One of the “guides” (for lack of a better word) I follow talked about ways to find ourselves.  As I spoke about yesterday, all we have is the present moment and we can make that moment about support or doom in so many ways.  We need to know ourselves well enough to see when we have to shift that mindset and know when we are truly about to sink versus a shift in course.  We also have to be flexible with our definition of self and understand that we are always adding to the story.  We aren’t supposed to stop growing.  We aren’t supposed to decide who we are at 15 and be that version of ourselves the rest of our lives.  That puts a cap on all potential we have and we miss all the facets of who we are—because we aren’t just one thing.  We aren’t complete—and even if we do have a solid foundation and know who we are, what we want, and how to get there, there still may be something that doesn’t quite fit how we thought it would.  It’s ok to see what needs to be shifted—we can step into completion in new ways—try new things to find new things, to find new ways/paths to who we are.  The more we try, the more we learn, the more we determine what will and will not work for us. 

We have to try new things to see what fits us, to try on a new skin and see who we are because that is the other side of this: we aren’t meant to be the same person for our entire lives.  Sure our core may remain steadfast and firm in its identity, but we are evolutionary beings with the capacity for thought and direction and the ability to change it.  It may not even be a matter of feeling like we HAVE to change (although that is a good motivator) but it may feel like we need to do something else, that we need to try something else.  It doesn’t have to have the intent to alter our trajectory or shift the entire path of our lives—it can be as simple as needing a little something different in our lives.  Those moments can satisfy that itch we have to scratch or they can show us that we need more.  They can open a doorway into pieces and possibilities we didn’t know existed.  We will only know if we take the time to try on new things.  We try to define ourselves as early on as possible and that’s ok—we need to know those core pieces of who we are.  But we can’t live our entire lives (nor are we meant to live our entire lives) in the same box.  We may get lucky and be born into a place that fits right from the beginning—but even if it does, there are still things we need to learn and sometimes they come in the forms/lessons we would least expect—we just have to take the opportunity when it comes to us.

As we spoke about yesterday, we always have a choice, not only in how we view things, but in what we allow in our lives and what direction we follow.  When opportunities arise we can always say no—we can stick with what we know.  That is fine—it’s our prerogative to choose and knowing who we are and what direction we want to go in helps us make those decisions.  But I can speak from experience that sometimes even if things feel like they are going right, we know that there is still something more.  The intent isn’t to change our entire lives, it’s to add a little something extra to it—we won’t know what fits until we give it a shot.  It’s sort of like trying on new clothes but the store is the infinite universe.  I do have some regret in forcing myself to live the same life starting from such a young age.  I was determined that I knew who I was and I didn’t need to try anything else—I was comfortable.  But comfort doesn’t encourage the type of growth that opens the potential of who we are.  This world, the entire universe, is a game of sorts. It’s a giant experiment in creativity and purpose—and we are the only ones who can ultimately decide what that is.  So keep trying on new things until we find what works.  Even if we have to create our own piece in the end (which most of us do), we won’t know what we want to incorporate without trying new things.  Don’t be afraid to try new things..    

“Believe the universe wants [us] to succeed.  Don’t give up.  Keep what happened in the past in the past.  Focus on what’s in front of [us],” Kyle Fuller.  The day to day life wears us down if we let it, if we live in a way that isn’t reflective of who we are.  We have a choice to believe that we are destined to succeed or fail, that we have the ability to change/decide that outcome, that we can pivot, that we have a relationship with source that allows us to connect with our purpose—that we have a purpose.  We also have the ability to choose that we are somehow a victim of our circumstances, that we have no choice but to sit in the muck and confusion.  We can believe that we are meant to fail, that he universe doesn’t want us to be happy, that we are perpetually the victim in life.  The results of each are vastly different yet they come from the same source: our minds.

