How would it feel if you 100% trusted everything?  The safety, the security in the knowing that all is truly well.  Nothing could go wrong.  Nothing would disturb the peace.  Because we would understand that even the things that disturb us are meant to help us—so there is no need to be upset, no need to get worked up, no need to feel anger about things going a certain way.  It is the complete relinquishing of control and trusting/accepting that this is for the best.  That we can change our direction and that too will be for the best.  That every choice we make is what’s meant to happen.  It is the complete acceptance of the moment.  And in that acceptance we find trust.  When I think about the feeling that comes with trust, I think of safety.  I know that is one of the things I sought most in the world—being safe and secure.  I dealt with a lot of loss as a child—loss of important people in my life, siblings older than me going away to school and moving out, almost losing my siblings and my father several times.  I always wanted to make sure everyone was ok and accounted for.

I spent so much time trying to keep everything around me so I’d have some sort of security blanket that I didn’t realize how time was moving.  I tried to freeze moments because I wanted to remember how I felt—and I wanted to recapture that feeling.  I didn’t have an extremely large or stable friend group growing up and I felt ostracized most of the time so I leaned on the guidance of adults around me and I certainly became clingier than I needed to be.  I never learned to trust and learning that skill as an adult isn’t easy.  We realize that we first have to trust ourselves before we trust others and if we haven’t learned to believe in our own foundation or our ability to fly then we struggle to trust ourselves.  It’s far easier to repeat the patterns we know because we KNOW those.  We aren’t sure if we can trust ourselves.  It takes time and it takes stepping into things we aren’t certain of so we can learn to find our way back.    

As far as that feeling of trust and knowing we can find our way back to ourselves by ourselves, I imagine trust feels like a combination of confidence and like being carried.  It’s that feeling that we can handle anything and we are being held/supported at the same time.  What an amazing feeling.  I imagine that there is no worry and no fear, and that we see things with clarity and sharp focus.  I imagine that there is a new level of presence when we trust that everything around us is exactly as we need it to be because there is no trying to change what IS.  The goal isn’t about changing ourselves, it’s about loving who we are in that moment.  What a gift!!  Talk about the ultimate acceptance of who we are and understanding how connected we are to the universe and ultimately our purpose.  This is why trust is so important: we learn to navigate by our north star and to continue even when it’s hard—and any uncertainty becomes a learning opportunity.  So when we trust everything, we know we are guided.  We know we are safe and that safety allows us to be fully who we are.  How cool is that? 

It isn’t easy to swallow, but the mind was not created for happiness, it was created for survival.  This can be a tough pill to swallow.  We believe that we are meant to feel joy and happiness all the time and when we don’t have that constant euphoria, we look for other ways to get it. We indulge in distraction and activities that aren’t healthy for us thinking it makes us happy.  But the point of life isn’t strictly to be happy.  Yes, I said it.  In spite of all of our talk about finding joy and letting joy be the driver (which paradoxically still holds true) happiness is not the point of the mind.  Our brains are a powerful supercomputer but we need to remember we are still animals.  We still have primitive instincts, the most basic of which is survival.  The brain makes thousands of calculations a second to evaluate and determine if we are in danger.  The goal of the brain is to keep us alive.  All of the other chemicals that produce joy and happiness are a bonus.  Those are things that tell us we are guided in the right direction—once we are in safety.

With that being said, we need to understand that we have to program our brains.  We need to teach our brain that we aren’t in a constant battle for survival in this day and age.  We have the ability to spend our time in creativity instead of fighting off predators.  It’s a luxury to be able to focus on things that make us feel good.  Yes, there is still a lot of crap in this world, things driven by ego and greed, and some of those things are dangerous, but we can choose to do better.  The point is that we need to choose happiness in every moment.  Choose joy.  Choose love.  Surround ourselves with joy and love.  When we surround ourselves in that type of environment, we can change the course.  Finding joy and happiness becomes an exercise in determining what is good.

Survival matters above all, but we can shift the need to feel good into a purposeful event.  Life isn’t always easy, it isn’t meant to be, but we can use that good feeling to guide us toward our purpose which, in turn, can make us feel good and bring some light to the world.  Knowing the purpose of the brain is survival, we can work with that energy and learn to trust that we are safe.  Once we know we are safe then we open up entirely new worlds.  It’s a reframing of our intention that allows us to create a more purposeful life. I don’t want to mis-represent anything because I do believe that happiness is our guidepost and a good indicator that we are on the right path. But when we seek happiness over purpose, we lose sight along the way. Trust that if we do the things that keep us focused, we will find that purpose and that is a happy thing.

