Today I am grateful for new understanding.  Later this week I will discuss a realization, an understanding developed about manifesting and our role in developing ourselves and how we receive in this world.  It also helped with understanding more about what I’ve talked about with BEING what we want to be in order to attract what we want.  I never understood why it was so difficult to attract for me.  Until this week when I saw myself upset about not hearing on a position at work that I’m only luke warm about.  The position will be helpful monetarily and will solve some concerns I have for the summer with finances—and there are legitimately things about it that excite me from the aspect of doing something new, something focused, something creative, and being at a new level with leadership, literally.  But I realized that there are things I am passionate about and that make sense the more I talk about them, things that have never gone away as far as how I feel about them.  I have no clue what that will bring financially or if it’s even an option for me, but I know I enjoy that more—it’s more fun and it will also teach me about leadership and creativity, just in a different way.  I couldn’t decide between them because I need facets of both.  But I understand now that nothing can happen until I make a choice and that sometimes it isn’t about the immediate gain—it’s about what feels right and aligning with who we are.

Today I am grateful for application.  The main way to get what we want is to do something.  We need to be active in our pursuits and active in receiving.  I never considered receiving a verb even though the word itself is a verb.  I considered the action of receiving passive.  Whatever was meant for me would come to me and all I had to do was wait for it.  I was raised that if I did the right thing and what I was told, that what I wanted would come.  If I didn’t get it then I must be doing something wrong.  I was never told that my actions needed to be more involved than holding my hands out, essentially begging for what I wanted.  With a new lesson in active participation, I understand that this was basically telling the universe that I needed someone to tell me my worth.  If we are given a gift from the universe it isn’t up to us to determine if we are ready or worthy—it’s our job to take it and apply it the best we can to share it with as many people as we can.  The more we say yes to what we really feel and enjoy, to the things that light us up, the more opportunities will come our way to share.  If we want to receive what we are asking for, it isn’t a matter of worth, it’s a matter of willingness to be a steward of the gift. 

Today I am grateful for perspective/a reality check.  I’m human and it’s easy to let ego get in the way.  When we pursue our dreams and have a specific goal in mind we tend to be narrowly focused and have certain expectations.  We can have expectations even without a goal in mind.  The issue with expectations is they are contingent on other people and their participation in our narrative of what we want to happen.  Our dream can fall apart if they don’t do what we thought they would.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that being in a relationship isn’t about one person blindly filling the other person’s desires.  There comes a point where we realize that life is a give and take and that different people have different limitations and a different capacity for certain things.  My day is divided so I have a lot of mental strain when it comes to focus and expending energy.  When I come home, I get frustrated if the things my husband and I discussed and agreed on aren’t done.  We both work but we agreed I would keep pursuing our business in order to secure a different future for us.  When he doesn’t hold up his end, anger kind of takes hold of me.  But recently I’ve seen how willing he is to help others—and at first that pissed me off too.  He has time to do all this extra stuff for other people but not in his own home?  But I see what a good heart he has and I have to acknowledge he does do a lot.  There might be things we need to tweak together in order to make it work, but I can’t deny he is an active participant even if it looks different than I wanted.      

Today I am grateful for drive.  Life is chaotic in general with all of the expectations we have for ourselves, all the things we want, all the time wasters we have made obligatory.  It really is easy to get swept up in the bustle of it all and miss the opportunities we have right here.  If we couple that with expectation then we are even more apt to let time go because we won’t take action until we see things align how we expect them to.  I’ve been stuck in a pattern, waiting for things to become easier, to be a certain way, for me to really follow through and do what I want.  I’ve faced setback after setback, not from some universal conspiracy to prevent me from moving forward, but from my own lack of clarity or commitment.  There is a silver lining.  No matter what has happened, I’ve been tenacious enough to continue on a path toward something greater.  That vision wasn’t always clear, but I always kept going.  I’ve had to stop many times to recalibrate and evaluate where I’m at and what I need to do, but I haven’t stopped.  I’m at a point now where I’m looking at forward momentum versus walking in circles and it’s caused me to slow down quite a bit.  And that’s ok.  I can still appreciate the need to move.  I know that when I refocus, that movement will be purposeful and productive.  Probably easier too.  So I love that I have drive and I am grateful that I can direct it. 