I know from experience that it isn’t as easy as snapping our fingers and we suddenly believe everything is perfect.  It takes a lot of work to reframe the mind and to actually believe it.  Sometimes it takes even longer to see the result of that belief.  But the point is what we believe, whether we think we are set up to succeed or fail, that we can turn the tide or not, it is up to us and the results will be a direct reflection of what our true belief is.  We have a skewed definition of what challenges are and that means at times those learning opportunities, the events that help us make decisions about what is right/wrong, what feels good, can stick with us and make us feel a certain way if it didn’t go how we planned.  In those moments when things seem a little dark, it’s easy to believe the odds are stacked against us.

But when we look at what’s right in front of us, we see the truth: we can only deal with what is in our lives at that moment.  While the past may be an indicator of what our foundation is, it is by no means a guarantee of what will happen.  Past failures don’t mean the future is doomed by any means—as long as we know how to frame the experience into something else.  We can take any circumstance and shift perspective on it.  To others it may be deemed a failure, but we can still look at it as an opportunity.  All we can do is work with what we have in our present state.  We can’t push the clock forward or backward—we only have this ever present now and that time can be filled with angst/anger/anxiety about what’s to come, or we can learn how to work with those circumstances and change it into something else.  The choice is always ours—we just have to remember the outcome is vastly different, and that is dependent on those choices. So choose wisely—no one else is responsible for the outcomes of our lives.

Today I am grateful for character.  I’m proud of myself for allowing people to be who they are and for allowing them to be who they are in different circumstances, to be with them through different phases of their lives.  I’m also glad to know their character and to understand their patterns.  Some people are who they are no matter what we do.  They say a leopard never changes its spots and in some cases this is true.  We can’t be upset at the scorpion for stinging.  People aren’t all bad, but we do need to realize that no mater what we do, sometimes it’s just their nature to sting.  Once we fully grasp that, it makes it easier to be who we need to be—who we are. I never considered it a bad thing to allow people the benefit of the doubt, to give them chances.  But there came a point when I realized that my nature to give people a chance to be who I thought they were wasn’t serving.  There comes a time for all of those with a soft heart to understand it’s ok for them to walk away and it will be necessary at some point to put up that wall.  That doesn’t mean we have to harden our hearts—we are simply recognizing when someone will sting again.  It took a long time to realize that keeping people at bay so to speak wasn’t about being hard and it didn’t make me a bad person. It means we accept those people for who they are and we stay true to ourselves.

Today I am grateful for new beginnings.  For both the beginnings we plan and the beginnings we don’t.  I’ve had an unsettled feeling for years now, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on but it was basically like I didn’t fit anywhere I went.  In certain situations it felt like I was a rock being tumbled around, forced to blunt my edges, other times I needed to sharpen them, but the overall sensation was that no matter where I was, I didn’t quite fit in.  Constantly a square peg in a round hole.  For so long I felt like I had to immerse myself in some specific identity, some version of me that was true but not complete.  A constant battle between too much and not enough, the common factor being me looking for something to tell me what I was and where I belonged.  Needing someone to tell me my value, that I was welcome.  There comes a point where we no longer need to be invited to the room because we own the room.  We take control of our lives and we no longer seek approval or invitation—we simply move through life. When something doesn’t fit, we need to remove it or remove ourselves from the situation. Sometimes we have to say fuck it and just start over.  We get the feeling that something isn’t working—we need to trust that.

Today I am grateful for my son.  I call this out specifically because I’ve had the opportunity to sit and work with my son on some emotional healing and development over the last few days.  My son is a sensitive soul like me.  For as fiery as I am, I am indeed sensitive and I react quickly.  He feels just as heavily as I do and I witnessed the true weight this beautiful boy carries and I understood to the full extent where my role is to ease that burden for him and to teach him how to carry what IS his.  I’ve talked about how quickly time moves in general and I’ve even brought that up about the time I have with my son and I know now how determined I am to make sure that I get the most out of this brief window I have with him before he decides he’s too cool for me and wants to play video games for longer, or he goes out with his friends more, or that inevitable moment when he decides he wants to leave for college and all the millions of moments in between that tell me he’s growing up.  The moments I witness every day.  So when he wants to snuggle with me, I’m going to take those few extra minutes to let him.  I’m going to soak it all up and love him as much as I can and I’m going to make sure he knows he is loved and capable and important and strong.  When we have the opportunity to experience life, I’m going to take it, not push it off because I have some checklist of things I need to do.  All of that can wait because I have right now.

