We don’t often talk about the power of making a decision and something happened recently that reinforced the need to talk about it.  As I spoke about earlier in the week, my son started school and I took the day off.  During that day I did a ton of work that I actually wanted to focus on.  I cleaned, I organized, I prepared for an event we are having.  I also spent a lot of time thinking and working through some more personal stuff. Throughout the day I kept finding myself thinking, “this is exactly what I want to be doing.”  Previously I found myself lamenting and wanting to work from home but I didn’t have the clarity to make it happen—it felt like a fantasy.  But something about the productivity of that day made it feel both real and possible.  It was pivotal for me because that has been the clearest I’ve ever felt about creating that type of reality.  The feeling was so powerful I told my boss the next day that I need to find something where I can work from home.  Based on how I felt, I knew it in my gut.  Logistically, I don’t want to be as far as I am from my son during the day—that’s pretty solid for me that I want to be home.

Now that was a decision.  I could have held it inside and continued to think working from home was a pipedream or fantasy.  But I decided it was time to speak it out loud.  I felt the clarity and I recognized the power of putting out the energy you want into the universe. Let me tell you, it was such an incredibly freeing feeling.  Even more surprising, my boss didn’t react how I expected.  She actually was very understanding.  Granted we don’t have the capacity to make it happen at this point, but I definitely have the clarity and the direction now.  From the perspective of creating the life we want, I’ve spoken about manifesting and learning how to close the gap from where we are to where we want to be.  But the truth is when we are manifesting the life we want, we often underestimate the power of simply making the choice.  Number one, it feels amazing to decide on something but once we make a decision, the rest falls away and things get really clear.  Once things are clear, the universe conspires to make it happen.

I don’t claim this will happen over night, not by any means.  But I feel a shift.  I feel the path opening up toward the life I want.  They always say that things will come together to make it happen and it certainly feels that way.  This is the difference between thinking it and speaking it. When we hold something in, it has no chance to manifest.  We need to have a moment of trust to speak what we want into reality.  We have to trust that once we speak it, it will come and that can be a scary place to work from.  We don’t always know how things will turn out but one thing is certain: if you don’t put out what you actually want, you will certainly never get it.  But the most important part is admitting to yourself what you actually want.  It’s only when you understand that that you can understand what is possible and in that moment, you ask different questions.  Questions like, “What will happen if I start working toward it?”  and like, “What happens if I say this out loud?”  All I know for certain is that the odds of creating what you want are far greater if you speak them and align with what it takes.  Happy decision making!

I just wanted to share a quick thought on trashing our houses.  I read a quote from Dandapani that said, “I live in my house therefore I don’t trash my house.  I live in my mind therefore I don’t trash my mind.”  This fell on the heels of me cleaning the house and wanting to organize everything and the realization that I want to work from home (next post goes into more detail about that).  Regardless, we have multiple homes.  Our physical location, our emotional state, and what we take in.  When we consider the thoughts that run through our minds on a daily basis, it’s easy to see how many are redundant, how many are negative etc.  If we allow ourselves to go through the same things over and over again, it’s also easy to see how we create a mess.

So this is a polite and clear reminder to make sure you’re taking care of your house, both physical and mental.  Look at the thoughts you’re having on a regular basis and figure out if they are yours or if they are coming from somewhere else.  Ask yourself if you can change your course of thought.  Ask yourself what you actually want to be thinking about and manifesting and creating in this world.  Ask yourself how you want to feel.  Ask yourself what you’re choosing where you are right now and what you want to choose moving forward.  How do you want to move forward?  Release all that doesn’t serve and move forward with what is left.  Take out the trash, whatever form that trash takes.

Last week my son started kindergarten.  I know, it’s so cliché, a mom having a melt down on her kid’s first day of school.  But that isn’t exactly what happened.  I mean, full transparency, I needed to take the day off because of it, but it wasn’t an entire breakdown.  So my son is definitely extra sensitive and I pick up on that really easily so I knew he was having some emotions the morning of his first day.  I kept my cool and we walked to the school without any major issues, just the usual nerves he expressed well.  When we got to the school I took the obligatory pictures (I mean, come one, they put stands out there for kids to take pictures with, who wouldn’t have done it?!).  Again he did really well.  The doors opened and I let him walk in by himself but as soon as I noticed other parents going in, I changed my mind and I ran in after him. I felt guilty and didn’t want him to feel alone.  He had made it to his classroom so I knew he was ok and I took more pictures and then I walked home.

