“If you continually get overwhelmed over and over again it’s because you’re not aware of your capacity and you push past it [by not addressing it].  Procrastination takes part of your capacity (because you’re thinking about it over and over again) until it’s done,” Rob Dyrdek.  This is a good follow up to yesterday’s piece about emotion.  Overwhelm is an emotion we choose as well because we always have the option to address the work now and the more we put it off, the longer it hangs over our heads.  Adress the issue now so you don’t waste time and capacity thinking about what still needs to be done.  The constant “needing” to do something will always sit with us until the activity is done.  We don’t need to get hung up on waiting for something, for the right time.  If we just act now we clear up space for the future.  It’s our job to manage our overwhelm and our feelings and to appreciate the feelings of a barometer of what we actually need to do.  Feelings are always a good compass.

We can’t allow ourselves to get so distracted by what we have to do that we don’t actually do anything. We can’t lie under the guise that we can do it all—I mean, we can but that doesn’t mean it will all get done to its fullest potential or to the capacity where it can fulfill its purpose.  Sometimes we simply have to sit there and do a hard look at what is really important in our lives and make the decision about what needs to be addressed—and then we have to get to work.  It really is that simple.  I know that isn’t always easy because we’ve operated under the misconception of what our real priorities are for so long that shifting them to something that steers us toward our goals feels uncomfortable.  But when we strip away the unnecessary, the distractions, when we pause even for just a little while, the noise begins to quiet.  The dust begins to settle and suddenly there is some clarity.  We are all capable of great things and so many of us don’t operate on that level simply because we are clouded with pushing things off or the fear of starting.  Don’t let life become a daunting chunk of “have-to’s” or “I wish I did” or even focusing on the wrong thing.

It may seem like we don’t have time for the things we want to do—hell it sometimes feels like we don’t have time for the things we need to do—but when we settle and discover what truly needs our attention, suddenly there is an abundance of time.  There is this long now that stretches before us and suddenly the doing doesn’t even feel like work.  It feels like an aligned series of steps.  Things are drawn to us and we reflect light, we share our talents, our goals, and we fulfill our purpose.  We can only do that if we put aside that which doesn’t serve and we start addressing what needs our attention.  That is the secret to eliminating overwhelm: get rid of what doesn’t need attention.  Don’t create a list of things that don’t need to be done simply because someone tells us it’s important.  If it has no value, then it is something we can consider taking off your list.  When we start to get some clarity, the path starts to open up and the steps become evident.  Don’t push past the feelings: start to ask if it’s something that really needs our attention.  Break the habit of needing to do anything and step into what aligns.  That’s when the distraction goes away and the steps become clear.    

The amazing thing about life is we get to feel.  The fact that we can feel and experience anything is a phenomenal gift and I don’t think that we take enough time to understand that experience of feeling.  We rest in our thoughts and feelings but we don’t take the time to wonder at them.   When we really look at our lives, do we allow ourselves the experience to appreciate that we were brave enough to live?  The whole point of these essays, this work in general  is to encourage people to take the leap toward self-realization on the path of who they actually are.  In order to do that we need to honor the fact that we have these thoughts and emotions and are able to process things and make decisions.  For a long time I know I didn’t like my feelings and then I went the other way and felt them too much—I mean I collapsed into anything I was feeling in the moment and fixated intensely.  But when we let go and we let life be life, amazing things happen and we understand the amazing gifts in life.

Now I know that feeling is a sort of super power.  While we all do it, not many people are emotionally intelligent enough to use it correctly.  I used to use feelings as a barometer of how I should act around people—and I know fellow people pleasers out there know what this about.  Then I started to understand that people’s behavior really stemmed from their feelings, typically insecurity or fears.  I wish I could say that made me patient, but it didn’t.  It absolutely made me understanding of where these individuals came from and why they did what they did, but I would lose patience because THEY didn’t understand that.  They would continue along their way without checking their own behavior oblivious to what it did to others.  So then I went the other way and I spent too much time tailoring my behavior to what others wanted in some weird attempt at being an example.  It only made me a martyr.  As I’ve progressed in this work, I understand there is a middle ground.  We can understand people and hold them accountable but it isn’t our job to enforce their responsibility.  We are meant to use our feelings as a beacon to open people up to what they feel and to understand that. 