Today I am grateful for breaking patterns.  I’ve struggled with patterns at times because there is a fine line between routine and a rut—we need routines but we can’t let them become ruts.  We form habits based on our actions and the actions are borne of our goals but what happens when we see the tide shifting? Or when we have to learn new ways to achieve the goals we were looking for?  We have to be able to let go of what we knew and welcome the new.  Patterns serve to build the foundation but they quickly become walls/barriers to something new if we keep building the same layers over and over again.  Shaking things up is good for the brain.  It can be a bit disorienting at first but it’s ultimately exactly what we need.  Break the patterns, break the mold, be ready to say no and do what works for ourselves—be ready to say yes to what works as well.  And be willing to admit when we have to know the difference. 

Today I am grateful for camaraderie.  This is different than friendship.  My son has started a team sport and it’s a whole new world for us.  I’ve always loved athletics and playing games—even if I couldn’t play them very well 😊—but I never understood what it really meant to be part of team.  My entire life I’d either been too competitive or the team I was part of was too competitive (internally) and we didn’t know how to work as a unit.  Watching these kids function together and move as a unit, each one playing their role and even shifting roles as necessary is a beautiful thing.  Watching them celebrate their wins and even learning from their losses is really special to witness.  They learn new things about themselves and when they accomplish what they set out to do, seeing the satisfaction on their faces is like nothing else.  The pride they feel when they set a goal and achieve it is a nice reminder that sometimes we need a group to support us to hit those last few feet—someone to set us up so we can carry it home.  And other times we need to be the support and that is just as important.  Camaraderie isn’t about who wins, it’s about how we function together and when I see the teams I’m part of not functioning, it shows me that there is value in finding the team that does.  There’s no point in chipping away at the pieces of ourselves to make things work—we need to help each other shine. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

“She’s a lot; You’re right.  I am a lot.  With a lot of layers, a lot of personality, a lot of dreams, a lot of ideas, a lot of strategies, a lot of emotions, a lot of love.  So. Yeah.  I’m a lot.” Unknown.  The world needs this reminder right now.  I feel like it’s trite and belabors the point to say anyone who says you’re too much can go away/isn’t for you/doesn’t matter etc.  I’ve never been shy on my stance in regards to self-worth and I have always found it funny that people tend to encourage us to be all we can be until we get to the point of too much—well their definition of too much.  But it is in the farthest reaches of to much, the biggest expansion we can manage that we find who we are.  So how is that we want people to grow and still tell them it’s too much?  Or we tell them they’re doing it wrong?  I struggled (and still struggle) with the idea that we are somehow responsible for meeting other people’s definitions of our lives.  I struggle with it because I fell right into it, I let them drive and I had no idea where the hell they took me for a long time.  I had no idea how to get back.

Humans were never designed to be single dimensional creatures.  If we were, we wouldn’t have the capacity for all the wonders this universe can afford us that we are capable of taking in and making sense of, of creating.  So with that being said, mathematically speaking it doesn’t even begin to make sense that we all need to be the same.   And by that logic, it makes no sense that any human on this planet would be the one to determine what too much/too little/too anything is.  The fact of the matter is we have a lot of emotion in a little container, a powerhouse of energy brimming with potential.  We are like siphons, channeling that energy into something productive.  So why would we want to produce the same things? And why would we presume to listen to someone be critical over us when it’s likely they don’t have the ability to do what we do?  I work with some people who get angry when you help them with something and then angry when you don’t, they want explicit instruction on something but when you give it to them it’s micromanaging—and that is the way of humans in this world.  We have the capacity for infinite … anything…and here we are trying to lord that power over each other. 

