“Big journeys start with small steps,” unknown.  We must not confuse getting things done with taking more on—or assume that taking on more and more will lead to success.  It is the sum of all the small daily habits we embrace that determine our success in life.  It is the every day, the things we put our energy toward and how we execute all of those things that show us what we get.  Some of the major milestones in life are reached simply because of taking the first step.  It doesn’t matter how big the idea is, it always starts with one single step.  Then we take the next one.  Each of those steps will lead us to precipice where we can take the biggest leap of our lives.

See we feel terrified when we take the leap into the unknown, and I want to be clear that for real change to occur we all have to take the leap at some point, because we don’t know what comes of it.  But when we’ve taken the little steps to get to the point where we need to fly, we are better prepared and we know what to do when we reach that ledge.  We know we are able to fly and we know that we can take that leap because even if we can’t see where it goes/where it leads to, we know that we will be able to carry ourselves through/over/under–wherever.  So many of us spend time planning—we’ve been talking about the planning stage.  It’s exciting, it’s thrilling, it’s full of possibility.  But when we crowd ourself with doing and doing, that becomes mere movement.  And we’ve spoken many times of the difference between movement and progress.    

If we have a big vision, we need to take big steps.  We need to follow through.  We need to be who we are meant to be.  and we don’t come into this world knowing how to fly—we just know that we can fly.  So the real key is this: We have to take the little steps that lead us to the point where we know when we spread our wings we will soar, we will carry our own weight on the wind and we can direct our own course.  The vision we have sets the tone for our actions and we can sit there and get overwhelmed with the millions of little steps we must take to achieve those goals—or we can simply take one step.  Because sitting there thinking of all we have to do, worrying about the weight of what we have to do, gets nothing done.  taking that first step, while only a step, is what brings us closer to flying.  Once we know and develop the strength in our wings, that will carry us as far as we want to go.

“We choose Love or we choose fear—we can not serve two masters,” Don Miguel Ruiz.  I ended last week talking about not being able to advance our dreams when we work on someone else’s and this is a pattern that follows: The most basic reminder that the energy we put out is what we receive so if we are extending confusion by living in a state of fear while trying to express love, the universe doesn’t know what frequency to pick up on.  It doesn’t know what to express back to us because we aren’t clear on what we are sending out.  I spent my life discussing my fears—I fixated on them, praying please don’t let X happen and I would get so angry when that exact thing happened, not understanding that it was on me.  The universe doesn’t understand the nuance of “don’t” in the context of us attempting to block/avoid a specific thing.  All it understands is we are focusing on a specific thing, and THAT it can pick up on. 

When we choose the emotional state to operate from, we are choosing what we send out and receive back.  From that logic alone why would we choose to live in anything but an elevated state of love?  If we knew we would receive pain, why would we ask for pain?  So if we know we will receive fear and have to live in that state, why would we put out fear?  Love can be confusing because we assume there are contingencies attached.  But the truth is love is unconditional.  When we put conditions on things, that is when we create fear because if we don’t do X, we won’t get Y-and that fear of loss becomes the motivator.  When we choose love, we accept what is, we understand abundance and reciprocity.

So look at our habits and ask which master we are serving.  Are our actions based in real, unconditional love that comes from our authentic self?  Or are they from the fear of losing?  And get really honest and ask if we have a foot on either side of that track.  When we can’t commit we create confusion for the universe as well.  Understand the connection between our thoughts and actions and what we receive.  Remember it all comes down to us and what we choose to think, what we choose to do as a result of those thoughts.  Do not let fear be the master—live in love. 

Today I am grateful for the ability to care for myself.  Sometimes we get repetitive in what we are grateful for because we need to know it’s the little things that become the big things that matter.  So.  I’ve been on an amazing health journey, truly dedicated, over the last year.  I managed to get most of my blood work back in range, I’ve lost 38 pounds, and I have a consistent routine that feels right—and more importantly, it feels good.  In spite of all that, I had other issues going on in my body that I have been very well aware of for a while, and now being over 40, this isn’t something to ignore any longer.  I have had additional testing done and now there seems to be another issue unrelated to what I thought was going on.  Hazard of 20 years in healthcare, we think we know what’s happening in our bodies, things we think are normal aren’t.  Which is ironic because things we think aren’t normal sometimes turn out to be normal.  Anyway.  I fully recognize that I am privileged to continue on this path and figure out what is going on and to resolve it.  I haven’t come this far to only come this far.  I fully intend to continue being grateful for the ability to care for myself because when we care for ourselves we can fulfill our purpose and care for others.  Because it feels good to live.  Because it feels good to live to our highest potential.  It feels good to know that we have more.  Another day isn’t always promised, so do not take any of them for granted—take care of ourselves in the smallest of ways to the biggest. 

