“How much of your life was performing, just fitting into a mold that just wasn’t you?  You know it’s a real awakening because you can’t go back to sleep, there’s a before and an after.  Keep asking every single question that comes to mind. You’re not going crazy, you’re becoming you,” Ross Lara.  This was probably my favorite quote from the entire reel Ross shared.  We are given a persona from the time we are born that we don’t even realize may not be who we are.  Some suspect there is something more or that the life they’re living isn’t quite a right fit—they just feel off.  And often that’s how this starts—with the subtle shift that something doesn’t feel right and that our actions aren’t matching what we feel.  When we see the alternatives and know that we are indeed meant for more, that mold cracks. Of course it feels like breaking and some of us fear that we will never be able to get it back together again—that’s entirely natural because we are trained that the mold is who we are and if that breaks then what else do we have?  What else defines us?  The reality is, when that mold breaks, it’s showing what is meant to be, what has always been inside, the pieces we’ve been trained to hide for one reason or another over the years.

We learn the difference is this process is more akin to shedding a skin than it is to breaking a vase.  This is the realization that we never fit in that vase and we were contorting ourselves to fit into an image someone else held for us based on their experience, and perhaps we don’t know ourselves as well as we thought we did.  Our lives aren’t meant to be spent twisting and flipping, becoming different people for different people.  When we experience the awakening and we actually wake up, we see that the mold we used as safety or as a definition of who we are, rather than it being a place of consistency and comfort, has become a coffin.  The things that used to feed us and make us tick no longer work or resonate.  In many ways it has become a parasite that feeds off us instead of giving us the sustenance we needed. That is awakening.  That is knowing who we are and knowing that we can’t go back.  If the mold is broken then there is nothing to go back to regardless.  What we were afraid of is the belief that we can’t survive outside of what we know even if we know there is something more—or perhaps even the idea that we CAN handle whatever comes next in spite of what anyone else thinks.

We’ve lived our lives asleep thinking we are awake because we are moving and conscious, but when we get that taste that there is something more and manage to get a peek underneath, it becomes that much harder to ignore.  As Ross says, there is the before and after.  The in between can get a little murky because that’s when it seems most bleak, but awakening is like shedding layers and if we keep going, eventually all the costumes we wore for the roles we’ve played come off.  The old no longer fits and we are no longer content to accept the role we had before—even if we willingly took it before.  Many people view this as some sort of crisis and say this is because we are changing and we don’t know ourselves anymore.  There may be some truth to that because we are indeed becoming a new person with a new perspective—but the crisis they speak of is the fact that they no longer know who they are to us and they don’t see us in our role anymore.  And that is ok.  We stay true, hold steady, and like Lara says, we keep questioning until there is nothing left to hide behind nor a desire to hide.  We welcome all we are with open arms and never look back.  So even if the show is over for one portion of our lives, the living begins. 

“The truth doesn’t need defending if it’s the truth; once you start asking questions the floodgates open,” Ross Lara.  Humans are curious creatures by nature.  It comes with the inherent creativity we were gifted and our ability to learn, adapt, understand, and modify the environment around us.  We have to be curious in order to see the possibilities and to learn.  This quote was a continuation of the discussion of awakening in the context of finding the answers to things we always questioned and a reminder to keep questioning.  We have brains capable of understanding all of human history and context, we were driven to record our history, our stories, to leave a mark and it is right to question everything we know because it is all based on what was told before us.  A majority was not through first hand experience—it was simply what we were told and accepted as true.  It wasn’t until we started to care about how we looked and started seeking power that we manipulated the truth.  I mean, with that being said, we started lying as soon as we realized we could hunt because the guy with the biggest kill had the most power.  But then it turned into a game of manipulation to make people behave a certain way so they would fulfill specific interests.  So when we understood that and started asking questions, that was an entirely different game.