Today I am grateful for connection.  I isolate when I get scared, overwhelmed, frustrated, uncertain, uneasy, and when I have a gut instinct about people.  Being hyper sensitive and aware, that means I isolate a lot.  I lost some skills along the way, because I was so often triggered by others and didn’t know how to cope.  I felt so let down by people and I didn’t trust many.  The ones closest to me were exhausted because I relied on them to be my source of sanity.  I am always grateful to them and I understand looking back how dealing with me was overwhelming for them.  I always did my best to take care of them, but me making someone else responsible for my emotional state wasn’t fair.  That isn’t connection.  That’s making someone obligated to my well being and how I behave during the day when I should have been the one controlling that. Ironically I’d always get pissed if someone tried to tell me what to do yet I’d hand over the reins to my emotional state to them without even seeing it.  But as I learn these new definitions of connection, leadership, accountability, drive, purpose, and power, I am humbled and embarrassed.  Humbled because I see the truth of where these things lie—within.  Embarrassed because I was so petulant and whiny for so long.  Of course I was miserable and clingy—I thought I needed people to give me permission or outright gift me what I wanted in life.  What I needed was a deeper connection to myself and to set boundaries protecting my energy so I could focus and apply my gifts.  Application is connection and when we connect with ourselves we are better able to connect with others. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The definition of happiness is the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence,” John F. Kennedy.  Happiness is nothing we can receive from the outside as we have discussed numerous times.  When we rely on the external to define our happiness, we will never achieve it because the external is ephemeral, temporary, and always changing.  Not evolving or growing, but changing.  The outside shifts and suddenly we are left wanting and lost, waiting for the next thing.  When we stop seeking happiness and instead seek to utilize our gifts to the best of our ability, and to share those gifts, we learn that we weren’t necessarily seeking happiness all that time, but rather fulfillment.  Within fulfillment there is happiness.  There is no happiness in the chase because we can never slow down.  When we have a purpose and when we are able to align that purpose with who we are and able to develop it and then share it, there is no greater sense of being in this world.  We can live an entire lifetime and not experience anything because we allow others to define what we want, what we are supposed to be, and how we are supposed to feel/interact.  We need to seek the experiences—and it is often missing those experiences that leads to regret.

If we can look back at our lives and say that we did all we could with all we have and that we did the best we could, then there is no shame and nothing to regret.  Wasted time and space, time spent trying to fill our lives collecting things instead of collecting memories, trying to prove ourselves without developing who we are for the sake of our ego.  None of that will ever bring us satisfaction.  And the truth is even settling for being satisfied will still leave us wanting.  I also want to be clear that there is a difference between excellence and perfection.  Excellence is a standard where we put forth our focused energy to the best of our ability and we strive to improve for ourselves and others—we learn.  Excellence is layered and expansive.  Perfection is unattainable, and the definition can change at will without warning.  But we can shift the goal from perfection to excellence with a simple shift in mindset with one question: how many people am I able to benefit through being perfect versus striving for excellence?  How approachable is perfect?  The perfect things in this world are put on a pedestal and left unchanging whereas going for excellence allows us to see the best of ourselves for what we are and not for what we aren’t.  That isn’t to say we don’t need to grow, but we teach ourselves to grow where we thrive best.  We don’t blame the fish for not flying. 

In order to be happy, we need to accept and become the greatest version of ourselves, not the version we’d put behind a glass case.  Happiness implies doing, not looking a certain way.  Happiness also implies being with people who bring out the best in us, because happiness is also about feeling our best so we can do our best.  Don’t hold back when it comes to our lives, especially our dreams.  And if we are lucky enough to be given a specific passion or goal, then we need to pursue that at all costs.  The magic really comes when we approach a goal like that with complete focus and abandon.  When we do that we learn to tap into something that is uniquely ours, something that no one can take from us or change.  That happiness develops and emanates from the inside, from the core of our being.  No one can stop that, in fact, it’s contagious.  We can’t be afraid of failing at who we are.  We can’t hold ourselves back from who we are meant to be because we stifle the fire inside of us.  So let it out and allow the happiness to overflow.           