Today I am grateful for connection and reminders to progress.  I had a wonderful conversation with my best friend the other night. We hadn’t spoken in a long time because we are legitimately super busy and we work different hours.  Regardless, I had heard that she was making some changes in her career and possibly where she’s living and I reached out, feeling a little guilty that we hadn’t connected sooner.  She confirmed some of the upcoming changes in her life and I was a little taken aback.  I hadn’t realized some of the changes going on in her career were on the same trajectory as mine.  And I couldn’t help but be so proud of her for deciding to follow what works best for her and her husband.  I had watched as they developed over the course of their relationship, finishing school, moving out of state, going back to school and starting over in an entirely new state, having a house built.  Their consistency and teamwork always impressed me and to see them be able to pick up and navigate through these changes in their life reminded me that the changes going on where I’m at right now aren’t life-ending in a negative way.  They are just the end of this way of doing things and that we have to continue to move with it.  Michael leaving my 9-5 and moving across country, my best friend moving to follow her dream, me navigating new opportunities at work and in my business—it all happens for a reason.  Progress doesn’t happen from doing the same thing.  Progress happens when we move. 

Today I am grateful for the reminder that we are all doing our best.  This was a tough concept for me to swallow.  I remember reading Brene Brown and she was talking about attending a conference where the person she was roomed with ate a cinnamon roll and then wiped her hand on the couch because “it wasn’t theirs” and how that same person put her shoes on the couch.  The way Brown described it, I was completely on her side, appalled that someone would behave like that.  Thoughts of integrity flew into my mind like, you wouldn’t do this in your own home, why would you do this to something that isn’t even yours?  You’d be pissed if someone did that to your stuff because they didn’t know you.  Brown then goes on to describe how she realized after many therapy sessions that people truly are doing their best.  They do what they think is right based on what they know and what they have.  In speaking with my best friend, who by all counts is one of the smartest people I know, I noticed she tended to express some guilt behavior when it came to decisions she had to make for her animal.  I don’t pretend to understand the entire range of emotions or her thought process but I fully trust that she made the decision she did for a reason—she doesn’t need to justify anything to anyone.  Would someone else have done the same thing? Absolutely.  Would someone else have done it differently?  Absolutely.  We all make choices based on what we have and what we know at the time.  We are all just doing our best even if our best(s) look a little different.  It isn’t up to us to judge.

Today I am grateful for not taking offense.  This is a complicated one because it started out slightly offensive, but once I understood the context, I was grateful to keep the focus on what it needed to be—the work I want to do and the future.  My husband made the comment about my friend working her ass off to get where she is in reference to the fact that she is now able to afford a certain lifestyle due to her job–and I was a little taken aback at first because I thought of all the work I’ve done over the years, keeping a roof over our head, food in our bellies, clothes on our backs.  I’ve worked full time, I’ve put myself through school and got my bachelor’s, I put myself through massage school, I stared a business, I got a book deal.  He had never once acknowledged that I had worked hard.  I thought maybe my actions weren’t producing the results we wanted so maybe it wasn’t focused effort, simply the work I’ve done hasn’t gotten us the results we wanted and my friend seems to have exactly what she wants.  And then I realized that he has a component in this too—if it’s a life we want then we need to make it together.  He’s been doing amazing work on our home for the last several weeks and I am beyond impressed with him.  He has a wide knowledge base and he applies it well.  So I realize now that what I want to do is apply my skills as well.  I’m tired of trying to do all the things and make everything take off at once.  It’s too much.  And I realized that I was feeling guilty for wasting time not doing the things I wanted to do to completion.  I also realized that I can still do it, still create what I’ve said I wanted doing the work I want—we can still do what we want to do, too. 

