Walking in Beauty + A Bag of Poo #2

Tired of other people's $#!T? Learn how to let it go!

I love a good callback. And, the Universe has a great sense of humor — for me, this means the Universe punking me with an recurring theme involving beauty... and crap. This week, it started with the “Beauty Way” card that I pulled from my oracle card deck. Yes, I do that (no judging). The other aspect involved dealing with heaping piles of other people’s $#!T, literally and figuratively. Let’s start with the beauty though.

Walking In Beauty

In shamanic practice, the “beauty way” or “walking in beauty” is a choice we make, a two-part choice. It’s both a path and a practice.

The path is choosing to perceive beauty all around you. It’s a mindset shift to see beauty in yourself, in others, and in your life experience – all of it – what’s easy and what’s hard, the synchronicities and the challenges, the failures and the successes.

The practice is choosing to take the responsibility and action to create beauty, to be the one to bring beauty to every situation you find yourself in, bring joy, peace, and love; bring light to the darkness, calm to the noise, harmony to the chaos. Here’s what that looks like in my world.

Beauty In Prickly Things

My path of beauty is through the desert. It’s hot, dusty, and there are a lot of prickly things. Here’s the beauty: desert life is scrappy, resourceful, and resilient. I appreciate the daily reminder that we all have something that is uniquely ours to bring to world, even if not everyone sees the beauty in it. Even prickly desert things have beauty to share. Even a cactus has flowers.

One aspect of my practice includes taking a garbage bag with me on my morning desert walks, so I can pick up litter while I listen to music, audio books, or podcasts. There I was, walking in beauty, listening to The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins, and she was telling a story about walking her dog. It involves an encounter with someone who blatantly did not clean up after their dog in a public place, when I saw it…

Pausing this story for an unpaid and purely heartfelt endorsement. If The Let Them Theory is new to you, I highly recommend it. I’m only on chapter 4 and I already love it. The book makes “letting go” tangible and easy with one phrase, “let them.” With these two words we can release the stress of trying to control everything and everyone outside ourselves, including prickly situations and people. The book also weaves in choice and accountability. That’s the “let me” part. The combination is simple and empowering.

Beauty In The $#!T

OK, back to the crap. When I saw the bag of poop, I was at the part in the book where Mel had just told her own dog poop story, and I was already feeling that story hard. Earlier in the week, I picked up a bag of poop someone had apparently tried to throw out of eyesight instead of taking it to a nearby trash receptacle. Their attempt to launch it over a tree and far away was an epic fail.

Instead of being catapulted far from the sidewalk, the crap sack was impaled by a tree branch, which eventually snapped, but not before the culprit was able to make a clean escape. That $#!T hung there, in a tree, until the precise moment I was walking in beauty — at which point it fell to the sidewalk, leaving a hot bag of poop with a stick through the middle directly in my path. Cool, cool.

Fast forward a couple days, and I’m receiving another giftbag of crap. Mel was saying “…take a pause and consider, is this going to bother me in an hour? Is this going to bother me in a week? Or is this something that just really annoys me right now?” The idea being, if it’s going to bother you, do something about it. Oh, hell yeah, it would bother me. So, I picked up the poop ((again)) and escorted it to the dog park garbage can that was literally a one-minute walk from the crime scene. Breathing…

Moral Of The Story

I love a good moment of synchronicity. Could have done without the actual crap, but there’s beauty in even this experience. Sometimes if you want to walk in beauty, you have to pick up someone else’s bag of $#!T. Sometimes this is literal, other times figurative. Either way, it doesn’t need to stress us out. The crap doesn’t need to stick to us. We can let it go. Got it! Thanks, Mel. Thanks, Universe. Message received.

So, when I saw ANOTHER bag of poop on my return trip the same day. First, I nearly lost my f’ing mind. Then, I took a breath and let that go too. Props to the Universe for the callback. In choosing to laugh (and make yet another detour to the readily accessible garbage can with someone else’s bag of turds), I had a realization.

I only physically carried someone else’s crap for roughly two minutes, instead of carrying it with me energetically all day, or all week, or whenever I walk that particular path next. Mind blown! Yes, I would rather everyone be accountable for their own $#!T, and yes, I also know that’s totally out of my control. But, there’s beauty, peace, and power in accepting reality for what it is and choosing a path forward that’s worthy of our time and energy.

Beauty In Letting Go

Assuming we’re not in an actual emergency, and we’re just dealing with something we don’t like, here’s what we CAN do, in the moment, to let that $#!T go and reduce the load we’re carrying:

1. Notice: We can become more aware of the thoughts and emotions that come up for us in stressful situations. We can observe when our body’s stress response kicks in.

2. Reset: We can’t control our body’s automatic response to stress, but we can reset it when we pause, take a few deep breaths, and decide to allow the situation to be exactly what it is. Stop fighting reality and let it be. Let it go.

3. Respond Well: We can choose to focus on what really matters to us, our values, and what we can control, our response. We can decide not to feed the thoughts we know stress us out. And, we can act in a way that makes us proud of ourselves.

There’s an incredible freedom that comes from simply letting others own what they think, say, do, believe, and feel. None of that is ours. We can try to understand. We can be compassionate. But, we can’t control. We only stress ourselves out when we try! When we notice our own stress rising up, take a moment to reset, and respond in a way that honors our values, we’re better able to walk in beauty. We can begin to see and appreciate the beauty all around us. We can choose to bring beauty to all situations. And, we can carry our own crap, literally and figuratively.

More to Explore!

Hi, I'm Amber, founder of Spirit Stone Wellness. Thank you for reading the blog! For more on stress management and how to let go, check out the first part of this unusual and hopefully complete series: Walking In Beauty + A Bag of Poo.

If you’re looking for wellness suggestions to incorporate into your work day, feel free to download this free Wellness at Work Resource Guide. If you’re interested in going deeper, I have a program called The PATH of Well-Being. If you’re feeling stuck, burned out, or your inner voice is telling you something needs to change, this might be for you. Whether we work together (or not), if you’re feeling more than a healthy level of stress, please let this be a gentle wakeup call to prioritize your well-being (for reals). My heartfelt wish for you and everyone reading this is that you enjoy more ease and lightness and you find your path to living, working, and BEING well.

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