“Take the risk of optimism,”  Simon Sinek.  I spent most of my life depressed and anxious and then anxious and depressed.  I would swing from, “I can’t believe I did that,” to “Why didn’t I do that?” in the course of a day and always regret any move I made.  I found flaw with everything I did if it wasn’t perfect and I wouldn’t move unless I could do it perfectly.  I thought that was the goal in life.  The reality is that it kept me stuck in the exact same spot, running around showing people how perfect I was as they all moved forward in their lives.  You can’t master one level of your life and expect it to take you to the top.  The lonelier I got running my circle, the more the weight of proving myself buried me into the rut of that path, the more difficult it was to tell myself I had the ability to step out and move forward myself: I just needed to let go of the need to prove and I had to learn to believe that things could get better.

Like most of these stories, it starts the same way: I was tired of pretty much everything and I was terrified of sending the rest of my life like that.  I didn’t know how to make myself feel good because feeling good was never a priority; being good and doing what others needed is what mattered.  I witnessed my mother descend into a level of anger so deep that her foundation of good nearly evaporated.  She seethed anger all with a smile on her face.  She resented anyone who did something with their lives.  She sat on the sidelines and became their cheerleader, even their stepping stone while they created the life they wanted and she stood still.  And I felt myself doing exactly the same thing.  That’s when I realized this wasn’t Cinderella where some hero was going to give me everything I wanted for sacrificing my life for those who never asked: I offered it willingly, hoping they would return the favor.  If I gave it away, I could take it back.

That became the initial goal: taking my life back.  In order to do that I needed to be the person I wanted to be.  I had to learn to be my own hero and in order to do THAT, I needed to put away the weight of what I thought I was supposed to do.  I needed to understand that I had the ability and the responsibility to create what I wanted. And as simple as it is, I needed to learn to feel good.  Feeling good for me started with understanding that things could be different.  Embracing my personal power and relishing in the creation of it—not the perfecting of it.  Seeing what I was able to do made me hopeful for what I could do next.  THAT is optimism.

Optimism is a powerful place to work from. It allows you to see possibilities you’ve blocked from yourself with old beliefs.  What we believe isn’t always true, yet the things we tell ourselves often become our beliefs.  While it is easy to fall into the patterns of negative thoughts, the positive thoughts are what carry us.  Often we feel like being optimistic is a pipe dream when in reality, it sets us on a path toward something greater than what we even thought possible. 

“You are born and then you die, but in between you can do anything you want.  It’s society that creates rules for us, but you can break out of that,” Zola Jesus.  We spoke about learning to swim and not half-assing the effort on Saturday.  Aside from the possibly played out metaphor on oceans, the point stands that people will always give you reasons to NOT do what you want to.  When we forget our personal power we are far easier to control.  We are malleable and we will conform to the group for the sake of acceptance rather than stand out for the sake of our soul.  Some people are able to keep that inner voice quiet, the one that tells us there is more to the story than what we are “allowed” to do.  But when we stifle that voice a little part of us dies.

The human machine is incredibly powerful.  We have a mind that is capable of seeing the potential in raw materials around us and then executing it and making a vision reality.  Taking the chance to do what we really want means separating from the herd.  While we are safer in numbers (in some cases) the reward is in learning to be self-sufficient.  I’m not suggesting we are better off alone—I’m saying that we are capable of far more than we think and we won’t learn to build that trust in ourselves if we don’t step away from what we are told to do.     

We are given a glorious opportunity to create and make life better and to have fun and experience joy when we are granted life.  Especially in this day and age.  We may not see it because of how things have gone the last few years, but the truth is THIS is the golden opportunity.  Systems aren’t meant to run forever.  We create something that runs like a machine, designed to keep us all on the same track but we soon learn that it doesn’t work for everyone.  We’ve been trained to internalize it, to believe that we are wrong if we aren’t able to keep up with what we are told to want, to believe wanting something different is wrong.  We are NOT wrong—and the last few years are the evidence that the system isn’t working for many of us any more.  Nothing is wrong with us: our systems are failing.