Today I am grateful for absolute creative inspiration.  I’ve had to lay low for most of this week due to the health issues mentioned in today’s first gratitude so I’ve spent an amazing amount of time reading (I read nearly every day but never in the chunks of time I want) and I’ve been focused on watching shows about baking—another passion of mine that I don’t spend a lot of focused time on.  I finished a series that caught my eye previously and once I started reading it, I could NOT put it down.  It was funny and poignant and for fantasy, just so relatable.  Plus from a technical standpoint, it was very well written.  I finished the second book in the series this week and have to wait a while for book 3 so I started looking up info on the author and found her TikTok page.  I was floored to find out that this entire thing was made possible because she was sharing little reels of her bits of the story and it took off.  I was amazed.  So I may be behind the times in a lot of regards because I do NOT spend a lot of time on TikTok—I’m on other socials but not really on that one because I felt like it was way too ADD inducing for me (which, honestly, it is).  So watching the author on this journey, my first thought was I wish I had known about her sooner because that would have been so much fun to follow that journey up to publication—plus she has done an amazing job navigating this story.  Then I realized something: I have yet ANOTHER layer to break through in regards to my authenticity.  I’ve been so proud of all the layers I’ve peeled over the years and even more so in the last few months because I realized I needed to double down on authenticity—and here, I see the full vulnerability of sharing a story in its infancy with no shame, with amazing humor, and it was captivating.  I spent so much time thinking of how I wanted to package the message and how I wanted people to receive it that I’ve lost sight of the damn message.   Learning is a lifelong thing, truly.  There are so many ways now to share what we do and who we are that it can be overwhelming to figure it out.  I’m grateful to remember this is about the message, not making people see it a certain way.  More control to release.  It’s a wild ride to let go of more of what anchored us. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“It’s impossible to achieve your dream working for someone else, working on someone else’s dream,” Steven Hu.  I attended a business conference a couple of weeks ago and this was a reminder that we are capable of achieving our dreams—and that we can only achieve those dreams if we do the work to achieve those goals.  The more time we spend focusing on someone else’s dream, no matter how lucrative it may be, no matter how secure it makes us feel, the less time we have to dedicate to the things we enjoy doing or to our ultimate goals. 

The brain is amazing and can convince us that we do things for the right reason.  Like we can go an entire life doing nothing to work toward are dreams under the guise of doing the right thing for someone else.  We train ourselves to believe our dreams and goals don’t matter in the context of other people’s goals and dreams.  We convince ourselves that we have to settle for other people’s dreams because we don’t see how they can fly just because someone else is further on the runway—even if our wings are already spread.  People get confused with the idea of self-sacrifice, thinking giving up what we love hoping someone will do the same for us is somehow noble.

The bottom line is we can’t achieve what we do not work on.  We will never get what we don’t put energy toward.  It quite literally doesn’t work like that.  Energy flows where attention goes, so if we don’t give the appropriate amount of attention to our projects, the things we want to do, then how can they come to us?  And if we are working on other people’s dreams, then how can we work on our own>  And if we manage to work on our own dreams, are we giving it the same attention and care that we would give others?  Are we giving it too much, making the point about perfection?

Make sure we know what we want, how we feel about what we want, and make sure we dedicate enough time to the things that bring us joy.  It’s fine to help others and we should help others—but we should never help others at the expense of who we are and what we love.  I’ve known some people who feel they need to put themselves last in every situation in order to be worthy.  That ends when we know our worth and we have clarity on where we are going.  Believe enough to know our capacity and capabilities and our worth and then go for it all with complete faith and abandon.

“I can’t wait for everything to be ok for me to choose to be ok…because if I wait for everything to be ok, I will never be ok.  I don’t want to wait for things to be perfect before I choose to live life to the fullest.  There’s things [going on] that we can’t control, but what can we control?  We can control the fact that we’re going to choose to be ok,” JB Copeland.  What a perfectly balanced perspective on mindset and action.  The concept of waiting for things to be ok/right/perfect/right timing is predicated on outside factors aligning how we feel they should.  There are so many sayings that directly conflict each other in terms of action and the what/how/when we should do things that we create confusion and misunderstanding about priority and action in our lives.  We talk about the right timing, like waiting for our ducks to be in a row, to have all of our pieces before we begin, making sure we are prepared and that directly opposes things telling us to take the leap, we will never be ready, it will never be all perfect.  In either case, we are not taught to trust ourselves.  Trust is the key. 

