Today I am grateful for friends. Sometimes we need our friends to help us put things in perspective and that is something I felt like I’ve needed as of late. There’s a lot of crap going on and sometimes we need to just realize what is good and having a group of people we can relate to, laugh with, and solve problems with is a gift we should always be grateful for. There are people we can just meet and they understand us more than those we’ve known our whole life. Sometimes we just need to know that someone resonates with who we are and that we are understood.
Today I am grateful for nature and outside. We came back from a business trip/vacation a couple of weeks ago and we were in some of the most beautiful land in the country. Being near mountains, trees, rivers has always brought me back to present. There is nothing more awe inspiring than being with nature and seeing what this world is really made of. We are part of that and all of the nonsense we waste our times with, the crap we waste our time convincing ourselves we need to do, only distracts us from the reality that we are nature. When we stop trying to be something else, we fully embrace where we are and be in our element.
Today I am grateful for seeing my kid explore and become more of who he is. I got to watch him with a new friend today. This kid is very close to a select small group of friends so for him to break out and try new things and realize that he can have fun doing new things was a gift. Watching him spend time outside with friends and simply be a kid is an absolute joy. He saw that he could do new things, that there are other people out there who will love and care for him for who he is. It’s a gift to have a small group of friends and I wouldn’t begrudge him for that but it is also a gift to see that there are other parts of him that people will appreciate and other things he can contribute that he was afraid to before. This kid has carried a lot of heavier things in his short time here and he takes life seriously, he’s hard on himself. So watching him be a kid and enjoy it is awesome.
Today I am grateful for opportunity. Truly you never know when opportunity will hit. It’s funny how we think we know what we want and we do all of this “stuff” to build the life we want and oftentimes we find the most opportunity being ourselves. Sharing who we are and what we do should be as natural as breathing because when we are who we are, there is nothing to present—we simply are. There is magic that happens when we take those opportunities. We learn about ourselves, what we can do, and what we really want when we take chances on ourselves. We just have to believe and have the guts to go for it.
Today I am grateful for helping. When we are able to offer our help it’s a gift. It is the greatest fulfillment of our purpose. Being able to remind people of who they are is a huge gift and to do that while being the most authentic version of ourselves is the entirety of why we are here. To love, experience, enjoy, to share, to remember who and what we are. We are meant to constantly change the paradigm and we have the opportunity to change it for the better. How awesome is it that we can offer so much simply by using the gifts we are given?
“We lock ourselves in a cage where ‘not now,’ ‘not ready’ and our comfort kills dreams. Don’t choose comfort over courage,” Loren Ridinger. A perfect follow up to what we talked about yesterday. I’ve hit on these points quite a bit this week but this one is a bit more subtle than the others. Sure the overarching theme is the same: we choose our path and what happens is a result of our actions. But this stood out because of the nuance of the thought. It really is something as small as saying “not now” or believing we aren’t ready because we don’t think we can do it perfectly that can keep us right where we are. Comfort is nice and we seek it, but if we really think about it, that isn’t what we want. We are seeking safety and safety is outside of our comfort zone believe it or not. Because when we seek comfort, we are looking for things to be easy and attainable and within reach. The safety we seek comes when we have a means to attain the things we want that will continually provide. It has nothing to do with how we feel, it has to do with how we set up the path of our lives—security in freedom.
Every time we choose “not now” or “not ready” we are telling the universe that we don’t want what is being offered—even if it’s the exact thing we were asking for. Whatever lies behind that feeling of not being ready is where we have to start. Identify what it is that makes us feel not ready. I know in many instances it’s the lack of self-worth that keeps us where we are but I’ve recently had to tackle the demons around the idea that it isn’t the lack of self-worth but the fear of succeeding and that is something I thought I had done a long time ago. The idea that we would reject our own success is ridiculous, right? The reality is success brings a lot of unknowns. Will I be able to maintain it? Will I be able to duplicate it? Will the people I love still support me? What if they don’t believe in me? It does take courage to take a leap into something new because we can’t see what’s underneath. I learned that taking the leap often does turn things upside down and when you jump you will eventually get back to the top.
I don’t know what that thing is that will make people feel strong enough to do it because I certainly don’t in spite of the fact that I had to make some difficult choices and changes recently. I had to get really honest with myself about my role in my journey. Look at the distraction, look at the fear, look at the choices I was making and ask if that was in line with what I wanted. I have a giant pool of things that I want to do and I know all are feasible and tie together but instead of focusing on those things I make sure everyone else’s stuff is done first. Then I ask why I haven’t been making progress on what I wanted. That habit is a “not now” moment as well. Sure, it’s nice to be helpful but when it cuts away at the energy and time we have for our own ventures, we have to ask if that’s the right thing to do, if that’s what is really needed in that moment. It’s a prime example of knowing what we have to do and having evidence of success. So reframe—not now becomes yes, now and not ready becomes the chance we were waiting for.
