“Ships are safe in the harbor but that’s not what ships are built for,” John Augustus Shedd.  This is something I wanted to revisit.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, the purpose of life and the chances we take and the ones we don’t and how they tie into our purpose here.  I was talking with my sister the other day about fears and I noticed there was a distinct difference in the type of fear we had and what we thought it meant to be risk averse versus risk seeking. Do we let our fears dampen the risks we need to take or does our desire for something make us take risks that are too much for us to handle.  What makes us seek risk and is there a real purpose to it in this day and age?  There was a point to taking risk s back in the day because we needed to survive and if we didn’t we would die.  But we are much more comfortable and settled in today’s time, we have many more options and we have resources readily available.  As a result people look for things to spike that adrenaline as it gives a power surge.  We were not meant to jump out of airplanes or go bungee jumping or dive to the deepest depths of the ocean.  That isn’t something the human body was designed to do yet we push ourselves to do it.  There is just as much an innate instinct to challenge ourselves and push the limits as there is for comfort and calm.        

Taking on life is one of the scariest things we can do.  If you believe a certain way, it is said that we choose these lives, these incarnations and lessons before we even come here.  Others believe we have no choice and are thrust into this world as an unwilling participant who needs to learn the game.  Regardless of the scenario, we find ourselves in the same position: we need to figure out what to do in this life.  We are born with an innate knowing both of who we are and our purpose so whether we are here by choice or not, I firmly believe we all do have a purpose and we are here to discover it or remember it depending on your point of view.  A big theme this week has been the topic of purpose and distraction and if we allow the distraction of the world to interfere with our purpose, then we will think the entire point of life is to sit and look pretty—potential to function but sitting there withering away.  We are meant to get a little dirty, to get tossed around, to learn how to take ourselves from one destination to another and then to another if necessary. 

Sometimes we need the reminder to shake it up every now and then and to know the difference between those challenges we avoid because of the risk versus the challenges we wouldn’t take just because we have no interest in that path.  Like, I have a phobia of large bodies of water but I know knowing how to swim is beneficial so even if it scares me, that is a challenge to take on. At the same time I have no need to learn to hold my breath for super long periods of time because I’m not anticipating deep diving.  There are things we do for the sake of doing them but there are also things we can do that are risky and necessary and part of the learning process to do what we came here to do.  Expression is a challenge we all need to take on in all art forms.  We may put pretty words on paper in a journal but we may be meant to share that with the world, to make it loud and clear and share a message that very well may change the course of someone’s life.  The entire point is to not seek safety, it is to practice enough and develop enough skill that we master what we are meant for and learn how to get through the hardest of times even when we think we can’t.  It is to learn how to steer the ship through the toughest of storms in stead of focusing on keeping her safe and contained—even if she comes through a little battered, we have learned to direct our own ship to a different destination, one step closer to what it is we are looking for. 

“You can’t quietly be on fire,” no official attribution cited.  There are some conversations we don’t want to have in our lives like facing the reality of who we are.  Fearing that all the things people said and thought about us were true.  So we hold in and repress and we try to be what everyone wants us to be until our very souls seem to stifle.  We can’t breathe and we feel like we drown under the weight of our own worry.  We fear reaching out to people, we fear what it looks like or what it means, we fear appearing too needy, too concerned with ourselves.  Frankly we are lost in what it means to even ask for help because we are lost as a whole trying to figure out what we are meant to do.  WE have forgotten what real connection is.  The purpose of connection is to help each other lighten the load and bear the burden of life.  We aren’t here to judge each other, we are here to help each other and we are training ourselves to handle what it is we are meant to do, to discover our purpose and to make that our primary focus/goal.  What we have lost sight of, however, is that the goal was always to help each other make this a better place and to share in the beauty and deliciousness that is life together—so we can all experience that joy of being alive. 