Life is a mix of knowing when to wait and when to move and understanding we can’t control everything, not all of life will play out how we plan it.  Things fall apart and change and move, and we start to change and move and develop new ideas of what we want and what makes sense for us.  We can’t stick with an idea of how we want things to be just because that is what we planned years ago—we need to be able to let go of what isn’t working.  Just because things get a little unsteady (and even when they seem to fall apart entirely) it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose a new course of action.  We can get buried or we can build.  Either way, it depends on us and how we want to approach it.  We can decide and plan and make moves, that is always true, but we have to decide the most prudent move to make based on where we are at, what we know, and what may get us closest to the goal.  We also have to know when to pivot the goal and aim for something else.  That, too, involves entirely trusting ourselves and that depends more on knowing/being clear on who we are rather than making sure we feel ok. 

I often get frustrated at the scenarios where it seems people are deciding the outcome of my life for me.  A silly but pertinent example is driving.  It isn’t my fault you’re running late and speed around me when I’m already doing 5-10 over the speed limit.  Or why did you choose to inappropriately enter traffic when I’m already at speed causing me to slow down for you?  I don’t like it when I have to alter the course of my actions for the sake of someone else’s ignorance.  The same can be said when major changes happen—changes as I’ve described at my 9-5 that are deeply unsettling and entirely unexpected.  I could sit and wait for decisions to be made regarding my specific function and do nothing on a daily basis.  Or I can continue on my path, on my projects working on the pieces that make sense for me to work on and doing what I am supposed to do until a decision has been made otherwise.  It isn’t easy.  I still feel like my fate is ultimately in someone else’s hands.  The truth is, it is.  I have no say in when the company will decide to do the next round of changes and I have no idea if I will be involved in that.  All I can do is what I’ve been hired to do on a daily basis.  Now that doesn’t mean I’m ignorant and waiting for the ball to drop.  No.  I’m simultaneously networking and making other connections to keep possibilities open.  I have no idea which way things will go, but if I wait for that decision to me made I will end up stuck here or completely out on my ass.          

As trite/cliché as it may sound, we have always turned out alright.  Alright in the regard that we are alive and we have another opportunity to make things better, different, to change our focus.  I’m not saying that we aren’t a little beaten up for it or a little scarred, but with the premise that we can only control what we can control, the truth is if we are alive and breathing we have the chance to do things differently and to do them again.  Whether or not that feels good, feels right, feels fair, feels like what we want it to be is all irrelevant.  We are still here and moving forward, making our own decisions, choosing to take what we can from whatever situation comes our way, and do actively do something with it.  And if we wait for the right moment for everything, we will waste the time and life we had available while it was here.  The last thing we want to do is look back and regret the things we could have simply chosen to do differently.  And I say simple—I didn’t say easy.  I have a lot of pieces I’ve shared about that distinction so don’t get upset about it.  The decision is simple: we don’t want to feel a certain way, we don’t want to wait.  The fact is there are somethings in our lives we have to jump hurdles in order to take the action we need, and sometimes those hurdles are still in our mind, and sometimes they are very real.  But with everything, we can decide to keep practicing so the jump becomes easier or we can continue fighting the walls as we try to walk around the hurdle.  The point is the hurdle won’t go away in either situation—the choice is ours how we get around it.

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.  Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself,” William Faulkner.  Competition doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things.  We know being the best at Candy Crush really doesn’t matter.  Being the best at anything really doesn’t matter.  What matters is what we do with it and what we do with the privileges and opportunities being in that position can afford us.  We are only limited by our minds so why would we place a limit on ourselves to only surpass others?  Great, we got there first, but what do we do when we get there?  Are we just waiting for the next race to start?  When we push ourselves past what we thought we could do, we set a new bar for ourselves, and perhaps in the process, it’s a new bar for others as well, but the point is that we don’t know our true limits until we push the boundaries of what we thought we were capable of.