The first wave of emotion hit me when I got home.  The house was too quiet.  Yes, I do relish those moments and I normally seek them out because I’m trying to get things done, but this quiet was different.  It felt distinctly absent of something.  I know, that’s how silence and quiet work.  But it felt  heavy to me.  I dove into cleaning and organizing and it helped.  As time moved on, I started thinking about the things my son would help me with.  When I got to the piles of his toys, I started thinking of the things he would fight me on.  And out of nowhere, the thought hit me that one day everything will be clean and quiet forever.  That’s when I actually got sad.  I’ve spoken about my weird thing with time before, and in that moment I realized how quickly time passes.  My parents had an issue earlier in the week and they really struggled with it so I think I was extra sensitive to the passage of time.

It’s such a funny thing when you transition to that phase where you are taking care of both your parents and your kids.  I still remember going to my first day of kindergarten and now I’m taking my son.  I’ve transitioned from child to parent and my parents are now grandparents.  I remember feeling so safe with my parents and now I’m trying to create that security for my son.  That safety I felt was partially because of how close I was to my parents because my siblings were so much older than me.  And then the second wave hit me: my son is an only child.  So this first day was also my last day.  That was when I actually did lose it a little bit. 

Now, I don’t mean to come across as a complete emotional wreck or an overdramatic person (although I totally am).  The reality is I am super sensitive and these moments mean a lot to me.  They also teach me a lot.  Primarily about emotional control, but also about how to value what we have and to appreciate how we got here.  It’s important to relish in the moments we have and to appreciate them while we have them.  I remember trying to grow up so quickly because I wanted to be like my siblings so I never learned to appreciate where I was.  I want my son to be able to enjoy his time and I want to enjoy the time I have with him.  So often we wish for the next step or the next stage.  We want to be through all the hard stuff.  But we miss that the hard stuff shapes the good at the end.  We miss that we have good times on the journey to the next part.  The part we are on now is what we have. Everything is always beginning and ending so let those moments remind us of what is really important.

I’ve often heard the quip about learning to rest when you are tired and not quitting.  The other day I found myself in a flurry of activity, furiously running around, back and forth, distracted by one mess and then another.  In this circumstance, rest was the furthest thing from my mind.  I felt my body aching because I hadn’t been down to the gym in a while but I had a ton of work to do.  I was tired of seeing all the clutter around the house and feeling overwhelmed by what I would do with it.  In the middle of organizing and chastising myself for letting things get this way, I remembered the quip about rest.  I looked at the piles I was creating around me and realized that all of the stuff that was in the piles had been created because I didn’t want to deal with it in the moment.  That’s when it hit me that I haven’t been resting in the proper moments.

What I mean is that I’d been excusing myself from all of the day to day stuff because I felt tired or overwhelmed after working all day and that had created enormous stress and clutter and distraction in my life.  Rather than actually creating a sensation of ease in not dealing with it right away, I created stress down the road.  The difference between resting and quitting is right there: you can’t give up in the moment because you feel mentally overwhelmed.  It’s all a mind game and if we allow the mind to win in the moment, we create additional issues later on.  In this case, I have over a year’s worth of information I need to sort through.  Yes, there have been a million things going on.  Yes, I’ve been balancing (barely) working full time with two side gigs, a 9-5, a child, and a husband, and the animals.  But those things are my choices and there are results I genuinely want to see out of it.  It gets overwhelming realizing I’ve already created the momentum, but I don’t want to give it up. 

Then the other realization hit me.  I don’t need to give up any of it—I just need to organize things better.  The day can be planned.  All of the activities can be addressed (probably with better focus and results) by dedicating time to them in different blocks than through what I’ve been doing.  Then I won’t feel so overwhelmed.  Then the piles of nonsense won’t build up, whether it is paper or tasks that need to be done.  There is a way to take all of the things that need to be done and to create space for it—even rest.  For too long rest was my priority.  I have always been driven, even if was just in my 9-5 I always strove to be the best so I could prove that I’d earned my time off or my down time.  That way when I went home, I could shut down.  But all of the things I WANTED to do were neglected as well.  I became a really lazy high performer.  I know that isn’t the legacy I want to leave behind. 

