I’ve been around many people lately who seem to be contrary simply for the sake of it. We all know the type—the ones who will tell you the sky is green simply because you said it was blue. It’s very obviously blue, but since you said it, it has to be something different. I wish I understood more of human nature to break down what it is that makes some people that way—that may be a project I have to look into coming up. That type of behavior has been the bane of my existence since childhood. I’ve attracted people who sought to fight simply because I was right. That isn’t an egotistical statement, that truly is as simple as an argument over the color of the sky—that was no bullshit example. There is something in some people that seeks to make other people crazy purely for the entertainment of it. Perhaps that’s my karma as well, to learn when to let stupid things go and to move on. Not everyone has to like us, we don’t always have to be right, and there are some times when certain people will be contrary simply to be that way because it is in their nature to fight for something no matter how stupid. We can’t change people and there are these types around everywhere. Is it worth wasting our breath and time trying to convince them what is obviously right is right? No.
Mel Robbins talks about the concept of letting people be who they are and sometimes, no matter how painful, we have to let people be who they are. We have to let them dig their own rut as they run the same circle trying to convince people that what they see is right. Some people like the challenge of making people feel crazy—they like to push buttons for no reason other than they can. So while they can choose to use their energy in that manner, we can choose to use our energy to fight someone who knows they are being difficult or we can use our energy to happily allow them to be who they are and walk away. We let those who fight for the sake of fighting carry on with that battle because that isn’t something we need to engage in—and we have a choice on whether or not to engage. It can be painful to experience a person we thought understood us become a person who simply wants to see a reaction out of us. There is no convincing those people that anyone else is right about anything because they see us as wrong simply because it IS US. Let them be that person.
My friends, there will be days when the sun is shining so brightly, no clouds in the sky and we see that brilliant blue carry on for what seems like endless miles. Even on those days, there will be people who see our smiles and decide that is enough reason to put a thorn in our sides. I’ve never met anyone who inspires that in me, who when I see them smile I want to see them suffer so I truly don’t know what that feels like. I am also a proponent of common sense and truth so it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea of fighting just because we can. My energy is much better spent elsewhere, and if there is a fight that needs to be fought, I’d rather have the ability to focus on that when the time is right. I don’t need to waste my time creating fights out of nothing. I don’t need to waste my time making people understand the truth. If we find ourselves with that type of crowd around us, it’s time to make the choice on whether or not we have anything worth staying for. The world has enough obstacles simply in the form of existence—we don’t need to waste our time with any additional created nonsense formed out of someone’s head or misplaced feeling toward us. So if their sky is green, so be it. Tell them it’s lovely and walk away.
Today I am grateful for new approaches and understanding. I’ve harbored a lot of anger over the years—anger about things I perhaps didn’t fully understand from the other person’s perspective, but it was usually over things that seemed pretty straight forward to me. So much so that I didn’t have the capacity to look at how I was doing the same thing. I’m older now and I DO see things from the other side and for some of it I still feel as frustrated but for other things I can slow down and take a more compassionate approach. I can ask better questions rather than demand specific action from people. My family are a bunch of thinkers, future tripping constantly and we wind up digging our own holes and getting mad about it. We learned from earlier generations that we are to have certain expectations of other people or that, because we adapt to others, we expect others to adapt to us. We want someone to come and save us and give us an answer even if it’s blatantly in front of our faces. Having any expectation on the behavior of others is a recipe for disaster and I’ve watched how people have cornered themselves into the victim cycle simply because they won’t act, thinking the angrier they get will change the behavior of others. No amount of anger, frustration, or resentment will make people change their behavior if they don’t want to. And it hurts knowing that even in situations where we’ve explained ourselves people still choose to do the thing that hurts us. But that is the reality of it. So we can look at it differently or we can repeat the pattern by expecting people to live up to our expectations. Once we understand our own power, we can approach things differently.