Facts needed to line up and when things didn’t make sense, we started to ask about the cracks.  Some people didn’t like that because they didn’t like being questioned or exposed.  Then there were those who simply stuck with the truth because they knew it was the truth.  There are truths we form based on our experience and we can have a different story for the exact same thing, but when we look objectively, we understand that we don’t need to defend ourselves when we are in truth.  The story tells itself.  So if we see someone or feel someone trying to adjust a story that we know didn’t go down a certain way, it feels wrong.  If we feel like something someone shares with us doesn’t make sense, we feel it.  If we see something portrayed as truth that only benefits a few and hurts someone else, we know it’s wrong.  So we get curious and start digging because we know there is more to it.  That is one of the greatest gifts of being human: we have this knowing when there is more to the story. We have this little radar that senses crap. So what really matters is that we can tell whatever story we want to but the truth will always come out.  We don’t need to back it up or posture for it—it speaks for itself. 

It’s when we experience those moments of finding a truth that we start to see there could be cracks in everything we know.  If we could go our entire lives believing and behaving based on one type of system only to find out there was an entirely different series of rules for others, then what else is there?  An infinite amount of possibility.  And we know that humans have a tendency to fight for being right rather than doing what is right.  Before anyone gets too upset at that, I’m NOT saying that is the norm—I know there are people who genuinely care and are honest and consistently act in the best interest of others simply for the fact it is the right thing to do.  But there are people who care more about being right than doing what is right, that is a fact we can’t escape.  So this is where the distinction is and the lesson in this piece: remember that we know the difference between right and wrong, that is something we were all born with.  If something feels off, allow that curiosity to guide is in the direction of what feels right and we will find the answer.  The truth can never stay buried for long because it has its own light about it.  It doesn’t need the glory of any sort of attention: it is exactly as it needs to be.  So trust our instincts and keep searching for what feels right.

“A spiritual awakening isn’t becoming religious.  It’s when you start questioning everything you’ve been taught. The beliefs you were handed, the systems you were raised in, the masks you had to wear to survive, the rules you had to follow just to be accepted,” Ross Lara.  The one good thing about everyone having a platform is that we are exposed to so many different viewpoints, talents, beliefs, ideas, and creative outlets.  We learn different ways of life.  We see that there may be cracks in what we were taught and there are other ways to not only survive, but thrive.  We learn to make the connections that really matter.  The connection to source and self.  That isn’t something religion can even teach us regardless.  Connecting to spirit means being willing to give up familiarity and comfort. 

Humans were designed to question.  We were given creativity and connection and thought and we are most definitely meant to use it.  The truth is there are no rules beyond what we make and sometimes we are the ones keeping ourselves in the cage.  We are given the spiritual awakening so we can unearth something new within us, something new to believe, something new to share.  Religion has nothing to do with it—religion is just another structure designed to keep people in line.  Spirituality—now that is where the meat is.  When we connect to spirit, that’s when we know real truth.  We don’t have to survive in truth, we simply are.  Welcome what we know and watch the entire game change.  It may feel a lot like falling apart, but it is the beginning of creation and the opening of the world.

To be fair, there doesn’t NEED to be a spiritual component to it, that’s just the context I’m most familiar with because my own awakening/epiphanies did have a lot to do with connection and spirituality.  But it doesn’t have to play out like that for anyone.  It can be a realization that we need to break a bad habit, an understanding of a long held concept, creating a new belief.  Awakening is anything that brings us out of our shell and into something new, something greater.  It’s the shifting from what we knew to what we WILL know through shedding what we carried.  That isn’t to say we let it all go, but it is saying that we let go of what no longer works in favor of something that fits better.  If we know there is something greater for us, the awakening will bring us right to it.  We just have to let it happen and then we move from survive to thrive in an entirely new way, with eyes wide open.  Ready. 