“We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments,” Maslow.  The self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.  I’ve dealt with a subconscious fear of attaining a goal and then losing it my entire life.  Afraid that I was a fraud, that I’d somehow be “found out” and discovered that I couldn’t deliver on what I promised, that I couldn’t be who I said I wanted to be.  So I procrastinated and delayed even deciding who I wanted to be and I blamed others for making that choice for me.  I let ego get in the way for fear of what people may do and say about me and focused on controlling those opinions instead of on developing myself.  As soon as we shift that focus on the outside and our motivation becomes external, we are at the mercy of other’s whims.  We will never be able to fulfill someone else’s ever changing idea of who and what we are supposed to be.  We will never find our own ideal of who we are supposed to be, and we will certainly never be in touch with that authentic version if we are listening to every else’s voice but our own.

Being honest and going for a goal exposes us and makes us vulnerable to outside opinion and interpretation—but we can choose to not internalize that.  We can choose to not self-sabotage and allow the actualization of our greatest dreams.  We fear that actualization because we are afraid of losing what we know.  And, as we talked about yesterday, that comfort zone becomes suffocating if we allow it.  When we try new things, we expand that comfort zone and soon we become more familiar with the things that bring us closer to the greatest version of ourselves.  That isn’t to say that the greatest versions of ourselves don’t come with responsibility, but as we try new things and develop new perspectives, we learn that the definition of perfection changes over time—and we learn that perfection is irrelevant anyway.  When we do our best and we work to fulfill our purpose every day, that is enough.  When we apply our gifts and impact as many people as we can, we see that is a perfect moment.  Ironically our most perfect moments have nothing to do with being perfect—they have to do with being present and complete acceptance.  That automatically brings us to our best.      

The ego is a tricky thing, simultaneously what inspires our growth as well as what hinders us.  Without it we are unable to find our sense of self in the world and discover/unleash the gifts we can share with the world.  But it can go the other way and create the basis for our decisions in that we choose our actions based on what we think others will think—not on what we know or feel.  In that regard, when we feel that fear, that is when we hold ourselves back and tend to stick with what we know rather than expand.  And we are also afraid that we won’t be able to live up to that expectation, the image we have in our minds.  When we learn to relax, to harness that energy, and to be who we are, then we see that perfection isn’t about an image or a specific goal.  It’s about a feeling, a warmness, a welcomeness, a feeling of completeness where we are, as we are.  We don’t need to fear losing those moments either, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  As long as we are honest with ourselves and authentic in all ways, we are already achieving our highest self.  Let’s put aside the fear and allow the space for growth—and that encourages the rest of the world to be their best as well.  So let’s allow the space for us all to actualize and become a different version of who we are and the greatest version of who we are is suddenly here.  That is nothing to fear, and nothing we can ever lose.

“Looking silly feels uncomfortable for a minute but letting doubts and fears own us is uncomfortable for a lifetime,” Robin Sharma.  As I ended yesterday’s piece about speaking up, I came across this quote that I had been saving for a few weeks.  In the matter of speaking up, whether for ourselves or others, the other side is the issue of appearance—we are afraid of what we look like and how we will be perceived to others.  Not just the reaction to our words, but the reaction to us as a person and that we look silly, unprepared, or any other way.  That tends to be a major block to showing up authentically which stops us from ever showing up completely.  The human brain wants to keep us alive and our survival instincts are very much tied to the acceptance and perception of others.  We never want to be on the outside because that is a form of death today.  If we aren’t with the group we have the potential to be alone.  It takes a lot to override that instinct and to fight the drive to equate acceptance with survival.

But speaking as someone who held in a lot of her personal preferences for too long, as someone who has witnessed people give up their entire lives for the sake of the good of others (or what they thought was the good), as someone who lived on insecurity so bad that I took it out on my physical being (overeating, self-harm, unmanaged energy/drive, etc.), I can say that the moments we sit in silence when given the opportunity to shine we can never get back.  Each time we choose comfort over truth, we lose something of who we are, our energy misplaced.  And we feel it.  I mean, there are times to weigh the options, I’m not suggesting we freely and carelessly spout words or behave a certain way.  I am suggesting that we need to remove other’s opinions from the equation and if we really want something then we need to go for it before it is too late.

