I have this odd affiliation with plants that started when I first saw The Secret Garden as a kid and I adored the wildness, the protectiveness, the seclusion of the beautiful garden that grew just as it was meant to, just as it wanted to. I think on some level my soul always knew that I wanted to be just as wild, just as free, just as accepted exactly as I was. I didn’t want anyone to tame me or tell me which way to grow. Ironically as I grew up and worked through life, that is the furthest thing from what happened—I lost the ability to discern and just do what I wanted to do, I couldn’t tell what I wanted to do. I had lost the ability to listen to my heart telling me what I needed to do and I needed people to tell me what the right thing was.
Just like we must prune back good flowers, we must constantly be pruning back our life to make room for the more abundant and full. It is ok o let go of “good” things so you can hone in on the “great” things. This was on my calendar the other day and it got me thinking about how there are things in this life that we try to grow, hoping they take hold and branch off into something beautiful. Truthfully I’m still learning a lot about plants and gardening (I tried and failed—but I will try again!) and I noticed I had a habit of leaving things exactly as they were. I didn’t want to trim pieces or prune back what looked like perfectly good flowers even though people told me to, I didn’t want to make it any different, I wanted the plants to grow how they were meant to, more how they wanted to
I’m learning now that with gardening there are times you must pull back the flowers in order to make the plant grow healthier. Making the decision to let some things go in order to make room for more is a concept we talk about frequently in self-development yet I tried to cram all things into one plant without pruning anything to allow more stalks to bloom. The entirety of our lives can’t fit on one plant—we are meant to grow and branch out and create a firm system that creates and is able to sustain the story of our life. I’ve said it a million times: life is about growth and expansion and our evolution requires that we cut away what doesn’t work—we are taught this in nature. So my very nature I felt calling to me as a kid recognized the wildness and the ability to foster growth early on and wanted to connect with that spirit. Just as I’m learning to grow things, I know I can learn which pieces I’m ready to let go of and which I’m ready to expand on. No one needs to tell me which way to go—the heart knows the way.
“I can be changed by what happens to me but I refuse to be reduced by it,” Maya Angelou. We make choices all the time and we can choose to allow situations to break us or build us. We need to keep perspective that when we experience something in life, we are also creating that experience. Our choices take us down certain paths and how we respond to those opportunities is entirely up to us—we create the garden in our mind so we can either see something filled with possibilities and blooms or we see something filled with fear and anxiety about how it will turn out, how it will look. The goal of the universe is never about how it looks—it is beautiful in its own right and it doesn’t seek validation from us in order to be beautiful or to know it’s beautiful. The same is true with us: it isn’t about how things look, it’s about what we make of it.
Stating the obvious, but terrible things happen in this world all the time—we all experience varying degrees of loss and tragedy and we all have to learn how to cope with those experiences. Then we have things happening on a global scale. We can take situations we have no control over and become the victim in it or we can learn to take what we experience and turn it into something that serves. Just because things happen a certain way doesn’t mean we have to turn it into a life sentence. Sometimes we are meant to learn about the power we have to take a crappy situation and make it beautiful. It’s easy to feel powerless and scared or like there is no hope when we are constantly exposed to what’s going wrong in this world. But we have the option to make things right and make them beautiful and continue on.
We can allow the course of this world to change us and shift our direction, but we don’t have to make it make us feel less. We aren’t diminished in who we are if things don’t go our way or if we have some particularly difficult moment etched in our memory. Those moments don’t define who we are but those moments often show us who we are. They show us what we are made of and what we are capable of. We don’t have to be struck down and feel hopeless in who we are and what our options are just because something unexpected happens. We get to choose what that means to us and we decide who we are. The events that unfold in our lives can change who we are, but we decide hat that means.