Right now we have the opportunity to create something else.  We have the chance to step into our personal power and create something new.  It doesn’t have to be anything life-altering—it just has to be real.  I’ve said it before that the more people see you doing what is right for you and thriving in your own skin, the easier it will be for them to do the same.  It’s so simple yet so complex.  We aren’t meant to live in a box when we have the whole world to explore.  Not only that but we were given the tools to advance even further.  And the timing just so happens to allow us to go get any of the raw materials we need.  There is no reason to not take advantage of it. 

There’s a saying that says something along the lines of asking for a cake but we get mad when we are handed eggs, flour, sugar, butter, and vanilla.  We think we aren’t getting what we want because we are taught that the end result is the goal and not how to work with the materials.  We are also taught that if the cake we make looks different from our neighbors that it’s somehow wrong.  We forget that sometimes someone can build a gorgeous masterpiece of a cake but it will taste like crap.  It doesn’t matter what it looks like if it isn’t functional.  So take the chance and do what you want.  It won’t be pretty at first, but it will get you closer to what you want.

Today I am grateful for my body.  I put myself through the wringer this weekend for no other reason than I got caught up in the moment.  I’m human and I made some bad decisions and my body is definitely not used to that.  I didn’t do anything to excess but I still did more than I should have.  I literally heard my mind telling me two things at the same time: do it and don’t do it and all the while the logical portion of my brain was trying to tell me to make the right decision.  The point through all this vagueness is that my body is resilient even if the mind is still weak in some areas and I am grateful to make better choices.

Today I am grateful for my health and the health of my family.  Simply put, the most valuable asset we have is our health and it is up to us to invest in that as often and as much as possible.  I strive to be a better example of that for my family.  My husband and I have been together for so long that it’s really easy for us to fall into old patterns of the things we used to do when we were kids—but we are no longer 17 years old.  We are so fortunate that we have the ability to make healthier decisions and the means to actual live a healthier lifestyle—there are no more excuses.

Today I am grateful for slowing down.  I have been pushing at a pace that I can’t keep up with, doing things I don’t really want to be doing.  My mind is always somewhere else and never where I am.  I have been driving myself crazy trying to do everything all at once on top of getting the new house set up.  I’ve spoken to a couple of people who have been in their homes for over a year and they still have boxes of stuff and we have only been here three weeks.  My compulsion has been really bad and we are nearly done setting up but I’ve been fixating on “getting done” for the last three weeks.  I have been so scatter brained that I’ve forgotten everything from my phone to my water to the letters we needed to update our information all in the process of using these things.  I have no choice but to slow down because the self-inflicted chaos is now making its way into other areas.  I woke up today and I know I need to take a real break.

Today I am grateful for my mind.  I know I just mentioned how scatter-brained I’ve been but I need to express gratitude for the fact that I’m still able to function.  It may not be at the level I want (and I truly do have issues following conversations now because I’m so unfocused) but I have a mind that is constantly keeping me moving and helping me work things out.  I need to give it credit for pushing me through as much as it has.  It has held on and continued to stay with me to the best of its ability.  It’s just tired now.   

Today I am grateful for the pause—again.  I’ve had a few revelations over the last few weeks, many of which I’ve shared.  Mainly I’ve realized how I need to reprioritize what is really important to me and that I need to stick with what I’ve said I will do.  I know I’m not alone when I say being in the middle of transition isn’t easy because there are still facets you need from your old life because the fledgling start of your new life isn’t strong enough to hold on yet, it hasn’t taken root.  At the same time, I know I can do more but I’m torn because there are only so many hours in the day and I don’t want to lose time with my son or my family.  So I’ve been floundering, dipping my toes in, and trying to find a way to have it all at once.  A 9-5, a side business, time with my son, my husband, and still fit in self-care.  I know something has to give but it isn’t an easy decision.  So I’m taking my time and I’m going to become more strategic.  It isn’t an all or none, it is a matter of going after what needs to come first.