How bland would this life be if we didn’t feel anything at all?  Not feeling appreciation, or love, or hope, or excitement, or the anger of injustice.  We’d sit here numb to all of it, not responsive to anything.  We need to understand that we can’t make people feel the same way about things that we do.  Their experience and context tell a different story than ours.  That doesn’t mean that we need to stop what we feel. We need to lean into how we feel and make the decision on how we use that.  I don’t want to waste a second of my time not feeling the magic of something.  The breath in my lungs and the air on my face, the heat of a fire in the fall and the burn of creative energy inside, the solidness of the Earth beneath me and the stability of follow through, the cleansing of water and learning to be in flow.  I also wouldn’t change the gift of being able to understand what people are feeling and learning to communicate with them based on where they are at.  Feeling is a gift.  Feeling and support and love and trust are all the drivers forward.  They are the pillars that move us into who we are at our core.  We just need to have enough belief in that feeling to trust it.  And I know now that if we feel it, it is meant for us.  Believe.               

Why is it people think they don’t need to check on the strong ones?  This isn’t my question, I saw it on my feed the other day and it got me thinking.  We’ve been talking about healing, perspective, worth, etc. for a long time now.  In that healing, we’ve had to discover patterns and reasons for behaviors, some of which we need to accept aren’t ours to begin with.  The defense mechanisms we learn and adopt as children become the habits we have as adults and sometimes those turn into obstacles we need to overcome.  I’ve said it a million times here: we aren’t meant to carry the weight of those who came before us.  We aren’t meant to add to the walls around us.  We certainly weren’t created to isolate and do it all on our own.  We operate under this misconception that we need to do it on our own to prove some sort of strength or worth.  The reality is that only creates false ideas and perceptions such as idolizing people and thinking they have it all or that they can do it all.

The greatest successes come from a unit, a web or system of support.  While we all have things we are remarkably great at, the truth is that most of us are great at wearing a façade.  I’ve often asked what would happen if we simply let the facades fall away. What would happen with that level of vulnerability?  What greatness would emerge in the world from simply creating a place where we all shared the best versions of who we are?  The absolute highest potential of what we could do without competition?  Competition started as a means of survival and evolved into sport and now we continue it as a way to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.  What if we let go of the competition as well?  I think we’d discover that there is joy in the softness and that the need to be strong emotionally was far overrated.  That isn’t to say I want people falling apart at the seams, we need a modicum of emotional control.  But we can put aside the air that we have to do it all alone and that we are always strong. 

I know I’ve been afraid to reach out to certain people because they seemed like they had it together on so many levels.  I created this separation between us, a hierarchy, that created distance because I put them above me.  I know I’ve been told that people have been afraid to reach out to me for the same reasons.  We are trained to make judgements based on what we see and take action based on that interpretation.  We don’t necessarily know what’s actually happening behind the scenes in someone’s life.  The truth is we are all neurotic messes playing the same game and the more we wake up to it, the more we shed the necessity to isolate or create divides between us.  We are better when we connect.  Sometimes the people who appear to have it together the most are the ones who are barely holding it together.  Let’s learn to withhold judgement and ask the questions instead.  You never know when someone simply needs an ear—and we may be surprised to find when we need one as well.  We all need someone at some point, even the ones who look like they have it all together. 

You’re special as you are, even if you don’t believe it now.  I saw this in context to a woman having a panic attack and her significant other comforting her at the height of the event.  Human beings live with something called the recency bias which is the thought that the way things are is how they will always be.  I haven’t done enough research to know where that comes from, but I know we all know that feeling of the bad day settling over us and we think this is simply how it will always be.  In those moments we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, we are most likely to start repeating patterns and thoughts we know—we default to current neural wiring. If we’ve spent our lives thinking we are nothing and other negative things, that spiral is where we find ourselves.  We have to keep perspective—and as someone who deals with anxiety I know how hard that is—that what is in front of us doesn’t have to stay the same.