“Anxiety and trauma impair decision making.  The fear of making the wrong choice creates analysis paralysis.  The feeling of being stuck is not a character flaw.  It’s cognitive overload.  When someone feels stuck, and I’ve done this to myself, they often blame it on their own weakness, their own laziness, or emotional instability, but the truth is stuck-ness is usually just the result of too many competing internal demands.  Your brain isn’t broken, it’s overwhelmed. Cognitive overload happens when your brain’s working memory is trying to juggle too much at once. Emotionally, mentally, or even physically.  I know you understand because your brain is going a thousand miles per hour and keeps you stuck in a situation.  A 2011 study published in Psychological Science shows high emotional stress impairs the pre-fontal cortex, the part responsible for decision making, planning, and impulse control. When overwhelmed emotionally, clarity is neurologically blocked.  What triggers emotional overwhelm is stacked unresolved emotions, lack of boundaries, neglecting basic physical needs, unmet needs for safety and validation, overintellectualizing instead of feeling, and toxic relationships that keep you in a state of hypervigilance,” JB Copeland. 

Recently there’s been an influx of information shared about the nervous system and regulating it.  The goal is to create understanding around body function and how we can work with our nervous systems to regulate and make better choices.  It explains how our body is wired and the things we do either help or hinder it—and how we can get back to a neutral state to better make decisions.  We live in a society that is always on, always moving, always striving, always proving, always trying to make sense of something.  The human mind and body aren’t designed to function like that.  We need the ebbs and flows, the on and the off so we can recharge.  We make each other feel like we are weak if we somehow can’t keep up with an impossible expectation of doing it all.  Even when we don’t know what doing it all means.  We put ourselves into a state of anxiety where we can’t make logical decisions only to be taught to blame ourselves for not functioning in a way we weren’t designed to function in the first place.  Overwhelm is a dangerous thing.  Multiple drives, directives, desires pull people in multiple directions and we can’t focus. And we make ourselves sick.

We need to understand that mental health is synonymous with self-regulation and awareness.  It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with us, it means we are trying to function in a system not designed for us.  We put too much on our plates and are critical of ourselves and then put more and more on there until we are buried and have no way out.  It’s important to slow down for our sanity and for our actual function.  We need to change the story around the premise that we are supposed to be in constant motion, always doing, always productive.  If we don’t address the root cause of that overwhelm we will constantly find ourselves in that state, unable to move.  Don’t mistake what I’m saying—we are indeed meant to move, we just aren’t meant to move how we do now.  Slow down, take it all in, breathe.  The better we take care of ourselves the better we can make decisions.  So move, flow, don’t force—and in that context it has nothing to do with attracting—it just has to do with getting on track, our own track.    

Today I am grateful for laughter.  Life can get pretty heavy sometimes and if we continue to focus on that, it gets painful.  I’ve often spoken about sharing the lighter side of things, of choosing what we focus on, and on managing our perspective.  I never claimed any of that was easy—we are emotional creatures and it takes a lot of practice and discipline to become aware of our state consistently enough to not let those emotions dictate what we do or our overall mindset.  Sometimes we just need a simple reminder that getting out of that spiral of negative focus is all we need.  I had a wonderful conversation with my best friend the other day and this is someone I’ve laughed with and loved for over 30 years so in that time we’ve gone through everything together.  Not that our conversations are always serious or anything, but we are both in the same field professionally so we talk about a lot of our struggles in that arena—even that isn’t in a negative way, it’s more relating to each other and talking about how we deal with it respectively.  But the other day we had the most ridiculous conversation ranging from cruises and rogue waves to Greenland Sharks and windmills.  In that moment, all we needed was laughter and laugh we did.  The hear, mind, body, and soul know what we need so if we need to laugh, laugh.  It really is the best medicine.