Today I am grateful to communicate.  I’ve been feeling really off and overwhelmed lately and I haven’t been the easiest person to be around.  I know exactly where it has been coming from.  While I haven’t been able to curb all of my outbursts, I am proud I’ve been able to communicate that I know where the issue really comes from.  I’m actually thrilled by the change of moving to this house, but I’m truly uncomfortable that I’m not settled yet.  I know it’s only been three weeks so I’m trying to stay level, I’m just overwhelmed by the amount that we still have to do.  I guess that is all part of home ownership and I’m willing to take it.  I just have to learn to adapt.  Until then all I can do is continue to express where my discomfort lies and try to be more accommodating and accepting of what is going on.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

“Don’t half-ass it; you won’t have to wonder if the outcome would have been different,” Matthew McConaughey.  I spoke the other week about thinking I had been putting in enough effort and learning that I HADN’T.  I danced on the edges of the things I wanted to do, never committing to what I wanted to build, sticking with the safe route and doing what I was told.  Then I would put in a little effort and expect big results.  That my friends is not how it works.  Once I had my ass physically handed to me—and not only survived, but thrived, I learned that I need to up my game on so many levels. 

We live within self-imposed as well as societal limitations and develop these beliefs about what we can and can’t do early on.  The societal beliefs are designed to keep us in line and the self-imposed ones are the result of any number of our fears.  We become so afraid of expressing our identities because we feel we will either be ostracized or ridiculed that we give up the sense of who we are in favor of who we are told to be.  Then we get glimpses of what we want to do and, for many of us, we simply shake our heads and say, “That isn’t meant for me,” and keep our heads down and stay within the confines we’ve created.  For some of us we may start to put some toes out of line because we’re curious and we see it feels good but if it doesn’t all fall into place immediately we feel it isn’t for us and we revert back.  For some, like me, we repeat this dipping of toes and running away for years.

I knew I wanted to take bigger steps into the ocean because staying on the shore felt awful.  I could see my life happening to me and I felt myself making decisions like a trained monkey rather than as a mature adult with life experience.  But I was naïve on the work it takes to fully bring that vision of life to actual life.  I believed that if we wanted something it would just happen if we took those baby steps.  I never realized that we would have to keep walking into the ocean until we couldn’t feel the floor anymore.  That I might have to swim in order to get what I wanted.  So I kept half-assing the steps I took believing it was enough and someone would build a ship for me. That is also not how it works my friends.  You have to dive all the way in and learn to use the muscles you’ve never used before—full body commitment with arms flailing and legs kicking until you get it.  You may choke on some water but you can’t learn without fully committing yourself to the effort. You’ll learn to keep your mouth closed and start moving your body through the water.

See, when we start getting curious about dipping our toes we start to remember the fear messages about staying on the shore.  They won’t even tell you that we have the ability to swim, they just tell you about the sharks and the swells and the tides rather than showing you how to float and eventually move through the water.  This is by design because they want you to serve their purpose, not your own.  They want us to forget our power because we are far easier to control when we are on dry land than when we are out to sea.  What they say is true: we may sink, we may get pulled under, and yes there are much bigger fish than us out there.  But we have personal strength that will carry us as far as we need to go and we have the ingenuity to build a system to carry us even further if we need to.  We just have to remember our power and we have to take the time to learn how to do it.        

When we want change we will have to take the big leap and dive all the way in.  We will have to cut away what we thought we knew and adopt new routines and new beliefs that match the life we are trying to create.  If we want to be someone who gets something done then we need to learn to be someone who does something.  Imperfect or disastrous, we have to learn that the actions we take will give us the foundation of who we want to be.  We can’t start our own businesses if we stay stuck at our 9-5s or if we don’t do the research on how to run a business.  That is a scary thing when we turn away from the perceived security we are shown working for someone else. But the freedom we garner by supporting ourselves is unlike anything else.  Not only can you swim and support yourself, soon you’ll find you’re changing the tide.