We have drowned ourselves in the distraction of life.  When I really look at it, I have started to think the distraction of life was set up with decent intent in the first place as ways to celebrate and share different facets of creativity and joy and connection, different views.  We were all given different points of view in order to see different facets of the world and to consider all the different possibilities of the world.  It’s a beautiful celebration of the mind and the connection people have to the universe and to each other and how we express that connection.  But that distraction took a darker turn once we started settling and modernizing and adapting to what the world did—we started to focus on manipulation as the tactic because we understood power meant dominion.  Once that became the goal, distraction was meant to funnel people into a sort of cage that served other people’s goals.  And that is when the world stared to go made because we lost our connection to ourselves.  We quite literally set ourselves on fire in order to appease what other people wanted and lost sight of what we were here to do in the first place: our personal purpose.

We can’t sit there on fire, miserable in our own worlds, all the while working to make other people satisfied and successful while our purpose shrivels and fades away.  What we give attention to grows and expands and this is a universe of growth.  We are all well aware of what happens when we unite to a common goal.  The force of the energy combines and expands and multiplies and amazing things happen.  When we sit in misery or with any intense emotion on our own, nothing will happen.  People won’t see the flames until it’s too late.  When we first start to feel the burn of desire, follow it.  When we feel the spark of creativity, nourish it.  When we feel the sting of someone else pushing us to the point where our focus and energy is no longer our own, that is the fuel.  The pressure from society to conform to that type of behavior is the match.  When we don’t live up to those expectations that is the fire and it is often a slow burn.  So when we feel ourselves starting to combust and struggling to put out the flames every day, that is when we need to call in reinforcements to help put us out because it will burn us down if we keep it inside for too long.  The only time I want to be on fire is with my purpose, when I get in the flow of creativity and I feel my power and energy directed somewhere.  That is burn with purpose and I don’t ever want to let anyone direct my flame inward.  Fuel my growth, fan the desire, but don’t stifle that flame so it fuels your dream/life/work/goal instead of my own.  Ignite the flame, don’t let it burn us down.              

Yesterday I spoke about how our energy has a ripple effect into the world, both personal and literally on a global level—perhaps universal—but today I want to focus on the personal implications of it.  We are responsible for our own actions, monitoring our emotions, our progress toward a goal, for deciding on a goal, and what we want the trajectory of our lives to be.  We can decide to do a million things but none of them will happen if we don’t take action toward them.  A team member of mine shared a super simple but potent piece of advice that ties right into this concept of action and energy: Daily effort toward goals is what moves you forward.  It doesn’t have to be huge leaping strides every day, it is the consistency and drive and heart we put into whatever it is we decide to do that moves us.  I’ve chosen at least a dozen different paths in this lifetime, each time thinking I was doing the right thing, that I had found “it” only for it to crumble away and leave me confused, wanting, and empty.  I can fully admit that in some cases they were merely bad choices—they were things that weren’t for me.  In others I know it was a matter of lack of clarity.  And still in others, it was fear to do what needed to be done.  In all cases, it was about not doing what needed to be done.

When we make the choice to not take action on our goals or do the necessary result producing actions then we have set in motion the lack of an outcome on whatever it was we decided.  As a society I think we set ourselves up for failure with the belief that we have to do it all RIGHT NOW or we have to do a million things in order to somehow be deemed worthy.  We take on too much and we self-sabotage to the point where the level of what we are trying to accomplish or the amount we are trying to accomplish is unattainable.  That isn’t the case for everything.  There are those things we want and we can see them and we know what we have to do to get them and we don’t do it—so the question becomes what did we miss in our own lives as well as what did we deprive the world of?  Energy is key and I am learning and continue to be humbled at how much we actually (perhaps just me) need to let go of, how much work is necessary to really channel our energy—or even understand it.  The universe has a funny way of really testing that resolve when we think we have it under control, testing if we really want it, testing if we are really where we think we are on our journey.  Those with the gumption to stick it through to the end are rare to a degree, and the long term effects of sticking it out are evident in their lives and in society.    

