Today I am grateful for the zone.  Rob Dyrdek talks about abundance and flow in terms of entering a zone where time slips away—Joe Dispenza talks about the same thing.  A lot of people talk about entering the zone whether in regards to creative pursuits, sports, other work etc. and how the energy, time, and thought move differently.  Our minds operate and perceive differently.  I’ve been working on a group for my mom friends for a while.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for them as a way to create built-in support.  We are all busy women who need to take care of our homes, families, businesses/jobs, and ourselves.  While I was planning this, I felt something come over me and idea upon idea came out, just filling me with more and more warmth and joy as I kept going.  The more I wrote, the more came out, the more ideas I had to help and create an open space, the more ideas came to me.  In what felt like an instant, I had a ton of things written down and I felt lighter.  The zone is an incredibly powerful space to be.  When we strive for more in our lives, that is a place of abundance and joy.

Today I am grateful to integrate and understand.  While I was having lunch with a colleague the other day, I started feeling funny (dizzy, jittery, anxious) in a way I haven’t felt before.  It felt like I needed to crawl out of my skin so I checked my heart rate—it was at 109 BPM.  I’d been really confused and frustrated and scared and this was the result of waiting for someone to make a decision on my life and me falling into old habits instead of doing the work I needed to do.  As I’m learning about what feels right for me and trying to apply this quantum way of thinking (Thank you Joe Dispenza), I’m understanding my needs more and that learning something new means unlearning what I used to know—and that means really letting it go, not repeating the pattern.  As I was getting ready to go out on our first date in nearly 6 years with my husband, I saw my body differently; initially I was sad, angry and disappointed, but I heard a voice say this version of you got you where you are now.  Suddenly I felt appreciation instead of disgust.  I looked in the mirror and I said, “Thank you for what you’ve done to get me here.  It’s time for me to do something else.”  I realized that I needed to grow and that means accepting help and actually doing what needs to be done instead of thinking about it.  It’s the application of the lesson.  I can’t hate myself because all that I went through got me here.  I need to love myself and that means being grateful for what I’ve done.  It means accepting my worth, accepting help and love, and accepting responsibility to take the actions necessary to get where I want to go.  If I want something different I need to feel something different and do something different.   

Today I am grateful for sharing energy.  My husband and I have been talking about various projects around the house for ages but we weren’t moving on any of them.  Before anyone gets judgy, when I say “ages,” I want to clarify that we’ve talked about it for 3 years—it’s not like I was getting anxious after a few days.  Things I needed done in my area (storage and living in the basement) were contingent on moving things around in his area (the garage).  I didn’t want to make decisions and move ahead with moving his tools or anything else without his input otherwise I would have done it myself.  It definitely felt overwhelming looking at the amount of stuff that needed doing—but once it started, my husband entered his zone.  Next thing I know, insulation and drywall are up in the garage, peg board is hanging and the tools are going up.  Every day he’d work in there and it keeps getting better and better.  The energy is contagious and he admitted it felt good to focus and get things done.  Plus it was a great example that he was supported and people would help him—friends/neighbors and me.  It’s really just about taking that first step.    

Today I am grateful for generosity and kindness.  I grew up with a family that, while helpful amongst each other, still had the undertone that anything that happened was our responsibility.  Meaning, the learning curve for most every day things was pretty steep.  They’d help you with something but it would be on their terms in their way.  Again, it wasn’t to leave you high and dry, it was just their way of making people accountable.  It made it easier to just do most things on my own until I really needed help.  Asking for help made me feel weak, like I should be able to handle it all on my own—whatever it is.  So when I found this group of friends and they started telling me they would help me with stuff like watching my kid so my husband and I could go out, or when I had my kid and my sister told me the same thing, I never knew how to ask or accept that.  It always felt like there was something else behind it, some unspoken expectation of like, ok I’ll help you but then you need to do x for me.  Completely in my head, but it was the guilt complex that carried over—I felt I needed to be responsible for my child.  Last night we had a lovely meal with friends to celebrate one of the birthdays and my sister watched my son.  It was an incredible evening filled with laughter, joy, and love.  My son had a great time with his cousin, my sister got tiramisu, and we had a ton of fun with friends. 

Today I am grateful for a new start—with a new definition of what that looks like.  I’ve had a few points in my life that I would consider a new start.  Whether it was health related or trying a new discipline in the morning or how I spoke with people/managed my emotions, I would start strong and eventually give up.  I’d get too lax with myself and would easily fall back into whatever the old habit was.  Whenever we face something new or decide we want something new, the universe has this little way of testing us to see if we are going to stick with it, to see if we really want what we say we want—change isn’t easy, so I don’t think it’s a malicious thing, I think it’s an, “are you sure?” type of thing.  When it comes to integration, sharing energy, trusting people, and accepting help without guilt (all the things I’ve learned this week), I finally understood what was holding me back: my idea of the how when it came to how things happened for me, the fear of change, and lack of clarity.  If we don’t know what we want then we don’t know what steps to take to get there so we fall into old habits, if we control and obsess over how and when something comes, we ignore opportunities we should take, and if we give into the fear of the unknown, we never expand into something new.   

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.