“You need to hang out with people who fit your future, not your past.” Via wealth.  I’ve had the same core group of friends for over 30 years.  I consider myself fortunate to have built that kind of relationship with these people.  But as we have grown older and gone our separate ways, we aren’t as close as we were.  And that is ok.  It is timely and expected, quite frankly.  I still have love for them, but that isn’t who I am any more.  And it isn’t who they are, either. 

I romanticized having long term relationships and sticking with people no matter what.  I grew up with parents who had the same friends since early adulthood and that is how I thought it was meant to be.  But that isn’t always what works and it isn’t always what is healthy or needed.  There were parts of my life that I certainly had fun, but that isn’t how I have fun now.  One of them still does.  She is successful in her own right, but her personal life still holds those remnants of the days we used to get messed up together.  That no longer serves me.

Tearing the emotional band-aid off of our connection hurt, but not as much as I thought it would.  I saw quotes about your net worth being your network and saw very quickly that the people I loved weren’t really contributing to what I was building.  They were more interested in repeating the same shenanigans we did when we were kids.  Telling the same story over and over again doesn’t turn the page.  And I felt a deep calling in my soul that I needed to move forward.  I couldn’t do it anymore.

I’ve always been afraid to do things on my own. I had this underlying fear that if things got really hard I wouldn’t be able to get past them by myself.  So I developed a habit of people pleasing and keeping toxic people around me because it felt familiar and secure.  Soon my own environment began to stink.  I started to clean up my own space—and that requires a lot of mental work and radical honesty.  It was worth every stinking moment, every tear, every realization of my responsibility to create the person I said I was.

That fear of my inability to do things on my own had been a crutch for too long.  I’ve proven to myself over and over again that I am able.  Letting people tell me other wise is an unproductive use of time and serves absolutely no place when you’re moving forward.  The truth is it was nice to have that support around me, but they didn’t know how to support who I was becoming.  I was willing to shed layers they hadn’t even learned were there yet.  We can still have these people in our lives and we can still cheer them on—I will even bring them to my table.  I just can’t focus on their issues or solve their problems like I used to.  If I’m honest, I can’t have them solve my problems either.

Evolution is scary and painful at times.  I’ve learned that it is often the idea of change that is more scary than the change itself.  I’ve also learned that it is always timely.  I wrote a piece the other day about how we instinctually know when it is time to move on or to level up.  We wouldn’t be brought to where we are and we wouldn’t have the thoughts we do if we weren’t meant to act on them.  We need to make sure we surround ourselves with people who have the ability and the capacity to recognize those signs as well.  The love is always real, but the effort has to change. 

“Discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people’s opinions who don’t know themselves,” Osho.  I felt this was the perfect follow up to yesterday’s piece about doing what others tell you to do.  The best way to avoid getting caught up in someone else’s definition of who you are is to take the time to define yourself.  Human nature is judge-y.  Just by definition, we are trained to make snap decisions so we know if something is dangerous or not, so we are constantly evaluating and labelling and categorizing people.  We know that doesn’t always work and it isn’t always true.  But we have the ability to simultaneously define ourselves and keep out of the box. 

The idea isn’t to define who we are and never to move from that spot, rather, it is to define a set of boundaries.  Those boundaries can expand and shift, but they don’t often break.  The point is, it is up to US to define those boundaries—not other people.  We have so much information coming at us every day that it’s easy to get lost in what we should be doing or who we are supposed to be.  But all of that noise is only that—noise.  We get to say what works for us and what doesn’t.  We aren’t meant to fit in everywhere and with everyone—we are meant to create our own space.

The empowerment that comes from creating who you are is unlike anything else in the world.  It is the divine connection.  And we aren’t meant to be one thing.  Creation in itself is destructive.  We break down and rebuild and redefine and integrate new things all the time.  We lose pieces of ourselves in favor of something stronger.  We combine what we knew with what we learn and we are the alchemy of our lives.  It is a constant evolution. Why on Earth would we give that power to anyone else?  And why would we all try to do the same thing?  We aren’t meant to.