“Plant your garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers,” Jose Luis Borges. This seemed timely following yesterday’s piece. Generations ago we were taught we needed permission to do just about anything. Our family and our elders and society and how things functioned determined our access so we got in the habit of believing we needed permission to do what interested us. We got in the habit of creating access issues to certain things whether we decided only certain people could participate, only those who could afford it, only those who proved their worth, etc. and we created a system that supported the exclusivity of doing what we love. We learned to protect that rather than protect ourselves, our integrity, our values, and our own interests. We learned to survive by blending in with the crowd and shoving aside our natural instincts in favor of what we were told was the safe route. That is a recipe for regret and disaster in our personal lives. While those at the top thrive in that environment, it isn’t set up to help those moving the wheel. So if we are called to do something, we don’t need any more permission than that.
When we wait for someone to create the life we want, we set ourselves up for disappointment, resentment, delays, heartache, and any other myriad emotions that come from hinging our dreams, goals, and desires on the actions of other people. As social creatures of course we want validation, but we all get to a point where we are no longer interested in doing the same thing to fulfill other people’s dreams. We have to find our own path and we need to take action rather than waiting for someone to do it for us. As I talked about yesterday, life is too short to wait for anyone to do for us what we need to do for ourselves. The irony is when we do the things we love we suddenly have all the time in the world. So there is the answer to this conundrum: if we don’t want life to pass us by, we need to find a way to slow time down, and since we can’t actually physically do that, we need to learn to fill the time we have with the things we love to create more of it. Joy, passion, hope, drive, creativity are all things we plant ourselves or things we were born with. Our job is to tend to it just like we would a garden. Take care of those seeds and let them bloom into something that will grow into the garden of our dreams.
I want to touch on the idea that waiting for someone to bring us flowers means we are waiting for someone to cut the blooms off of their own garden (or take it from someone else) in order to fulfill the dreams we are responsible for. It can take a lot of patience and effort to make something like that bloom for us and we need to believe that we can make it bloom. We have a vision and we need the patience and dedication to make it happen—and we can only get that by learning to cultivate the life around us. Follow the signs, the seasons, the natural flow of our lives. Let go of what doesn’t serve, rest when we need to, plant when we need to, and utilize the tools we have to make that garden grow. The vision is ours and no one else is responsible for making that happen. We don’t need to defer our dreams for the sake of someone else or some idea of what we are meant to do. We are meant to nurture and plant and cultivate our dreams until it blooms fully and we can sustain ourselves and be a light to others as well. Align and do what gives us light in our own lives and we ignite something far greater than someone else’s idea of what we are supposed to do with our lives: we answer the call of our soul and it turns into the most beautiful thing we have ever seen.
We are meant to create and there doesn’t always need to be a reason that makes sense to other people: it needs to make sense to ourselves. If painting calls, paint. If making miniatures calls, build miniatures. Love what we do because there isn’t enough love in this world. The more we love, the more we fuel our growth and encourage growth in others. We’ve been taught that unless our dreams are so big we get a name for ourselves that they aren’t worth it, and often times when dreams are that big we are also told they are unrealistic. The universe doesn’t care the size of our dreams, it only cares about the purpose in them. It cares about the care we put into our passion and drive and when we have that level of dedication and commitment, the world explodes into color and we find new ways of doing things, of looking at things, of creating our own possibilities. We just need to make the life that makes sense to us. There is beauty in this world and we are part of that—that is all the validation we need to follow the call of our soul.
“If you feel like there’s something out there that you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and just do it,” Wanda Sykes. It all comes down to action and I have a strong feeling this next week in particular is going to be filled with decisive action. I vow that I will never spend another moment feeling as rattled by other people’s actions as I did this past week. There were so many moments where things felt surreal, like what I was hearing couldn’t be real, that people didn’t actually behave this way, that it hit me like a flash that I won’t deal with this any longer. We know the corporate world isn’t always the safest place, especially as you begin to climb. The longer I’ve been part of this world, the more clarity I have that I don’t belong in this situation. The corporate world operates under it’s own rules—it’s its own living entity and we protect it. The second we don’t play by the rules we are told we are putting the organization at risk as if that’s more important than the people involved. There is no flexibility there for humanity. As more time went on, it became apparent that flexibility for the humanity of leadership was even less and that leadership was even more controlled and drowned out than those not in leadership. That hasn’t sat well with me for a long time—so I convinced myself to treat this as an interim, a means to an end until I could be placed where I really wanted to be in an environment that interested, fulfilled, and supported me.