Today I am grateful for inspiration.  This past weekend I’ve been afforded the opportunity of a lifetime.  Talk about changing the trajectory of things.  I attended a conference for my business and it’s something that happens annually but I haven’t been able to go for the last several years.  We all have those moments where something clicks and comes together, and truth be told, I thought that happened for me the last time I went to this event.  And it did in a way—there were tons of impactful moments including the realization that I can travel and do things differently, perhaps most importantly, that we are able to change the course of our lives with a decision to do things differently and a commitment to follow through.  I am stubborn as hell and I know I likely could have been more successful had I been more open and receptive to some of the feedback and/or methods of how the team functions.  I mean, they are all successful in their own right so something they are doing is working.  But I had to learn on my own that there are ways to incorporate that work in a manner that feels right for me.  So in being with the group this time around, I fully understand what it is to take accountability for a life changing thing and to dive in.  It’s all here for us, we just have to be willing to reach out and take it.  For the first time in a while, with all the chaos in my mind, I feel like it’s a real possibility.

Today I am grateful for help.  I rarely talk about needing help because I was trained to never need help in my family.  If we needed help we were either an inconvenience or weak depending on who you were talking to.  Being the youngest, I often needed help but I picked up on the cues of who I could go to and when to do it on my own very quickly.  So many people talk about the youngest getting special treatment and being privileged—and I’d be lying if I said there was none of that, there was certainly some—but what we don’t often talk about is the psychological impact of having to keep up all the time and the constant need to prove that we are worthy of space and capable of holding our own.  I had to carefully choose when to ask for help because it would either mean I was an idiot or a pain in the ass.  So learning when it was safe to reach out for help from others was (and is) a huge thing for me.  I don’t like to bother people. I’m used to being the one people come to.  So in that regard I also like being the one who knows things—and that’s a me thing. Regardless, it’s a huge milestone for me to realize that asking for help and using it doesn’t make us lecherous or parasitic or incompetent or stupid or lazy.  I mean, what kind of lessons are those for a kid?  I hated feeling like that and it made me hyper independent.  Sure, that independence did teach me a lot and made me capable of a lot, but it also gave me a complex where I needed to carry the burden all the time, no matter what it was, I had to learn how to do it.  No one can carry that much on their own so it is ok to reach out for help because we are human and we all need help at some point. 

Today I am grateful for stepping up and understanding capacity.  The last 18 months have been filled with enormous change in nearly every facet of my life.  I struggled with some of it, feeling like it was too big, that I wasn’t capable or that what I wanted simply wouldn’t happen, that I was doing it wrong.  Things started to shift the more I kept at it.  I had to adapt and shift at certain points, some things ended up not looking at all like what I thought they would.  I had to give up on some things I thought I wanted most.  The biggest lesson is that sometimes the things we build up in our heads are just that: in our heads.  We have much more capacity than we think as long as we get rid of all the extra crap.  When we start doing the work it alleviates the fear because we see what needs to be done and we can manage those tasks one at a time.  The greatest things in life may take time, yes, but the truth is we have the ability to manage anything—sometimes just not in one bite.  Once we start doing the work, however we see that time may not be as much as we thought.  It gets easier the more we get moving because momentum is what creates progress.  So when we make progress at understanding our capacity and the work that actually needs to get done, nothing can get in our way.

