Author: Amanda Viviers

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Embracing Slow

Be brave. Be strong. Don’t give up.

Expect God to get here soon.

Psalm 31: 24

It is 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I am still in my pajama’s. Today I declared ground zero for my family and called everyone in sick. It doesn’t happen often but I know when the signs are flaring and my littles needed a free-flowing home day.

I picked up my recent knitting work in progress and found a way through the frustration of winding down. I have just come off the back of speaking five times in four days and my mind was whirling.

I often struggle with the need to please others. Thinking that my meeting a need will be a quick fix to the ache lying beneath. Questioning my life’s meaning, purpose and fulfilment. The lie that whispers in our ear telling us if we do more, be more and have more then we will win the race.

Maybe we are afraid of the mundane because society continually promotes success as “escaping our every day”. Instagram taunts if we have a perfect holiday, body, car, boat or experience then happiness is guaranteed.

What if the everyday ordinary was where the treasure lies?

What if the possibility of happiness and peace is unearthed in the mundane?

When I read Psalm 31 telling me to be brave, be strong and to not give up, I immediately lean towards the hope in my future. However, I am realising that bravery is required most often to say no to that which is distracting and yes to our best practice in the mundane.

Prayer

Encouragement

Friendship

Showing Up

Listening

Patience

The list goes on and on.

How we uncover our character in the mundane is the truest walk of freedom in each and every one of our lives. When we spend our days trying to escape our every day, we will always lean toward striving, hustling and edge towards a place of exhaustion.

Over these next 40 days, Em Hazeldean and I will be unpacking our wrestle with embracing slow. Today begins the season of Lent and it is a call towards the simple and present.

Psalm 31: 3-5

You’re my cave to hide in,
    my cliff to climb.
Be my safe leader,
    be my true mountain guide.
Free me from hidden traps;
    I want to hide in you.
I’ve put my life in your hands.
    You won’t drop me,
    you’ll never let me down.

My desire is when I slow and face my present, remembering the beauty that I find in His presence. A cave of communion, the direction from One who has walked before and my rescuer who is present when no one else is.

Over this journey of devotion, I am limiting my time with technology and leaning my ear towards his soft whisper asking me to walk in His steps and ways.

Dear Lord,

I pray for every person whose eyes flick across these words and I ask you to bring a blessing of hope and life. May our hearts slow to your beat and our ears incline to your voice. Where there is stress, pardon. Where this is hurt, healing. Where there is sadness, comfort. Where there is exhaustion, peace. Help us to find our hope and strength in you. Remembering that everything we face in the mundane is but a whisper in light of eternity.

Embracing Slow

Amen.

 

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Familiarity breeds contempt

The vulnerability explosion online has been a welcome refuge to the filtered and stretching of reality. However, I have realised in the midst of the honesty moments online familiarity is breeding contempt.

We have become familiar with people being honest.

We have become familiar with people feeling deeply.

And in the midst of that familiarity, it is breeding apathy.

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

William Bernbach

I have noticed that it is easier to assume what is happening in my life by my online interactions rather than sitting and having face to face conversations. The smiley photos of my children, the highlight reel and quick inspiration quotes can help us quickly check in to each other’s worlds but it also enables quick assumptions. It can make us feel falsely connected and at the end of the interaction slowly and sadly we become more and more disconnected.

Do you feel unseen by the world?
Do you feel alone?

Over the Christmas period here in Perth, Australia I took a sabbatical from social media. I left my phone at home. I deleted apps from my device and I rested into the rhythm of a new year. I pulled out my book New Days and began to write. I explored my thoughts without the comparison to others. I expressed myself in a way that was honest and raw not worrying what others had to say. I spent time reflecting and retreating from the world. Here are three lessons I learned whilst I switched off over the summer.

Be More Intentional

In the midst of my sabbath from online familiarity, I decided that year I want to be more intentional about the way that I interacted online. There is an amazing app called In the Moment that shows you how often you are on apps and your phone. This week I asked my accountability partner to check my activity on my phone and my goal is only two hours per day.

Use Facetime More Than Messanger

Messanger is easy and so are texts, but they don’t convey emotion or context. Each time I start to text and it turns into a marathon, I stop the stream and say let’s facetime. Also with friends and family, I have been scheduling the time to video call rather than text across the week. It is an awesome way to connect, using the technology with wisdom but finding ways to connect more effectively.

Stop The Scroll

I am learning to stop the scroll. Each and every time I find myself down rabbit holes of scrolling. I switch off my phone and go and pick up a book. Reading more intentionally has really helped me exit from the chewing gum of the mind that is found in the scroll.

What are your tips?

I’d love to learn how you are facing this epidemic in our world. Maybe your social media world has disconnected you more than you realise and familiarity with each others ideas, stories and life has atrophied.

Let’s encourage one another to live more connected in 2018.

Come and join my online accountability group YOUR GOALS WITH AMANDA VIVIERS and together let’s live with more intention.

Amanda Viviers

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Learning to love me better

#dateyoselfie

“Beauty is when you can appreciate yourself. When you love yourself, that’s when you’re most beautiful.”

Zoe Kravitz

Motherhood has the capacity to silence you like nothing else. As February unfolds I have realised that there is a whole heap of pent-up emotion from dealing with negotiating toddlers and children for weeks upon end. We are fresh out of school holidays here and I am fresh out of perspective.

As I look out across my week it would be easy for me to blame everyone else for the way I feel. Expectations unmet, time poor and emotions unravelled.

The only person I can turn the camera onto is myself. We cannot change others and unless we learn to communicate our needs and breathe in deep the trust gap we will be constantly disappointed.

Then enter Valentines Day. Am I loved? Who cares about me? Will I be noticed?

As we step into the week of valentines it is easy to have unmet expectations from our partners. One of the best things you can do for your relationship is to learn to love yourself better.