Today I am grateful for reminders it doesn’t need to be complicated. Over the last few days I’ve put things away and cleaned and organized and worked both my 9-5 and my business and I’ve mothered/wifed/daughtered/sistered/friended with those close to me and we threw in a few adventures discussing upcoming holiday plans. All the time I’ve stressed and worried and got lost in thought over how long things would take, how much time I had lost, and how stuck in my head I’ve been as of late I really needed that reality check: we can do more than we think we can. We overcomplicate tasks and create miles of to do lists when all that needs to be done is simply to do things. Talk about things. Be honest about things. Get up and move things. Try something. We can’t worry something positive into or out of existence. We can’t stop time. We can’t stop how other people behave. We can’t change what was done. We can’t make people see things our way. We CAN be here now and we can do something in the moment. I had gotten so stuck in my head that I forgot a family function I agreed to host in my home. I was reminded of it the night before and believe me, that text message snapped me directly into the moment. And the thing is this: all was fine. All the things I wanted to do got done. It wasn’t hard, it was one foot in front of the other, just like I’ve always told myself in my not-freaked-out states. It’s funny because every time I talk about being brought back to the present I’m always thinking to myself, “You KNOW this, why do you waste this time?” and I end up sharing it here because I know my process isn’t perfect, I know how often I need to be reminded of these things. I’m human and sometimes need to be reminded of a few things.
Today I am grateful for reminders of why I made decisions. Last week I shared that on Halloween I was proud of the choices I made in regards to confronting the people whom I’ve allowed to be the source of my anger and pain over the last several months. I have no regrets in what I did, what I said to them, in getting the truth out. I’ve spoken the truth about the elephant in the room in this situation since the start and no one has liked it. It’s been bleeding over into other people’s behavior toward me and I’ve felt it. But I am secure in standing my ground, not out of stubbornness, but out of the fact that I’ve taken the facts of the situation, looked at the goal of healing the relationships, swallowed my pride to speak the truth and do the healing work WITH them, and the behavior and treatment remains the same. None of what I said last week was out of malice and it seemed relatively well received, albeit frustrating at the time. Not more than 36 hours later, I saw the pictures of the people I’d tried to make amends with for months, the people who I put everything aside to help find a kid, those very people who hugged me as we talked through things, I saw the photos without me. Look, I am well aware of how potentially childish this sounds and I’m well aware adults can befriend and decide what they want to do and when. But the heart of the matter is those decisions can still be hurtful when the group I was responsible for “creating” is now doing the very things I tried to do with them from the beginning. Seeing those photos made it crystal clear that I made the decisions I did for a reason and that I could bleed out for these people and they would look the other way. I may not be the best at reading social cues but I value relationships and that means having the hard conversations—I’ve even asked what I did wrong and received no response. So that means it’s simply the choice that I don’t belong in the very thing I built. And that is fine. That isn’t behavior I want to allow in my life regardless and I don’t want that to become another wound I need to fix or a wound my family needs to fix. I’m standing by my choices.
Today I am grateful for reminders of life. My new role for my 9-5 is pretty cool. It’s something very new to me and I am still treading cautiously in many ways, still carrying old habits related to doing what I’m told etc. But I love the work, I love the freedom that came from accepting this role, the freedom that has taken me some time to adapt to. I envisioned it for a long time and it took me a long time to get to this point—5 months to be exact. It was a journey to truly adapt to what freedom meant. Where the responsibility came in and where I could loosen the reins, where my time needed to be spent, where I needed to be more disciplined and where I could make decisions I didn’t before. Currently someone near to the role hadn’t been acting themselves, they seemed absolutely exhausted and didn’t look well, and I told them they needed to take the time to take care of themselves because I’ve been on that side of the fence where my sanity and health didn’t matter to anyone—I ran myself ragged trying to be all things to all people to hear a few words of praise, that I did the right thing or that I was doing a good job. Less than a week later, this person was in the hospital with chest pains. Thank goodness that initial evaluation came back negative but the following days this person declined and now they are on leave. No matter what’s happening in a job, we are in fact ALWAYS replaceable to a role—they will always find someone new to do what they want them to. So remember to take the time to live life, take care of ourselves—the work will always be there but we will not always get another opportunity to do the things we want to do—and if we run ourselves into the ground for the sake of a role, then we never will. Take care of ourselves, live.
