesn't allow control. It is a spot where we let our guts hang out and don't apologize for our existence. It resides one block beyond the dark night of the soul, and it is endless, safe, and inviting. The invitation is, "Quit trying so hard. Have some fun. Be authentic. Don't hide. Please come out and play." It is not a space many spiritual seekers want to go, because we are so darn serious. We need to give up the idea that something is missing so we can partake in what is present. What is it? It's love. It's here.

I started this article with a description of me basking in this ever-present love. I can't give directions on how to get where we already are, but I do encourage myself to make frequents stops at the inner terminal of well-being. I still my mind routinely throughout the day and listen with my heart for the ultimate love song. It sings though every cell of my body. It speaks through the voice of silence as it distracts my egoic mind from its agenda. Join me in this thrilling, expansive trip of a lifetime. Come aboard to our ultimate destiny, The Love Boat. Wouldn't it be great for us to all be in the same boat? It's a boat that sails into the present moment with gusto and it arrives before it even starts. Your ticket is waiting. All aboard.

Anne

  Quotes

Anne Quotes

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  Abundance Affirmations

Join Anne's Facebook Group

This group is a place to post uplifting affirmations and thoughts about prosperity and abundant living. Let's create a right relationship with money so that we feel comfortable about money. Let's use money as it's meant to be used, and not as a way to accumulate power or to fill a void. We don't need money to buy more stuff. We need it to create a world that works for everyone. We want to cast off old beliefs of lack and reclaim our natural state of abundance.

  Featured Product

Click here to learn about Anne's 5 books.

  What is EZosophy?

Click to learn about EZosophy.

NOTE: If you are viewing this on a cell phone, be sure to scroll to the right to see the other column.

  Healthy Living

Driven by Perfection

There are many approaches to healthy living. They range from how we deal with emotions, to what we eat. Healthy living includes movement, but most of all, healthy living is a lifestyle. That's why it's called healthy living, not healthy perfection. Within a healthy lifestyle, we can eat poor meals, skip exercise, and get angry and bent out of shape, but we can't do that frequently.

Too often, if we are driven by perfection, we get down on ourselves when we skip part of our healthy routine. The exceptionally good news is that we don't have to do everything perfectly. We can skip a meditation or two, eat a piece of pie, and be sedentary for a few days, and nothing bad will happen. While I am an avid fan of commitment, I am not an avid fan of perfectionism.

My friend Fran called it to my attention that I was a perfectionist. I vehemently denied it. As a perfectionist, I could not admit that I was a perfectionist, because that would be a flaw, and therefore I would be imperfect. I droned on about how I had given up perfectionism. "I no longer have to have a perfectly clean house and nor do I always have to put on makeup when I leave the house." I missed her point. What she was saying was that I was hard on myself when I did not do a stellar job on most everything, especially my quest for enlightenment. I had cleared up the need for my outside world to be perfect, but I still needed my behavior and intellect to be perfect.

Here are some signs of perfectionism:

• Unrealistic Standards - I did an undergraduate thesis. It was a major undertaking. When it came time to turn it in, I got an extension. It just wasn't good enough. My sister told me to turn the thing in. It was an albatross. Just let go. I turned it in with trepidation, but, to my surprise, I won a major award with my project. I guess it was good enough!
• Procrastination - Perfectionists are often so afraid of failure that they get immobilized and don't do anything until they are forced to.
• Defensiveness - Because any error in performance is so painful and scary, a perfectionist spends a great deal of time defending their behaviors or actions. Once a friend mentioned how fast I was talking. What a dance I did around that! Her remark, "I don't remember you talking that fast in the past." I had not seen her for years. I came up with all kinds of excuses.
• Overly-rigid schedule - This includes endless to do lists that don't leave any personal time for oneself or for personal friendships.
• Not being able to relax - This is different from being a workaholic. Unstructured time always feels wrong because you should be doing something more important, even if you don't know what it is.
• Can't concentrate if things aren't clean - Me, me, me, and me.

I had no idea what I was going to write this column about. I thought I would go with a flow of consciousness and that flow led me to perfectionism. I researched the topic and I may be depressed at this point! I thought my perfectionism was abated, but perusal of my habits reveals that even though I'm not as perfectionistic as I once was, I'm at least standing next to the poster child for perfectionism. I'm joking. I'm not depressed; I'm just surprised. Dang, just when I thought I was letting go. Now I am a perfectionist and I have A.D.D. Geeze.

Would you believe there are healing perfectionism coaches? They should have a flourishing practice. While I can't offer solutions, I think you'll find Your 12-Step Program to Become a Recovering Perfectionist by Dr. Laura Markham useful. If you identify with any of the traits above, you will want to take steps to get yourself out of the stringent grip of your inner perfectionist, because when you do, your life will be EZier and EZier.

If you have any healthy living tips for the newsletter, send them to me at anne@annegillis.com.

  Anne Talk

The Greatest Prosperity Affirmation

In The Greatest Prosperity Affirmation, Anne provides a simple prosperity mantra to keep you focused on abundance. Time: 2:30

  Anne Art

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  Shareables From Anne

The World's Best Weight Loss Secret

Thought Freedom

40 Days to Abundance

  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time
unless otherwise specified.

Friday, August 10, 2018
Workshop: 9:00 AM-3:00 PM EDT
"Reducing Stress by Connecting With the Body" 5 CE credits $50.00
Bring Your Lunch or Purchase for $11
Location: "The Cottage," 122 Alicia Drive, Summerville, SC
Must Register by August 7, 2018
Click for Flyer & to Register Online
To Register by Mail, send Name,
Address & Contact Info to
Anne S. Gillis, c/o Elizabeth Wann
574 Chimney Bluff Dr.
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
Make Checks Payable to Anne S. Gillis
Refund Requires 48 hrs. Notice

Sunday, August 12, 2018
Morning Service: 10:00 AM EDT
"Enlightened Wisdom"
Unity of Mt. Pleasant
Meets at Center for Holistic Healing
1470 Ben Sawyer Blvd, Suite #7
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29466

Friday, August 17, 2018
Workshop: 9:00 AM-3:00 PM EDT
"Handling Life's Biggest Challenges:
Body, Relationships, & Money"
5 CE credits $50.00
Bring Your Lunch or Purchase for $11
Location: "The Cottage," 122 Alicia Drive, Summerville, SC
Must Register by August 14, 2018
Click for Flyer & to Register Online
To Register by Mail, send Name,
Address & Contact Info to
Anne S. Gillis, c/o Elizabeth Wann
574 Chimney Bluff Dr.
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
Make Checks Payable to Anne S. Gillis
Refund Requires 48 hrs. Notice

Contact Anne to book your event:
713.922.0242 or anne@annegillis.com.