The last component to this talk is that we must remember to never get too big for the little things—they matter.  The results really are in the details, but the key is really that we must be willing to do all the things that need to be done in order to succeed in our goal. No, that isn’t about driving ourselves crazy and making sure every detail is perfect—perfect isn’t the goal.  It IS about making sure we have all the pieces in place to make things function smoothly and to full capacity. I heard it said that the little things are the big things and the big things are the little things.  It’s all a matter of perspective—understanding that we need to have a big picture and be firm on the destination but flexible on the details and the how all while knowing we have to be willing to handle the small details.  Life is this balance of clarity, consistency, and knowing how NOT to get hung up on something while also NOT ignoring what needs to be done.  No one said this was easy and in reality it is the greater lesson to life itself—Balance and clarity.  Somehow we have to find that sweet spot of knowing what we want and how to get it while knowing that our goals may or may not be part of the bigger universal plan.  We have to stick with what we know while expanding what we want to know.  Keep ourselves in check and be really clear on the destination, and above all, be willing to adapt and flow so we do the work it takes and let go of the rest.

I heard a comment on the ripple effect basically saying that when you retreat you’re stealing form the ripple effect, the lives you don’t know you’re touching—those we know and those we don’t know.  Even with the greatest intentions of intentionality, , we can never know the full scope of impact of our actions or the full breadth of our reach.  We never know the full reach we have because there are times that reach extends beyond our lives and even our lifetimes.  Think of some of the names in history from Socrates to Da Vinci to King Arthur to Washington and Lincoln and Curie to Ross to Einstein and Hawking and MLK. All the minds that have impacted the world and will continue to impact the world because their words and work are timeless.  We’ve evolved and developed and expanded the theories and understanding these people shared but the core principle they developed is the same, and that is incredibly powerful to know that there were theories, philosophies, and ideas that people understood when others didn’t and they stuck with it and shared it enough that it transcended time to make its way to us today. The ripple effect can go simpler and also deeper at the same time—it doesn’t have to be a world altering paradigm.  You never know how many people you impact because you smiled at someone.  What if they were having an awful day and suddenly you smile at them for no reason?  That can change the entire trajectory of their day and then they go on to smile at someone or find the energy to help someone and that person does the same and so on and so on.

When we stop sharing our gift or our message, we are taking away from the energy exchange and the possibility of that person sharing our initial exchange.  Energy doesn’t lie and the world moves on energy.  What we see is what we are.  Yes, there are major events that shape the course of what we do but even those big events may be influenced by the small things.  The world is shaped and changes based on the small things, the accumulation of the little things that build up over time.  When we are intentional with what we are doing and we approach the world with the idea that we are going to do our best and we work to manage our emotions, we see it differently and can appreciate how connected we all are. The closer we get to understanding our connection to each other and the Earth itself, the more intentional we are with everything we do because we do not operate in a bubble—our actions aren’t isolated.  We become more careful with our energy and how it’s managed because of this understanding.  We are aware of the impact of what we do or don’t do, the choices we make and what is done to us as well.  This is also how generational patterns and energies work as well: the energy our ancestors carry from their experiences flows down from person to person.  It’s up to us to recognize harmful traits/energy that doesn’t serve and to work to break those patterns because we can stop the cyclical patterns when we see them.  It’s up to us to manage the energy we share with the world, period.

Much of this is basically the same concept as The Butterfly Effect, how actions set other actions in motion that we aren’t always aware of—there can be long term impacts from what we do.  I spent a lot of time fearing that responsibility, wanting to make the right choices all the time because I was so highly sensitive to what my actions did to other people.  Ironically as connected as we are to the world, we still struggle to grasp the full extent of how what we do affects other people.  I’m not suggesting we live our lives appeasing every person around us, contorting to every which whim someone may have.  The entire point of this is to be aware of what we do, to slow down enough to put some thought into the action before taking it—and when we take the action to be fully invested in it, knowing what we want it to do.  Be intentional.  The biggest component to this concept is that we are all connected and our actions impact others.  The same is said for our inaction as well.  Not everything we do will have a life-altering impact on people—like if you wear two different socks, no one even has to know about that.  But the universe responds to everything we do, and everything we decide but the breadth of the ripple is indeterminant.  Bezos may have envisioned a big picture when he started working out of his garage but the impact wasn’t fully understood.  So choose carefully and don’t deny the world of our gifts.  We never know what they can turn into. 