Today I am grateful for embracing my power. If we spend our time thinking of all the things we have no control over, we can find endless ways to be a victim in this world. When we focus on what we CAN do, it shifts the entire story. The only one truly keeping us where we are is ourselves. If we don’t do the healing work I spoke of yesterday, a majority of our time will be spent in avoidable agony for ourselves and ways we possibly hurt others. There are infinite things we have no control over in this world and it is a terrifying prospect considering all the ways our lives can go sideways. We can spend our lives creating ways to avoid all those things but the truth is we will NEVER find a way to avoid all the potholes in life. I can’t emphasize enough how life changing it is when we focus on what we do have power over. In spite of what we may think, we do have a lot of choice and power in this world—nearly as infinite as what can go wrong. We can choose our reaction in every moment and that can be decided by either our wounds or our truth. When we let the truth be the guide, we understand our feelings, while important, do not run the show. I’ve spoken of that many times and it is always worth repeating: how we feel isn’t the reality of the situation so we need to make sure that our interpretation of something isn’t skewing our entire view. We have to learn to pause and ask the questions—is this what I really feel and is this how I want to behave? Is this truly me or is this an old reaction? What are my real boundaries and how do I do the work to establish what I need? People are flawed and imperfect and there is no way we can avoid our emotions occasionally spilling over into what we do. But we can always pivot and take the reins again. We DO have a choice.
Heal the wound—everyone’s wounds talk. Regardless of age, we all have wounds we’re dealing with and they come from various things. Living, other people, expectations, choices—all things have had some sort of impact on our lives and they can determine how we treat ourselves and others. I don’t like to admit when my wounds do the talking and for a long time they were the only thing people would hear from me. I let them do the talking for me. The thing is everyone’s wounds are real—we all feel what we feel, that is a fact, but we need to remember that what we feel isn’t necessarily the truth of what happened and if we let how we feel decide our actions, our wounds will be the only voice people hear. Healing is meant to be a release and it is cathartic—there’s nothing that compares to releasing the weight of pain we carry with us. We have to acknowledge how much the pain of what happened does the talking for us. That means we have to be willing to acknowledge our behaviors in certain situations may not be what we expect of ourselves.
We can spend years recovering from things if we don’t do the work of healing and digging out the pieces of things that fester in our minds. Thoughts do fester. They can either be the seed of something great or the beginning of something that eats away at everything good. We can either see the good in things or we can see the negative and remember—we have the choice of what we see. That all depends on how we heal our specific wounds. We have to find our triggers and do the work of disarming them. We have to face the reality of what we feel and examine what actually happened and WHY we feel the way we do—is there some sort of transgression that can be fixed with a few words? Is there some true trespass on the core of who we are (or others/things we love) that made us question everything? Were there true violations and traumas in our lives that, while they weren’t our fault, we need to close the door on? No matter what it is, it takes the willingness to look inside and examine what really happened and why we feel the way we do and how that impacts our actions—and others.
We want to stop the cycle of hurting ourselves from things we have control over. The most horrible places aren’t always physical locations—they are in our minds with the stories we repeat continuously. The more we repeat the story, the more engrained in our minds it becomes and those trenches can take a long time to heal. We want to get to the start before those trenches create more offshoots and bleed into other areas of our lives and then impact others. We do not operate in a vacuum, so this isn’t just about ourselves—this is about preventing further hurt to others as well. This is about avoiding planting the seeds of pain in others because we couldn’t face our own. We are powerful yet we all fall prey to the ideas in our heads, the stories we tell ourselves. It isn’t always easy but it’s less painful than we think. We have the power to tell a new story—or at the very least we have the power to take out the root of what caused our pain in the first place. Once our wounds are healed, not only do we feel better, but we prevent hurting others thereby planting more seeds of pain. We also become an example of HOW to do the work and what happens when we do. Don’t let the ghost of something etched in our minds do our talking. Heal, stop taking pieces from others to feel better, find the connection to self and become whole on our own. That is when our voice becomes loud and clear.
“Don’t fear death. We are constantly dying. Dying every day. Life is a one way street. Time marches in one direction. Things are always ending, always coming to a close, or getting closer to one. We have to accept change, embrace it. None of us maintain anything or any form forever. We are transitioning always. Everything is tinged with a kind of dying. Everything is a phase,” Marcus Aurelius/author unknown. Cat’s out of the bag: I hate death. I would avoid death at all costs for nearly anything. I told stories of how, as a child, I wanted to be a vampire so I could live forever. I hated the idea of losing someone or something dear to me because I lost people very close to me at a young age. Perhaps more psychologically draining were the people I nearly lost. It felt like I was constantly on the lookout for someone to get hurt or die or go away. I never wanted them to. People moving away? I couldn’t stand it. I think I was forced into change too quickly and too young too often where I became averse to change. There are many facets of change that I love and embrace in their entirety. You need to switch that wardrobe? Go for it. You want a new job? If that works for you, do it. You want to add in a healthier recipe for the week? Awesome. But this last hurdle, this last frontier of change is one that I can’t seem to reconcile with. I have borne witness to a significant amount of loss and know it happens to us all. I have been part of something that simply didn’t work and it was time to end it so I know that things don’t last forever. My question has always been why? We can argue evolution and improvement but that doesn’t ease the ache from losing what was.
