Horse Hippie’s Morning Mantras

Morning Mantra: "Faith is not knowing how it will happen, but believing it will."  My favorite author/guru Anne Lamott did a piece recently about faith, which is one of her favorite topics.  It made me think about what faith means to me, how it has shown up in my life. Faith doesn't take away the problem, it takes you through it, because it gives you strength when you can't fin...

Morning Mantra: “Pause. Take a breath. The world will keep spinning, but for now, you don’t have to.” Anxiety is a tough one. It makes it feel like your body isn’t safe, even when you know it is just sending off false alarms.  You feel like you can’t sit with the emotion without trying to push it away. But sitting with the feeling of anxiety is an opportunity to practice recognizing uncomfortable...

Morning Mantra: “What you do makes a difference, you just have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” It’s easy to think you don’t make a difference in a world of social media where we value people having huge followings and 1000’s of likes.  But this quote by my hero, Jane Goodall, reminds you that your impact on other people is bigger than you think.  Someone still giggles when the...

Morning Mantra: "Choose people that choose you." Over the years I have had a few relationships with people I love that were really difficult.  No matter how hard I tried they didn't care enough to try to fix and heal what was broken. I used to think more patience would fix it.  I used to think I could earn care by overdelivering love.  I thought if I apologized faster, spoke gentler...

Morning Mantra: “Stay where your heart smiles.” You know the feeling. The one where you can swear your heart is happy. It’s not a place, a person, or a thing. It’s a habit. It’s the habit of finding your joy, even when it’s hiding from you. It’s a state of mind that you cultivate. Of course, you might think the reason you are happy is a certain person, being at a certain place, or doing a certain...

Morning Mantra: "Don't be afraid to start over again. This time, you are not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience." Just because the past didn't turn out like you had hoped, doesn't mean the future won't. Go ahead and try again.  You are better equipped this time, you know what works, and what doesn't. You know what brings you joy, and what...

Morning Mantra: “Healing is not the absence of the storm. Healing is learning how to ride it.” It’s okay if you thought you were over it but it hits you all over again. It’s okay to fall apart even after you thought you had moved on. Don’t give up, don’t give into it. Healing is messy. Healing is a process of learning how to accept everything but picking the best.  It’s a daily choice to make peac...

Morning Mantra: "Today is going to be a great day!" Today is rainy and cold.  The first real taste of the weather to come.  I could be bummed about it, or I can try and find the glimmers of what's good about it. So I choose to look for the good.  I refuse to have a bad day despite the change in plans due to the weather.  I have raincoats, muck boots and umbrellas.  My horse has a ni...

Morning Mantra: "Don't be absent from your own life." I wish I could tell my 20-year-old self what I now believe is the most important thing in life. I would tell her, with all my heart, just to be present and open to the moment that is unfolding before you. Because ultimately, your life is made up of moments. So don’t miss them by being lost in the past or anticipating the future....

Morning Mantra: "Live life with more 'I can't believe I did this!' instead of 'I should of done it.' " In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make. Overtime people regret what they didn’t do more than what they did do. Regrets of inaction are far more common than reg...

Morning Mantra: “Be Yourself.  People don’t have to like you and you don’t have to care.” No one else’s opinion should matter more than your own. Do YOU like yourself? Do YOU think you are living a good life? That’s what matters. If you answered “No” to either of these, spend some time contemplating ways to change that. If you are being yourself, thinking for yourself, and acting from those though...

Morning Mantra: "Something cool is going to happen for me today." Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it better. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. So, always believe something wonderful is going to happen. S...

Morning Mantra: “The more you do, the more you fail.  The more you fail, the more you learn.  The more you learn, the better you get.” I’d rather fail over and over trying to do what I love, than settle. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, they are part of the human experience.  Just acknowledge them, take responsibility for them, and learn from them. Then try again. What is the point of...

Morning Mantra: “Life isn’t always about finding shelter from the storm, sometimes it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” The storms of life come and go. Some come to disrupt your life, forcing change. Some come to clear the path to a different direction.  When you come out of a storm you won’t be the same person. That’s what the storm is all about. You can either use the rain to grow and lear...

Morning Mantra: "Listen and silent are spelled with the same letters."    Listening is an art that requires attention over talent,  spirit over ego, and others over self.  One of the biggest communication problems we can have is that we don’t listen to understand, we listen to reply. It’s one thing to listen to someone when they speak, but is another thing to truly hear what they are say...

Morning Mantra: “Life is tough my darling, but so are you.” If you are going to accept anything in life it should be that it is hard. We resist life when we think it is always going to be butterflies and rainbows. When we resist, we live in a state of dissatisfaction.  Accepting that life is hard allows you to move through the resistance to a place of peace amid the chaos.  This doesn’t mean you d...

Morning Mantra: "I need to give myself more credit for how hard I'm trying." Give yourself more credit.  You’re trying to grow while you heal.  You’re trying to forgive while you’re trying to grieve.  You’re trying to search while you’re trying to let go.  You’re trying to love others while remembering how to love yourself.  And you’re doing the best you can.  And that’s enough so g...

Morning Mantra: “Happiness is a feeling created within you, by you.” Happiness is not what your house looks like, but how you love the people within it. Happiness is not achieving success by a certain age, but finding something you love to do so much that time seems to disappear. Happiness isn’t feeling like you are admired by others, but feeling at peace within your own skin unconcerned by how yo...

Morning Mantra: “You have to put up with some rain to get the rainbow.” Life is interesting in the way you must experience the negative to appreciate the positive. We all want to avoid anything negative or unpleasant, but when you think about it, you’d have nothing to compare to if you never experienced the opposite. You must experience pain to understand compassion. You must experience how cruel...

Morning Mantra: “You are deserving of harmony, serenity, and happiness always.” Lead a life of your own design, on your own terms, not one that others or the environment have scripted for you. Let go, make room, and breathe. Be it people or things, if they don’t hold positive space in your heart or in your thoughts, you can let them go.  You need to lift that weight, sever those cords, free yourse...

Morning Mantra: "Peace arrives the moment you stop forcing life to unfold on your timeline." You don’t have to control every detail of your life. You don’t have to chase what’s already making its way to you. Learn to let go and let things flow to you. The universe has a way of aligning things exactly when they’re meant to happen. And when you finally let go, you make room for the magic t...

Morning Mantra: "Sometimes just being there for someone can bring hope when all seems hopeless." If you’re a fixer like me, you think helping always has to be a grand gesture or solving someone’s problems, when all they really need most times is just to know that someone cares. It's difficult for me to remember that people don’t always need advice. Sometimes all they really need is...

Morning Mantra: "What's going to happen will or will not happen whether you worry about it or not." Worry tricks you into believing control will save you. But the truth is, freedom is found in release. Worry tells you that if you plan harder, hold tighter, anticipate every outcome, you’ll finally be safe. That if you grip strong enough, nothing will fall apart. But life has never wo...

Morning Mantra: "We are what we repeatedly do." Your daily rituals are not small things. Every thought you think, every emotion you allow, every piece of media you consume, every environment you place yourself in are quiet conversations you have with your future self.  None of it’s just passing time, it’s all laying bricks in the foundation of you. Of who you are and who you are becoming...

Morning Mantra: "Closure is a choice not a conversation." Sometimes you just have to be done. Not mad. Not upset. Just done. The only closure you really need is the understanding that you deserve better.  Their lack of respect was the closure.  Their lack of apology was the closure.  Their lack of care was the closure.  Their lack of accountability was the closure.  Their lack of honesty...