Today I am grateful for travel and love.  We don’t often take trips and we recently were on a business trip that we threw a few extra days on to celebrate our anniversary.  I love to travel and see different things.  Yes, it’s stressful, yes I hated leaving my animals in someone else’s care, but the experience of other locations is something you can only get quite literally by leaving the comfort zone and doing something different.  If we want something different we have to do something different, right?  Between the trip itself and the significance of this anniversary, it made me realize that I need to celebrate more.  I allow myself to get caught up in the next task so often, I forget to take a minute to honor where I’m at.  We barely celebrate birthdays let alone the achievements we’ve made along the way to getting where we want to go.  But this time was different.  We took the time to be with each other and our son, not rushing to check the next thing off the list, not living up to someone else’s expectations of what we needed to do next and we just did what we wanted to do.  We took the time to breathe and be together and to witness what was around us, to take it all in.  Frankly, we took the time to just be alive and be happy together in our own little unit.  It’s a blessing to have that time together and I promise myself that I am not going to bulldoze those moments to get to the next thing.  Right now is what matters and there is so much to see together—so take the time to do it while we still can.  Live and love to the fullest while we are here.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“For 21 days I want you to keep your mind on what you want and keep it off what you don’t want. Keep your conversations on what you want, keep your conversation off what you don’t want. Keep your dreams, your imagination, your thoughts, your feelings, everything in your environment consistent with what you desire and keep it off of what you don’t want.  Why do we pick 21 days?  For a very good reason. It takes 21 days for a chicken that has a brain the size of a pea to sit patiently, calmly, faithfully on an egg to hatch the egg. Now we feel if a chicken with a little brain like that can sit on an egg for 21 days without seeing any change, just in faith, for 21 days they sit on that egg, we can ask adults who have brains the size of 3 pounds, that have 12 to 20 billion cells and has the capacity to remember and retain all the knowledge known to man, if the brain can be tapped, we’d ask them to keep at it for 21 days, if you go on a positive mental attitude diet for 21 days keep your mind on it. The goal is to become what we call a purely positive person,” Manifestation Wishes.  Just a little reminder that with time and consistency, what we think about can become a reality and will become a part of us, innate, as long as we create the habits with practice and patience.

It takes time and practice but there is no clock on these things.  We have to train ourselves to be what we are trying to be, to be open enough to welcome the life we want.  We can’t handle new things with old habits if they aren’t meant to fit in the same mold we came from.  New ideas and new life come from positive places and it is our job to ensure our brain/mind is a fertile place for that which we want.  Whether it’s a new look, renewed health, a new sense of self, a new job, a new routine, it takes time to make it something natural.  But this isn’t just about making something natural—it’s about the consistency to keep going even when we don’t see the results right away.  I’ve been on a health journey for over a decade—constant ups and downs, trying new things.  Health has always been important to me but I allowed myself to be distracted and I wouldn’t give the work I was doing enough time to take hold.  I didn’t believe I could be that person who looked how I wanted to look and feel how I wanted to feel.  It was only in the last year when I decided that I’d had enough and it was time to make it happen. For me this wasn’t just physical: there was an entire mental component to it as well.

So for the last year I’ve been consistent with the diet and exercise and I see the results. The physical transformation is one thing, but the mental transformation is another.  It has re-instilled belief in myself by showing me I could do it.  It encouraged me to go for something new—more specifically the thing I knew I wanted to do with my life.  My career path has been another series of stops and starts and this time when an opportunity fell in my lap, I went for it.  The timing was right and it was the right place for me.  And I’ve stuck with my business for the last 4 years because I love the work and what it stands for and what I can do for people but it hasn’t seen much action.  And now another opportunity has presented itself and I know that the timing is right for all that as well. These things wouldn’t have stayed on my mind, the opportunities continuing to show up if they weren’t meant to be.  That is something I have paid attention to. In my previous life I would have ignored it and possibly let fear win, believing that it wasn’t for me, that it would come around again.  But this time, I’m grabbing that golden ring and I’m going for it.  Consistency has taught me that as well: you have to go for it when you see it.  Changing mindset is never easy but it is always worth it—it’s a game changer.  So be consistent, be patient, stay focused and let the universe work its magic.      