The thing with death is that it speaks of the ultimate finality which is scary in itself. It even speaks of the unknown which there’s no way to prepare for. It speaks to the fact that we have no control which kind of sucks. But the part that no one really talks about, the part that bothers me the most is the emptiness. That moment when you walk back into the house and you know that person will never be there again. The moment you realize you’ll never hear their laugh again, feel their hug, eat that special dish only they could make. I struggle to understand how there’s this before where this person or this thing is in your life and then it’s just gone. How something is here one second and then not in the next breath. Just typing that out leaves a hollow pit in my stomach, my heart dropping down. I’m not naïve enough to think we can evade death and there is some comfort in the idea that perhaps it really is just a transition to another form and there is something beyond what we can see. I looked at death as the ultimate enemy for taking the people and things I loved—I never looked at it as necessary. Sure, even I can admit there is beauty in the cycle: we spring forth, we live and enjoy life full of vitality and luster, we may begin to slow down, still seeing the beauty of our lives and still living as much as we can, and then we embrace the cold and put our shells to rest, nourishing for the next one. The idea that energy is never destroyed is pretty cool. And we won’t get this answer today—perhaps never—as to why we need to transmute and change. I mean, if we are given such a short time here, you’d think there would be manuals or cheat codes or something to tell us how to get it right on our path the first time around.
I understand evolution and the need for change but I don’t see the point in putting us on such a short quest to find the meaning of it all. I feel like time is a sort of sick game—we only get one shot to get it right and we never know if we are right until it’s over. We watch ourselves decay in a hideous dichotomy of living while dying. I mean, at what point to those cells that sustain us go from giving us life to no longer being able to function? And even worse than that is we sometimes see the young ones go. I don’t see the purpose in illness and discord and fighting and ego—yet we all experience that those things. Humans are complicated. We try to avoid death (a lot of us do) and it’s like running a race we can never win. It will ALWAYS catch us. It makes sense to befriend the fate we all share. It makes sense to try and understand what comes next. But that part of the journey we will all take alone, we don’t share the answer. In some logical part of my brain, I know death isn’t evil, it probably isn’t even bad. It just IS. Yet the part of me grasping to keep things as they were, to have the same level of conversation with my father I did 10 years ago, to have my loved ones still alive, to have not lost so many key support systems in my life very much thinks death is an evil bastard. We can do nothing about it, so perhaps the lesson is that we must embrace the phase we are in. Embrace the now. It’s said that we will never be this old or this young again, all we have is now. All we can do is our best and somehow, some way make peace with what our lives are and the cycle that has and will perpetuate for millennia. Make peace with the unknown that comes for us all and appreciate the grand adventure we are on while we are on it. Don’t take anything for granted. The greatest greeting for death is a life well lived. So live.
Don’t do it later. Do it now. That’s the one thing all fools do, Seneca said. They put it off. They let their fear or their laziness win. We have to be brave enough to push past our fears. We have to be strong enough to will ourselves to do what needs to be done. Find our purpose, our truth and do the work for it. Believe we can do it and follow the path before us when the task appears. Fear is a showstopper for so many of us and it’s a liar. Our minds hold the key to everything—what we do now and what we don’t and those actions determine the events that unfold. Don’t let our minds talk us out of what we know we need to do We think life is short when in reality we just waste it. The present moment is the most valuable thing you own. Humans were given creative outlets to do precisely that: create. We aren’t meant to sit on something begging to be brought out of us.
I’m guilty of procrastinating and not using my time well. I allow myself to become overwhelmed with what needs to be done. I have all of these thoughts and things I want to address at once and my brain kind of just stutters and I end up paralyzed. Next thing I know, time has passed and I’ve fallen back into the routine of getting to my next meeting or needing my schedule again and then I get angry and talk about how I want to operate on my own schedule. If that’s true, then I need to operate on my own schedule with my time managed well. Look, we don’t need every single second of the day accounted for, we need balance in what we do ranging from leisure to various work. But no matter what we are doing, if it calls to us now, then we need to respond otherwise the moment vanishes. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I would remember a thought only to have it completely disappear.