I’ve known for some time that I was heading in a different direction, particularly different from some of my leadership. I’ve been aware of the potential consequences of that and I’ve moved forward anyway and had great results both confidence wise, and with my work. As things in my personal life became more uncertain this year, I fell back into some old habits—because that is what humans do. And then reality became more and more skewed with what we allowed people to get away with. The most recent incident is something I didn’t have words for and the guidance and leadership I needed to navigate through it wasn’t present. In fact, the leadership I received was how poorly I’ve handled this up until now and how this has been my fault. I know it’s not entirely true, I’ve had to tread carefully for a while with a particularly sneaky individual but, yes, could I have been more direct and even escalated a few incidents, yes. Did I? No—part of me was trying to be nice, part of me trying to avoid conflict, part of me just didn’t have the energy, and part of me didn’t want to stir unnecessary shit. That in itself led me to the conclusion a long time ago that I didn’t want to deal with this crap any longer—couple that with other interests and sparks of creativity and I knew this wasn’t the side for me regardless. I was already tired of dealing with the fires created by people who imagined clearance to be a different thing, and the interest in the work was long gone. Then throw in insanity and it’s over.
The lesson is this: when we feel a pull toward something, don’t ignore it. That pull, that draw, is the energy of what is meant to be for us calling to us, the vibration of what we love bringing us closer to our purpose. But if we put that action on the sidelines and ignore the call of what we are meant to do, then we will perpetuate the cycle until the cycle is done with us rather than being in control and connection with our feelings and guiding our ship to where it’s meant to be. So when something creates passion in us and we discover we have joy for certain things, don’t hesitate to follow it. When we take the means to an end rather than following our own creative path, we are simply trying to get to the end. What’s the point of that? While life is short, there is a lot of life to live in those moments as long as we are following what is meant for us. The part that’s short is the fact that we can’t waste time screwing around doing something that doesn’t bring us joy or serve a purpose—or that helps us serve our purpose. Life won’t change if we don’t change and that requires action, focus, and honesty. All we can do is be true to ourselves and listen and feel what truly makes sense to us, and the best thing we can do, is then follow that drive and work in alignment with that particular energy. Don’t allow ourselves to be swayed by fear—step into reality and look at all sides of the situation: if it doesn’t fit, make arrangements to take the next steps to find something that does. We get one shot this go around, don’t waste passion and energy doing anything less than what brings us absolute joy.
Today I am grateful for realizing results. I’ve spoken on here frequently about health, most often mental health but I haven’t shared much of my physical journey. I turned 40 earlier this year and there was something about that number that sharpened my focus on what was important. It was with the utmost clarity that I realized I couldn’t screw around anymore and there wasn’t going to be anyone to advocate or fix what needed fixing in my life—yes, that is even a topic of which I’ve spoken here as well. I couldn’t spend anymore time waiting for what I wanted to do, or wait for signs of what I want to do; I needed to listen to the feelings and start doing, and one of those areas was physical health. I have some areas of my health that I watch closely due to family history and early symptoms I’m seeing in myself. Plus, with honest self-awareness, I knew the years spent in non-committal ventures professional, health, entrepreneurial, and other areas, I decided it was time to commit to something in these arenas. And our health system isn’t the most supportive of health-care (we practice sick care) so this is something we all need to take into consideration for ourselves. I started a journey addressing my physical health and I am down 34.4 pounds. This has been a tough journey of learning discipline and figuring out what my body really needs and putting what I knew into practice. The results speak for themselves and it is a great reaffirmation of the power of focus, commitment, and allowing change.