We don’t want to get in the habit of silencing the desires we feel because those are the things that bring us to our passion.  Those are the guideposts for the steps we need to take to create the life we are meant to have that teaches us to share those gifts—and in turn teaches others how to do the same.  There will come a time where, for certain things, it will be too late.  We won’t be able to be part of the picture because the moment is gone.  We won’t be able to pursue what called to us because we aren’t physically able to.  We lose the capacity and capability to say what we really need to say because we don’t stretch that muscle.  They say the comfort zone is where dreams go to die—and while I find that a tad dramatic, I understand it.  If we constantly seek comfort we don’t grow.  We need to remember that this is a momentary feeling.  When we choose the temporary discomfort, we create space, and in the long run, that comfort zone expands.  When that happens we have less to fear because our frame of reference is bigger.  And we learn that our ego, the fear of how we appear is all in our heads because we can always say we are doing more than the people on the sidelines judging us.  So take any opportunity to look silly that we can.  

“When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed.  But when we are silent, we are still afraid.  So it is better to speak,” Audre Lorde.  A concise and powerful reminder of the power of our voices.  Just because the words aren’t welcomed (or we fear they won’t be) doesn’t mean that they aren’t necessary.  If we misspeak and say the wrong thing, if we anger others with our words, at least we have the chance to correct it or explain it.  If we say nothing then the words die before they even reach our lips.  Nothing can change if we don’t speak honestly.  It’s normal to fear being contrary to what others think.  It’s normal to feel fear when we do anything against the crowd.  When we do things against the grain we are putting ourselves at risk to some degree—we become noticeable and it can feel like we have a spotlight on us.  In some cases that may even be true.  We have to decide between the risk of saying it or being silent.  It is better to share a fear and possibly have it mitigated rather than swallow that fear and hold it inside for the rest of our lives.    

As a child, I was never really a suffer in silence girl—I always tried to be respectful with adults but I didn’t hesitate for a second to point out what people were doing wrong, especially to each other. When it came to doing the right thing by others or explaining their voice (if needed) I was happy to be their voice and explain their side.  Looking back that’s probably how I got the know-it-all reputation with a few of my peers.  I was also quick at recognizing when I needed to be silent on behalf of others so I didn’t intrude.  At some point things started to shift and I didn’t feel comfortable or confident in using my voice any longer.  I became afraid of what others thought of me—it was easier to speak for others than myself.  I know that when I started holding back it began to feel like poison.  It wasn’t just the fear, it was seeing the missed opportunities for not raising my voice, feeling like I was saying the wrong things at the wrong time, knowing what I should have said, etc..  So I learned that not speaking up had bigger consequences than just staying silent—and I learned that staying silent had bigger consequences than being quiet.

The body functions on energy and flow and it isn’t designed to hold in and repress the energy of unspoken and unresolved emotions.  That’s why it can feel like poison.  All of that energy needs to go somewhere.  I started to physically suffer because I felt I couldn’t control what came out of my mouth so I was controlling what went in–I’d eat and eat and consume because I couldn’t find the time to create and say what I really needed to say, to move the energy along.  I shrank myself from what I really wanted to do and my body got bigger, more cumbersome, and my confidence diminished in a perpetuating cycle of fear of what others thought of me either for what I said or how I looked.  I wanted to be heard, and yes, understood but I was afraid I wouldn’t be.  Over time that energy became too much to bear and something shifted.  I was tired of hurting myself for the sake of the potential of what others thought.  I was tired of holding these things in and still being afraid.  And the words started pouring out.  That energy moved again and I knew that it was better to feel afraid for a second than to repress it for a lifetime.  We all have a voice—use it. 

“It’s better to go down in fiery failure because you chased your loftiest ambitions than to spend your best hours watching TV in some subdivision,” Robin Sharma. This one is one of my favorites.  Don’t live the same day over for 85 years and call it a life—we may have been alive but that doesn’t mean we lived.  It’s up to us to make it an adventure and go after the biggest dreams we can muster.  JR Ridinger says that we will only ever be as big as our dreams.  So the question is why would we limit ourselves?  At least if we shoot for something bigger than ourselves we are going to get further than if we stayed in one spot constantly distracted by the world, our fears, or any of the other guilty pleasures we can think of.  But the more we try, the better we feel because we learn what we are capable of.   We will never have the pain of asking what if, if we simply go for it.  Because there is the other side of what if:  What if I succeed?  What if I am able to help others?  What if I am worthy?  What if this idea is really good?  What if that person really does love me?  What if trusted again?  What if taking that leap is going to change my entire life? 