Life throws curveballs all the time.  We mistake getting caught in the moment for presence when the reality is being present means we never get caught in anything.  We also mistake distraction for presence.  For example, scrolling social media or binge watching episodes of shows isn’t being present.  That’s escaping to another world—and there is NO judgement there.  Honestly there’s a time and place for that.  Our brain has a need to detach and indulge in distraction every now and then.  But the brain isn’t meant to stay there.  So now we pose a question about presence: What if you woke up only with what you said you were grateful for yesterday?  Presence requires a state of awareness for how we feel and appreciating the moment we are in.  It isn’t to say we attach to the moment or the feeling, but we allow ourselves to feel it all the same.

If all we have left is what we said we were grateful for, what would life look like?  Would life become smaller?  Or would it become expansive?  Suddenly things we didn’t think about or things we took for granted become important.  If that list is what we are appreciative of, suddenly we look around us with laser focus.  We see the good in what we have.  We acknowledge our accomplishments.  We recognize and honor our abilities.  We have room for those we love—and the petty differences fade away.  What about time and how we spend it?  We’ve been taught that money is an important commodity but the truth is the most valuable currency we have is time.  That is something that once spent we can’t get back.  So take the time to develop that appreciation for life and understand the curveballs aren’t meant to derail us, they are meant to signal to us what’s important.  

Doubt is no longer on the menu.  The mind is a powerful thing and it will believe what we tell it.  If we say we can, chances are we will find a way to make it happen.  If we say we can’t, the mind will make excuses so we don’t have to try.  But understanding doubt is no longer an option is a powerful mindset shift.  When it comes to empowerment and making decisions for ourselves, finding our confidence is key.  It isn’t about perfection, it’s about adapting and acceptance.  If we understand that everything happens for a reason, our progress becomes more about adjusting our sails than about being perfect.  Knowing we are able to roll with the changes is more important than creating a smooth course.  We tell that inner voice that suggests we can’t do it to be quiet and we step boldly into who we are.  Confidence is key.  Even if we “fail” spectacularly, at least we tried something.  What we learn is more important than what we accomplish—and what we learn helps us to achieve what we want to accomplish. 

Don’t ever let anyone talk us out of doing what we know is right for us.  If we have an idea that persists in spite of everything around us, chances are that is related to our purpose and we need to give it the courtesy of hearing it out and seeing where it leads us.  Doubt is a waste of energy—and it’s easy.  Think about it: it’s easy to think we can’t do it and then choose to sit and watch TV.  It takes energy and effort to work toward our dreams.  We all have moments of fearing we can’t do something, but the mind doesn’t understand the difference between fear and excitement: chemically they are indistinguishable.  So when we think we can’t do something, that is the chance for us to take the reins and shift toward making progress on something that excites us.  It takes practice to make that shift, but once we do, we become unstoppable.

Health and wellness are greatly impacted by what’s around us, the people around us.  Keeping energy high means understanding what our environment encompasses and evaluating what works in moving us forward and what holds us back.  For my people pleasers, how often are we sacrificing our goals to make people happy? Yes, those people are part of our environment.  We are greatly impacted by those around us, especially those we spend the most time with.  I read this quote: “The real reason you’re sad is because you’re attached to people who play hot and cold with you. You always make time for people who are too busy for you.  You give attention to people who ignore you.  And you’re too fucking caring for people who are careless when it comes to you,” Adam Cam.  While our environment entails more than just the people around us, people are the greatest influence on us.

This quote resonated in terms of connection.  Connection is a key component of our health and it includes so many layers.  This life is a web so we talk in terms of connection with self and understanding what we need, connection with friends, connection with purpose, connection with family, intimate connection, and spiritual connection.  If we are trying to connect with people who aren’t there to support us, we are going to feel depleted.  If we are constantly giving our energy in service of other people’s goals and meeting their expectations, we are going to feel depleted.  If we take in crap, if we surround ourselves with crap, we are going to feel like crap.  We can’t feel safe and supported in this web of life if we surround ourselves with people trying to cut our connections.

Health and wellness is all about the environment in its totality.  Food, drink, what we read, what we see on television and social media, who we are with, the baseline thoughts and feelings we have, what we wear, our stores.  All of these things have an impact on us.  This is why it’s so important to have a sense of self so we have a clear understanding of what aligns with who we are.  We need to understand how the things around us make us feel so we can move toward that which feels good.  We need to learn to recognize healthy environments and trust that we are meant to feel good.  We aren’t meant to stay stuck where we are feeling like crap.  The human mind has great capacity to create so why not create something that’s actually good for ourselves?  We don’t need to feel like crap, we aren’t meant to.  So if we have down moments, take a pause and look at where we are.  Look at the influence around us and make the decision to change the environment or change our thoughts.  It will make all the difference.

