“When you continuously swim by the waters of people that don’t have the depth to understand you, you will eventually drown in all of their misunderstandings of you.  You don’t have to keep diving down to reach people who consistently cut the air from your authenticity,” Bill Chapata.  What an amazing follow up to our talk about teamwork on Saturday.  That was one aspect of teams and finding support I didn’t talk about in my last piece: we need our team to consist of people who understand us.  It does no good if we dim our light and diminish our gifts to fit in with people who don’t understand (or who choose to not understand) who we are.  We feel like crap when we are with people who misunderstand us, and even moreso when we are around those who choose to misunderstand us.  I point out choice in these last two sentences because people have the capacity and the capability to observe other’s viewpoints, but we are more concerned with being right, so we choose to feign ignorance. Oftentimes we are so afraid of being alone that we don’t consider if people are really good for us.  Then we choose to drink the poison because we don’t think we can find clearer water.  Soon enough we start to believe we are what other people say we are and we don’t even know ourselves. 

In drinking that poison of misunderstanding, we start to misunderstand ourselves.  It’s amazing how much we can convince ourselves to stop believing what we feel inside, to stop trusting what we know about ourselves instinctually simply by listening to those around us.  We were never meant to create an interpretation of ourselves based on what others saw in us.  We were meant to build from the blueprint and create the foundation of who we are and simply be that construct, a piece of divine work.  The statue doesn’t try to form itself into something else when the creator is done with it, neither should we.  Our DNA does more than simply keep us alive—it tells us exactly who we are down to the things we enjoy, our talents, our feelings, our creativity, and yes, our purpose.  It’s all there, which is why it’s so vital to listen to the pull/call/feelings we have.  Instead of swimming in murky waters, we learn to find our own spring and navigate to the river.  Once we are in clear waters, we see ourselves for who we truly are.    

There comes a point in searching for self, in finding authenticity, in genuine self-expression that we start to suffocate if we don’t honor the feelings we have inside, if we don’t honor the call of what we feel and what we see.  We cut off any chance of being who we are if we limit ourselves to those experiences and people around us.  We aren’t living our own lives at that point.  Not everyone is meant to understand us, and instead of looking at that as an insult, we need to look at it as a gift.  Those who don’t understand us offer us the opportunity to understand and express ourselves.  They give us the chance to be who we are and define who we are and to respect and be comfortable as that person.  We learn to stand on our own legs and then the team we need finds us.  When what we are not falls away, what we are remains.  Don’t let our environment choke the life out of us.  Don’t drown in the waters we can simply walk out of.  We need to seek a place that encourages and supports our growth, and that includes the players around us.  We have a choice, just as they choose to (mis)understand, and I choose to understand. I choose to live. 

Today I am grateful for insubordination.  While I don’t agree with the context of the word in this situation, I suppose it is the most literal definition of what happened.  There was an incident at work and I was given direction on how to handle the repercussions for the person involved.  I didn’t agree with the decision, and based on the policy, I stuck with what the policy stated versus what I was told to do.  The policy was stricter than what I was told and, given the situation, I felt it was entirely warranted.  My boss had been on the same page as me (the decision came from higher than both of us) but when I explained what I did, I was told she couldn’t believe I did it because it was insubordination.  I told her it was the right thing to do, her name wasn’t on it.  I will tell you, the empowerment I felt was immense.  As the week went on there were more situations I needed to deal with and they progressively became more and more difficult, so trust me, that “high” wore off, but I learned quickly how good it felt to make a decision and stand in it regardless of what I was told to do.  Some situations are very clear, and I understood we don’t need to muddy the waters with permission or opinions of those who don’t know the players and we can simply go with what we know we are supposed to do.