“I think we both know you can do it.  The thing you just thought about.  The thing you want to do, the dream, the goal whatever it is.  You know you can do it.  Maybe you’re worried that it’s outside your comfort zone.  Maybe you’re worried it will take you to places you’ve never been before.  Or it might be hard and uncomfortable but you CAN do it.  And deep down you know that.  You look at people doing it and you’re inspired, you know you should be there too.  So maybe this is your sign to do it.  To chase the dream, to do the thing.  Because deep down we know you can.  Once you realize that and you accept that, it’s going to be beautiful.  You just have to take that first step. You just have to believe it enough and then it can all fall into place.  And it will.  Just time we go for it,” Harrison Davis.  Mindset is key to all we do and it may take years to understand the depths and layers of what we need to unpack.  We may think we have it, that we’re over it, past whatever was holding us back, when suddenly the trigger hits and we’re left feeling helpless again.  True strength and belief in self is so powerful.  It’s something innate we talk ourselves out of, but we can learn to get it back.

Allow for the small wins.  Remember that each win, no matter how small compounds and builds strength and trust in self.  Those little moments that we feel are mistakes and we think have been so destructive to our path turn out to be exactly what we needed.  Sometimes that path had to be redirected or shifted a little bit and we wouldn’t have gotten where we needed to be if fate didn’t step in.  We always have the choice to believe a hindrance is helpful or harmful.  We can get annoyed with it or we can take the lesson and be grateful for it.  All it takes is that series of wins and incorporating the lessons we learn to establish belief in ourselves.  Everything we’ve ever done has brought us here and we have survived every “un-survivable” moment up to this point and we will continue to survive.  But the more we push past the doubt and insecurity and the fear, the more we see we can reply on ourselves and accomplish what we want to. We know what we are capable of: don’t let the voice we picked up from everyone else tell us anything different.  Remember.

Your brain doesn’t believe what’s true, it believes what you repeat.

Your thoughts shape feelings, feelings drive actions, actions become your identity.

Your brain is always rewiring so who you are is changeable.

Say something often enough with enough emotion and your brain starts to believe it. That’s why self talk really matters, it’s like casting a spell for your brain and body.

How you speak to yourself shapes how you feel about yourself and your life will always reflect who you think you are.  Your brain doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined so when you’re visioning the confident, clam capable version of you, you’re literally rewiring your brain for it.  You can’t think your way out of a feeling but you can feel your way into a new way of thinking. 

Most of your behavior is automatic, your brain guesses what’s next based on old experiences. 

“Don’t let them talk to you any type of way and you don’t talk to you any type of way either. See disrespect don’t start with other people’s mouth.  It starts with how you teach them yours is worth listening to.  Ever notice how someone only talks reckless when they feel safe being reckless with you?  How they only raise their voice when they know you’ll lower your standards to stay?  That’s not just communication, that’s a test of your boundaries disguised as tone. Because the moment you flinch at disrespect, the moment you let ‘They didn’t mean it,’ become your new peace treaty, you train people that you silence is cheaper than your self-worth.  You are not the vent for people who refuse to deal with their storm, you are not the verbal punching bag for people who call it ‘just how I am’.  No, let them be how they are somewhere else, by themselves, not involving you.  Check yourself too, because sometimes the harshest voice you hear is not theirs, it’s yours.  The one that tells you you’re too sensitive for wanting basic respect.  That internal monologue that excuses mistreatment because “at least they’re still here”.  Stop calling mistreatment a misunderstanding.  You’re not hard to talk to, they’re just not used to people who require accountability.  So no don’t let them talk to you any type of way, not out of habit, not out of history, not out of fear, you will be alone if you speak up. You don’t have to choose between peace and people.  Choose the kind of people who bring peace with them,” Jay Douglas. 

We’re going to launch into a series of pieces about how we treat ourselves and the impact of internal talk.  We don’t let the world determine who we are and when we have weak boundaries, the world will fill in the blanks as they see fit.  Those who support our authenticity won’t require your silence or your looking the other way at how they treat you.  Human nature is to test the limits—we are animals, after all.  We need to know where we stand with people and, frankly, who they are to us and what we can get away with.  We’ve perpetuated a hierarchical pattern in our society so we are always trying to find the pecking order and the systems we have in place bank on us knowing exactly where we stand.  The people we surround ourselves with, the appearance of our lives, all of that is a mirror of how we feel about ourselves and our true mental state.  So we need to be strong enough to go against the grain and to stand up for ourselves even in those situations where everyone else tells us not to.  The thing I hate (and I feel strongly enough that I will use hate) about this society is our ability to make an action and turn it around on other people as if we have no part in how people react/feel.  As much as we tell ourselves that we are responsible for our own actions and choices, we have to understand the reciprocal effect in that some of those actions would be elicited without provocation or a different action. 