I had a realization that I’m going to dive into more later in the week about enjoying the planning stages of things.  That stage is absolutely magical because when we are at that point of imagining and envisioning something, there are absolutely no limits.  Literally anything is possible—if we think it, in that moment, it is real.  There is something so freeing and exciting in limitless opportunity.  In that moment we are the flea without the lid on the jar, able to jump to our fullest height.  Not that we want to be fleas, but the point is we haven’t been limited by the lid on the jar—our own fears, doubts, uncertainties that creep in.  Once those take root, we can never attain the height we are capable of.  When we reach a goal, of course celebrate and be happy, but start looking at the next benchmark until we are fully satisfied with the outcome. 

Competing with others becomes hollow and pointless after a while.  There will eventually be no one else to compete with because they will either lose interest or we will.  Either way there will be a point when we will not feel the same sense of satisfaction we used to when we accomplish something.  We have to learn to love what we do, not for the sake of winning, but for the sake of doing our best.  When we approach our goals and dreams that way soon we see that we can go so much further than we ever thought.  Competition with others was never the point—the point was to develop ourselves enough that we become the best version of who we can be.  There is purpose and satisfaction in that—and purpose is the ultimate goal in life.  When we are 1% better than who we were yesterday, we open up new doors just by bringing that little extra to the game.  Imagine how we can change the game when we get all the way up.  Think of the fulfillment from living life all the way on.  THAT is where the excitement is. 

“It won’t end here.  Your faith has got to be greater than your fear,” Julian Casablancas.  There are moments in life when it feels like time stops.  What we thought would destroy us happens, what we thought would break us happens, where we thought we couldn’t go any further happens—and we have to go further.  The truth is time is infinite and there is always something more.  There is always something else.  As long as we have air in our lungs and the ability to function, we can find something else, we can try again.  As long as we are gifted tomorrow, we can try again.  Don’t let fear be the thing that stops us.  Time is our greatest gift and what we do with our time speaks volumes.  How we spend our time tells the world who we are—and it’s how we find who we are.  We have the very real ability to create the life we want to live, we just need to be bold enough to take action on it.  The day we stop connecting with our creativity and stop doing the things we love is the day it is really over.  The day we stop feeling joy is the day it’s over.

One of my cards today was that joy is the ultimate creator and another was when I’m connected to my joyful presence I attract support from the universe.  Joy is the greatest creator and it can eliminate any type of doubt, and yes, it can eliminate fear as well.  Think of the thrill of a roller coaster—we may feel trepidation and fear while we are waiting in line, hearing the screams of people on the ride.  But once we get on the ride and get over that first drop, we feel the thrill of it and suddenly fear turns to laughter.  We can transmute the fear of anything if we stick with it long enough and focus on the good of it.  Fear in context of todays world means different things.  There are still people who face very real issues of discrimination and fear of harm to their person for being who they are.  But there are fears that have no basis in reality—like being afraid of making a mistake that makes us look silly.  Looking silly won’t kill us, that’s just ego we have to get past. 

We have moments we wish we could do over for whatever reason and we have moments when we know we need to just keep going. Those are past and present focused emotions.  The funny thing about life is we need to find that balance between past, present, and future in order to successfully navigate to where we want to be.  We have to integrate what we know from the past with what we have available to us now in order to get what we want in the future.  And so much of life is a guessing game—it’s a matter of trial and error to alchemize the life we are capable of creating.  Sometimes we are capable of so much more than we thought and we only learn that by knowing there is something else, picking up, learning from the experience and trying again.  We connect with the joy of it, the thrill of it, believe there is something greater and we keep going, knowing there is something more on the other side.  Believe that, feel that faith and trust every time—and keep going until we get to the other side.  Fear is temporary, regret is forever so do not let a temporary emotion ruin something greater.   