Today I am grateful for second chances—and third, and fourth, etc. Sometimes our boundaries are tested in multiple ways. I made the decision earlier this year to not speak to a particular individual because of a former mutual friend—I had put the boundary in place that I wasn’t going to speak to the mutual friend because I was no longer going to tolerate people who behaved how she did toward me. I wanted to enforce respect and show that I respected myself by not having someone in my life who treated me that way. I’m no longer willing to people-please so I wasn’t going to deal with that crap any longer; I simply have no room in my life to waste time on people who aren’t treating me well. That brought in this particular individual: I didn’t personally know her but I knew she had a friendship with the mutual friend so, maintaining my boundaries, I didn’t have room for people who associated with people who disrespected me. As the universe would have it (and a particularly stubborn husband) this individual began coming around more often (different reasons) and I lost my shit at first. Then I realized that the relationship this individual had with the rest of our group wasn’t going to change. That meant it was up to me to decide how to move forward: cut out the entire group or look at this person differently. We had some decent conversations but I have learned to not wear my heart on my sleeve too early in the relationship so to speak. But what has evolved has been nice so I grateful for both giving and receiving a second chance to see the type of friendship we may spark. We never know why people are brought into our lives so sometimes we have to be patient to figure it out-and it’s always worth it.
Today I am grateful for seeing the truth. When people show you who they are, believe them. This applies on several levels: character, personality, general habit. A friend of mine often quotes Nietzsche’s saying, “I judge a person by their patterns not what they’ve most recently done…. and that can be tricky when an individual shows contradictory sides—while I can dive into the reasons for this behavior, the truth is this: how one person treats an individual around you, they treat you when you’re not around. I consider myself fortunate to live around people we can rely on if needed and we can have fun with—it’s a tight community. But there is a pattern from one couple that tells me something: they befriend everyone to be the ones people trust. At first I didn’t notice anything strange, they were open and generous and kind and had a way about them you just trusted. Little things started happening like off comments about other people, often in humor. After time, they were talking shit about other people in the group but it was in a loving/humorous way if that makes sense—like talking shit about funny anecdotes etc. Then it evolved into personal stuff and talking about other people’s character. The we turn around and suddenly they’re hanging out with these people. It suddenly seemed they only hung out with people as it was beneficial to them. Who knows, maybe this is human nature and this is how relationships work: we talk shit about the ones we love, I don’t know. But the truth is this—who they show you behind other people’s back is who they are behind your back and we have to form our own opinions.
Today I am grateful for breaking habits and making a decision. My job is needlessly stressful, mainly due to personalities and lack of clarity, but this past week I got myself so worked up with a few incidents at work that went beyond any normal stress. I realized I was dealing with several unhinged individuals. I don’t exaggerate behavior and this is something I’ve never encountered with other adults. A level of maliciousness and demand on other people’s behavior that is entirely inappropriate. When I shared the nature of the incident with someone higher than me, this person basically told me it was my fault regarding not documenting specific action in our HR system. I have record of everything, it’s just not all documented where this person thought it should be, and she told me I have poor follow through with other employees as far as corrective action. Let’s be honest, no one likes dealing with disciplining adults, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t addressed poor behavior and department expectation previously. This particular employee presents multiple challenges so I tread lightly. Plus HR isn’t so keen on documenting or supporting disciplinary action for events toward the manager—management really isn’t supported. This past week went to a new level in shitty behavior from this employee and from this higher up. So my decision is to always remember they are human and that I don’t need to tolerate this from other humans regardless of some hierarchy—there are many opportunities out there and I do not need to settle for this type of crap—I am worth more. I knew there was discussion behind my back about misperceptions and I had that confirmed and then this event happened and it revealed all that disturbs me in people. I can move on to something else—and that is my plan.