I want to be a lot—there’s a lot to do here.  There’s a lot to experience.  There’s a lot to feel.  There’s a lot of places to go.  In order to do those things, I need to be a lot.  I need to know who I am and I need to be clear in those expectations and the path I’m following.  Believe me I learned that first hand from years of NOT doing it. It took me a long time to realize the audience will change its view of you depending on who is in it.  We make each other think we have to somehow perform for each other, that we need to be what the other person wants.  The reality is there is no stage.  If we were honest, I’m not entirely sure the world could handle that, but if we are at least honest with ourselves, we can get closer to the truth.  We can learn to embrace the too much.  We can embrace the entire thing.  I don’t want to reach the end of my life and say I lived small.  Because shrinking takes away not only from the experience of who we are but the experience of what the world can really get from you.  We are meant to taste this life.  To feel it.  We need to be big enough to take a bite out of it.  So let them say you’re a lot.  Chances are they want to be a lot too and they haven’t figured it out yet.  And when someone says you’re a lot, simply say, “Thank you” smile and move on.

“I found my rhythm when I realized that even the steps backward were part of the dance,” unknown.  We all feel like we take steps back every now and then.  Like no matter what we do we can’t catch up. That is the nature of life, it ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes just like the moon.  The natural rhythm of life is a filling and emptying that happens all on its own.  Everyone gets on the back step every now and then.  Some of us are just better at turning it around than others.  We learn to make the move into a step rather than a fall, and suddenly we understand what life is telling us.  Our balance relies entirely on our ability to pivot and in order to dance well, we have to learn to understand the rhythm.  We have to FEEL it.  Our hearts beat on their own every day, carrying out their cadence and keeping us alive.  It’s a series of impulses that keep moving, that keep going no matter what we do.  We have to do the same.

Sure, there are hiccups along the way, we all stumble.  But how quickly we rise and move allows us to keep moving.  Some people stop dancing even when they still hear the rhythm.  That is a life wasted, that is a life where we miss the beautiful sounds and feels of living.  Sitting out is always our choice, always an option—but that option leaves out the core of the experience.  Life gets messy, life isn’t meant to stand still.  The essence of life is in movement.  We can look at steps back as mistakes or we can look at them as simply the next step in the dance regardless of which direction.  Sure, we WANT to move forward, that truly is the goal, but we must often pivot and that involves coming at things from new angles. We can only see new directions if we move—even if that means moving backward.

Quite simply, we must remember that moving backwards isn’t a bad thing. The only negative connotation we have with it is how we define it.  And sure, stepping backwards can feel crappy at times, but moving forward and taking the leap is an even better feeling, especially when we can bounce back from where we are.  As hard as it is to accept, those steps backward often aren’t personal.  We must learn the lesson involved and in order to move forward we have to learn how to handle the steps back, what our weight feels like as we shift our feet and our balance.  The only way we can learn that is to actually take the step back.  Again, I don’t pretend that is easy or comfortable.  But if we look at it from a different angle, we can at least see how it is useful.  When we stop carrying the stigma of a backstep as a bad thing, it all comes together into the exquisite performance of our lives, one in which there are no missteps—because there never were any.   

“Just because you were born in the desert doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the ocean,” unknown. Sometimes we are born a bit out of our element.  Sometimes we have to find where we are meant to go.  There are places where the sun is always shining yet some people stay rooted in the dark.  Some people live in the dark places but they know the light and they choose to be the light for other people.  The natural state of who we are calls to us from the time we are born.  For those who believe we choose our mission before/when we come here, that is exactly what I’m talking about.  We KNOW.  Some people are fortunate enough to have been born in the exact right circumstance for what they want.  Others need to find their way to it.  We must always remember that even if there is a struggle to become who we are, we must follow that knowing because it is a beacon. 