When you’re in despair in the valley, what happens when you keep marching?  Eventually you’ll reach the peak.  There comes a point when we have no choice but to keep going.  Simply pick up and keep putting one foot in front of the other.  There are tons of sayings supporting this: “The only way out is through,” “Tomorrow is another day,” “This too shall pass.”   Moving forward feels near impossible at times.  It feels heavy, like we have to fight to even lift that foot and finding the strength to do it feels impossible.  Sometimes we need the reminder that we need to let go.  We have to release the burden that’s holding us back.  Sometimes we have to stop for a moment to catch our breath and find our bearings and in those moments, if we listen carefully enough, we hear what the next right thing is.

I propose that sometimes when you’re in despair we need to sit with it more.  We need to dive in further and learn to unpack what’s actually there, why we are feeling despair in the first place.  It’s easy to sit with people and hear their story and tell them what the problem is.  Like a friend comes to us crying about something and we have the answer for them.  When we have to dig through our own shit, it gets really uncomfortable at times.  There comes a point, however, when we see that clearing the surface level of shit isn’t enough.  We have to dig deeper to really get to the root of it because getting to the source of what’s causing the issue and making the shit keep filling in is the only way to stop it.  We don’t need to keep piling on and it does no good to do the work if it keeps coming.  We need to stop it at the source.

The key here is understanding that some of that shit comes from our own minds and we need to have enough wherewithal to know we need to take control—to stop and gather our bearings.  It is true that we take on plenty of behaviors and issues from outside of ourselves.  There are habits and behaviors millennia old that will not be stopped/treated/cured overnight.  There is a lot of conscious effort that goes into healing those things and even more that goes into applying that at a larger scale.  There is also effort in remembering what we are capable of handling ourselves and finding our path and responsibility on this journey.  As trite as it may sound, at the end of the day all we can do is keep going.  There is no pause or stop on this life—we just keep going.  We adapt, we move forward, we find ways to do our best.  Letting go of the despair only helps us to keep moving forward.   

Today I am grateful for my family.  My oldest sister is in from NY and we’ve been able to really spend time together for the first time in a couple of years.  It feels different this time around.  Sure, I’m older, sure, I know the changes I’ve endured since turning 40, sure I’ve changed a lot of facets of my life.  But I’m confronting things I didn’t expect to (discussions on aging and death and the fear of losing my parents), making choices about where other people are in their lives and my role in it (my friends’ behavior, the gaslighting from it, habits at home), and lessons on control (I like to be in the driver’s seat, I want to fix things, I want everyone around me happy—and I want to be happy too).  These are all things we have very little control over and the best we can do is find ways to ground and connect.  To discharge the energy that holds us where we are like hostages, unable to make choices because we are in some unseen battle of the wills with what we think it should be and what is.  It takes practice and patience and belief that we are safe.  Family gives us that sense of security and we have to accept that sometimes the look of what family is changes.  Loss, grief, development, movement, evolving, are all part of life.  There is a time for all of it. 

Today I am grateful for new lessons in finding myself.  We took a trip to a temple not terribly far from where we live, something my sister had mentioned a long time ago and it attracted my attention then.  I was too afraid to go alone, too afraid to meet her there, too afraid to leave my home at certain times.  But yesterday, we went and it was a beautiful experience.  The warmth of the woman who opened her door, for letting us stay well past the 10 minutes she had left in the day, for the conversation we had with her that opened new doorways to my heart, for the gentle reminders of what I still carry and need to let go of, I am so incredibly grateful.  I may have found a way to stay on the path, the next step in what I need.  I feel like I’m constantly losing more and more pieces of myself and I’m not sure how I feel about it.  Perhaps a little sad at letting go, a little scared at how much I’m losing, a little disappointed at the realization that I still have so much work to do.  But I know all of that comes with reason—and I can at least appreciate that everything happens for a reason.  I didn’t approach this thinking I had all the answers and that once I found what I was looking for that I was done.  I also didn’t realize how much there really was to let go of.  So the work continues.