Today I am grateful for getting closer to the feeling of how I want to be. Often times we don’t realize the level of stress, denial, pain, fear, or anything else that we are in until we really begin to peel back the layers. In deciding that I won’t tolerate shitty behavior toward me in any environment, and that I have every right to speak up, I know I’ve been afraid of trusting my own intelligence. I’ve been afraid of standing on something without all the facts and having holes punched in it because I didn’t remember the facts correctly. I feel like I can’t rely on my mind any longer. Stress affects how memories are formed and recalled, and I’ve been under a degree of stress I’ve never encountered before (and aging doesn’t help either)—so I don’t trust my mind. That is something I can remedy both with emotional management as well as taking the time to focus on what really matters and learn about it. By slowing down and managing my health, appropriate discipline and focus, I can remedy a lot of this. And as I step through different levels of letting go of bullshit, things get clearer, the patterns recognized earlier, and I can correct sooner. I see more and more how I want to feel and that means letting go of some trust issues and other long held fears/beliefs about relationships and simply recognizing what does and doesn’t work. It means no longer playing a role, trying to be someone else—it’s fully embracing who we are and leaning into what feels right. I am an adult, time is short, there is no reason to hide/hold back who we are. Sometimes we just need that reminder.
When the stumble turns into the need to let go of what we thought we’d never have to say good-bye to—people, things, ideas, hopes, whatever it may be. We have to learn that sometimes the most painful thing isn’t letting go of the thing, it’s letting go of the idea of the thing, what we thought it represented to us. We define power in certain ways and each of us has a certain level of power we want and that can include the ability to bring that vision to life. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be a certain way and achieve certain things and make certain things happen. I talked about upholding traditions at the sacrifice of who I was—and I did it willingly. I wanted people to be happy, I wanted to make them feel happy about what I had done. That was a version of GirlBossing it for me because I was making things happen. I wanted to have it all together and elicit certain responses out of people. I couldn’t accept that time moves on and that I was responsible not for repeating the patterns that made other people happy, but that I was responsible and it was possible to create a new tradition of my own. I was afraid to let go, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find myself. I was controlling the wrong things.
As it would happen, I just read Stassi Schroeder’s book You Can’t Have It All: The Basic Bitch Guide to Taking the Pressure Off. In this book Schroeder talks about how seeking power can run our power out. I recently spoke about how there usually is a reason why things fall apart and it is more often so we can become the version of ourselves we need to be. I spoke of the discomfort of letting go of what we know especially when we feel what we know is working. So far Schroeder has been talking about the decline of the GirlBoss and the unhealthy habits that culture has inspired—that idea of power we have and hold onto. The one that says we can’t let any sign of weakness show—most of us equate this to a business environment but we GirlBoss all over. Truthfully I still love the idea of the GirlBoss where we are in charge of our lives and we navigate the terrain ourselves, we call the shots, we make things happen. What I accepted a long time ago is that the GirlBoss culture didn’t need to look the same so I don’t have the same focus on appearance or making myself look a certain way—I want to embrace the GirlBoss that’s comfortable in her own skin and making that type of life that she wants, work, no matter what it is.
I recently wrote about how we sometimes have to quit to win, the sunk cost fallacy. We need to recognize the signs when GirlBoss isn’t working and we need to cut ties to the ideas we had. We need to let that portion of our lives go because it’s holding us back rather than acting as a float. The trouble with GirlBoss is not knowing when to let go when things aren’t working, when we hold onto the idea so tightly that even if we stumble, even if we are hurt beyond learning a lesson, we try to make it happen. Ironic that just as I’m having this epiphany in my own life and trying to decide what we are doing moving forward (basically trying to figure out what we really want instead of what we want to show we have), I stumble across this writing that talks about how we need to let go of what the image is, how we need to let go of what doesn’t work and get back in touch with what we feel and understanding what works for us. Typing out thousands of words all the time is a joy for me, I love doing this. And I talk about how we have control of our lives and there are skills I haven’t applied to this yet. But what am I trying to control? Am I trying to prove I can be in control of every situation, that nothing phases me? What happens if I turn that energy toward what I really want instead of what I feel like I have to do? We can still GirlBoss all day but when we are in touch with that side of ourselves, it’s more authentic and we aren’t draining ourselves.