Rather than continue to chastise myself or lament, I’m celebrating the small win of understanding that I can turn this around.  Nothing is completely out of my control when it comes to what I bring into the house and what I want to create.  This is a fixable situation.  There is a time for rest (no, I’m not talking about when I’m dead—I HATE that saying) and I will use it.  I honestly think people undervalue rest.  For me, I probably took that to an extreme.  There is work to be done and it is work I want to do.  So I choose to take it on and do so happily.  Rest will come.  I can move at my own pace.  Life doesn’t have to be a series of overwhelm—that’s when we want to give up.  Life flows and there are moments of productivity and moments to recharge.  I’m ready to flow. 

I had an ego moment with my husband the other day.  We had a small spat over something he said in the store that upset me because I didn’t like the tone it was putting out energetically.  Mindset is clearly a huge thing for me and what he said as a joke was not what I wanted the universe to pick up on.  Additionally our son’s inner monster came out during that grocery trip and the evening was not going to end well.  What I didn’t expect was for my husband to leave and go to the neighbor’s house.  Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but he completely disappeared and I didn’t know where he was.  That is a huge trigger for me.  It brings back old memories of being left out and left alone and I spiraled quickly.  I mean, I went from, “He’s been gone a long time” to “Damn it, no one likes me.  They literally left me out of the party—again” in about 10 seconds.

So full circle for this conversation we’ve been having about people noticing us: I put out the energy of needing to be there for my child (because I do) and that I don’t always have time to hang out anyway.  Their children are significantly older than mine so we are in different stages. I also realized that it was a stressful day for both my husband and I and we probably needed some cool down time.  I didn’t need to elevate the issue into something it wasn’t.  I wasn’t left out intentionally. I was left out incidentally.  I don’t need to freak out every time something goes a different way.  I don’t need to freak out that my husband is a different person than me and has different needs.  I don’t need to freak out that he has an easier time socially and needs more social interaction than I do.  That isn’t a reflection on my likeability.  It’s a reflection on where I’m at in life.

The next morning, I explained it to him.  It wasn’t about him, it was about the insecurities the action triggered—which is entirely on me.  Yes, from a literal standpoint, I wanted to know where my husband was.  I hate it when people just disappear.  But I also realized that my insecurities are generated by my mind.  I don’t need an invitation to be with my husband or with my friends. I could have chosen to walk over there as well.  I’m not intruding on anything and the reality is, not everything in life comes with an invitation.  Sometimes you have to just sit down and be part of the crowd.  So that evening, that is exactly what I did.  My son and I went with my husband and we sat around the fire with each other and we all found ourselves completely welcome.  Being open is what matters.  Put the ego aside and sit at the table (or in this case around the fire) and see what happens.  Sometimes when you invite yourself, you invite life.  I’m inviting life from now on.

I’ve been running a business for almost a year now and I haven’t done exceptionally well.  I’ve met an amazing group of people and I’ve learned so much from them in regards to life and turning things around.  I’ve learned more accountability and respect and excitement and support from this group than I’ve experienced most of my life.  They’ve shared a lot about personal growth and part of that is running the business of life and not letting it run you.  We can’t allow ourselves to get so caught up in bad patterns that we don’t see the value in shifting our mindset.  We have to be open to other ideas and other experiences and sometimes we have to trust what others tell us.  We have to trust what other people see in us and that we can shift the sails to go in a new direction.  We have to trust that life doesn’t happen to us, it happens for us. 

So I had a pivotal moment the other day.  As we worked through some training with a new couple we’ve brought on, I realized that some of the tools we were showing them I had never seen.  My initial reaction was frustration: how could my mentors have NOT shown me this?!  No wonder I didn’t know half of what they’ve been talking about.  No wonder I still don’t know what some of this is!  But as I was working on yesterday’s piece about what people notice, it hit me: I basically told them that I knew it all and that I would figure it out.  No wonder they didn’t approach me with this!  I didn’t want to be held to their time standards and I wanted to do it my own way.  I missed out on 8 months where I could have been much further and more successful than where I’m at had I been OPEN.  Had I not shut the door in their faces and said I would do it alone. I realized that I held myself back, not because I didn’t take it seriously, but because I didn’t know how to operate it or how to operate in it. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable enough to ask for help—I was still projecting the façade of being able to do it all on my own.     