Today I am grateful for strength.  Right now I’m facing a lot of fear of being alone from several different arenas: the loss of friends, the loss of a relationship that I put above everything for too long, the pending loss of everything due to the natural course of life.  I needed ways to remember that I am strong and the universe is providing them.  I can’t say I’m terribly thrilled at the lessons, but I guess if we have to learn something, it isn’t necessarily up to us how that happens.  It’s up to us how we receive it.  There has been one lesson I’ve been avoiding for decades now and it rears its head again right now.  The only way out is through, right?  I’m tired of running, tired of waiting, tired of delaying what I need to know because I’m afraid of what it means in relation to my comfort and what I’ve built.  We can’t keep things the same if we want to change, no matter how attached we are to it.  We can’t carry it with us.  So I am grateful for learning how strong I am and what I can carry but I’m also grateful to learn to be strong enough to put certain things down.  We talk about strength like it only matters what we can carry and we so often ignore what it takes to leave things behind.  I am grateful to have the option to leave things where they lay, and as scared as I am that I may not find them again or find my way back to myself, I am grateful to work on accepting the lesson. 

Today I am grateful for understanding what belongs to me and what doesn’t.  I guess I needed reminders of what I needed to stay out of—and where I needed to step up.  It’s hard to make the distinction when we’re already facing overwhelm to a degree. The lines blur in many ways.  I can’t fix everything.  I can’t do the work, even for the people I love.  I didn’t think I was still living at surface level but I have been.  There were many moments of flow yesterday, my sisters called it a vortex—and I felt it.  From the conversation we had meeting a perfect stranger to seeing the grace that stranger had with welcoming us even at the end of the day, to finding books on the same topics we discussed with that woman, to finding artwork that represented us, to the million little moments that showed us we were related.  Topics we discussed on random things like fairies and gas and berries and particular authors showed up just as we talked about them.  I know what I have to face now.

Today I am grateful for giving.  I allowed myself to get really caught up in some heavy crap happening in my life right now so I am grateful for the reminder that we still have energy to give, that I have energy to give.  I’m grateful for the reminders to be where I am right now. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

I heard a segment from an interview Bill Murray gave to Joe Rogan discussing a book written about the death of John Belushi and he talked about how the entire story changes when we talk to the periphery of people involved in a situation.  He noted how important it is to speak to the people actually involved in it, those in the room where it’s happening, and how easily people can be manipulated into believing what they are fed.  He equated these stories to framing Nixon—like who we listen to, who we believe creates the narrative and if someone could tell these stories about his friend, people barely involved, then it’s possible that the story of what we believed for decades may not be right either.  We have to see all sides of the story and sometimes we have to do a little research to understand it.  Most importantly is that we can’t take anything at face value because what’s shared is always off of someone else’s experience or perspective.

In that regard, I think one of the most important messages here is we have to remember that we always know the truth.  People can tell whatever story they want and that doesn’t make it true.  If we know what happened, if we were there, then the opinion of those not even present really doesn’t matter.   Sure, we can worry about perception and implications of what people think—but all that goes away.  There will come a time when all of us are forgotten.  Granted with social media and the internet, our mark may be a bit longer lasting than it used to be because we felt the need to document everything for posterity so to speak.  But most of us will be forgotten.  Death is the great equalizer and the stories get faded and diluted over time, like some decades or even centuries long game of telephone where someone started it with “I like cheese” and suddenly we’re hearing “France makes fancy bees.” 

Now, that isn’t to say that what wo do doesn’t matter and it isn’t to say that what people say about us can’t be detrimental.  The key is discernment and knowing what to take to heart versus what to roll off our backs.  Choosing the battels so to speak, because the game can quickly turn into wasting our precious time correcting the story to people who really didn’t matter in the first place.  We need to keep an eye out for those moments that don’t sit right and make the choice whether or not to correct it or adjust or just let it be.  I’ve shared before how much it bothered me what was said about me in high school.  On the surface that seems trivial and I know it won’t matter—I’m not even sure other people would have saved that documentation.  What bothered me the most is that the level of effort I put into that work was completely demeaned and that interpretation is what was left for people to see.  It is bothersome—but it also doesn’t matter.  The world will change and shift again in 100 years and everything as it stands today will seem silly just as it does when we look back now.  So all we can do is live the life we love in the moment and do the best we can—it all gets interpreted or forgotten anyway so learn to love those fancy bees.   