We need to reconcile what we feel with what we know.  Emotions are some of the most powerful forces on Earth.  They determine how we react and all variety of next moves we make.  The ability to monitor, manage, and master our emotions makes all the difference in the world.  Keeping the belief that all is well and that what is coming is greater than what we left behind, knowing that our worth isn’t determined by other’s opinions, trusting that our inner guidance will get us where we need to go and we will know what to do with it are all key.  The biggest lesson we need to remember is that the story we tell ourselves is the story we play out.  More important is knowing that we can change that story at any time.  We don’t cope well with the idea that we are enough in a society that thinks competing for the same things and who acquires the most is what determines who we are.  We don’t only deal with recency bias, we deal with a sort of mob mentality where we have to go with what everyone tells us.  It’s an act of rebellion to go against the norm. 

The bottom line is that no one can tell us what we feel or set the limit on who we are unless we let them.  No one can tell our story unless we let them.  No one can see our future, and even if they think they can, we are under no obligation to follow that road no matter who they are.  We are at the helm.  As we talked about yesterday, we can change that narrative and shift that direction at any time.  We just have to believe we can and we need to believe in the power of our ability to be who we are meant to be.  We create those moments, the opportunities, the light at the end of the tunnel and we make them real by taking action on them.  We are all special.  We are all worth it.  We all have unique abilities that need to be celebrated and recognized.  One difficult moment doesn’t determine the course of the rest of our lives unless we let it.  It is no different than a positive moment changing our lives—if we don’t act on it then nothing happens.  The choice is ours and we need to remember that now isn’t forever and the results come from what we choose to act on. 

Don’t be scared to start over, you might like your new story better.  Last week we ended with new beginnings and taking action.  This is a little reminder/encouragement that it’s natural to get scared along the way.  It’s natural to fear letting go of what we know because we don’t always see what’s down the new path.  It’s natural to feel sadness at letting go.  When we start over, there is indeed a sacrifice.  The person we were needs to be laid to rest so the person we are can come out.  We have to believe that what is coming is better than what was and have faith that we are able to follow the signs and see it through.  The fear of staying the same has to be greater than the fear of the unknown to really inspire action.  We also have to be in a position where we are willing to let go of what we know in favor of the belief that what’s coming is better.

The trajectory of life isn’t just about safety, it’s about change, evolution, creation, and expansion—those things almost the antithesis of safety.  While it seems counterintuitive, we can’t deny we’ve all felt the urge to go after things that, at first, may seem unrealistic.  On the same token, we’ve all felt stuck before and I personally know that what I’m doing now will not let me use the gifts I’ve been graced with, the things I am meant to share with the world.  The thought of playing it safe and allowing talents to develop on one side or the idea of being fully ready before leaping into the new means straddling both lives and we can’t steer multiple ships at once.  As I discussed yesterday, release and leaping is not easy—I’ve fallen into the same patterns millions of times.  We can’t help but lean toward familiar.  But I have an awareness of when I start repeating those patterns now and I have a much better idea of where I’m going and the beginning of any meaningful change is awareness.

The most beautiful thing about change, starting over, and expansion is that when we finally put the puzzle pieces together, there is a click and a resonance that simply makes sense in a way we couldn’t have imagined before.  I can attest to that for the moments I’ve taken the leap.  The point is that there are twists and turns and things in life that we can’t imagine coming forward.  We can’t project what will come based off of what we know because that doesn’t account for what we will learn.  The more we think we know what’s coming the more we strip ourselves of the potential for the magic that can unfold if we simply let the story unfold.  There is no reason to fear the unknown, even if it feels like the unknown can kill us.  The truth is, as I’ve said before, there is a death in the unknown and that is what we fear—but that death is the release of who we’ve been and what we’ve known.  The reward from taking that leap is far greater than staying where we are.  We may find true joy on the other side, it may be the awakening we need.  There is peace there.  Just let the story unfold. 

Today I am grateful for signs.  It’s been a while since I’ve spoken about signs.  I truly believe in the power of the universe.  In some ways it acts like the algorithms on social media—what we like we see more of and we notice more of the things we focus on.  As I work on my mental health journey, I notice that I am particularly susceptible to the desire for encouragement.  I don’t think I had a lot of encouragement when I was a kid, I think I simply received praise for a job well done.  My family wasn’t equipped to guide people through the learning stages so it was easier to be there when the task was done.  The beautiful part of this is that over time I’ve learned to find my own encouragement.  I ask for signs all the time and I truly do see them more often than not.  The universe shows us what we are willing to see and it communicates with us in thought, in feeling, in obstacles, in clear paths, in signs both big and small.  It’s up to us to what we do with it—I choose to bolster the belief when I see them.