Sometimes it takes a while for the action to align with the intention of the mind.  Sometimes the realization that you did it to yourself is a tough pill to swallow.  We make mistakes in business just as we make mistakes with every day life.  We have to accept that as a part of the human condition as well as the responsibility to learn from those mistakes.  Now I know.  I DON’T know it all.  I CAN trust people.  Sometimes I have to be the one who gets coached.  And this is the reality of growth: we cling to the reality we create and sometimes think that is the only way.  But sometimes we have to understand that we are meant to be cracked open and to share and to learn.  Even the guides need to be guided sometimes or they at least consult the map!   Pride gets in the way and creates walls.  We are meant to open those walls and learn.  People will approach us when we open the doors.  Life can flow in when we open the doors.  Most importantly, we can move forward when we open the doors.  Remove the obstacles we put in our own way and see how much easier it is to move forward.

Today I am grateful for health.  We’ve had some minor illness running through the house but we are feeling pretty good.  We are so fortunate to have the tools we need to take care of ourselves and we have access to nutritious food to help us along the way.  I know it isn’t perfect, but we are really lucky to be able to support our son and make sure he develops a healthy immune system along the way. 

Today I am grateful for steps and communication.  I’m a huge communicator—well, maybe a huge talker.  But this week I learned the importance of communicating and taking steps toward creating the life I want.  That involves being honest and letting people know your intentions and what you need for yourself.  I will add more detail about this later this week but I want to highlight that it is so important to speak your intentions into existence and to be clear about where you’re headed. 

Today I am grateful for making decisions on my own.  I’ve often made decisions around protecting my current life.  I always thought I could take steps toward what I wanted while maintaining what I have until what I want is big enough to sustain the new way of life.  This is true for the most part.  But when it comes to creation, there clarity is important as well as a certain level of faith.  In order to move forward, we have to accept that we don’t know the whole way while also understanding we can’t learn the way or move forward without taking our feet off the current step. I will also speak about this more later this week, but it is important to look at the why behind the decision as well as the what.  Defining those things really defines the goal and it makes the doing much more clear.

Today I am grateful for releasing fear.  In the process of creating a new life fear is bound to come up.  There is the uncertainty I mentioned above as well as the unknown.  The uncertainty I’ve found lingers around whether or not we will be able to do it.  The unknown creates fear around whether or not you can handle what comes because on a new path you have no idea what may come…which creates more uncertainty and fear.  Over the last few days I’ve had the pleasure of taking steps toward the life I want in new ways.  Those steps, while small, were incredibly significant.  I had a lot of fear around one of those steps and it is certainly one that I would never have taken previously.  I’m proud that I took that step and can start working toward clarifying what comes next—I never could have done that before, not without acknowledging this.  It took a lot to let go of that fear but I am so grateful I did.

Today I am grateful for fun.  This weekend, while it doesn’t look like it normally does, was still filled with a lot of fun things.  We were able to spend quality time together, we were able to get a few things for our future endeavors/our business, we were able to see some friends.  So often I look too far ahead and forget where I’m at.  I forget to enjoy what is good about this moment right here.  In this moment I am working, watching my son and husband nap, and I feel completely at ease.  This is peace.  This is contentment.  I am grateful to have created contentment in this moment here. 

Today I am grateful for sacrifice.  There is a lot I want to do right now in this very moment.  Everything from spending money to taking a wild vacation to napping to building a business to cleaning the entire house to selling everything and running away.  But I am so grateful for this moment where I am not doing any of those things.  I’m looking at the long term gain and I know that sacrificing those wants right now will produce something amazing in the end.  Life is short and yes, there are times when we will give in and take what we want now because it’s fleeting and we want to feel joy.  But I am grateful for looking at the long term and asking what serves the purpose of the long term NOW.  I am grateful to know there is something at the end that we both want, something we are both headed for now.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

I remember when I was in high school I didn’t eat one day and my mom said, “What did you eat today? 600 calories?” and it made me realize something: she noticed.  She noticed a lot.  She noticed me.  I think I took for granted how much she actually saw.  I operated under the idea I was on my own for a long time when I really didn’t know how to reach out for help.  I had so many failed attempts at professional help and I’m super impatient so I didn’t pursue it and I didn’t trust people to help me get through it.  So when I think of this story in the context of feeling alone, I see how much time I spent by myself when all I had to do was reach out.  I’m still like that (more on that tomorrow).  But this ties into a couple of other things—presence and the impression we make on people. 