The truth is we are bad judges of time. We delay starting something we think is going to take too long or we jump on something we think will disappear when we should have just gotten started or trusted our instinct to start at a more opportune time. If we were to truly time the day to day things we do, do they really take that long? Instead of letting the dishes pile up to where it takes an hour to clean, do them right away and we see it really only takes 10 minutes. And sometimes the things we think will take a few minutes end up taking way longer—I’m talking to all those people who will be ready in 5 minutes. Or those who decide to put together that bookshelf at 9PM. Balance is key. Proactive planning is key and we have to learn how to navigate and respond appropriately to the curveballs that life will inevitably throw at us. Don’t be afraid to do what needs to be done. don’t be afraid of the momentum that comes once we get started. And don’t leave things half-finished. We can surprise ourselves with a little focus and determination—anything can get done.
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“Don’t be all about business. Overwork, a lack of balance, it ends in ruin. It’s a false dichotomy to think you can just squeeze more and more out of yourself. You are no good to yourself and to the people around you if you put your professional obligations and advancements above everything else. Step back. Don’t overcommit. Learn your limits,” Marcus Aurelius and author unknown. Learning limits goes hand in hand with understanding what we can control and avoidance. The world has so much to offer and we all want to get as much as we can our of our time here but that isn’t possible. We can’t do it all—we can do all that we were meant to do and there is a big difference. Constantly saying yes for the sake of saying yes, prioritizing the to-do list over time spent with the creative outlets life has to offer, not responding to the call of what we are supposed to do leaves us with a hole that will never be complete by adding more work to our day. That’s just how it is. It can be frustrating and possibly even create a sense of missing out, however, it can also give a real sense of purpose. The fact that we can’t do everything shows us what we CAN do and there is real joy in what we can do. Purposeful work brings us a sense of belonging and value and that’s wonderful—but so does purposeful time spent doing other things like spending time in nature, sitting with our family and having a good laugh, drawing, singing, speaking, learning.
We are given this time and we truly do have the gift of being able to do whatever we want with it. I spent a lot of time in overwhelm just considering the possibilities life has to offer. It felt so final to make a choice to do one thing and I avoided commitment all the time. I realized that feeling came about because I was trying to do it all. Things I didn’t care about, not really. It was an effort to prove I held my weight and that I was worthy. It was an effort to mark things off an endless to-do list that included things that weren’t even mine. I mean this in the least selfish way possible: why would we do that? Why would we fill our time with other people’s obligations? I don’t understand what it is in people where we fall into these categories where we do it all on our own, we take on everyone else’s stuff, or we seem to be lazy. With all the distraction today, we find ourselves torn between overwork and laziness—neither of which are productive. Balance really is the key. Balance looks different for all of us, that’s true so we will have varying degrees of busy and time spent recovering. That is up to us to decide and when we find it, we hold onto it.
“Don’t judge others. Strict with yourself, understanding to others. Be open to the idea that people are going to be fools or jerks or unreliable or anything else. Let them be. That’s their business. That’s not inside your control. Be disciplined with yourself, your reactions. If someone acts ridiculous, let them. If you’re acting ridiculous catch the problem, stop it, and work on preventing it from happening in the future. What you do is in your control. That is your business. Be strict about it. Leave other people to themselves. You have enough to worry about,” Marcus Aurelius/additional author unknown. This is a simple lesson: let people do what they want to do, let them be who they are. There are many annoyances in this world, I don’t pretend that they don’t exist or that I don’t wish people would behave a certain way but I know that it isn’t my choice. I wouldn’t want someone to tell me what to do so it isn’t my place to tell people how to be either. And it isn’t my place to judge who people are or how they behave. People will be who they want to be, all we can control is ourselves.
The more disciplined we are with ourselves the easier things become. As we spoke about yesterday, avoidance will do nothing except cause regret and frustration in the long run. So will seeking the quick and easy path now. Do the hard work now and allow for the ease of aligning run the rest of the way. When we see we are the problem, correct ourselves. When someone else seems to be the issue, let them and work on our response. The truth is what we see in others a reflection of the things we need to work on in ourselves so the things that inspire anger and frustration are the things we are angry or frustrated with in ourselves. The question becomes what can we do to correct our perspective or the actions we take? Are we behaving how we want to behave? Is this what we want to do with our lives? Our words are powerful yet they mean very little in the end because we are not the ones who determine the course or quality of someone else’s life: we can only do that for our own. Focus on what we can control and take it one step at a time.