We need to learn to love us!

We need to find our voice to discover our needs!

We need to explore what makes us smile!

If you can learn to love yourself and all the flaws, you can love other people so much better. And that makes you so happy.

Kristin Chenoweth

Many years, especially when I was single I often found myself in a space where my expectations remained unmet. Unfortunately, we can carry the disappointment of these seasons into our present reality and we become our own worst enemy. Dear Single Self, helped me unpack those expectations and discover a way to date myself.

The way that we speak to ourselves, the walls we build in our relationships and the unspoken disappointment.

Here are six lessons I have learnt about loving myself better.

6 tips for learning to love yourself better

  1. Be willing to feel pain and take responsibility for your feelings.

  2. Sit in a place of growth, allowing yourself to learn.

  3. Journal to find what you are telling yourself that is not true.

  4. Chat with a friend to discover what makes you smile.

  5. Make time to do what you learnt in step 4.

  6. Celebrate your growth and note your growth leaps.

I’d love to chat more with you over in my online facebook group “Your Goals with Amanda Viviers”. Let’s help one another to date ourselves and love the closest person to us; you.

Amanda Viviers

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The tightrope of trust

One of the most endearing and terrifying questions a partner can whisper is “Babe, do you trust me?”

That terror-filled moment when an aeroplane takes off or the fear that explodes in your heart as the roller coaster descends comes somewhat close to this moment in any relationship. Next thing you’re lost in the details of wedding preparation. The decisions, the expectations and the angst can test even the closest relationship.

One of the greatest lessons I have learnt in marriage is to find peace in the midst of difference. Gracing each other with the opportunity to grow together as a couple no matter what happens. Seasons change as your marriage unfolds and each new day brings a new set of challenges. Not only do we need to learn to communicate and trust one another but bring a village of people around us to bring wisdom and strength.

When my partner and I first lived together, we argued endlessly about the placement of our artwork. We lived in a beautiful yet tiny Hawaiian beach shack. After the thank-you cards had been sent and the gifts put away the journey began to find a style that suited both of our very diverse tastes.

My style could be described as eclectic, repurposed and colourful. My new husband’s preference was minimalist, monochrome and modern. This journey became the greatest lesson of trust in our newly formed family. Little by little, we learned to understand and love each other’s quirks and difference. Understanding when we each made a choice that was different to one another, it wasn’t bad or good, just different.

This is what makes trust such an unusual part of marriage. Every person has a different perspective and the moments that have impacted the preferences that we now hold as our own opinion are valid.

Interior design may have been a pressing point of conflict in our early years of marriage but it highlighted something that I never realised has the opportunity to be a breaking point in many marriages. Finding a way to trust people in the midst of diversity. It is a lesson many people do not surrender to and the ensuing conflict can be heartbreaking.

It is easy to gather around people who think like you and have similar tastes, thoughts and cultural preferences. What about those who think very differently to you? How can you find a way to thrive in the midst of diversity?

Learning to allow one another to have different opinions and preference is the beginning point of the tightrope held between people of trust. Being able to hold that tension tight between one another and learning to walk along the beauty oƒ complexity.

The language of love is immersed in moments where trust is tested. Without opportunities to stretch these muscles of opportunity between one another, to allow each other grace, beauty and autonomy.

These early years of discovery became a foundation of our family culture. Today we delight in renovating and coming up with a mix of both our styles. It has impacted every area of our life especially now our family has grown to a group of four very different individuals. Being able to accommodate opposing thoughts, opinions and personalities to thrive under one roof.

Lessons learnt from something so simple have reverberated out across the village we need so deeply to raise our family with strength. We have learnt as a family, the greatest way we can exist together is to exist within a community and find people that want to learn from one another.

When we became parents for the first time we realised that we needed help. The diversity that we found in parenting was not only confusing but asked us to trust the experience of those who had gone before us. We had to walk that tightrope again and ask family members, friends and neighbours to hold parts of our life.

Have you ever walked a season where you needed to trust someone?

Each and every one of us will go through seasons of stress and change, maybe emotional tiredness or great success. When these seasons come and go, the greatest gift we can give to ourselves is to learn to trust another to bring a community to the core of our personal ecosystem. To be able to do this with strength and courage, however, the beginning point is learning to allow one another to thrive within the deep chasm of our own personal experiences, strengths and weaknesses.

Who could have thought that the placement of artwork in our little beach could be the beginning of something so formative in our marriage?

Next time you find yourself conflicting with your partner about something, it could just be the beginning of a beautiful awakening.

Amanda Viviers is an Author, Speaker and Novice Mum. Her latest book New Days can be found here

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How to live a more satisfied 2018

How to live a more satisfied life

We are right on the precipice of a New Year and as 2018 comes to fruition, there is something very powerful about setting intentions and goals. We all understand the hope of a New Year, that is why we count down the evening, we accept invitations to friends parties and we hope tomorrow will be better. Unfortunately though, where we get stuck is dealing with the disappointment when life doesn’t go the way we planned.

Failure often holds us captive and we routinely blame it on unmet expectations. Living a deeply satisfied life often is coupled with living a life of intention. It is true that when you hope for something and it doesn’t plan out the way we expect it can be filled with resentment and disappointment, but living a life where we don’t review, let go and plan also asks that we surrender to monotony and apathy.

This year, what if you allowed yourself to dream again?

This year, what if you learnt lessons through failure rather than trapped by it?

This year, what if you accepted that places of your life that bring you unhappiness and acknowledge that is a very normal part of everyday life?

I have created a pro forma to help you write and let go this New Year. It is called New Days and it is available to download directly to your inbox, to print out and retreat this New Year. $9.95 AU, direct download available.

Happy New Year

Amanda Viviers