Things change quickly. I remember the moment my mother asked me about what I ate like it was yesterday.  But when I look up, I see a very different reality.  I have a husband, my own child, my own house, my own job, grey hair.  My parents are aging and they need help.  I don’t want to continue missing out on the moments I have left with them because I’m not here mentally.  I chose to operate on my own because I didn’t feel I had a lot of people I could rely on to help me and I didn’t want to put additional pressure on my parents.  Taking that behavior into adulthood (coupled with a fear of doing everything wrong), some nasty habits formed.  I’m learning to let those go and choosing to acknowledge it wasn’t people who let me down, it was my expectations and the idea I needed to do it all on my own to prove I was worthy. I was embarrassed to admit I needed help because I didn’t think I deserved it.  My mom was there the entire time.  She saw everything I tried to hide.

People see more than we give them credit for.  Our reactions, our demeanor, our habits, our practices, our beliefs all become who we are and it is all part of the image we project to the world.  I said above my mother saw everything I tried to hide because she did.  I took her experience and awareness for granted.  Because I projected such a strong façade of being able to do it on my own, she didn’t know how to step in.  This applies to everyone around us–our friends, co-workers, our children.  They all see what we do and they form an impression of who we are so they know how to operate around us.  I have learned so many lessons from the reactions I show my child that I know I need to be stronger and choose my reactions more carefully.  He has picked up on everything and he knows what will upset me and what won’t.  But I don’t want him to live like that.  I don’t want him to grow up carrying the weight of worrying about my reactions on the things he does.  He needs to explore and have fun.  My employees need to be able to come to me with ideas.  I need to be coachable in order to coach.   

The simple truth is that I need to stop projecting the façade and learn to share who I really am with those around me.  Some may not know how to react, but as I said with my child, I can’t base my actions on their potential reactions.  It’s hard and it’s scary because I don’t know how I will be received—no one ever does.  But I see how short life really is and I know the sting of regret.  I don’t want to regret people not knowing the real me.  I don’t want to regret never showing the real me.  I don’t want to regret what a relationship could have looked like because I didn’t break down a wall.  I built up walls with everyone around me, even those closest to me.  It was easier to share these things with complete strangers than it was those closest to me because I didn’t want to lose their approval. But the things I did to maintain my image pushed them further away.  I have to stop pretending I have to do this on my own.  Just because I have a vision doesn’t mean it will turn out exactly as I plan it.  I can soften and bring others into it and maybe it will turn out even better.  They will see me giving a different chance.  That is connection and that is something we all want.  So I begin there.  With accepting myself and learning to accept help. People see that—I can accept them as I accept myself.  I can accept my mother and move on.  She’s looking for the same thing. 

I listened to a meditation from Jay Shetty and he asked what pain we are trying to avoid now.  I learned a lot through this exercise and I thought I would share it.  Most of us don’t think we are avoiding anything simply because we are here right now.  Just because we are physically here doesn’t mean that’s where we actually are.  If our attention is behind us or in front of us, we aren’t here.  The pain I deal with is the pain of loss.  I experienced and witnessed loss at a very young age and didn’t have much context for it because my siblings are quite a bit older than me.  That translated into an intense need for control and a fear of losing everything as well as a compulsive need to keep my nest full at all times and know where everyone and everything is at all times.  So this exercise was really profound and it expanded some thinking.

The pain I’m trying to avoid is the pain of loss.  I’m trying to avoid the pain of things that haven’t even happened yet and I’m essentially putting myself through it every time I think about it.  I’m trying to avoid the pain of the loss of things that I know will happen like the death of my parents, my son eventually moving out, the loss of our animals.  It’s loss I can’t prevent either as it’s a natural thing that happens. I’m consciously trying to change my mindset and understand that I’m building my community and that I have support and I am able to stand o my own two feet.  I can change the routine and work on building myself.  I can trust my intuition and I can take action.