People can be multiple things—people ARE multiple things.  Some of those things are just more clearly defined than others.  It can be tricky to put together the puzzle pieces because it may not make sense where they fit at first—but if we turn them over and we start seeing the big picture, it all comes into focus.  Sometimes the things we are looking for aren’t right around the corner—we need to venture out and learn by answer the calling of our souls by responding to what feels right.  And we have to remember that no matter what current circumstances never dictate the destination.  Where we are at today is no indicator of where we will be tomorrow—but what we DO today is a good gauge.  Where we are today is not an indicator of worth by any means—it’s a reference point to show us what we need to do to get where we want to go.  The choice is always ours, whether we stay or go, whether we follow through on what we know we have to do or not.  But where we start is not where we end up—so keep going.       

A few years back, right after we moved into this house, one of our neighbors was in a horrific accident involving a horse that escaped.  It was late at night and the animal, under the influence of some medical issue, had escaped from his pen and ran straight toward the road where it ran headlong into this guy’s truck.  The driver had to be airlifted to get help and he died 13 times over the course of his recovery.  It was a long journey for him—but he survived.  My friend hadn’t heard the full extent of this story and through the course of her business, she met his wife (again, not knowing who he was) so this gentleman came to my friend’s house to pick up his dog.  I didn’t get detail on how the conversation started or how the subject was broached, but he ended up saying he was sort of famous around here because of his accident…and that the biggest lesson he has learned is to just keep going.  He said he didn’t know why God kept him alive, but he knows he has to keep going.  And that is the truth.  In so many circumstances, what else can we do but keep going?  There are always issues in this world, always problems we have to surpass—but there are certain circumstances in life that are beyond explanation and can only be felt to understand…to be brought back to life from death is a powerful message of purpose.  And his purpose in that moment with my friend was to tell her to keep going.  She needed the reminder in the midst of the stress she was feeling, and it needed to be him to give it to her.  And the really interesting part is that she was the one to give it to me.

I wrote about forgetting blessings in the middle of stressing and it’s a difficult emotion to explain—it’s not like I forget that I’m blessed, truly.  I don’t ever mean to come across as an entitled brat because I am well aware of the issues in the world and the opportunities I’ve been afforded.  My losses, stresses, and traumas are no different than others.  In some cases they are insignificant and in others they would make people feel glad it wasn’t theirs.  But we do get caught up in where we are, no matter what it is—we are human and that happens.  It’s easy to look at what is causing stress for us in the moment and lose sight of the bigger picture because that is what is in our reality right now. For as open minded as we are, we can have a limited view when we need to deal with what is in our reality.  And the universe will send us the reminders we need to bring things back into perspective for us.  When we let emotion overwhelm us we forget where we are.  I’ve been lost in emotion many times—and that usually seems to be the place the universe offers the most humbling of lessons.  Like…you can be freaking out and feeling absolutely inundated with emotion and all of a sudden it will all click into place and everything is fine…or something will happen (like hearing this guy’s story) to remind us that what we are going through isn’t so bad. 

“You can’t change the past no matter how hard you try or how much you want to, you just can’t go back and change what has been done.  But what you can do, is you can choose to move forward, make different decisions, more in tune more in line with the truth of who you are and also authentic to where you want to go.  You can create new from where you are right now,” Travis Holp.  I needed to hear this one.  Sometimes we need the reminder that there are things beyond our control, things we can’t change.  The only thing we have power of altering in the past is our view of it.  The only thing we can control is how we handle life moving forward.  The events of our past show us who we were and shape us into who we are.  Without them we wouldn’t be who we are.  We wouldn’t have our unique identity.  The past can be painful, yes, but even those parts are necessary.  Sometimes events happen simply to show us that we can handle things we didn’t think we could before and sometimes it’s to show us that what we thought would b0e devastating wasn’t so bad after all.  We endure what we have to in order to understand our strength and sometimes we have to remind ourselves of who we are so we don’t get buried under the weight of it.  As shitty as it sounds, sometimes our crappy stories are also to remind others of what they can survive as well.  We are here to help each other keep things in perspective.