“The door to the life we are meant to have unlocks inside our head. We hold the key to the treasure we seek,” Loren Ridinger. Another reminder that it starts and ends with us, more specifically, with our thoughts. I can’t say it enough: the mind is an incredibly powerful thing and it will pave the path to our dreams or our nightmares depending on what we let it do. It is literally up to us. The thing is, I’ve somehow always known that and I think we all have on some level. But what I think we all miss is just how seriously we need to take our thoughts. The mind doesn’t distinguish thought from reality so what we allow to race through our brains is considered very real. From that context alone why would we want to take a chance and put anything negative in there? Sometimes the negativity is so subtle we truly don’t know we do it—that little doubt about wearing that shirt or eating that ice cream, or applying for that job, calling that person—it may not seem like much and we may chalk it up to nerves but the truth is we are putting the seeds of doubt in our brains and that is all it takes for those cages to start to go up. We create our own traps in our minds and we also hold the key—I’ve talked about that a lot. We have everything we need inside of us and around us and if we don’t see it, we have the capacity to get it.
As cliché as it may sound the truth is that if we can see it in our minds, we can bring it into reality. We can create it. The thoughts and feelings we have aren’t all by accident. The feelings we get are the cues we need to direct us toward the life we want. The choice to act on that is always up to us, and like I talked about yesterday, if we don’t decide to do something different, if we don’t decide to follow those instincts (actively take action) then nothing will change. It really is as simple as that. I don’t suggest there are no repercussions to the choices we make, but the same can be said for not making a choice. The life we envision, if the vision is big enough, lies on the other side of what we won’t do—or what we think we can’t do. It’s all what we tell ourselves. When we are kids, we feel invincible. We can take on the world and we have dreams of the highest caliber, things that take us to the highest peak. We start to let those little seeds of doubt build those cages I talked about earlier and we forget how high we can go.
So between too small pans, too many cages, too many fears, the message remains the same: it’s up to us to manage our thoughts and make the choice to be great, to do something bigger, something more. Frankly, to do something that is more aligned with the truth of who we are so we can fulfill our purpose in this world. We sometimes think we seek attention and notoriety when we are really seeking connection and truth. Sure, it’s nice to have people know our names, but think of the legacy we leave behind. There are just as many people who have left this world with a scar that we remember as much as those who have tried to help it. So the point is this: the power is in the mind all the way, all the time. If we want something we have to go for it with full commitment and belief that we can get whatever it is that we seek. We have to be audacious enough to believe that the world will work with us to get us where we need to be and that the result will be as beautiful, if not better, than we can imagine. Be bold, be honest, be authentic because those are the real keys to the life we seek.
“We don’t rise to the level of vision, we rise to the level of our decisions,” Loren Ridinger. It’s one thing to have great vision it’s another thing to bring it to life. A decision is just that: clear choice coupled with action—the key is in the action. In order to rise, we have to believe in the vision. We have to believe in ourselves and our ability to fulfill that vision. At conference I had another take away which is that we must decide like the person who lives that vision would decide in order to experience what we want to experience. I’ve said it before, you can imagine going to Bali all you want—that’s your vision—but buying a ticket to Florida is not the same thing—that’s the decision. If we keep deciding like we always have then we will get what we always got. Life gives us what we put into it so we have to make sure we are very clear on what we want—and what we need.
When it comes to the level of our vision, it’s safe to say that we often dream too small. We may have a big idea but with no workable way to do it, all it stays is an idea. A vision requires steps and action and the choice to take risk. That risk can be anything from saying yes to something we haven’t before or saying no to something we haven’t before; it can be walking instead of driving, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. It can be as monumental as wiping the entire slate clean and starting somewhere new. But the point is this: if we don’t do something different nothing will ever change. The good news is it doesn’t have to be a huge life-altering step from the get go, it can be something small that breaks the pattern. It compounds from there because we see that changing course is often a series of small adjustments that gets us where we need to go. At the end of the day every big move starts from the smallest of decisions.