Today I am grateful for reading.  I’ve needed some escape lately and reading has been a wonderful place for me.  I’ve loved reading my entire life.  Whole series, new worlds, learning about the function of the human, the mind, the body, society, adventure, true stories.  All of it.  I have a large collection of books and there is always something waiting for me, some place where I can go and just be part of another situation, another group, another life for a while.  I’m incredibly grateful my son also loves reading.  He’s finally found a series that he’s interested in and he loves when we read it together so now there is the added benefit of bonding over words.  It’s a beautiful experience and reminds me of my mom and I when I was a kid.  She’d read to me and she never restricted me on books.  It was amazing and something I am incredibly grateful for and even moreso to continue passing on that tradition with my son.  

Today I am grateful for perspective.  I’ve been in my head a lot, running circles trying to find my way out of the circumstance I’ve gotten myself into.  We know where circles get us: not very far.  I liked to believe that I had options but I feel like there are certain truths I have to face at the moment, including what options are truly available. What habits I need to break.  That sometimes stuff really does just fall apart.  I mean, so much of it is out of my control and I am struggling with that in ways I can’t begin to describe in this moment, and I don’t understand the point of it.  But I can only accept where I’m at.  Even if it feels bleak—which it does—this is simply where I’m at and I can only hope that it gets better from here. 

Today I am grateful for disruption.  Truth be told, I’m having a lot of trouble this morning while I’m working through this and my mindset is pretty rough.  But I know I have to force myself to see some positives including that there may be a reason why all this chaos and disruption is happening now.  Things change so quickly, by the hour, second, and especially by the day, so all of this is incredibly temporary.  Yes, it feels horrible, no I truly can’t see an exit strategy or even a next step.  But I know at some point it has to end.  I know I’m tired of settling so I don’t want to make decisions from this place where I feel like I have to jump on something.  I also know that this is forcing me to look at things from another perspective.

Today I am grateful for tomorrow.  This weekend has been as far from what I needed mentally and emotionally as it could possibly be. It had already been a difficult week with high emotions, tough decisions, and dangerous implications.  It didn’t stop through the weekend in our personal life, in my personal life.  While I may not see a way out, I am trying my best to keep my head above water.  So for today all I can do is breathe and just be grateful for what I’m able to do.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Teamwork: an act of love to delegate so I can be alone and creative and constructive.  The idea of others helping so we can honor ourselves.  I finally brought an idea to life last weekend when I hosted my first support session for my friends.  This idea stemmed from a conversation I had two months ago where a few of my mom friends were really stressing out and we talked through how we were feeling only to find solutions.  On the surface this seems like a really commonplace thing.  It’s no secret that talking things out helps people.  But what unfolded for me that night was a vision of empowerment.  Regardless of our “roles” in the family, we need to acknowledge that the way things are in society now does not support what is actually needed in our lives.  We are told that we have to do it all or we are failures.  That we have to make sure it’s all done correctly or we are failures.  That we can’t have all of our dreams until we fulfil the needs and obligations of our employers, families, and friends, oh and the systems we feed into.  I wanted to create a place where we could come together and solve these issues, a community, a network, a web designed to catch all of us whenever we needed it. 

We need to understand that regardless of any expectation put upon us, we are human and there are simply times we can’t do it alone.  We have individual strengths that we can use to help each other and there is no reason for us to feel we have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders.  This isn’t about proving what we can do.  In fact, if we stopped worrying about proving anything and we learned to support each other in our goals and pursuits, we’d see that so much more can be done.  Instead of supporting another organization or institution, if we support the people, amazing things can get done.  We are creative and we are meant to create.  We all create in different ways, we all have different inspiration.  The world wants that creativity to expand—and the best way we can do that is through working together.  It is an act of love, not only to ourselves but to others when we delegate.  We learn that we don’t need to do it all, that we are showing trust when we allow others to do things as they see fit.  We learn that we deserve rest and that what we do is enough—sometimes someone else needs to help us pick up a bit and that they are capable to do so.  This isn’t like high school where we try to put the entire project on one kid, this is about allowing everyone to use their strengths and to actually utilize them in a capacity that works for everyone.