Today I am grateful for abundance.  Abundance is so much more than what’s in our bank accounts or the size of the house we have.  It’s more than the cars we drive or the clothes we wear. It’s more than any jewelry we could put on our bodies or any trip we could take.  Abundance is about health, nourishment, nature, security, joy, time, energy, presence, connection, spirit, and love.  These are all things that create genuine abundance and these are the source of true wealth.  These are the things that help us manage and tap into the materials of the world, yes, but we understand those things in the material world are not what make us abundant.  Being surrounded by family and friends and laughter is an unbelievable privilege and measure of what truly matters.  I have people I love and who love me back and that is such a gift.  I have a healthy body and I am able to nourish and strengthen it and I have access to all of the things I listed above.  That is an abundant life. There is nothing to complain about.

Today I am grateful for shifting. It takes an immense amount of work to shift our minds.  We are set in our ways and the ways of others and we operate according to what we know—which comes from what we have been taught and experienced.  In order to open up to other possibilities, it takes a conscious effort and a pointed move in a new direction.  For some people there’s a before and after, like an event occurs that changes our minds so radically that there is no going back to what we knew before.  For others it’s a gradual process, more like an awakening or coming to our senses to understand what’s really around us.  For me, it’s been a combination of both.  I’ve been blessed with moments that have changed me whether it was meeting someone, going somewhere, or opening up to understanding what I was feeling.  And then there are times when it comes to awareness of what I really feel that it has been a longer process because I’m fighting with accepting and understanding what I really feel.  It’s a visceral feeling, like learning to use our senses in a new way.  How cool is it to learn and integrate new information?  I strive to apply those lessons as often as I can.

Today I am grateful for expression—and appreciating the expression of others.  Seeing people in their true element is an amazing thing.  There is a level of vulnerability in sharing who we really are, so finding the security and safety to be who we really are is a gift.  It’s also pretty cool because it’s in the expression of our true selves that we find our people.  When we find what truly resonates with us and we start operating there, people with similar interests and goals come forward and we suddenly find support we didn’t know existed.  Life isn’t meant to be operated on the periphery, dipping our toes in to see who takes us on.  We are meant to whole-heartedly enter the pool with enthusiasm and find the expression of who we are.  That’s the only way to do it.  Don’t take the light we emit for granted.  Love wholly and completely, including loving ourselves exactly as we are. 

Today I am grateful for joy.  I have shared my gratitude for this emotion before, but I really want to express a deeper understanding of this experience.  I struggled for so long to find happiness—somedays I still do.  It felt like something I needed to earn and it felt fleeting at best.  But as we will discuss this week, happiness isn’t necessarily the goal.  Happiness is a guidepost and we know we are fully in our element when we embrace the joy around us.  The truth is joy is an emotion stronger than happiness—it’s an embodiment of who we are and the experiences around us.  Joy is a full body experience whereas happiness tends to be a chemical in the brain.  That can still feel good, but we will always be looking for the next thing—it isn’t lasting.  Joy is a state of being that opens doorways to things and experiences we didn’t realize were available.  Joy is a key, happiness is a window.        

Today I am grateful for understanding safety.  I had a revelation over the last few weeks that I’ve spent the majority of my life looking for safety.  This isn’t to elicit pity, but I was not easily accepted by people—and I can’t pretend to know why.  The reason is irrelevant because this is about the feeling.  I was trained early on to be a people pleaser, to literally hide who I am (shame about by body etc.), and to hold myself back intellectually to make others feel better.  I was still left behind.  So that meant the people who did accept and appreciate me got an extra dose of clinginess for me—admittedly which as probably a lot.  So I’d distance myself from them too when I felt their need for space.  All this time I was looking for an indicator that I was worthy when all I needed to do was believe I was worthy—of the space I took up, of the ideas that wanted to develop, of love.  Those things were the security I truly needed.  I needed to know that my existence was accepted.  And all of that came from understanding that I was safe in myself, safe to accept myself, safe to acknowledge my worth. 