To make it, we need to have the right mindset and attitude; we need to know what we will do to make the money, to generate the income to support us.  The inspiration for this piece came to me while I was watching a clip from my business the other day.  The owner/founder of the company has a multi-directional focus that has always called to me but what sticks out the most is that her approach to each of these areas works and unrelated things seem to connect easily—it works and makes sense.  On the surface it would seem there are too many pieces to put together and that they don’t make a clear image.  The reality is all of these pieces are connected.  There is a web that ties them together in a way that makes perfect sense.  I need to dive into this so bear with me.  For example, there is an internet brokerage with exclusive products in everything from cleaning and personal care, to makeup, to hair/skin/beauty, vitamins, supplements, child care, laundry, tea, pet care, car care, coffee, weight loss, energy, protein—frankly covering that scope of product is overwhelming in itself and that isn’t even all of it.  Further there is the shopping annuity with partnerships with thousands of companies.  Then there is the coaching and mindset training.  On top of that she’s an author. All of these pieces fit together to allow people the option to use/share any one of these areas or all of them.  So we are talking entrepreneurship, partnership, authorship, and literally changing health/wellness and how business is run.

I felt like the code was cracked watching this clip—I understood how people with multiple, seemingly unrelated goals, manage to put them all together in a cohesive package.  I have all of these different areas of focus and different passion projects that I want to bring to life and I struggle to put all of it together because it always feels like I should be doing something else when I’m working on one area or I haven’t quite found the common thread in all of it.  I spent a lot of time with all of these ideas flowing through me with no real focus and no real belief that anything could be done about it—I believed I could only pick one thing.  I went to the other end of the spectrum as well—I tried to do all things at once and all that did was leave me with a bunch of started but unfinished projects.  But what clicked while watching this clip was that it isn’t so much finding a way to do all the things, it’s finding the common theme or common message between them and that branches out into different fields.  For example, one area that I’m passionate about is health and wellness.  That can be applied to medical care, pharmaceuticals, holistic practice, diet/nutrition, exercise/fitness.  And each of those can further branch out—specialized practice, a particular focus for drug treatment, massage therapy/chiropractic/acupuncture/oils/herbs, food quality/managing macros/growing our own food/eating to cure and prevent illness, and strength training/cardio/joint health/respiratory health etc. etc.  And maybe we spend time in each of those areas.  Sometimes it’s closer to a web than a puzzle.       

Marie Forleo always said she was a multi-passionate entrepreneur and that phrasing always connected with me– but I struggled to put it into action.  I realized after watching that clip that I understand the web idea more than compartmentalizing my life.  Operating under the idea of only doing one thing was way too limiting, doing too much wasn’t getting anything done, and then getting overwhelmed and settling for something so far outside the realm of what I wanted to do took me on an entirely different track.  I’ve shared many pieces about living multiple lives at once.  We can’t do it all.  We are human and we can eventually do all we are meant to do but that means getting really specific and finding that common theme, the common thread through our entire lives.  Sometimes we are that common thread and we pivot multiple times before we figure out what we are meant to do.  Power comes from operating in truth and knowing who we are and, above all, follow through and taking action on it.  When we find aligned people who support our efforts and ideas and they put their energy and effort toward the same thing or toward complementary goals, we truly become unstoppable.  There is nothing beyond reach, truly.  The key is understanding what we are doing and following the threads until we can see the bigger picture.  Sometimes that takes some digging to see how things are linked.  And as long as we have the right mindset and are clear on our message/theme/purpose, it will all come together.  

“Plan your exit strategy,” Allison Abbott.  This is an important concept to follow up on creativity and inspiration.  When something calls to us and we know it’s more than a whim, we need to explore the options of it.  If we find that it’s more than a passing thing, we need to turn creativity into action.  And as we spoke about yesterday, creativity and inspiration aren’t limited to certain hours in the day so we can’t try and harness something we know nothing about.  We have to spend time with it and understand it, especially if it is a recurring thought. We can’t ignore something that calls to us and expect to learn about it in a meaningful way, and if it is a recurring theme in our train of thought, then this is something that may have additional possibilities for us.  We need to give it time to unfold especially if what we are doing isn’t working and we feel inspiration toward something.  Sometimes we need to consider that there is a different way and that inspiration may be the way out.  We need to step out of our comfort zone and start breaking down the box.  Only then will we bring enough light to the situation to see a way out.  And once we see the way, we may discover that there is something more for us, something else we may want that we hadn’t considered previously. 

