It’s a sunny day on the island, and though bird songs are always plentiful here, they seem to have increased tenfold over the last month.

Riotous melodies and chimerical chirps accompany these words, reminding me to find the joy in day.

It has come to my attention lately, that I’m very good at getting ahead of myself in life. Admittedly some of this is just in my make-up: I’m a Leo visionary with plenty of fire energy to back up those visions. I’m wired to look ahead, dream, and act.

Add to that my life choice to start over at mid-life on an island, and it’s impossible not to wonder about the future. How will things look? How will things turn out? Where will I be a year from now and how will that come to pass?

These are normal questions to ask. Since my future was a blank page when I moved to the island in 2017, of course I wonder how that page will eventually fill up and what other new chapters it will lead to!

But I keep learning the lesson that when I get too wrapped up in the questions of the future, I am missing out on the gifts of the present and missing out on the opportunity to show up in my life today and find the joy of now.

So, with that on my mind and heart, I decided to make May’s Your Heart Magic about exploring the concept of showing up.

Because if we’re not showing up, then we are missing out on the gloss and grist that is found within the in-between seams of our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with our life.

And that’s the stuff that makes like golden.

It’s where we find our personal meaning and jewels of insight. It’s where we learn to do our soul work and grow our relationship with our inner world.

If we are too focused on what’s ahead of us in life, we miss valuable opportunities to focus on what’s going on inside of us right now. So, with that in mine, let’s talk about what it means to show up.

There’s a lot of ways to show up in our lives, but in keeping with my current heart-lessons on being present with myself, I’m going to focus on how this applies to our relationship with self.

To make this all deliciously succinct and soulfully yummy, here’s the three beautiful acts of being I believe we need in order to fully show up for our beautiful selves:

1. Being present with ourselves by making space to drop inside of ourselves and listen.

2. Being willing to examine whatever is coming up, so we can respond with conscious intent.

3. Being open to grappling with our glitter and our grit and finding inner growth.

First, I believe showing up is about being present in our lives.

Admittedly there are days that showing up means getting out of bed and just getting life done! But in the bigger picture, I believe we need to create sacred spaces where we can frequently drop into our hearts and listen.

Listen to what we’re feeling. Listen to our inner wisdom. Observe our language of heart and inner truth.

It is only in making space to go within that we are able to develop an awareness of what we’re feeling, what inner shifts we are experiencing, and where we are at in our relationship with our self, so we can navigate life’s ebbs and flows.

Next, we have to be willing to work with whatever is coming up.

Observe it. Examine it. Make space for it. Invite it in. Learn from it. Wrestle with it. Try and understand it. Take it out and buy it a grilled cheese and fries.

There is no right or wrong to inner work, for our inner work is sacred and highly unique to who we are. But we can open ourselves up or close ourselves off to our inner wisdom and inner voice.

Which is why I believe inner growth starts with willingness. When we are willing to work with what comes up, we allow our own process of self to organically unfold without trying to fix, force, or be something other than exactly who we are.

When we do that, we are open to honest examination and better able to respond to ourselves with conscious intent.

Last, is the unglamorous work of grappling with the glitter and grit.

This can be sticky, messy and uncertain. But it is only through awkwardly grappling that we find our growth. We find insights, we give ourselves permission not to know, and and we stay open to finding out.

We find the diamonds in the mud and figure out how to work through a rose’s thorns, so we come to see the beauty of the rose’s whole.

We show up for ourselves when we work through our own thorn’s and come to see the beauty in the whole of our being.

When we do that, we make space for the full of our experience, so we are not afraid to show up, listen, learn, and evolve our heart wisdom.

A cluster of birds just tweeted a bluesy jam as I wrote those last words.

It was as if they were saying: Yes, dear humans, yes. Just be in the full of your experience, let it be what it is, and learn to find the music in every note.

That is how you find the joy in the day.

For today that means being present with myself and listening to my heart’s voice.

This morning, when I asked my heart, “how can I show up for you today,” her wisdom was crystal clear.

Be present. Listen. Make art. Write. Breathe your being into Your Heart Magic so you’re fully present in your words.

Others can wait. Others will have to wait. You can’t always be about the other and also be about you.

Take this grace space of Saturday and find joy and pleasure. Make peace with where you’re at and the ongoing nebula that is the future. Go find a mountain and sit on top of it. Be romanced by the earth and romance it straight back.

Let your notes be a jam, or the blues, or a symphony, or a pop song, or a single key off-beat and off-tune.

It doesn’t matter, dear soul, as long as it’s the truest reflection of you and your truth.