We will never know what we are capable of if we live in distraction and numb out.  That’s easy and it’s all part of the greater plan to keep us unhealthy and reliant on broken systems.  I digress.  But the truth of the point remains the same: if we don’t do anything we will never get anything.  We all have fears of failure and that we will never be able to recover from a mistake.  We are taught that failure is bad and that we need to avoid it.  We rarely examine the idea that failure is what can get us where we need to.  It can teach us who is really there for us.  it can teach us that we are able to do more than we think we can.  It teaches us that living isn’t about being perfect and that we can survive and even go so far as to thrive in creating the life we want.  Even if we don’t get what we think we want, we certainly will get what we need when we decide to put aside the fear and go after what calls us.  At least in going after it we have a chance of attaining what we want rather than sitting there.  If we never take action we will never get a result—there will be no chance of getting what we want if we do nothing.  So don’t give into distraction.  Take the chance and do the damn thing.   

“Never give in…in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense,” Winston Churchill.  This quote came in a different time with a different context but it is so important to break this down and understand it and integrate it.  This was said in a time when fighting for what we believed and what was right was considered noble and frankly, even a responsibility.  A duty.  People were expected to pick a side and to stick with it.  To fight and defend their choices.  Time was also slower then because we didn’t have the immediate sharing of unfiltered information.  We also didn’t have the same filtering of media that we do today.  Things were more based in fact than performative.  We still see the willingness to fight for beliefs as a general behavior today but it has been diluted down to people’s opinions and their egos.  We are incensed over getting offended but we fail to defend those in physical need or facing harm.  Conviction takes on a different meaning when referring to human rights versus human opinion.   

I won’t go down the morality path in this piece but it does have a lot to do with it.  We have compromised our beliefs in favor of instant gratification and numbing and distraction.  The people who have strong convictions seem to be morally bankrupt in many cases, making choices for others in an attempt to control the situation or the person themselves.  The thing is this: when we are better able to make decisions through a bigger view we understand the moral aspect better.  In making the world bigger and forming new ways to connect with people, we seem to have lost touch with our humanity.  Interacting through screens has diminished our ability to relate to each other in spite of communicating with each other.  In order to operate with conviction, honor, and sense, we need to reinstate the ability to authentically, and accurately relate to people.  We need to be able to discern what is real versus curated.  To be clear, I am not insinuating correct moral decisions were made during Churchill’s time.  My intent is to express that people picked a side based on the collective, whether right or wrong, they made a choice based on others.  We have lost much of that ability today.

In spite of how that behavior has shifted, I still have hope that people find belief and value in more than just themselves.  I hope that people have things they want to have conviction for.  I hope that people can still draw the line in the sand and say that there are things they are willing to fight for outside of the latest IG filter scandal.  In a time where making a decision is often complicated by human interference, I hope that we maintain good sense and choose to do the right thing.  Sometimes beliefs can create another set of issues, but I will encourage ideas to no end.  When we have ideas we have possibility.  We have excitement and curiosity.  And as we dabble with that, we can learn what works and what doesn’t and we can see the impact on others.  So when we discover what it is that makes us tick and what keeps us going, the driver, then we must stick with that and do what we can to develop it.  We must be the person we say we are and back  it up.  Don’t let it go.

Today I am grateful for my body.  Over the last six weeks I have worked extraordinarily hard on my body, my overall health, my strength, and my perseverance.  I have lost nearly 23 pounds and I feel fantastic.  I feel the way I used to move again.  The pain is gone.  Beyond that I feel connected to myself again.  I remember what it feels like to feel sexy, confident, wanted, in control.  There really is something to be said about the discipline of self care.  While it may feel difficult at first, with time we see it is really the most freeing way to live.  When we practice self-care and health care consistently, we understand our bodies and minds better and we are better able to identify issues before they really start.  We are able to apply ourselves better.  I am so grateful to feel the weight of my body as it sits here, as I lay in bed, as I walk the Earth, because that weight doesn’t feel oppressive anymore.  When we reconcile the mind with the body, we aren’t carrying any excess.  We are present, we are collected, we are together.  And we feel good.  It feels good to feel good again.  To feel my skin and not want to climb out of it.  To be me.