If we find excitement in a real possibility of something new, the question then becomes can make an actual plan to turn our lives into what we want?  These scenarios are not like a light switch where we simply turn off what we’ve been doing and turn on a light in a new room.  Sure, we can finish what we are doing in one room and turn off the light, but when we enter the next room we may have to install the lightbulb or we may have to clean and organize before things fall into place how we envision them.  We may even have to do some research on how we want the build to look and find out what we need to do to make it work.  Life is a funny balance of planning and allowing, steering and being steered.  We know that most things don’t go exactly according to plan but we also know that if there is too loose a structure, things won’t happen either.  Talk does very little but so does focus on ineffective tasks.  In other words, we can’t do for the sake of doing because that’s just movement.  We need movement that creates progress and innovates and opens doors to new possibilities—even if that’s just creating opportunities for discovery.  We need to find feasible, real actions and make sure they align. 

All of this comes down to clarity of purpose.  We can do anything we want in life, truly.  I don’t claim that all possibilities are open to every person at any time, that’s not what I’m talking about.  We aren’t meant to do all the things, to be all the things, to know all the things—that’s why we have other people in this world so we can complement and create and collaborate and innovate.  But we CAN do all of the things we are meant to do, we just need to believe and take risks and plan a way out of what we know so we can enter a new realm and make the unknown familiar.  That is how we grow and develop.  We imagine, we decide, we learn, we plan, we execute.  Those things that we imagine are meant to be unleashed from our brains so we can make a new reality.  The possibilities are endless even if it’s a focused area.  Become the expert, answer the call to curiosity and do it over and over again until we have such a wide berth that we become the expert and suddenly we are out of the previous confines of what we knew because we believe differently.  We follow that belief to create those possibilities.  Nothing is permanent as long as we keep our minds open to the different possibilities, the calling. All we have to do is answer and the rest falls into place—the plan makes sense and we attach real action to it and suddenly we are living that vision. With real purpose we have a way out.

Today I am grateful for lessons in presence.  Oh, this has been a huge on so many of my gratitude posts over the years but I am continually reminded (and grateful for the reminder) on how important presence is.  I am hyper aware of the things I need to be doing in order to move forward. I am also aware that there are so many things I want to do that my attention is far too scattered 70% of the time.  I spend (and spent) so much time wishing for things to be a certain way that I lost sight on how to make them that way.  I lost sight of how to just be.  Even the times I’m aware of it and working toward that presence, I still find myself feeling like I need to be doing something else.  The realization came over me the other day that the constant going isn’t serving anything.  It’s still—after all this time and awareness and reminders to myself—it is still just movement.  I may be widening the circle but I am far from making the amount of progress I want to be.  So.  The answer is focus and presence, but I want to talk about this from a grounding perspective—and perhaps a bit of ADD/ADHD.  There are times presence is simply going to mean doing one thing at a time.  Other times it is going to mean doing nothing.  Other times it will mean focusing on our breath.  There are times we will have to navigate 30 tasks and need to prioritize them quickly—so we will need to be present in different places at once and then decide the focus where we are.  We can only ever do one thing at a time.  Stick with it long enough to see progress, not just movement.  We can’t control the outcome of so many things, but we can control how we look at it—and that requires being where we are.  It isn’t about how much we do, it’s about how we do it.    