Society may say that we have to do it all or have it all in order to be accepted or deemed worthy.  The natural human function and rhythm says we are worthy as we are and that all we need to do is use our natural gifts and talents to help others.  Why not create a team of people we can trust and rely on in times of need?  Why not create a group that supports and encourages each other to do what is right for them?  Why not work with people to develop their talents until they feel so confident that they are fulfilling their purpose every day?  The purpose of this is to feed enough energy into each other that we learn to fill our own cups enough to continue the cycle and continue creating amazing things.  We can do amazing things.  We are intentional creatures who get distracted by the outside voices. But when we get quiet and learn to harness our power and energy, we learn the truth of who we are and we find those who are meant to support us along the way, and those we can support along the way.  We help others the most in being ourselves.  We help ourselves the most by being ourselves as well.  Find that team, and if you can’t find it, create it.  It changes everything. 

I was listening to a reading the other day and he said that we need to tame the beast in order to harness our power and make something more substantial through taking action.  I considered a beast a system that told me how to live, a boss that I needed permission from, a system that told me no every time I went after something, a system that wouldn’t let me break the confines of where I was at even if I went about it the “right” way, something that fought me every step of the way. While all of that is true, something else came over me: there is more than one beast that needs to be fought.  My beast isn’t solely an outside oppressor, I’m my biggest limiter.  There are many outside influences that try to keep us small, but the truth is they only work on us if we let them.  We are only small if we choose to be.  I know and speak first hand to the fact that playing small seems normal and that is what we are expected to do.  I know from experience that this is a bullshit construct that we can break free of at any time.  I may not have entirely done that yet, but I am 100% certain it’s true.

I have a beast of fear, of self-doubt, of inaction, of confusion/lack of clarity, and a lack of belief.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these beasts were far more dangerous and limiting than anything I had experienced coming from the outside.  The only reason the outside limited me at all was because I believed it did. I believed that I needed to live in those confines.  I resented as much as I envied those who naturally broke those rules and did their own thing.  It baffled and angered me when I saw those who shirked the rules not only facing 0 consequences, but surpassing me in nearly everything I wanted to do.  I never thought that was something possible for me, that I’d be able to move beyond and see those highest/deepest dreams.  Additionally, I wanted the safety net, I wanted something to fall back on.  It seemed the smarter choice.  Soon that net wrapped itself around me like a suffocating cocoon and I couldn’t move anywhere—and I blamed others for that.  Then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: because I was wrapped in the net, I never gave myself the opportunity to try the things I wanted to so when I finally did, I failed. Then the cycle repeated.  Pent up energy, erratically try something, fail, do nothing.    

When dealing with a beast, it will run free unless we tame it, and it can be tamed in one of two ways—slaughter it or train it.  I know I don’t want to kill any of these qualities inside of me, so the answer is to harness that energy.  It has nothing to do with stopping the energy, it isn’t even about slowing it down.  It’s about directing it where it needs to go so it can be unleashed and do everything it wants to do, exactly what it is meant to do..  All of these things I want that constantly chaotically run through my mind need to be harnessed into the seed that can be tended and allowed to grow.  I’ve worked with animals my whole life and I instinctually and instantly knew it wasn’t about stopping them from doing/being what they are.  It’s about working with it.  Instead of taking “it” out of them, we teach them to be exactly what they are while learning what not to hurt, and we always remember they are wild.  We need to learn to expect he same of ourselves.           

The beautiful part of all this is that I understand I have many beasts inside of me.  While there are things that may hold me back, there are things that propel me infinitely forward. I have a beast of pure joy, love, and creativity.  A beast that sees limitless possibilities for this world and has so many ideas it wants to share.  So much information to share to make people love themselves and open themselves to creativity.  I have a beast that would defend anyone it loves to the end no matter what that looks like or what it does to itself.  I have a beast that loves so fiercely it has wounded itself looking for the same love.  I have a beast that intensely wants the best for everyone, to make everyone happy, that wants to show everyone how to be happy.  I have a beast that simply needs to be heard.  I wouldn’t trade any of that for the world.  The beast that survives is the one we feed so I’m choosing every one of them in this last paragraph.  I will starve out the others.  What a magnificent creature that will become.