Today I am grateful for authenticity.  This is to piggy back off of safety above.  When we feel safe, we express our true, authentic selves.  The thing is, when we spend the majority of our time dulling the edges and turning down the light of who we are, we dim our existence.  This is a world of full experience and expression—similar to what I mentioned above, we aren’t meant to spend our time playing around the edges, we are meant to go all in.  When we are authentic, we find security in being ourselves and the key is that we have to learn to provide that security for ourselves rather than hope the world provides it.  Life is rich and complex but it is also meant to flow and be carried delicately.  It’s an art to live and to do so authentically makes it that much better.  It’s taking the blinders off and seeing the world in color.  We need to be who we are in order to see what we are meant to see.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

How do we move on when the stories we tell ourselves were false? I had a different concept about moving on that both liberated me and stopped me in my tracks.  I’m the first to admit that my family trends toward the dramatic side, the victim side, and the martyr side (myself included).  It’s easy to elicit sympathy if something is always going wrong and if we dwell in it, then there is the perfect excuse for not achieving what we set out to.  With that being said, the thought that came to me was about the interpretation of events in our lives.  How is that two people can have the exact same experience but their experience will be completely different?  It’s because of what we tell ourselves about what happened and what we feel about what happened.  I know some people whose version of events was so different from mine that I questioned whether or not I was actually there.  So what do we do?

There is a middle ground that requires an entirely objective view of what happened and taking the event simply for what it was.  We are trained to put an interpretation on it because it’s a survival and safety thing, so this isn’t easy.  But if we can learn to take things at face value and simply react to what is rather than what we THINK it is, it makes things a lot easier.  The mind is an incredible tool but it isn’t always honest when it allows emotion in.  We get stuck on how it feels based on our previous experience (x happened so I must feel y) so it becomes difficult to differentiate feeling differently in a similar circumstance.  Again, this exercise isn’t easy—it requires a lot of determination and focus.  At the same time, it guides us toward what we do want to feel.  If our interpretation of events isn’t making us feel good then we can choose again.

This is why it’s so important to be honest with ourselves at all times.  What are we really feeling and does it align with how we want to feel?  The stories we tell ourselves can promote or repress us, the version of events and what we associate it with internally is that important.  The saying that there are always three sides to every story (yours, mind, and the truth) is so true.  If we can lean a little more toward the truth then it works in everyone’s favor.  Being objective takes practice but it’s easy to identify how we WANT to feel.  No one overtly chooses to feel bad meaning they don’t actively say, “I want to feel bad today.”  So if feeling good means keeping an open mind and an awareness of what best serves in the moment and for the greater good.  If the goal is to progress then we need to consider what we are telling ourselves.

I just want to send a reminder out there to those who get stuck in the nostalgia/guilt/shame spiral.  Or we get caught between wanting things to be a certain way and believing there is some sort of penance for what we did that unlocks the path forward.  Those feelings will never allow us to move forward because there will always be something more we feel we can do.  The truth is shame and guilt close us down, grace opens us up.  Our journeys aren’t perfect, they aren’t meant to be, but they are mean to be perfect for us so we can share the story with others and help them along their way.  We learn the lessons to share with others.  When we carry shame, the story gets skewed.  We either hide it completely and repress it or we try to make it the best version of events instead of taking in the actual lesson of what happened.  We make it about how we look instead of what we learned. 

When we have grace for who we are and for what happened we can learn the lesson.  We don’t assign a label of good or bad to what happened, we acknowledge it, integrate it, and move forward.  If we are more preoccupied with how we look than on learning what we are meant to, we will be stuck in the loop of searching for people’s approval.  We will never move forward because we are waiting for someone’s permission in the form that we are good enough before doing what we want to do.  it’s a waste of time to wait for someone else to tell us we are good enough because there will always be someone who has an opinion that tends toward the negative.  So, learn to accept with grace, learn to view things with grace, learn to embrace our humanity with grace and understand that all of the things we experience are part of our journey and meant to help us along the way.  They are guideposts to how we want to feel and how to make that feeling happen.  Take it for what it is and don’t assign an emotion to it.

Grace is also the ability to allow things to be how they are.  Accepting how they are and not wishing for them to be what they are not. It’s also allowing ourselves to admit who we are and what we want—what feels good to us.  Trying to be what we are not rarely works for long and sometimes we experience guilt or shame for not being perfect at what we think we should be.  Instead of feeling guilt, learn to ask if this is aligned with who we truly are.  Ask if the guilt is purposeful and guiding us to correct a behavior or if it is purposeful in showing us who we truly are.  Allow the truth to sink in and don’t be ashamed of it.  We are meant to share our gifts, not be a replica of each other.  Don’t worry about how it was or about finding a way to do it better—ask for a way to be a better version of who we are.  That is true grace.  We are meant to be who we are.  Embrace it.