This exercise also required looking at habits and behaviors.  I have a habit of constantly taking things in.  Eating too fast, eating and reading, reading and watching T.V., watching T.V. and keeping an eye on my son, keeping an eye on my kid and trying to play with him while I work, wanting to be a kid, watching time, wasting time.  What if I just chewed?  Just savored?  Instead of trying to consume it all, what I fi just sat with it? Enjoyed it? Experienced it? Relished it?  Felt the fullness of it instead of taking in and hanging on every single second?  One thing at a time?  Just presence…the weight of me in the moment instead of the wait for the next thing? 

I have to learn to love the moment and linger in it, address it now, in the one long now, instead of waiting for the next or wishing for the last.  Presence.  Reality. Awareness.  The achieve it all, do it all mentality—all will get done as it’s supposed to.  I don’t need to play EVERY game.  I’m always 10, 100, 1000 steps ahead and still missing the moment.  Planning the next meal while I’m eating this one.  Planning to satiate myself until the next meal so I won’t starve…I’ve never starved.  Except for starving for the present.  That is the only way to ensure I’m not missing the moment.  Things change so fast.  I want to NOTICE and KNOW them while they happen.  THAT is life.  Not THE moment, but all moments.  The movement, chaos, the build, the love, loss, fun, plans, reality, spontaneity.  That is life.  Right now.   

I’ve been working a side gig for almost a year now (it will be a year in October) and I’ve been relatively lax about it.  I didn’t embody the full belief in it, I allowed outside interference and fear to distract me, and I quite frankly didn’t want to play ball with some of their directives/operations.  As time has passed, however, I’ve heard more and more of the group discuss how they didn’t take it seriously their first few years and it wasn’t until they adopted the beliefs and practices that they saw real success.  I spoke with my mentor the other day and she reiterated her own experience with delaying jumping on board and that’s when it hit me: she said she didn’t take it seriously for her first few years and she’s a major leader on the team now.  I’ve already been doing this for almost a year now and I’m not much further than I was when I started.

Time goes so quickly and I think I’m understanding my fear of time better than I have previously.  See, it’s not just the passage of time that makes me afraid: it’s the passage of time not spent well. If we are doing things we love and get the results we’re looking for, or if we are assured we are on the right path toward our purpose, the time we spend doesn’t feel like a waste.  I realized how much time I’ve wasted doing things I don’t want to do.  I’ve done them out of fear and out of the need for validation and out of the hope that someone would come along and grant my wishes as I struggled to fulfill theirs.  I’ve wasted time betting I would have more or that I would understand later.  I’ve skimmed books I wanted to dive into because I didn’t think I had time.  I avoided going to concerts and venues and associating with people because I didn’t think I would fit in or I didn’t trust my ability to get there.  I’ve lost trust in people thinking I would do it all on my own (and that I could do it on my own) and I’ve invested in the wrong people thinking they would jump on board and help me. 

When time is spent well, we don’t worry about how much time we have.  When time is spent well, we never question if it was worth it or if we are where we want to be.  When time is spent well we know that all will unfold as it’s meant to and we don’t necessarily worry about the return because we know there is a return whether a lesson or the intended result.  So I think about this past year and it feels like a blink.  Most years feel like a blink now.  And I see that I’ve been fighting for the status quo because I felt like it was the safe and responsible thing to do.  But I see now that it really takes a few moments, maybe even one moment, of total abandon and trust to really get what we need.  To really understand where we are meant to be and to follow through on it.  We are given a finite amount of time and we don’t how how much that really is.

So don’t waste another moment doing something that doesn’t take you on the path meant for you.  Even if it takes time to turn around, make sure you’re doing something to pivot a little bit every day.  Do something that takes you closer to your goal every day.  Eventually the overwhelm and regret will fall away and they need to if you are going to focus on what moves you forward.  Move forward.  There is always still time.  But make sure you remember this lesson: time spent doing something that isn’t for you or isn’t fulfilling to you is the waste.  Time spent doing things you love and that direct you toward your purpose is an investment.