Today I am grateful for discomfort.  There has been a lot of discomfort lately.  Changes, waiting, everything and nothing all at once, opinion, decisions, progress, delays.  I am grateful for the discomfort because it means that I’m moving.  For too long I’ve been standing still and it is nice to make progressive momentum rather than just movement.  The climb doesn’t feel as arduous and it certainly isn’t as cumbersome as the decisions become clearer—the discomfort is better than the comfort of no movement at all.  I can’t blind myself to the things I didn’t want to see or feel.  I can’t pause this time in hopes that it all goes away or that I figure out some way to avoid it.  I am grateful because I am fortunate enough to be able to make progress with the things I want to do.  Now I work on instilling the belief in my movement.   

Today I am grateful to release.  Who I was isn’t the person who can handle where I’m at now.  Who I was wasn’t able to shut out the noise, to put away the opinion of others.  Who I was wasn’t able to love herself fully because she thought that had to come from someone else.  In the blink of an eye I realized that I needed to be who I am and not who I used to be.  There is a feeling of complete release when we simply accept.  We don’t need to wallow in pain that we create or in pain that was handed to us.  We are able to let it all go and redefine ourselves.  We are allowed to become the best versions of ourselves, to love ourselves, and to apply our talents and gifts to the world to make it a better place.  We can lovingly accept who we were and be grateful to that version of ourselves for getting us where we are today—and we can also decide that we still need to put that aside and become something else. One decision doesn’t have to determine everything even though it is often one choice that sets the ball rolling and creates a moment that we can’t look back on.  But that doesn’t have to be a scary thing.  It can be an awakening, an allowing, and a becoming.  I look back at the winter of my life and I am still pained and saddened at times.  But out of that winter comes this spring, and it is in full bloom.

Today I am grateful for forgiveness.  I have a lot of things that I needed to come to terms with as far as forgiveness.  The stories told, the things I’ve felt, the things I’ve witnessed, the things that have been done to me, the false beliefs, the inherited fears, the lack of self-belief bound up in a firestorm of constant motion.  While the responsibility for our position in life will always lie with us, there are always outside influences and they have an impact on how we feel and how we make our decisions.  In the process of forgiveness we learn to understand that people are the sum of what has happened in their lives and their environment and then we learn that no matter what has happened they are ultimately responsible for their decisions.  And so are we.  We can accept that we are all flawed and we can make the choice to not tolerate it.  We can say we understand why a person behaved as they did and we can say that it wasn’t ok.  There is loving kindness in that act—and love for ourselves as we decide who and what we allow into our lives.  We can forgive ourselves for not allowing what we deserve into our lives.  And I am working on that a bit more every day.  Learning to forgive myself allows me to forgive others—and it allows me to keep the boundaries, to let go of co-dependence.  So I forgive. 

Today I am grateful for the promise that the work will show us what we need it to.  The more I put my effort into the projects that I have going, the more I see results.  The more that I become clear on the action and what I want to do, the closer I get to the goal.  The clearer the goal gets.  It isn’t about the work necessarily, and it isn’t about the result.  It’s about the impact.  We become different people when we put in the work for the sake of doing good, for the sake of creativity, for the sake of curiosity.  We learn and we develop and we grow and we help others.  The whole point of this world is to be able to share our gifts, to make things better.  The money and material things will all go away eventually.  We certainly can’t take it with us when we die.  But what is left behind is a legacy, a memory of who we are and what we did that has the potential to ripple through time.  We have some thing like 4,000 great-great-great relatives, without whom we wouldn’t be here.  There are stories we will never hear, yet each one of them is entwined in who we are—I want my story to be shared with the world, I want it to be felt because I know that we are not alone.  I know that we are all doing what we can to bring our best selves to the world and to feel our best.  Know that what we do makes a difference.  That impact is felt deeply in the energy of the word.  Do good work and the world returns that good. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Success isn’t about the right decision, it’s about a decision,” Robin Sharma.  This is probably my favorite quote in the entire book.  I wrote a few weeks ago about the quote I heard from Baby Reindeer about people running away—how some run away by packing their bags and how some run away by staying in the same place too long.  Making a decision, especially a complex one with lots of possible outcomes, impact, repercussions, etc. is never straightforward.  But do we hold ourselves back with either form of avoidance?  The human brain is designed to compartmentalize and break down the odds so we can analyze the outcome and make a choice and then move forward.  But we are complex and layered social creatures and we fear how we will be perceived and we also fear what people perceive as success and/or failure.  When we are in that state, it’s a type of analysis paralysis that most of us are familiar with.  Sharma’s quote suggests that in that moment we simply need to make a decision—and doing nothing is a decision as well.  We can choose to allow our lives to be dictated for us or we can decide.