Focusing on how things used to be makes it hard to move on.   I was a nostalgia junkie (I even made a post about it last year I believe) getting caught in how I wanted things to be and searching for the good old days. Focus on what is right now and what’s to come.  Nostalgia  keeps us attached to an idea of something, more often than not a feeling we are trying to recreate, so it isn’t always an accurate gauge of what happened or even what we are really looking for.  For example, after a lot of digging, I realized that I wasn’t necessarily looking for the experience, I was looking for the feeling of safety.  It dawned on me that if the goal is to move on and create new experiences, looking back at how things were will not carry us forward.  It’s important to remember that we are attached to our interpretation of an idea based on how we felt, and that we aren’t even the same people we were.  We have to become present to what is and what’s to come.  We have to be alright with letting go in order to embrace what is and what’s to come.  That isn’t to say eliminate the memory, but it is to say keep it in perspective.

It’s key to understand the importance of feelings and not get caught in them.  Feelings are guideposts that indicate what direction we need to go in.  We are meant to lean in to what feels right for us and not confuse the emotion with the experience.  That can be hard to do because we often equate the experience as generating the emotion.  That emotion came from within and it resonated because that is something meant for us on our path.  When we catch ourselves in the loop of longing for a particular experience, it’s more helpful to stop and ask what feeling we are trying to recreate.  There were times nostalgia hit me out of nowhere.  A particular smell, or the way the light hit at a certain time of day would send me back to the time I felt something good.  It took a long time to understand that that “good” feeling was really about safety.  It was rarely about fun or joy or doing things, it was about feeling secure and like I was doing the right thing—constant reassurance I was good.

Learning to generate that feeling from within and discerning the actual emotion we are looking for changes the game.  We are no longer reliant on finding that time again or on rehashing the emotion.  Studies have shown that remembering an emotion creates the same chemical experience in our minds—so we are essentially putting our minds through the experience, we are physically experiencing that moment again.  The short version is if we constantly repeat an experience in our minds, we are repeating it in our bodies because we are replaying the emotion of it which our minds can’t distinguish from past or present.  So before thinking things were greater at another time in our lives, start asking the question of what made us feel that way?  Not the experience, but what ABOUT the experience made us feel that way.  Is it that we want to do it again or that we want to feel that way again?  Understanding what we are actually looking for is key.  Once we unlock that, we can either reconcile it or we can determine if that is for the highest good.  THAT’S the guidepost we need.  Focus on how we want to feel and let the rest fall into place.    

True freedom lies not in the ability to say yes, but in the courage to say no.  Trust our instincts and only pursue what feels right for us, what call us.  do not allow others to tell us what needs to be done with our precious time here.  We get to decide what works for us even if that doesn’t work for someone else.  Living with anxiety for as long as I have has taught me that I allowed the fear of someone not liking me over power my ability to simply be who I am.  I said yes to everyone, I wanted everyone to be happy with me.  I thought love meant that everyone constantly approved.  I never understood people could and would still love me even if they didn’t agree with every single decision I made.  Living like that meant I was deciding for someone else.  Getting in touch with that voice after not heeding it for so long has proved challenging.  Doubt is still louder than trust on some days, but I’m learning that this time we have isn’t so forgiving when it comes to waiting for our opportunities: we have to take them.

Saying yes is important, that isn’t the point.  We can’t sit around doing absolutely nothing and expect that anything valuable will come of it.  Saying yes to the things that matter is key, specifically to the things that matter to us personally.  There is a difference between saying yes in order to feel included or to be accepted and saying yes because it feels like the right thing.  The right thing feels different to everyone, but the only way to truly make it valuable is if it has meaning to us.  So learn to be discerning in the yes AND the no.  If it doesn’t feel right or it isn’t aligned with personal values, don’t do it.  Doing that only drains our energy and leaves us wanting of someone else to fulfill us.  If we become more discerning with what works for us, we tap into source directly, we aren’t waiting for someone else to fill the well.  Marie Forleo calls it “The full body yes.”  If it isn’t a, “Hell Yes!,” it’s a no, and that is ok.

When it comes to the courage to say no, we are talking about keeping our boundaries and not allowing others to sway us to do something we don’t want to.  Even if it goes against a group, or a person who really matters to us, when we aren’t feeling it, we need to be able to stay firm in our choice and say no.  It’s hard because we have equated being agreeable with being likeable even if it doesn’t sit well with us.  This is such a false message and it’s dangerous.  We aren’t meant to agree all the time otherwise we wouldn’t have new ideas.  We’d never come up with different solutions or generate ideas,  We need multiple perspectives because we live different lives.  Saying no is a good thing because that creates the boundary as much as saying yes does.  It’s our decisions that shape us through our experiences, and we need to be able to define who we are to know what works and what doesn’t.  Don’t be afraid to say no, and for the record, “No” is a complete sentence. We have nothing to explain.