It’s become a tradition for me to write a post about freedom on July Fourth because freedom is such a multifaceted and highly emotional word that I think we need to talk through every now and then. I think the word means so much to me because I never understood what it really meant.  I didn’t face any type of hardship related to basic needs and by most counts I lived a privileged life—something I am grateful for every day.  Sometimes the only way to meet our basic needs is to fall in line with expectations of others.  Sometimes we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves too and we trap ourselves in a never ending loop of people pleasing or self-loathing or both.  I started to consider the other aspects of freedom: how much of this do we dive into on our own—like if train myself to focus on all the distraction and fun available, then I don’t have to focus on why I feel bad, what I’m really concerned about, what is really important.  In essence, I become a willing prisoner of my own mind.  And I fully acknowledge how easy it is to get distracted by everything today.  Right now as I type this I’m listening in on a meeting, I’m texting two people and I’m trying to keep my thoughts straight and steal snips/quotes for future pieces.  I do that to myself.  I can stop it at any time. 

Freedom is of course a physical thing, but what we need to talk about is mental freedom.  The way we stick to our own stories, the way we glorify feelings, putting responsibility onto others.  No, no one likes to do anything wrong, no one likes to make mistakes.  But we trap ourselves in the repetitive cycle of thoughts that force us to rehash every negative incident we ever did and then, just for extra funsies, we make that negative moment somehow mean we ARE a horrible person.  A mistake is a moment and something to learn from.  It isn’t a brand we are meant to wear forever.  We hurt ourselves thinking we are somehow absolving some sort of scarlet letter when all we are doing is embedding the mistake further and further into our neural pathways.  There comes a point where we have to take accountability and watch the trajectory of our thoughts.  I have never hidden that I needed help in this regard both professionally and chemically (medicine) and I often spoke of how hard it was on that journey to find both kinds of help along with a support system that worked for me.  But without taking the time to question my thoughts, I never would have tried to put a stop to them.  I don’t pretend that everyone is able to do that, I don’t pretend that every problem ranks the same in everyone’s life.  The result is the same, however, in how we decide to manage it: we move forward or we let ourselves drown.

Truth be told I am still scared of the depths of what I find in my brain.  I lived on repeat for a long time, trying to find different ways to look at the same story over and over again.  It helped for a while because it taught me to be a little more analytical and see the situation from all sides.  It made me understand my involvement in these situations and gave me a firm grasp of what I could and couldn’t control.  What I realized, however, is that there came a point where I would still get stuck on what I could have done differently, the things I couldn’t control.  And what good did that do?  There was no changing the past and it took a long time to stop using it as an excuse.  It gave me an explanation and that is what I had to do with it—I had to learn from it to move forward.  So.  Today is about many types of freedom. Freedom to buy the shoes we want, freedom to go for that walk, freedom to change the job, and our hair, and even what we believe in.  We get to decide what we learn more about and what that means for our futures—individually and collectively.  We need to stop telling the same story over and over again, especially for the parts we can’t change.  Allow ourselves the gift of being free in our minds as well.  Free to find a new path, to turn a new page, and to live how we are meant to be.            vvvv

I don’t have a direct quote on this one, but I saw a discussion Jon Bernthal had where he references the death of ego and how life matters more when you put aside ego.  He mentioned something along the lines that ego isn’t important but we have to matter to someone and we have to know we matter.  So being the best and biggest in something ultimately matters very little if we don’t have someone to share it with.  As humans it’s natural to want to leave a mark—the preoccupation with those we remember from history and the stories we have been told for millennia stick with us.  Who wouldn’t be fascinated with the idea of being remembered forever?  The problem is the difference between famous and infamous is a fine line and we have to remember that it isn’t always important that WE are remembered, rather it’s what we DO.  There are plenty of people in history remembered for some pretty terrible things so simply being known isn’t always a good thing.  The human creature needs to be known by those who matter, by those who see the soul within and help guide, shape, and walk with that person.  The connections we form are meant to shape each other, not just mar each other.  When we get over how things look or worrying about how we look to other people, we can focus on doing the work we need to.    