Life changes in a blink—sure it may not be overnight, but it changes faster than you think. One moment, one step, one choice at a time moves us closer to our dreams or further way. It’s all up to us. We can have an idea or an image of what we want in our minds but if we do nothing that idea will never come to light. Not everyone is aware of what they want right off the bat—we aren’t all that fortunate to remember who we are early in life and for most of us, the world gets in the way and wreaks a little havoc on us until we settle into who we are. We can’t let the noise and fear and distraction get in the way of the real dream. We have to recognize that calling, that hope, that voice, and yes, that vision—and we need to support it. If it was given to us it was meant for us and there is nothing that will take that away, so as long as we are clear and are willing to take responsibility for those choices, it becomes inevitable. Choose wisely. Choose big.
“We see signs along the way, we just don’t pay attention,” Loren Ridinger. This is about the lies we tell ourselves when we know something is wrong with a situation and we stay. We ignore all the warnings even when we know that something just isn’t right. We stick with the things we know will hurt us, the things that can break us and then we act surprised when something backfires. If we get really honest with ourselves, we can admit that we knew what was coming. My family has a long history of staying. Like, when shit hits the fan and we know we should run, we stay. When we know someone won’t change but we have hope for their potential, we stay. When we know an opportunity is for us and that little voice is telling us it isn’t, we stay nice and secure in that little bubble. We set up our own destruction when all the signs were there along the way. The brain can convince itself of unbelievable things.
So what happens if we start paying attention? I think of the time I could have saved and all the things I could have accomplished if I had cut my losses on some facets of my life sooner. I think of the ease of that life, the one I convinced myself I wasn’t worth having. I paid attention and I turned down each and every one of those chances that came my way. I stayed in the rut knowing full well I was burying myself deeper, not building a ladder. Whether it was in any type of relationship or goal, I managed to get myself right back to where I started. This is an easy arena to fall into the could have/should have nonsense. And it is nonsense (even if it’s right) because we can’t change it anyway and the universe said it had to be THIS way so that’s why things went down the way they did. But what I learned is that we can start paying attention now. We can start believing in ourselves now.
When we know who we are and familiarize ourselves with stepping out of the bubbles we made, we start to take our interactions more seriously—or at the least we start to consider or view them differently. We recognize the truth of the situation sooner than we would have previously and we are better able to navigate and steer ourselves away from a course we don’t want. We learn to trust our instincts and know that what we pick up on and act on what we know is true. This is different than impulse—this is about specific decision making. The truth is not everyone is toxic or has motive to hurt other people—far from it. That doesn’t make them any less self-serving, so we always need to be on the lookout. It becomes easier to know what to do because the path is laid out in front of us. All we have to do is stop pretending we can’t see it.
“We lie to ourselves to avoid the risk of becoming,” Loren Ridinger. I didn’t want to admit the truth in this statement. Like our parable yesterday, I didn’t want to take responsibility for anything more than I felt I could handle and I thought I was being practical. We tell ourselves someday or that we will do it when the time is right knowing full well we are setting some arbitrary standard to mark when we start living our lives. Make no mistake, there are real issues we face that sometime would legitimately impede us from moving forward in a productive manner. But when we take the every day mundane details and use them as the reason why we can’t get out of performing the every day mundane details, we’ve created our own mental trap. The things we want to break out of suddenly become the things we are reliant on to keep us in our little bubble. So we tell ourselves a story where we get to be the victim—we’ve done the work but look, nothing has happened so that’s not my fault!
It is a risk to decide to be something else. It’s a risk to shed what we know in favor of something we don’t know all on the chance of what could be. But we can’t let our own thoughts and fears be the very thing that hurts us or holds us back. We tell ourselves we can’t for whatever reason before we even try—if we don’t try we will never get anywhere anyway. If the caterpillar never built the cocoon it wouldn’t grow wings. If the bird never broke out of the shell it would die. So why do we cut off the exact opportunity we need? Because we aren’t sure we can carry ourselves through becoming who we are meant to be. We know who we are, we are comfortable where we are so even if we say we want to make the move to something different, when it comes down to it, it makes it nearly impossible to shift. We know what we have and we feel safe.
Ending with this concept of safety. We can create the safest nests for ourselves that we love and tend to with care and purpose and several things can still happen: we can still feel like we need something more, still feel the call that the space is too constricting. After time we may feel the need to change the surroundings entirely but we fear hurting someone’s idea of who we are—or our own because we aren’t living how we thought we would. The other thing is some outside forces can destroy what we built and we may have 0 control over it. All the planning, protection, and care in the world will not stop certain things from happening—not even the worst things. So the point is this: we are afraid of becoming because of what we have built. We need to start asking ourselves if what we built is still what we want, and more importantly, is it what we need in that moment? Don’t ignore what we know already which is that we are all fully capable of becoming exactly what we need to be and going higher than we ever thought possible. We just have to take the risk.