One irony I noticed with decisions, especially as we get more comfortable making them, is that we put more pressure on ourselves with the simpler things.  We overcomplicate everything in the beginning because we are trying to see every possible outcome, but as we dig further in, the complexity rises with the simplicity of the decision. It’s amazing how those simple things can impact everything.  Choosing to go for it can be the difference between becoming a millionaire and struggling for live.  Going on that date can lead to a wonderful relationship or a period of frustration.  Sometimes the decision will impact other people as well, like whether or not they get to keep their jobs.  None of this is said to deter us from making choices, rather this is another way in which making those choices can be difficult.  Still not a reason to not make a choice.  No matter what, it won’t be perfect so the only way we can get through it is to do it—simply walk in and learn the way as we go.   

Making decisions is easier when we have the right motivation.  I’ve learned in this study of leadership that sometimes it isn’t about the result.  We talk in terms of learning on the journey (it isn’t the destination, it’s the journey) and this is a good lesson in that.  For example, the goal really wasn’t about making millions of dollars, it was about providing value to others.  The best decisions we can make will provide that kind of impact for others.  Positive, offering options, solving problems are all things we need and if we are able to do that then the rest comes.  If we make the goal about money then we will always be chasing money.  But if we decide to fulfill a purpose, we get to help people and the money will naturally come.  It’s about deciding what we can offer and choosing to do the best we can with it at all times.  If we want to say that success is based on the right decision, let it be based on how we feel and what felt right to us, to fulfill our purpose.  When we stop avoiding a decision and commit, the work can get done.  Then we repeat and suddenly we are on our way and success is guaranteed no matter what it looks like in the end.  

“Shift from chaotic complexity to elegant simplicity.  Why be brilliantly busy around useless pursuits?” Robin Sharma.  We vacillate between extreme business and boredom, looking for things to distract us.  When we find something that sounds right suddenly we put our foot on the gas.  We over complicate and start and stop, create our own obstacles and then wonder why all the movement we made has only gotten us right back to where we started.  A huge societal issue I see is the constant need to prove ourselves.  The constant, inherent set up toward competition.  This makes us feel like we always have to be doing something others will deem “worthwhile.”  We always need to seem busy and we have to compare how busy we are.  We make it difficult to breathe and connect with what we really need, what we are really looking for in the preoccupation with proving our worth.  If proving our worth is our main goal, then we will spend our time doing nothing more than finding people to prove ourselves to.

When we really start to evaluate where we are at and where we want to go, we have to get in touch with ourselves at the deepest level.  We need to evaluate what feels right and what is important to us because that is going to tell us our driving purpose, what makes the most sense to us.  At the most basic level we need to value our time enough to make decisions that provide the best results that make sense to us.  When we exist in the distraction I mentioned above, we waste time and energy on things that have no value to us.  There is no point climbing a mountain only to realize it was the wrong one.  Great, we made it to the top but we don’t have the view we were looking for.  Sure we learned a few things but we can’t get to where we wanted to go.  In the effort of proving we could, we ended up settling even though we expended all that energy.  Sharma says on that topic, “Don’t major in the minors.”  The things that are irrelevant in the long run tend to take up too much of our time so we need to shift our focus on the things that will make the most impact.

Making the shift to simplicity makes things easier in that they are clear.  Simplicity doesn’t mean easy—there is still a great deal of work when it comes to achieving goals.  It just takes away the unnecessary and focuses on the result producing things that need to be done.  We are trained to think we are progressing when we are merely moving and shifting things around and staying busy but until we make a focused effort, it has been nothing but movement.  Look at the ways we keep ourselves busy and distracted in life.  Look at the ways we clutter our homes, our bodies, our minds.  We carry the weight of those who came before us, their ideas, their pursuits, their pressures in a world that no longer supports those things.  We struggle to keep up in a world that will always move faster than we can because we are connected 24/7 now.  We have to find our own rhythm in between the two.  Don’t focus on the things that aren’t going to move us toward the best of who we are and what we want.  Use our time as best as we can.