Today I am grateful for friends.  This has been an emotionally challenging week and a huge reminder that I need to continue practicing emotional control/restraint.  It’s funny because I always wanted a supportive group around me, people I could lean on but I had a tendency to push them away.  There was a lot I had to figure out on my own as a kid so I learned to self-soothe and I learned what I thought was best for me.  As I’ve gotten older, emotions got harder and harder to manage so I’ve learned that I need a better system.  Help isn’t necessarily about people fixing things for us—I honestly used to believe that too.  A lot of my early “friendships” and “relationships” were solely based off of where I could help people.  As an adult it made me incredibly shy to help others because I didn’t want to be taken advantage of.  But as the emotional baggage got too heavy and I learned to discern the real from the fake, I understood the importance of having an authentic support system.  I am grateful that they helped me through some incredibly challenging moments.

Today I am grateful for the destruction of ego.  I realize how much I have tried to call the shots in my life and how much I’ve defined success by how things have gone my way or people doing what I’ve told them.  it’s a power play because I’ve felt so insecure about many things.  I haven’t fully defined what I’ve wanted in life so I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around.  I’ve lost a lot of time and this has made me feel totally out of control—so I sought control in my relationships and with people around me.  I thought that having a title at work would make me feel better, I thought that calling the shots about how we spend money as a unit would make me feel better, I thought that things playing out how I saw them would feel better.  I see now that it has made me weak and a volatile mess.  I don’t want to be controlled by how I feel.  I don’t want people to be controlled by how I feel.  I don’t always know best, and finding other opportunities and other ways comes from letting go of that belief.  Ego is a fine line because we need enough to know we are worth going for it but not so much that we make ourselves the center of the universe. Let go of the inflation and allow ourselves to soar even higher.    

Today I am grateful for life.  This has been one of the busiest years I’ve had in a long time.  I legitimately cannot believe it’s November.  I feel so unbelievably blessed at the events of this year, the connections I’ve made, the events that have unfolded, and the new experiences we’ve shared.  This is truly what life is all about.  We often spend our time envisioning what we think it should be and then we notice that it either isn’t happening or we are going through it alone.  The more we align with what is, we start to feel the veil lifting and we suddenly find ourselves right where we need to be.  We allow the magic to flood in and adventures and stories are created.  Life is entirely of our own design and we are able to make it what we want.  It truly is of our own design, and that is a gift.  The more life we allow in, the more life we get to experience—and it can begin at any time. 

Today I am grateful for the perspective I needed to get and continued confirmation of my instincts.  I am also grateful to separate someone’s opinion from what I know about myself.  Someone told me they were disappointed in me this week.  That same person tried to equivocate a particular circumstance to something I had been complaining about previously.  She tried saying that something directed to me under my scope should have been shared with her because she felt excluded and she knows I don’t like being excluded either.  The difference is the things I was excluded from were responses to projects I had started or things impacting my team directly that she allowed to go to other managers.  I’m not going to lie, I was infuriated.  Not by the fact that she said she was disappointed, but by the fact that after all this time she still had no clue what I was upset about in the first place, she still couldn’t see her role in what bothered me.  She can keep her disappointment because that is a story she is telling herself to feel better and she needs to grasp at straws to make me the bad person.  That too belongs to her.  I don’t need her approval and I am not there for her praise—I have a job to do.  There is more than one way to get things done, it doesn’t make anything wrong if the goal is accomplished.  I am fine with that.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Get to work to get the results.  Once we make the decision to move on a new story with confidence and faith in our ability to do it, we need to act on it.  Follow through is what gets you there.  Yes, the vibration is important but we can’t get where we need to on thought alone.  We need to show the universe that we are willing to do the work required by this new energy.  I wrote a piece a while ago about setting intention and I used the example of wanting to go to Bali but buying a ticket to Florida.  That won’t get you where you want.  Similarly, we can’t say we want to bring about change and continue to do the same thing every day.  I’ve done that for decades.  I told myself I was doing the work by reading, by feeling righteous, by getting angry of what has done.  Those feelings all inspired belief and understanding, but I didn’t move.  I didn’t act on those beliefs to tell the universe I believed I was worth more.  For example, I have never walked out of a job that treated me like crap—I was living with one foot in each camp thinking that was getting me forward.  We can move forward like that but there comes a point on the line where the gap is too great and we need to pick a side.