We are the boss of our own lives, that will never change. If things aren’t going exactly how we thought they would, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. It just means we need to pause and take stock of what we really want. If it isn’t working then perhaps we need a different approach. Like I’ve been talking about this week, sometimes no isn’t no forever, it’s meant to guide us to where we are meant to be. We can’t have it all but we can have all that is meant for us. We can have it all when we learn to turn the stumble into the dance and when we learn to transmute pain—or better, when we learn to let go of pain that doesn’t serve. We get in touch with our power when we stop pushing for power for power’s sake and we embrace who we are. The loss of an idea or understanding the potential of an idea isn’t panning out doesn’t mean we have failed. It means we are adaptable and able to pivot toward what works. We know ourselves enough to know what we really need and we let go of the rest. We don’t need to force anything, we take the chance to fully be who we are meant to be, pain, power, and the stumble all melding into one. Don’t force the image, simply be.
“Don’t underestimate the power of pain. The power to bear pain without breaking is a strength people underestimate. It isn’t the pain of other people that we are afraid of, it’s our own pain.” XMen Days of Future Past. Like we talked about yesterday—a stumble sometimes teaches us exactly what we need to know. The break can be painful but it can also be exactly what we need. Sometimes the things we hold up as sacred and precious are really just tools to get us where we want to be—they aren’t things we are meant to covet and repeat forever. Whether it is a tradition we need to change or a physical thing we hold onto, it isn’t always true that we need to protect things. All things end—that is the reality of life. No matter what we do, none of us will make it out of here alive. We are a species that fights for familiarity, for status quo more than it fights for the improvement of circumstances for all. With that knowledge, I would think that we would constantly be participating in our own evolution. Yet I am the first one who falls into maintaining tradition and I’ve held onto things long beyond their use. There came a point in each circumstance that the struggle to hold on and keep things the same hurt more than the pain of letting go.
Sometimes we need the pain to guide us toward what we are meant to do. This was a tough lesson to swallow. I craved familiarity at every turn, I wanted to show that I was capable of meeting the expectations of those around me, of keeping people happy. For a long time I succeeded—no matter how much it hurt to let certain experiences pass me by, I held on and kept things going. I also held on in circumstances where I saw the potential of something working out in a particular way. I hoped it would be a certain way and I stuck around thinking it would eventually go the way I wanted it to. The pain in that circumstance taught me that holding things for other people doesn’t guarantee they will be around to hold things for us, and frankly, there is a level of manipulation that comes with expecting people to behave a certain way because we did things for them. With all that being said, we look at pain differently. Pain is a teacher—we learn what works and what doesn’t work through pain. We also learn that we can bear far more than we think we can. The human spirit is resilient, so is the mind, so is the body. That isn’t to say I advocate for pain, but it is to say that I don’t shy away from it any longer.
Gary Brecka says that aging is the active pursuit of comfort. When we constantly seek to make things easy we lose the ability to adapt and create strength. Pain has a purpose and we often avoid it because we think it will hurt. Evolutionarily speaking it was also prudent to avoid pain because we didn’t want to risk dying or separating from the pack. Now we avoid it because we equate pain with things like embarrassment. All of that is temporary. The more we can adapt and use pain as a tool, the faster we heal and move on. The immediate reaction is that pain lasts forever and we can’t heal from it. The reality is if we pull that band-aid off and face the fear, we see that it’s far less scary than we think. The other reality is we put ourselves through far more pain than anyone else: we are our own worst critic, we fixate on mistakes, we worry constantly, we repeat errors over and over again in our minds. If we let it happen, learn the lesson, then move on, the pain abates. Don’t avoid it, learn to use it—even if it hurts, even if we are afraid, learn to accept pain as a key to moving on. The future isn’t soft—but we are malleable. Let the lessons shape our perceptions.