There are 3 truths: mine, yours, and the real truth.  It’s all about choice, specifically choice in how we interpret things.  We can choose how we spend our energy, choose light over dark so we can see something bigger.  The only thing we have control over is our own perception so make sure it’s expansive—don’t limit ourselves to what others tell us to see or to repeating the same day over and over again.  The universe is designed to expand and create, our minds and bodies do the same.  Anything we can conceive of in our minds we can make real just as we grow humans physically.  If there is something we want in this life, we need to go after it.  We aren’t meant to be the same and that is when people are their most dangerous: when they are caged.  Society likes it when we fit into the confines of someone else’s ideas so we can feed into their system.  The world likes it when we break free and become exactly who we are meant to be.  As someone who spent a lot of years doing everything she was told, I can tell you that is one of the most wasteful and stifling ways to live.  There is something inside that screams to be heard until we let it out. 

We can choose to honor that voice or we can stay where we are—the choice is always ours.  The thing is this: whatever we choose will become the truth for us.  That is why it’s so important to keep that perception open.  There are enough things that try to keep us within some sort of confine—don’t let our minds be one of those things.  As soon as some of the cracks start to reveal another way, as soon as we start to see that there is light on the other side—or even that we can emanate our own light—things look different.  Suddenly it isn’t so scary, it’s clear.  We learn to take chances we many not have previously, even if that simply means listening to ourselves more.  It can be a scary thing to take control of our lives because we are solely responsible for what happens to us.  But how liberating is that?  No matter what we choose, we can choose again.  I’d rather take the time to experience all I can instead of sitting on the sidelines.  As someone who has done the latter for far too long, experience beckons.  Don’t be afraid to answer the call.

The thing about truth is that we have the power to make it whatever we want it to be.  We are meant to keep an open mind, we are meant to create.  We wouldn’t want to read a book that’s only one page long, or 1000 pages saying the exact same thing.  Fill the pages with adventure and wonder and things we create, show boldness, and curiosity, compassion, love, understanding, and pure unbridled joy. When we are confused, frustrated, sad, uncertain, or any other thing, we have the power to turn the page and begin again.  I used to scoff at statements like there are no limits except the limitations of our minds because I could very easily point out things that were holding me back.  It took me a long time to realize that I was trying to fit into a box.  It was a box I was told to love and I was told was the answer to everything, how to stay safe and everything I should want was in there. How clever of the world to give us a gilded cage, call it freedom, and make us desire our own confines.  Use our light and unlock that door.  Create a new truth and make the world as big as we want it to be.  The choice is ours. 

“An event challenges you.  Going through the process changes you,” John C. Maxwell. We have to go through the process to grow and become who we are meant to be.  Last week I went through an experience at work that completely put this in perspective.  One of my employees caused a major issue with potential for a lot of damage.  Stopping it and getting things under control was certainly challenging.  Explaining the seriousness of the situation to motivate people to move proved to be the most difficult part.  Then the waiting to determine the extent of the damage was next.  There was (and is) this limbo where we don’t know the extent of the damage or if anything actually happened, but we know what the potential meant as far as danger (yes, actual danger) to the organization.  Going through the process absolutely changed me.  It was hard enough to get people to move in this situation, but the aftermath made my skin crawl—still does.  Instead of supporting my decision for corrective action, leadership stepped in and told me that I wouldn’t be allowed to do anything.