Don’t get me wrong, establishing belief and understanding for ourselves is a huge step—it just isn’t enough to create the change we need.  Only action can do that.  I got myself stuck here as well.  1. I would create these plans for how to bring about that change and then I would inevitably get exhausted continuing to prioritize my old way of being.  Like, I’d get up early to work on things for my personal goals but then end up cutting myself off because it was time to get to work when I really wanted to take a personal day and keep going.  2. I’d get overwhelmed because I would lose focus and stop prioritizing what I needed to and end up right where I started.  I’d also be overwhelmed because I focused too much on the end result, got frustrated when I didn’t get it, and go back to old habits.  I had to learn to break down the goal into smaller bits-understanding and accepting that big changes are brought about by small daily changes in support of our shift.  3. I had to learn to really let go of ego and my timeline.  I’d get so frustrated when things didn’t happen on my schedule that I’d give up.  I had to believe differently.

Undergoing change in our lives is simultaneously exhilarating/exhausting and empowering/humbling.  We need to be humble enough to pick up that what we are doing isn’t working and empowered enough to change it and it’s exhilarating because it’s something new and an entirely new world opens up to us but it’s exhausting because we aren’t used to that energy.  We can’t assume we are able to flip a switch and become a new version of ourselves.  That’s when we are most likely to give up.  We have to move slowly and integrate every day.  Some days it will go faster than others but there are some lessons that take time.  Regardless of the challenges, we are meant to keep going.  We are meant to ignite the spark of change and let it become a blaze that lights our path and inspires the flame in others.  We have to be willing to burn away the old so there is room for the new.  That is a terrifying moment. They key is that we keep the lessons we need from the past and release the rest.  That way we have what we need and we honor it but we are firmly in a new direction.  We can’t always take the past with us.  New destinations require new moves.  What work are you willing to do?   

New beginnings require two things: 1. Incredible confidence 2. An unshakeable faith in yourself.  This is a perfect follow up to last week’s conversation on auditing our lives.  Sometimes we get the inkling that we need to do something different with our lives and others there are blatant signs that smack us in the face.  Some people have a deep yearning drive for something more and others have a curiosity that leads to more curiosity so they follow it.  Regardless of how the beginning comes about, making any significant change in our lives does require the confidence to do it and the faith that we can follow through to bring it to reality.  I believe the first step in any major change is what we talked about yesterday—audit all facets of our lives to determine where we are at compared to what we want to be.  If the two don’t match, then we can begin the process of breaking down the changes into manageable steps. 

The other part of starting fresh is accepting the responsibility of a new beginning.  When we decide to go in a new direction, no one will shift for us.  There will be people and guideposts along the way, but it is up to us to follow through.  We have to navigate uncharted territory on our own with confidence and trust that we will get where we want to go.  That doesn’t mean we need to know everything, but we do need to learn how to figure it out.  This is the prime example that adaptability is key and knowing what we want, follow through and determination are the steps to get there.  All of this starts with taking an honest, informed, and discerning eye to our current situation and how we feel about it and stepping toward how we want to feel a little bit more every day.  The purpose of a new beginning is to start fresh and we need to audit our lives to see where we need to take a different action. We learn ourselves well enough to take the leap.  We tell a new story. 

Telling a new story is key because the universe understands vibration and if we are telling the story of life before the new beginning, we will simply get more of the same.  We have to believe we can ask for what we want and that we are worthy of getting what we want and that we have the ability to create it.  Believe that everything is happening and that we are already living in a state of love and purpose and that we can get what we offer vibrationally.  That our lives unfold in joy and that we recognize joy and happiness as the way to move forward.  Focus on what is good and draw in more good, allow the vibration to pass and expand.  We need to tell the story of how we believed in ourselves enough to take the leap and create something new.  Once we commit to that, there is nothing that can stop us.  Even if we don’t know the way, the confidence is that we will find the way.  We can’t go wrong on that path.  Trust and take the leap. 