“Just because someone stumbles it doesn’t mean they are lost forever,” XMen Days of Future Past. When we are present and take chances, that doesn’t always mean we will get it right—and it doesn’t always mean the doors will open right away. That doesn’t mean it’s a no either. Life will always throw us curve balls and always surprise us with challenges and opportunities. We are meant to take those chances presented to us and we are meant to be present. That doesn’t mean it will always work out perfectly. Sometimes we have to understand the stumble is part of the lesson we need to learn to keep us on track. To keep us present and aware of where we are and what we are meant to learn and do and share. Sometimes that stumble isn’t meant to break us—it is meant to show us what was already broken and how we can fix it or help us discern what needs to be left broken so we can move forward. A hiccup doesn’t mean something is irreparable. Sometimes it’s meant to turn us a bit so we can see another option. Life is literally all perception.
The truth is sometimes that stumble turns into a tumble and it can feel like we have lost our way forever or that there is no way out. I’d be lying if I said that it’s easy to see every set back as an opportunity. But what I do know is that I believe in both sides of the coin: we aren’t lost forever just because of a perceived mistake and sometimes it can take a while to find the way back to where we are meant to be. We will always find ourselves though as long as we keep looking, as long as we keep going. What matters most is the belief that we will find our way. That we have a way to find and that we know we can trust ourselves enough to master our circumstances to get to where we need to be. We all have the ability to turn our lives into something magical. We just need to remember our purpose. How we look at things matters so much more than what actually happens. They say something like 90% of life is how we respond to it—so that means we can make the most of any circumstance, we just need to be aware of the opportunity.
Life is this alchemical playground where we are meant to take what we are given and turn it into something else. That means we can transmute our stumbles and pains into lessons we can use for the good of all. A stumble doesn’t mean all is broken or lost, it means we are given a reason to pause and see if there is another way. It all becomes a matter of perception. Those who go the furthest weren’t necessarily the ones with the map—they were the ones who saw another way. How many stories have we heard about finding a mysterious room or pathway when the character fell? There are ways that can only be seen when we are on the ground. Sometimes the only way up is to look down—because when we find ourselves at the bottom, the only way we can go is up. And I’ve written it before—if we can’t go up or down, we have to learn to go sideways. It’s an old school mentality that judges someone from their stumbles, that we categorize a stumble as a failure. No one makes it through this life unscathed. That is a life unlived. Any time we ask what the chance is, we are taking a chance that we will turn up a bit worse for wear. More knowledgeable and further on our path, but marked in a way that will take us further on our path. Welcome the stumble and the chance to find ourselves, to challenge ourselves, to learn something new. Love the playground and find that joy in the dance.
“What’s the chance?” Lewis howes. The question that changes everything. Brings up that if you don’t ask you’re not going to get it. On 9/5/2024 I wrote about taking the chance to ask for what we need. I needed to work from home, it made sense to work from home, so I asked for it under a circumstance where I normally would have made an excuse that my staff was in the building and I should be there with them. But a different question struck me: how much use can I really be to them when I am this burdened with these things and I know I can better serve from here? When we ask for what we need in a way that supports not only ourselves but others, we open the doorway. Howes was talking about opening doorways with this question in situations like “What’s the chance I can get an upgrade? What’s the chance I can get 10% off? What’s the chance you want to collaborate? What’s the chance you want to go later?” All of those things, that phrasing opens possibilities. So we need to remember to take the chance on our own lives and see what magic it can bring by simply asking “What’s the chance I can do this?” “What’s the chance that this works out infinitely better than I thought?”
This question ties in with the presence we spoke about yesterday. People are more willing to do things than we think and I believe that we are all kind of tired of working in a world that we feel is functionally NOT working anymore. We are learning to work together so we can change how things work overall. That requires presence and awareness of who we are and a willingness to take a chance. Go with what we feel because the worst that can happen is a no—and that no may lead us to something better anyway. Presence is different than impulse, I’m not talking about reckless action, I’m talking about aligned action that feels right and creates connection rather than self-serving purpose. If we are going to learn who we are and fully embrace ourselves, then we need to learn to take the chance and find ways to enjoy the now—to be in the now at all times.