The ironic part is that we grow up hearing that different is good and that we don’t want to be the same yet we try to shove everyone down the same path and make them yield the same results all while praising uniqueness and criticizing when someone does it differently.  We are so backwards.  It is scary to truly let go of other people’s opinions and expectations because you’re floating in open water.  Whether you sink or swim is entirely up to you.  But at that point, it doesn’t matter because no matter HOW you learn to swim, the point is you need to move.  It is the same with life.  The point isn’t to live the same day on repeat or to live by someone else’s definition until you die.  Life is vibrant and beautiful and can be anything we want it to be.  Don’t hold back because losing someone’s praise in favor of gaining your own self-respect is infinitely more gratifying.  So is seeing the results of your efforts toward your goals over what you were told to do.  So while it is scary, it is always worth it.  Jump in! 

“If you do what other people tell you to do, don’t be surprised if you never find your purpose in life.” Via Brian and Gab.  I have endured massive physical trauma over the last year.  Quite frankly, massive emotional trauma as well.  But one of the saddest moments in my life was when I woke up and realized that my life wasn’t my own.  I looked around at all the beautiful things I had collected around me and I felt completely empty.  Then angry.  Then guilty.  Then simply…sad.  I wanted nothing to do with any of what was around me.  I hated my husband, I hated myself, I resented my child, I felt miserable at work, I felt martyred at home.  It hit me that everything around me was a result of what other people had told me to do. 

I realized that I had allowed people to set my limits, to define my goals, to paint me in a certain light.  There was even a time I looked for that kind of “guidance” so I would get it right.  I wanted to be liked and I wanted to be perfect.  When I woke up that morning and immediately felt miserable, something clicked.  I knew I never wanted to feel that way again.  Slowly, I realized it was all about choice, and choosing to wake up that miserable was nonsense.  Selfish, immature, nonsense.  It took a while to understand that while the choices I made were mine, it wasn’t someone being malicious—it was their belief of what was good and it was my lack of understanding that I had a say in how I wanted to create my life. 

Once I learned that I had the ability to live without someone else’s permission, my world opened up.  I started caring less about what other people thought and more about what served.  I looked at what I had done and instead of feeling empty or that it wasn’t “mine,” I learned to be grateful that I had the ability to do it.  I realized that if I could follow someone’s blueprint so well, then I have the ability to design something for myself too.  I’m beyond grateful for what I have been given and all of the people who supported me.  I’m even grateful for the people who doubted me.  But what I’m most grateful for is that I learned to shut all of that out and do what was right for me.

This is a learning process and I’m still figuring it out on a daily basis.  But I know the discomfort I feel in learning my way through this is better than the limitations of someone else’s box.  Breaking out of those limitations also requires putting aside your own beliefs as well.  You have to break your own boundaries first and know that you have the ability to do what you want.  Once you step outside of your own box, you certainly won’t settle for someone else’s.  Your purpose, your life, your dreams are all on the other side of your fear and your people-pleasing, and your “supposed to’s.”  We were given a blank book and often forget we were also handed the pen.  Pick up that pen and get to work.  We have little say in the story people tell about us—but we have all the say in what we write down.

“If the dream is in you, it’s for you.” Amber Lilyestrom.  This is a perfect follow up to our discussion about mindset.  Don’t let bullshit feelings of being unworthy or having to prove yourself talk you out of a goal you have.  If it came to you, it is for a reason.  Liz Gilbert spoke about the magic of creativity and how if these ideas come to us, they are meant for us to work with.  They WANT us to work with them and they want to come to life.  We are all messengers—we need to get in tune and start picking up on what we are meant to share.  I feel the same message applies to the life we want to create as well, not just creative work.  If we are given the dream, it is meant for us and if we don’t act on it, it may pass by.