I’ve said it a million times before and I will say it again: we do not operate in a bubble.  If someone wants to step in and disrupt peace, make us question who we are, make us feel like we are too much for expecting basic respect, that person has no business being in our lives.  I don’t need to make space for those who think my existing is taking up too much space.  Because of that, it is very clear that the way you treat me and what I ultimately decide to allow in my life, is a direct reflection of your choice in how you treat me.  And I will make that decision based on how I treat myself, what I accept for myself.  Do not be surprised if the door that used to be open is now closed and I walk the other way.  Once I learned the way I had to handle myself and what felt right, I knew that lesson needed to be applied to those around me.  The ones who cared and were in it for me, the ones we have a mutual understanding with, they get it.  The ones who make conditions on the expression of my authenticity: they’re out.  As Jay says, we don’t have to choose between peace and people.  If you are determined to take away my peace, or expect me to disrupt my peace for your sake, or if you find the disruption of my peace funny, that tells me all I need to know.  We don’t have time or space for that.  So we set the boundary and wish them well.

I’ve shared repeatedly that people’s stories are important.  We all have something to share in this world and we wouldn’t have been given the gifts of insight and communication if we weren’t meant to use and share them with each other.  The fact that we are taught to feel any sort of shame in our stories is absurd yet it is protection so we continue to perpetuate the cycles of creating masks for every scenario we are in.  I’ve never been good at wearing masks because it’s so much easier to just let the truth out.  Sometimes we wear so many masks and tell so many stories in different scenarios that we forget what that truth is.  We learn to really believe what we tell people whether it’s the truth or not. I’m guilty of that as well because no matter what I do, my experience is my experience so that is my version of the story.  What happens when we think we are doing the right thing?  In the scenario I talked about yesterday regarding relationships, I know with all of my heart the people involved truly believe that they are doing the right thing, they believe they are right.  There comes a time when your truth needs to become THE truth and that can be painful to accept.

So when we tell stories, there are lessons to learn on all sides.  There may be a lesson in the story itself like some moral parable.  There may be a lesson on how we tell the story and what it means to tell the truth even in difficult circumstances.  And there are lessons in life when we share stories, like when we see the true side of people.  None of this means to stop sharing stories.  Stories are the foundation of who we are and they can last forever.  With time, any story is subject to the telephone game and the message might get a little convoluted or shifted a tad, some details exaggerated or forgotten, but even that adaptation has meaning.  The question becomes what story do we want to tell?  Do we need to be the person who changes the story depending on the room they’re in or do we share who we are?  My hope in being raw, in my inability to wear a mask, is that people learn to become more comfortable with who they are so they understand the mess we’ve made and that we can clean it up.  We don’t have to keep telling the same story.  We can make our own and we are supposed to share the one from the core of our being. 

We can’t make ourselves right at the expense of someone else or at the expense of the truth and that is the difference between the stories I’m talking about and an outright lie.  We can convince ourselves of anything and sometimes we can convince others as well.  I wrote about being convincible last week. Sometimes it isn’t people trying to convince us, they’re trying to convince themselves and they plant their feet and whole heartedly believe that they are in the right.  I’ve witnessed people destroy relationships over it, over pride, over ego, over what they wanted to be right rather than working with someone they claim to care about to find what is right rather than who is right.  So, I guess there is a need to make sure we take care of our stories, that we do our best to tell the story we want without diluting the truth of what is.  It makes life so much easier in the long run.