I used to fight the ugly, fight the pain.  I feared both of those things—I didn’t want to feel those things. I didn’t think I could handle something if it went wrong. I didn’t trust my ability to problem solve so to speak.  I wanted everything to be planned to the T and to come off without a hitch simply for the sake of my sanity, so I would be safe, because I knew what was happening.  I needed to be in control, aware at all times of what happens.  With that level of hyper-vigilance, we turn on sensors in our body that aren’t designed to run all the time and we become sensitive to EVERYTHING.  I didn’t want pain so I was aware of everything that could possibly cause pain and my body/mind never learned how to shut off—and then it started interpreting everything as pain.  And in avoiding pain, I created more pain for myself because it all seemed designed to hurt me. I avoided the things that could have helped make me who I was supposed to be and I interpreted every slight as a targeted hurt against me.  But I guess by this logic, I would acknowledge that getting over avoidance was the lesson and trusting that all is right on time—exactly how and when it is supposed to happen.  Nothing will change the past.  The sooner we reconcile that, make peace with it, the easier it is to move forward.  I wanted to go back and fix things, I wanted to live forever to make sure I got it all right by having an endless supply of time to get it right—but I never learned to simply sit in the moment and find what I needed right now.

Truthfully this is about more than presence.  This is about the awakening to who we are and accepting the past is part of that.  Humans have the capacity and capability to bring their visions to reality and we don’t always get it right.  We fear missed opportunity and mistakes but sometimes the mistake is the opportunity.  That opportunity is the new. That is the chance to get it “right” again.  This time with a little more conviction and knowledge behind it.  Choose to take the path of creating new because we can’t undo what has been done.  Allow the experiences we’ve had teach us and shape us.  And be grateful to be where we are right now because it is exactly where we are meant to be.  I’d be lying if I said I practiced this all the time, that I believed it all the time.  I still struggle like a motherf’er with keeping my emotions/brain in check and the smallest things can set me off.  And I know that’s where I’m out of line because when everything sets you off, you aren’t seeing the reality of what’s going on—you’re too locked in your mind and other people aren’t there.  People don’t know how to respond if you don’t know how to handle yourself and we can’t live in fear that the truth, the mistakes, the times we have to do what we have to do will offend people when it has nothing to do with them.  We can’t expect them to handle us with kid gloves either.  The reality is this is a lesson in reconciling the past and accepting it, integrating it.  We can’t change it–so we can learn from it and adapt to where we are now.

I want to add a little follow up to Saturday’s post that will lead us into tomorrow’s post as well.  When we are in that mess and can’t make sense of things, we can’t see that the mess is perfectly planned out.  No matter how chaotic, we need to consider that he mess itself is perfect.  The universe is organized in patterns, fractals, shapes, things that look and sound pretty crazy when seen close up.  But when we zoom out, we see the big picture and suddenly that mess doesn’t seem so messy.  Sometimes we need some distance and sometimes we just need some time to find out what that picture looks like.  I won’t deny that sometimes chaos is just chaos—there is always entropy involved somewhere.  But more often than not, we find that it happened for a reason.  It’s easy to get caught up in whatever issue we have, and sometimes there are very real issues.  But they don’t stop the clock—the world keeps turning.

So in a way, remember that we must keep going.  There is no stopping regardless of not seeing the next step, regardless of not knowing where we end up, regardless of not knowing the reason—there is only on because it won’t stop no matter what, not until we do.  The fact that this will all end should remind us to find that blessing in the mess, to remember that there is a bigger picture—we can’t let the little shit, the nonsense we cause ourselves derail us from the reality of what we are.  We can’t forget the absolute miracle that is this world.  The odds, the timing, the mixture, the elements that formed to create the entirety of existence, the absolute magic that all of these things had to come together exactly as they did in order to create this experience.  The fact that we get to be here, is a miracle and there is an entire universe of this and it all works to perfection.  We don’t have to do anything.  I mean, we’ve done some cool stuff as humans, but we don’t need to do anything—we just ARE.