We tend to let ego and emotion run the show—I know I did.  If something didn’t look exactly as I envisioned it, I always took that as my idea wasn’t good enough, which naturally meant I wasn’t good enough.  Cue sorrow and self-pity and whining and years of sitting still doing nothing but bathing in self-created misery.  Let me tell you a shift in mindset is the most beautiful thing that can happen.

When we truly start to understand that everything happens for a reason—everything—life starts to shift for us.  We suddenly become more open and accepting of what happens and we get a clearer eye that certain things simply have nothing to do with us.  We learn our boundaries and we define what works and what doesn’t work for ourselves—and we acknowledge that we are allowed to do that.  Most importantly we learn that almost nothing in this world is personal.  At the very least we learn we don’t have to take it personally.

When you drop the weight of other people’s opinions (and even your own) the freedom is amazing.  All it takes is a little self-confidence and a lot of “fuck it, I’m doing it anyway.”  Sometimes it even takes a little, “This is crazy and I have no idea why I want to, but I’m going to.”  We just have to trust that if it came our way, it was meant to happen.  It isn’t our job to pull the reins, it’s our job to hold on and take in whatever life brings us.

“The only disability in life is a bad attitude,” via wealth.  I can not repeat this enough, and I speak from experience.  I lived my life misguided enough to believe that perfection was key.  Worse than that, I believed that if you weren’t perfect you shouldn’t even join the team.  I spent a lot of years on the sideline, playing the safe route and letting myself get softer and softer while people learned to go after the live of their dreams.  It made me bitter and I slipped into victimhood.  That gained some sympathy but it got me no closer to where I wanted to be.  You can only go so far on the pity of others. 

I always say I’m a novice when it comes to self improvement because the journey into self-care and breaking patterns is painful and cyclical.  It is always worth it, but there is always work to do.  As you repeat the lesson, you will find things you never thought existed or that you thought you already dealt with.  So many times we are afraid of dealing with it or we want to control the journey—I definitely fell to the latter category.  I wanted to deal with specific things at certain times and, at first, I didn’t have the fortitude to move forward when something triggered me.  I allowed it to set me back a lot because it hurt too much.  Emotions are essential because they guide us—but left to their own devices, they are tricky, nasty, little bastards.

Emotion will tell you that you can’t do it, that you’ve had enough, or that you’re not even worthy to start.  Emotion will tell you that what you do isn’t good enough so why bother.  Emotion will tell you that you deserve to stay stuck because of something you did 30 years ago that literally no one remembers.  Emotion will tell you that other people’s opinions are more important than your own and that those whispers from other people are reason enough to not move forward.  Emotion will tell you if you don’t get it perfect, don’t even bother.  If you’re like me, any one of those things is/was enough to stop me in my tracks.

Let me tell you something: there is more value in a little hurt every now and then than there is repeating the same day over and over again for more than two decades.  DO THE WORK.  Allow yourself to feel it but don’t get swept up by it.  Emotions come and go and, believe me, we have the power and the ability to build our own empires.  Sometimes society wants us to forget that—people are afraid of power.  We are much easier to control when we are distracted and, as pack animals, we are taught that it’s better to fit in than to make waves.  I can tell you that is bullshit as well.  When we wake up and when we start doing the inner work, an entirely new world opens up to us. Walk through that door.

All of this boils down to you.  What are you willing to do to get the life you say want?  Are you willing to learn on the journey?  Because I can tell you, what I thought I wanted and what I needed were different things.  I can’t say I missed the mark entirely, but I didn’t get exactly what I envisioned.  And that is ok!  I learned to be willing to give up what I thought I needed in favor of what I actually needed.  That made a world of difference and the momentum was much greater without holding the brakes of control.  While we are allowed to blaze trails in our lives, we don’t always have a say on the path of destiny.  The universe takes us where we are meant to be—it’s much easier to go with it.  So check yourself; are you pressing the brake when you should be pressing the accelerator?  Are you forcing yourself to go straight when you need to turn?  Let go, my friend, let go.  Adjust yourself and go with it.