My initial frustration was totally ego related—I made a decision I knew and, with every fiber of my being, I still know, was the right one only to have it overturned.  I felt entirely deflated.  This is the first time in quite a long time where my boss and I were 100% aligned so I expressed to her this is why I am inconsistent.  When I make a decision, especially one that is supported by our policies, and then someone overturns it, it not only undermines my authority, it undermines my confidence and my ability to lead.  Then it became about the actual circumstance in my mind; not to be dramatic, but given certain things we are dealing with security wise, this was the potential worst case of worst cases.  To have someone that high up ignorantly dismiss it infuriated me as I understood no matter what I did, this organization is going to do what it wants to do and that’s exactly how we end up getting in a ton of trouble—we never learn our lessons about listening to people.  It changed me to the point where I told my boss I felt like there was no reason to lead—and she understood.  S

o there was the logistical challenge of handling the situation and then there was the emotional challenge of navigating the consequences while not knowing the extent of the damage.  Then the collateral political damage of having ignorance from leadership overrule practical application of management.  Look, mistakes happen, 100%–I can forgive that and I understand it, but we need to be accountable at some point.  The challenge of the event taught me how to handle this type of crisis.  But it has changed my view of leadership and how I lead in particular.  I share this story as it applies to actual leadership but it applies to anything we do in our lives.  Parenting, friendships, budgeting.  The point is that we can learn through experience, but we become who we are meant to be by undergoing the steps it takes to learn that lesson.  I’ve also learned that we can’t always make a decision in the moment, no matter how challenging, but we need to rely on our instincts and there is a time to push back on those who have no experience in the matter regardless of their position.  Confidence is change—and that too is part of the process.  Allow it to happen and see what unfolds.

“A child will look anyone in the eye and say, ‘This game is no longer fun,’ and simply stop playing it.  Without hesitation, without guilt.  And we all should still be doing the same thing.  With bad lovers, bad friends, bad jobs, with the hate we have for ourselves,” Erin Van Vuren.  I always felt guilt at stopping things I didn’t want to do because I didn’t know how it would impact others.  What if they were having a good time?  I didn’t want to be the party pooper.  What if I was the only one who had an issue with it?  I would learn to like it at some point (most times it didn’t happen).  How different would our lives be if we simply stopped engaging with what doesn’t work for us?   What if we maintained our boundaries and the clarity we feel about what we want without shame or hesitation?  Our lives would look a lot more aligned and we’d see a lot more genuinely happy people.  I think we’d know what real happiness feels like.  So often we ignore what we feel and we try to logic/control our way out of it.  We assume we will eventually feel better or be able to tolerate it.  But the truth is we are designed to be discerning creatures and we do feel when something is right for us and when it isn’t . 

Instead of spending our time wishing for things to become something they aren’t, when we clearly communicate what we do and do not like, we can influence the space around us or we learn that we need to move on.  I personally think of the time saved through being honest.  Instead of worrying that we may offend someone, think of how we may be able to come to a better resolution when we tell each other the truth, something that works well for all involved.  It’s amazing how in these conversations amongst children, they are rarely offended.  They may be upset and frustrated if they really wanted to play and someone told them they didn’t want to, but they eventually move on and come to a compromise.  We’ve spent so much time losing our ability to compromise because we give away our power on a daily basis, and that’s where it becomes about ego.  We give away our power to a system, turning over hard-earned money for the things we are told to want, so we expect things to go a certain way in return.  When they don’t we become insulted and angry instead of understanding that there are better ways to control our lives—or even that it was control we were looking for in the first place.  I think taking the time to understand those depths would open the door to understanding that we weren’t familiar with our emotions and we let them get out of control because we applied them to ego.      

I think the world would become a much more cooperative place if we continued the practice of honesty with our feelings.  We’d better understand and practice the idea that there is room for each of us to create and live the life we want.  We can operate peacefully and still have different ideas.  In fact, we’d learn to make those ideas beneficial for everyone.  We’d learn to accept the differences as something beneficial or even fun.  The ideas that really don’t resonate with us we would learn to let lie.  An idea in itself does nothing.  We need ideas as they are the foundation of creation.  More accurately, the feeling around an idea is the foundation of creation.  We will struggle to bring forth anything that doesn’t truly feel good to us so it’s important to learn what resonates and what we want to pursue.  What makes us feel good.  What makes us tick. This is a practice that aligns us with who we are because we are able to get out of the mind and work with how we feel.  In reading Joe Dispenza’s book, he talks about how honoring the feelings we have we learn to quantum leap.  Quantum leaping is a matter of collapsing the now and allowing the reality to take manifest simply through aligning with the feeling of the experience we want to have.  That is exactly what kids do.  Instead of struggling for control, we need to spend more time learning to be like a kid again.   