We’ve all faced a “no” in our lives and we’ve all had to decide what to do after we’ve been denied. Do we give in and do nothing? Or do we find a way to compromise and find an alternative? Or do we say screw it and do it anyway? We never know what will happen unless we take chances. I’m not saying we need to jump the Grand Canyon or quit our jobs all at once or anything like that—but I am saying we need to see that there are more opportunities open to us than we think. Sometimes all we have to do is ask the question to open the conversation. All we have to do is be willing to open that door ourselves and not wait until the time seems right. Sometimes people are waiting for us to create that opportunity so they can jump in on it as well. We don’t need to overcomplicate things or continue to follow some perceived hierarchy. Sometimes we need to slow down, learn to connect, have the conversation, and simply ask the damn questions. Just learn to take the chance, be in the now. Stop spending time dreaming of what it could be and take the first step to making it a reality.
“Don’t leave anything for later because later the coffee gets cold, later you lose interest, later the day turns into night, later people grow, later people grow old, later life goes by, later you regret not doing something when you had the chance, so stop waiting for the perfect moment that may never come, do it today, do it now, because life is happening right now and remember time slips away when you least expect it,” Denzel Washington. This year has been a lesson in doing things in the now. When we save things for later, we are only putting off what life can be now. Why do we need to wait for what is available to us here and now? Why do we put some arbitrary time frame on experiencing what we have now or what we can build now? With the losses I’ve faced this year, the limbo myself and my family have lived through, and with how rapidly this year seems to have gone by, this quote resonates powerfully. All we have is now. Anytime we wait, we are delaying our lives. I want to throw in the caveat that sometimes waiting is necessary as we need certain things to align or we need to accept guidance toward a better path—this type of immediacy is better served with decision making. Don’t allow fear to stop us from doing what calls to us, from doing what makes sense to us, from doing what we love. We are never too old to experience life or make changes—we tend to regret what we don’t do over what we did do unless that is a missed opportunity.
This year my family has experienced first hand the pain of unexpected illness and loss repeatedly. Witnessing what it is like to spend a lifetime hoarding things, waiting for the right opportunity to do what we really want only to see it fall apart, to see the things we so lovingly held onto for that right moment crumble away due to no use, made it painfully clear that all we have is now. We have each other and we have this gift of time so there is no reason to not move forward when we have the opportunity. The universe has show repeatedly that when the opportunity presents itself, that opportunity is meant for us. Don’t hold back because we are waiting for something else to come, some evidence that we are truly worthy of who we are. That “evidence” we seek may never come. We are responsible for receiving, managing, expressing, and utilizing our gifts to the best of our ability. To seizing the moment and creating the life we desire, the life we are meant to have. This world has opened up in ways we couldn’t have imagined even 40 or 20 years ago. The way time moves has changed, and because we are all connected all the time—time is irrelevant in many ways. So don’t let good things go to waste waiting for what we think is the perfect time. There is no perfect time, there is only now. If we wait for the fruit to ripen too long, it rots. And someday we wake up and we are seeing an old face in the mirror.
This also follows on the heels of what we spoke about yesterday: sometimes we surprise ourselves when we take the chances we didn’t think we could. Sometimes all we have to do is recognize the feeling and listen to the little voice that says, “This feels right, this might be something we like, we should do this—we could do this.” In many cases that’s all the universe needs. We just have to be willing participants in our own lives. I think one of the biggest regrets I have now is how many times I said no. So much of my self-doubt and fear led me to believe that I could never do the things I wanted to do, that somehow they weren’t meant for me. I held a lot of resentment because years later I saw that many of those doubts weren’t even mine—they were residual from beliefs of other people around me. Now I am surrounded by people who do nothing but take chances and have fun and live exactly as they want to, exactly as who they are. They have no shame or regret, they just live their lives as they see fit. I used to think that was selfish, now I see how smart it is. I also see how embracing themselves fully has allowed them to not only be more present, but to be more generous and ABLE to give. They aren’t sacrificing what they don’t have hoping for more later, they are developing what they do have and multiplying it. Presence changes things—it shows us who we are. It allows us to be who we are—and it is as simple as this: that’s all the universe wants, the fullest, most authentic version of who we are, right here, right now.
The Intentional Dreamer 