Today I am grateful for the reminder that life goes on—and feeling life again.  My Aunt’s cat played for the first time since we got him here in September.  On the surface that doesn’t seem like a big deal—wow, a cat played with their toys.  My Aunt died in September and I think I’m allowing myself to feel the actual emotions behind it.  It was so shocking—one of the most shocking deaths I’ve experienced in my life, actually—that I believe I’ve repressed so much of what I was feeling at her loss.  The initial surge of shock, yes, then the anger.  And now I’ve been feeling the sadness of it, the actual loss.  I hate the fact that she is gone.  When we got the news she had passed, we knew there was a cat in her home—I’d never met the animal, none of us had.  The condition of her house was so hard to deal with, we couldn’t find the cat at first.  He’d been alone in that home without food since she died, so when we were notified and allowed in the house, we left food for him.  He ate it but we he wouldn’t come out for us.  He’d been living with only my Aunt so he had never met kids, men, other cats, or dogs—she was relatively reclusive at the end of her life.  We brought the cat home and it was a journey to get him to trust me and then to work with him to be with my son, husband, and the other cats and our dog.  He made slow and steady progress but he was always cautious, still hiding during the day, shying away from my husband and son still.  Over the months he started to come out and join us—quickly peeking into the loft and then running back in the room until he started sitting in the corner watching us. Then he decided to move into my room and he slept with me at night. Then he came down stairs with me to my office.  Then he started eating downstairs in the morning.  Then he was ok being downstairs when my husband was home.  Then he started eating dinner downstairs.  And now he greets us all when we come home.  And today, he played with his toys, the toys I brought from my Aunt’s house for the first time since he’d been here.  I’m sure he still misses her—I know I do.  But I will do my best to give him the love he needs, and help him live his best days with us.         

Today I am grateful for getting out of my head.  Perhaps a continuation on presence, but I want to speak more to the idea that sometimes we need to do different things to be where we are.  The mind is such a powerful tool that we can be anywhere and everywhere all at once even if our feet are firmly planted right where they are.  We’ve been engaging with some new people, building a friendship with them, and we’ve been doing new things together.  We’ve also been working on our basement without breaking the bank.  And working full time, and working on my side projects, and spending time together, meal prepping, and working out.  So I’ve been spiraling.  Regardless, I realized we were in a bit of a tight spot for a few things this weekend and whatever it was in me, I couldn’t bring myself to get upset.  Like, my normal reaction would have been to absolutely freak out, but I didn’t feel that this time.  I told my husband to go out, try and have fun and I wanted to have a “mommy/son date” with our little (who is seriously not so little anymore and I’m freaking out that he’s already 8).  I helped my husband with a few things and he went and then I told my kid to stop playing his video game. We made different flavored popcorn, cut up apple slices with caramel and cool whip, had some healthy cookies, and some mint chocolates—and he even got to drink a pop.  We watched a movie together and we tried to play a game (it was getting a bit late for our attention span at that point) and then we watched a baking show together guessing what was cake (FYI so much fun).  We cuddled on the couch together and laughed—and I didn’t feel an ounce o stress.  He fell asleep around 11:30PM right after my husband got home, I read a little bit, spent some time with my husband and then went to bed.  It was perfect.     

Today I am grateful for really good books.  Ok, I’ve always loved books.  I’ve always made time to read books—perhaps not as much time as I would like, but I’ve always carved out some time in the day to read, even if it was five minutes.  I’ve transitioned to a few different genres recently and I’m reading a series right now that has made me laugh out loud again.  I love the artistry, the pacing, the context, the content of story telling.  I have immense respect for well-told stories and even more so when they are literally engaging.  I mean, there are fun stories to read, for sure, and there are very well written works—but there is nothing like that push to the limit of both engagement, immersion in a new world, belief in the characters, and going on a journey with them.  Right now I’m reading a really well written one.  It’s a fantastic fantasy/villain/adventure/strong female lead/redemption and slight romance, and it has made me feel all the feels so to speak.  (Kudos Hanna Nicole Maehrer).

Today I am grateful for inspiration.  As we start the week we need to remember that everything is mindset and energy.  We decide, we make moves, we explore, we try, and we try again.  I love the inspiration that comes from seeing people engrossed in their craft and their passion.  It is truly awe-inducing to see someone so wrapped up in what they are creating you can see they are in another realm.  It’s inspiring because it makes it so tangible that we can do the same.  We can each create our own world, filled with the things we love, filled with purpose and joy.  When we have that level of focus or dedication, the world opens up.  I will talk a bit later this week (or next, I haven’t decided yet) about having a focus/theme in this life, an overarching premise that guides us.  Instead of trying to make everything fit, when we have the theme, we see how those pieces automatically fit.  There is no force.  I see people doing the things I’m trying to accomplish and I used to be jealous.  Now I realize that these things wouldn’t be drawn to my life if I wasn’t somehow capable of doing them, if I wasn’t on the same frequency to have the capacity to do it.  I am grateful to find that and appreciate that and do it for myself as well.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.