I want to share a brief thought on health…When it comes to our overall health, we need to examine our relationship to stress.  Keely A Muscatel says the body has an immune response to stress—the cytokines of a stressful situation can cause an immune/stress response in the body simply by thought.  An otherwise physically healthy person will feel depressed and down when put in a stressful situation.  The brain tells the body to shut down. This is why it’s so important to manage our relationship to stress. It isn’t just about a heightened emotional state, our body responds to it. This means that our mental state is indeed responsible for some of the issues we have with our bodies.  Some scenarios are out of our control while others we need to be more cognizant of our role in it or our choice to participate.  The bottom line is there is physiological evidence that our thoughts impact the body.  If a thought can inspire action, it can also inspire internal discord on a chemical level.  The body believes what the brain tells it, so we need to be very careful in what we tell our bodies.    

We can’t be at war with our minds—we need to learn to make peace with them, we need to learn to honor them, and we need to learn to respect them.  The brain is the most powerful supercomputer in the world.  For so long we thought we were at the mercy of a series of impulses or that we needed to fight to survive—and for millennia we did.  Now we can take the time to understand more of the intricacies of how we function and the impact of our mental state on the body.  If we seek to improve ourselves physically, we need to master ourselves mentally.  We don’t want our bodies to shut down, we want them to thrive so they can fulfill our purpose. The more we manage those impulses, the more we can manage our reactions and relationship to things going on around us.  Don’t create more stress by allowing thoughts to run rampant, spend time each day working to mitigate and manage what goes through our minds.  Ask how our relationship to stress is impacting our health.  Is it something we can alter and adjust?  Always.  We just need to be honest about how. 

Today I am grateful for support.  Sometimes it comes from unexpected places.  There was a particularly stressful incident at work that I reacted emotionally to in the aftermath.  I think it was because I understood the implications of what happened and what could happen as well as understanding my role in holding people accountable as a manager.  I struggle with ignoring humanity when it comes to personal situations, and I made a lot of concessions for an employee that, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have.  I could have kindly held this person accountable instead of looking the other way.  This incident blew up and it is truthfully near worst-case scenario for an organization (or as close to it as we can get) and she barely reacted.  I handled it and stayed on top of it and a co-worker I would have least expected support from actually came through and out right told me it wasn’t my fault—they specifically said they were blunt and the first person to say when someone screws up and they were still saying I did nothing wrong.  It was nice to have people surround me when I felt like a failure.

Today I am grateful for moving forward on a goal.  Some of my projects have shifted slightly.  I still have the same overall goal, but there are facets of my work that I can’t give a lot of attention to right now—but others have taken priority.  It’s the first time in a while where something this creative has taken over and I love it.  I can’t put my finger on it because it isn’t exactly what I had in mind with some of my projects, but I love it, intensely.  As much as I’ve struggled to get my footing on some of the things I’m working on, this seems to be coming together well.  No, it isn’t exactly as I envisioned it, but it is coming together nicely.  I feel excitement and I honestly have a lot of hope that it will open the doors to the next step in my business, in clarifying what I need to do next.  It also feels really good to put these ideas together to see how the entire thing coalesces and is forming something new for me to help others. 

Today I am grateful for confidence.  Confidence has been something that waxes and wanes in my life.  I truly don’t know why.  I’m human so I know there are times my ego gets out of control, but for the most part, I live pretty well under the radar.  I’m not trying to be better than anyone—not anymore—because that type of validation is not good for my soul (or anyone’s soul).  I’m at the stage in my life where I am simply looking for clarity and how to be a good person, and to put my skills to use in a way that supports me mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially.  I have a vision of how I think this will happen, how it will all come together, and I’m working on balancing ego with confidence.  Confidence has an underlying trust that things will come together no matter what things look like, ego needs it to be exactly as it envisions it.  I have these ideas that are coming uncontrollably, and I love it.  I am working on having the confidence to follow that inspiration—and it feels good to follow it. 