Life audit: an honest look at the results you have versus what you want.  I took this from a speech I heard about self-improvement and it was used in the context of getting from where we are to where we want to be.  The simple way to look at this is evaluating how to close the gap (I have a piece on that further back as well 😊).  The more I thought about it, the more I realized it has a bigger reach and impact than that.  Recent events in the world seem to have made this more of a priority for me.  I don’t like the idea that things need to stay the same, especially if they aren’t working for everyone, and I don’t like the idea that we have to keep doing things a certain way simply because they were done that way before—especially if people are getting hurt.  Any belief that requires hurting someone else because of what they believe needs to be examined further. 

What really made me dive deeper into this idea of auditing where we are at is that, honestly, there are some days it feels like the world is falling apart.  The reality is that the world isn’t falling apart—the systems we knew are falling apart and we don’t know what to do in its place.  We are learning to operate on new ground and it’s intimidating for us all.  We are competitive animals so ridding ourselves of the idea that we need a best idea or that there needs to be a winner is hard to get rid of.  We are all vying to prove our worthiness/claim our power.  In spite of all that, I believe we are fully capable of starting over and making it a new beginning, a blank slate for all.  The answers to anything new don’t come overnight.  They come from understanding our roles, our desires, our talents and our purpose and then learning how that combines with other people.  That’s why it’s SO important to know who we are—I can’t reiterate that enough. 

The whole purpose of the individual life audit is simple: when we do our best and learn to operate at our optimal performance, we spread that light to the world.  We are able to fulfill our purpose easier, we have energy to see things through, we have the capacity to listen and understand people and we are brave enough to bring forward our ideas and humble enough to refine them with others.  Given the climate of the world now, we need people to awaken to this state now more than ever.  We all need to take pause and ask if what we are doing is who we are.  How much of what we do is because we learned it and how much of it is because it’s engrained in us—and we are meant to break the habit (see the post on generational trauma from a few days ago)?  Breaking any habit is hard—spending, eating, drugs, alcohol—but it’s harder to live someone else’s life.  I think that is the biggest source of regret when we go; at the end we realize that we missed out on living our lives because we were living someone else’s.  don’t let that happen.  Wake up, do the work, dig deep and analyze if this is what you want.  The sooner we can fulfill our destiny, the sooner the ideas that work for all can flow. Auditing ourselves is the most selfless thing we can do.        

Who are you storying for? The subtext to this question is don’t make assumptions about what other people are thinking or feeling.  This was a challenging one for me for several reasons: 1. This is a habit that I have that I thought came from a good place.  I decide what people are feeling before they confirm it with me.  2. I got this habit because I had to learn how to interpret and manage the feelings/emotions of others around me. 3. I’m really good at reading people. Even if it’s just a gut feeling, it’s hard to not jump forward when I know my gut is telling me something, especially when it hasn’t steered me wrong before.  It may have taken time to come out in some cases, but I’ve rarely been wrong.  4. I’ve been trained to not trust those instincts because other people didn’t see what I saw “soon enough” so they chalked it up to me being wrong. 

As I’ve gotten older, I clearly know that people are capable of telling their own story.  I’ve also learned that while I can be empathetic and sympathetic to people’s experiences, that doesn’t mean I feel the full range of what they do—it is still their story to tell, not mine, regardless of how similar the circumstance.  When we are trained as people pleasers, reading the room is important.  We need everyone to like us and we need to feel love and accepted and the only way to do that is to make sure people are happy with us and our behavior at all times.  Even if we feel it is for the other person’s benefit, we need to stop telling their story and assuming that’s what they want.  We have to learn to draw the line and understand that if people don’t like us when we stop doing what is best for them, then they weren’t meant to be in our lives regardless.  The other side of this is to stop believing we know how people feel at all times.  Sometimes they are simply tired and we misinterpret that as anger toward us.  Most of the time how people feel has nothing to do with us.    

The most important thing we can do is learn to tell our own story and to stand firm in who we are.  The more we know about ourselves, the more we trust ourselves, the less likely we feel the need to control others.  That is the essence of storying for other people—we think we have a modicum of control over the outcome if we know where their story is going so we start telling it for them.  We can’t steer the ship for other people’s lives (some people barely have the capacity to steer for themselves) so we need to learn to embrace the power and stand at the helm of our own lives.  How people react and interact with us depends on so many factors, we can’t make assumptions about their feelings and we always need to give them space to figure that out first.  We don’t always know how we feel immediately and if we give ourselves and others time to figure that out, communication improves.  Tell our own stories and watch everything improve.