There is a shift that happens in life, a shift that can happen any time, that shows us very clearly what matters.  Some people face it in mid-life but that isn’t always the case.  The feeling is always the same: the discomfort where what we do no longer feels right and we suddenly understand with absolute certainty that there is more to life than what we’ve been trained to do, more to life than what we were told matters.  We simultaneously want less and more out of life.  It coincides with the realization that we truly do have limited time on Earth, limited time with the people we love, limited time to do the things we love.  You’d think since this is a phenomenon shared by nearly every human to ever have existed that we would stop repeating the patterns that lead us to these moments in the first place.  We’d learn to do what matters sooner and we teach our kids what matters sooner.  I struggle with breaking some of the things my parents emphasized like good grades and kids should do what they’re told.  I am not a harsh parent and I do like to help my child explore his interests—but I see so many parents focus on how kids feel rather than doing what they love.  Like, a lot of his friend’s parents talk about how others make them feel and expressing their feelings back (which serves a purpose) but I focus on figuring out how what we DO makes us feel, how we feel doing what we love, and how we feel with those around us.  Those are important distinctions.

We let the ego run the show when we care more about how someone made us feel than we care about the work we do or how we can combine complementary goals to make something better.  We have to stop valuing someone’s feelings higher than someone else’s, and we have to stop letting ourselves be victimized by our interpretation of events.  That’s letting ego call the shots.  It’s easier to see the big picture and what we have to do when we take ourselves out of the picture.  It isn’t about finding ways to be the hero—it’s about finding ways to help the situation.  I know firsthand the frustration at not being heard and having my efforts ignored.  I know the frustration at doing work that we may never see the benefit of.  It comes down to how we feel while doing the work.  If the only joy we get is when the project is finished, then did the reason behind it even matter? Not really because it was just an item off the list.  Make sure to start asking ourselves if what we do benefits our hearts as well as those around us and that will serve as a reminder to keep focused on what matters: what we can bring to the table rather than what we take off it.

“Remember: You are braver than you believe, smarter than you seem, and stronger than you think.” I first read this quote in the context of Winnie The Pooh.  It made me think of how easily we get thrown off track.  How the distraction of the world surrounds us and we suddenly find ourselves lost in a sea of thoughts and fears, things designed to weigh us down when all we’re trying to do is float.  I often wonder if all those thoughts are somehow designed to help us.  Like, we are so hard wired for survival that the brain is acutely fine tuned to anything that has potential to harm us.  In this day and age that would seem to include our social and financial standing, We fixate on the small things, the way things seem, because the mind is trained to focus on the little things that make us appear weak.  This is the beauty and trouble with being human: we define and decide things.  We make the choice about what is acceptable and what isn’t and we use those definitions to determine where we fit in with this.  I will say for as connected as this world is, it is still pretty damn isolating. 

A wave of people over multiple generations have sought to infiltrate the world with love, light, and hope.  This was often met by people who believed in power and control.  The idea of love, light, and hope is beautiful and suggests the inherent worth we are all born with as well as the idea that there really is room for everyone to succeed.  That idea directly conflicts with the quest for power—it is a danger to power.  So for those who seek power, the easiest way to keep that going is to create competition and fear and distraction and division.  We need to remember who benefits from that: those seeking power with consumerism, those out for their own self-preservation who have forgotten that if we work together, we can preserve us all.  The purpose of this life is so much simpler than we make it.  There is truly so little to fear in this world.  The only reason we fear each other is because we think someone is going to take away what we have worked for, what we have spent our time on.  We fear we are going to lose our place in society if we don’t keep up with all the crap around us. 

So I want to share a little bit of that light and remind everyone that we are all brave, we are all smart, and we are all strong.  We are born that way, and no one can take that away from us.  It’s SO easy to forget that in a society that tells us we need to earn everything and that if we don’t meet certain standards at a certain time that we aren’t good enough.  It’s even easier to forget that when bravery, smarts, and strength all look different for different people.  They come in varying forms and at different times and some of us have to learn in different ways.  That doesn’t make that person weaker than someone else.  What we can do is focus on what we do have, what we know about ourselves, who we are and prioritize being the best version of that possible.  It is up to us, it always HAS been up to us to highlight those things in ourselves that make us shine.  It’s hard to remember to let other’s darkness flow away when that’s all we’re fed every day.  So I want to be a little light today and help you all remember the very best in ourselves.