There is a story of a fisherman who brings a ruler with him every day while fishing. He measures every fish he catches, throwing back the big ones. One day someone asks him why he doesn’t keep the big ones and he replies without hesitation that he only has a 12 inch pan. Some people see this as a matter of practicality—there isn’t room in the pan for the larger fish. Some people see this as a problem where the man could have just cut the fish. But there is one more lesson, one more possibility: what if he just needed to get a bigger pan? When we limit ourselves to the size of our meal, our speech, our dream, we limit the results we get in our lives. There comes a time when we have to consider that we aren’t dreaming big enough. If we break ourselves down to fit in the box (the pan so to speak) we are cutting out or throwing back the pieces of ourselves that could be the most valuable. How do we solve that? We need to get a bigger vessel. Sometimes we need to dream bigger and get rid of the ruler because the only limits we see or feel are in our own minds. Sometimes we limit what we do because we’re afraid of what more really means—that we CAN do more. When we remove the box, we remove all limitations, when we see there was never a real measuring stick, anything becomes possible.
Today I am grateful for confidence. Even if this is something I struggle with daily, I am so grateful for the moments when it comes out. We had dinner with new friends yesterday evening and they ended up joining us back home so we could play darts and some other games. I felt some of the old me come out in regards to that younger boldness—perhaps not confidence exactly, but the willingness to try things and put myself out there. In this case I didn’t do well with the game but I realized off the bat that wasn’t the point. The point was all of us just having a good time and being with each other. It’s been a while since I’ve been with people who weren’t in direct competition over anything even if we were playing a competitive game. We just had fun. I never considered needing confidence to have fun but the truth is if we are willing to take the chance to have fun we learn things. So I am grateful to take that chance.
Today I am grateful for good food. This isn’t something I talk about much but I’ve had a difficult relationship with food most of my life. I love food, I always have—but I also used it as a coping mechanism. I struggled with overeating and with sugar addiction specifically (nothing totally out there). Either way the point of being grateful for food is that it doesn’t have to be that kind of mechanism. Food is a uniter in so many ways, it’s an experience. We bring substances into our body for nourishment and when we do it correctly, our bodies thrive. Food is a tool and it is amazing what is provided for us with little effort. Over the last year and half I’ve lost and kept off 40 pounds and that is saying something to healing my relationship with what I thought I needed from food. But I’ve had a few moments over the year and half, up to and including the last week, where I found myself wanting to fall into old habits and not honoring my limits. But it was in those moments where I felt differently about the test. It wasn’t about my resolve in those moments—it was about presence. While we were out of town spending time together on the first family vacation we’ve ever taken together, I realized I didn’t want to worry about what I was consuming. We were eating things we wouldn’t get back home and the memory of those moments was more important than taking in a few extra calories. I’ve proven over the last year and a half that I can maintain and that I have the drive and discipline. I can handle taking the moment to enjoy even if it means a little extra work in the end. We also had a wonderful meal out the other night and it was a great time together—it was the experience all around. The food and the people, all of us gathered together to enjoy. It was lovely.
Today I am grateful for understanding what I have to do. It’s later in the afternoon than I would normally write this and I had a few moments this morning where I couldn’t even get up for various reasons. But I understand that in order to achieve what I’m seeking to achieve I need to do what I say I’m going to do. It’s all on me. It’s all in my choices and actions and what I do or don’t get is a result of what I do or don’t follow through on. That is the nature of taking responsibility for our lives. We get what we put into it. And for the first time, I have more clarity around that. I have a better relationship with balance and scheduling and knowing what needs to be done. I had this idea of what freedom is and what it means, thinking I could do whatever I wanted when I wanted to and I developed that into a routine a long time ago. But freedom also means adapting to what needs to be done. It means finding the balance between what we need and what we want—and then finding the ground to do what has to be done while honoring all the other stuff. The bottom line is if there is something that needs to be done, we need to be clear about it and do the work to get the work done. All gets done when it is supposed to so we can trust that we are always on time. All is exactly as it should be.