Today I am grateful to get comfortable with the idea of not doing it all.  For so many years I’ve struggled with the fact that I’m in the same spot I was 20 years ago.  Not literally, but emotionally, and even financially, and career wise.  It’s not for lack of trying or lack of ambition—but perhaps from too much ambition.  So many things I’ve wanted to do require a lot of attention and I want to do it all. I could never narrow down one thing and focus on that to see it through.  Progress is in the follow through, and I often stopped that if I didn’t get the results I wanted immediately.  There is so much to absorb in life, and we are meant to do something, but we don’t have to do it all.  And sometimes in slowing down and doing one thing, we see that all things do get done.  There are facets of my life I have to let go of—I only have so much time in a day, the same as anyone else.  I can’t live three different lives simultaneously.  I have to honor and follow the call of what makes the most sense for me now.  And soon the steps reveal themselves and we go from there. 

Today I am grateful to understand a bit more about my relationship to time.  As someone with ADD and easily distracted, I tend to start a million things and once and have a hard time finishing anything. Recently I was feeling like crap physically and I know it’s because I haven’t been taking care of my body as I should have been.  I haven’t been eating well and I haven’t been moving my body anywhere near enough.  It’s caused stagnation with my creativity even though my mind moves a million miles an hour, I haven’t been able to focus on one thing long enough to see it through.  So as I was looking at my body, I realized that when it comes to regaining my health, there are things that are going to take time. For example, with building muscle, we don’t get the tone and definition we want with a few hundred reps.  We need to take the time to do as many as we can and, more importantly, we need to make sure our form and function are correct.  There is no point in doing something if we aren’t going to do it correctly because then the time spent is just wasted.  Take the time to do it right instead of misdirecting and wasting energy.  Then time falls into place and suddenly we are operating outside of time, we are in flow. 

Today I am grateful to give.  Last night I was able to help a few of my friends feel better through using some old techniques I had from school.  I love feeling the power in my hands and taking away pain.  I’m also thrilled because today is the first day of a group I’m hosting at my home and I get to share these ideas and insights in person with people I care about.  I get to take care of people, share with people, and teach people.  We find support in giving and it teaches us how we can give to ourselves through recognizing our needs as well.  Sometimes we simply have to have an ear open so people can share, relate, and understand each other.  It really is a joy.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

There’s a Japanese legend that says: if you feel like you’re losing everything, remember, trees lose their leaves every year, yet they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.  There is truly always a bright side, no matter how difficult it may be to see it from the present vantage point.  Even if we think we have a generally positive mindset, there are still things we can work on to keep positive about future events that we are anticipating.  I’ve truthfully been expecting a particular outcome on a situation for a while and I’ve struggled to maintain patience and hope around it.  All of the “signs” tell me that this is real and that it’s coming, but it seems the goal post is moved further and further back each month.  Then I fall into a cycle of depression and not advancing because I’m simply exhausted getting my hopes up, feeling close, and then falling short.  I think we all need this reminder that even when things feel like they aren’t progressing, there are still other things happening in the background.

I know I don’t want to spend my days feeling like everything is falling through my hands like sand while I run around trying to catch every piece as it slides through my fingers.  There is much to be grateful for and, in those moments of chaotic uncertainty, it may simply be time to stop.  See, maybe the sand isn’t something we are mean to hold onto—maybe it is something we are meant to leave behind, the parts of us that may not serve.  We are meant to flow and the ocean moves the sand constantly.  So too must we learn to adapt to the pull of where we are at.  So, it isn’t about controlling and catching everything—it’s about creating our own roots and finding malleability in the changes. As I wait for my leaves to come back, I can take heart that the roots I planted will keep me standing in the wind.  I know the leaves will always return, and while I may not always be able to determine what color they are, I know I am protected, and will flourish, and bloom in my time, in my own way.  I know the same is true for all of you as well.