Today I am grateful for passion. Passion can apply to a lot of things we experience and feel in this world. The desire and drive to achieve something specific. The joy we feel when we are in a certain environment or doing a certain task. The way we feel about someone. The way we feel about a goal. Passion is what drives us in so many things. Liz Gilbert wrote years ago about how we have to find our passion to secure our actions and figure out what our lives mean. There is some truth to that, but she came back after a while essentially apologizing for it because the truth is there are some points where passion isn’t fully clear. Passion can sometimes be an impulse and we aren’t always able to decide what direction we’re really being pulled in. For me I became overwhelmed with passion because I am curious about a lot of things and I truly get interested in the process of learning and trying new things. But with that I was never able to fully settle and become a master or expert on any one thing in particular. I hated myself for that because I thought I had wasted all my time in this world trying to do everything. I can look at this a little differently now and understand it wasn’t wasted time, it was time spent learning that there are many beautiful things in this world and having a broad knowledge of them can be a key to guiding others to what they want as well. Passion keeps me coming back to the things I love: writing, reading, sharing, learning. It keeps me fulfilled. Even if I’m not the wild success I thought I would be, I am still successful enough to be able to explore the world as I see fit and that is because passion keeps my eyes open for new things. For that I am grateful.
Today I am grateful for relaxing. I have a high guilt complex so I am often plagued with feeling like I should always be doing something else, like I should always be somewhere else. I have a hard time being in the moment and really enjoying what I’m doing even if I love what I’m doing. I automatically go to thinking that there is something else I should be doing. The pressure of should takes the joy out of the present moment AND out of the things I should be doing—because if I’m really honest, the things I should be doing are all things I want to be doing as well. Creating a divide and uncertainty in the focus of the moment is enough of an issue but when we throw guilt on that fire, it consumes all joy we could potentially have anyway. So there are times we need to learn to relax. Accept the moment as it is. Accept the joy of the moment and trust divine timing in everything. All that needs to get done will, it doesn’t all have to get done at once. All is well. So breathe and focus and enjoy the present. We are here together and that is a gift.
“Reminder: Life is hard either way. Choose your difficult. Waking up early to work out is hard but so is feeling exhausted and unhealthy. Having tough conversations to fix a relationship is difficult but so is living with resentment and distance. Budgeting your money with discipline is hard but so is drowning in debt. Putting yourself out there is hard and risking rejection and putting your work and heart on the line is hard but so is playing it safe and wondering what could have been. Growth is hard but regret I would say it’s harder. Every path has its pain so don’t ask for easy, ask for worth it. You don’t get to skip difficult but you do get to decide what kind of difficult you live with. The difference between people who grow and people who stay stuck, it’s not talent, it’s how they handle difficult,” Ryan Leak. I know we’ve talked about this one before many times, but it is a pertinent reminder that we are in charge of our lives and the choices we make. It isn’t necessarily about controlling that life because all plans can go awry at any time, but it is about making choices, even if they are difficult. It is in the choosing, no matter how hard that we learn what we are made of.
If what I wrote a few weeks ago about the unicursal line is true, then it doesn’t matter what we choose because it will all be part of the same path that takes us to the same result no matter what we do. Again, that has nothing to do with a doom and gloom type of fatalism, it has to do with taking the pressure off and understanding that there is no wrong choice because no matter the outcome, we are safe, and we can’t be anywhere other than where we are. We can’t go back, we can’t go forward, we can only choose with the information we have now and we do our best. There is nothing to regret or fear because it is all for a reason and we made the choice for a reason. I noticed with regret, the only time we start to regret those choices is when we make the choices that we don’t truly believe in—or when we lose the opportunity to make the choice at all. So make the choice and take the chance because if we have the opportunity now, it’s meant to happen now, we have the opportunity now so take it before we can’t.
No matter what we say, different is hard, but sometimes living the same thing over and over again knowing we had the chance to make a change is harder. The things that replay in our minds, calling us, telling us they want to be awakened and expressed, the things we want to experience, the things that feel like home even if we haven’t been there or done that before—those are the things that will change us. Those are the moments we understand what is important and we wouldn’t be afraid if it wasn’t important to us. If it didn’t mater we wouldn’t worry about it. What we’ve forgotten, however, is that the experience isn’t always contingent on the result—sometimes it’s about how we get there. Sometimes we have to go through things a certain way to learn a specific lesson in how to get to the next step. We have to experience it to understand what it is we really want. And we have the choice at every turn to either commit and take the chance or to sit and wish for it. The only way to get it done is to do it so we must always remember that no action is a choice as well. But we can’t regret what we don’t choose anymore than what we do. So sit with our hearts and listen to what it tells our minds/bodies/souls and we will know what choice to make no matter how difficult. It will always be the right thing.
The Intentional Dreamer 