“Don’t avoid difficulty. To avoid difficulty would mean complete retreat from life. It would mean hiding in ignorance. Worse, this would make you dreadfully vulnerable to crisis if it did ever find you. Instead, we must welcome hazard. Rejoice in the unexpected and turn failure into strength by deciding to own it,” Marcus Aurelius. We can’t avoid hard things. It took me a long time to accept that. I wasn’t looking for ease solely for myself. I was always confused how there wasn’t a level playing field for all of us. Like, no matter the track we are on, there needed to be an answer so why didn’t it always play out that way? Why wasn’t there a simple answer for everything? If the entire world is a possibility and we are meant to dance in that, then why do we not have the opportunity for it to be easy? I’m not an advocate for eliminating free will, but if there IS a right way, a way that works for all, then why don’t we eliminate all the other unnecessary crap? Why is there this hands off approach to life? If there are no random events, then why isn’t there some kind of manual to get through? What I’ve come to understand is that there may be a best course, but sometimes the lessons we need to learn aren’t on the best course. Sometimes the lessons we need to learn involve humility and understanding rather than proving we are right or that we can get whatever we want. Achieving those goals doesn’t come free—but it doesn’t have to come at a hefty price either. We have to find the middle.
The middle sometimes looks like we are walking a fine line where we may fall to either side at any time. That may be true. What I’ve learned is that the middle sometimes means that the answer is something we have to work for, there are lessons we didn’t anticipate, understanding we don’t understand it all, and it means doing the work—even the work we don’t think we want to. I have my frustrations with the difficulty we impart on our own lives, not by the work we have to do, but by the rules we create to prove our worth to some inconsequential standard that we also created. The truth is that there is hard work to do and the path isn’t always clear. But it is also true that we cause a great deal of our own issues with overthinking, ego, and avoidance. Life isn’t about enduring OR avoiding—it’s about living and that includes the spectrum of experience just AS IT IS. Not how we see it or what we think about it—but what it ACTUALLY IS. If things don’t go how they were meant to, use it as a stone to bring us closer to how we want it to be. Closer to what we need to learn, and then we take that experience and create an entirely new way of being aligned with who we are and what our purpose is. We just have to be willing to embrace it.
Life doesn’t happen to us. It happens as we see it from the foundation of our beliefs and the lessons we’re learning to incorporate from those experiences. How well do we pivot? How well do we adapt? How well do we learn to shed what doesn’t work and move forward? How long to we hold onto what has tried to hurt us in hopes the edges will dull? It’s all a choice and so too is deciding what is too hard and what we are willing to do—and what we aren’t. A willingness to face what comes our way and a chance to undertake to do the work joyfully makes all the difference in the world. What we plant we reap so if we put out seeds of anger, fear, and discord, that is what we will receive. If we do the work with hope and intention and gratitude, we will more easily navigate through any challenge that may come our way. Life throws us curve balls for sure but the key is how we rally. We can spend a whole lot of time finding ways to avoid what the world throws at us only to find out that it wasn’t as painful as we thought and then wishing we had done the work sooner. We can’t avoid life otherwise it will be a life half-lived. It’s better to learn to face the task head on rather than in hind site. Be open and willing to trust that we are more than capable to handle whatever comes our way—it’s our journey, every part of it, good bad or otherwise.
Today I am grateful for making dreams come true. Every since my kid was born, I had envisioned being a part of his life in so many ways. Attending school functions, being the room mom, being able to drop him off and pick him up from school. This past Friday I was able to make that a reality and be part of his Halloween party. In the years up to now, I’d been able to at least leave work early to see him during his parade which was always fun and we were always thrilled to see each other, but all the special events during the day I would miss. So being able to take part of his party, to share my energy toward something he loved, to ensure these kids had a great time felt amazing. It was all I wanted. I am so grateful to be able to do that and more. I have the opportunity with my new role to be able to do this again for other events and I am so excited to do it. It was worth it, and while I wish I could have done it sooner, I am so happy to have been able to do this for him now and to do it again in the future.
Today I am grateful for new connections. Relationships change, sometimes when we least expect it. In those moments we have a choice to lament, fight for it, or change it. We can always mourn what was (or what we thought it was), that’s a necessary part of that dynamic. But when a relationship is stagnant and changes/ends, it opens opportunities to learn new parts of ourselves and to find other relationships that we didn’t know we needed. I met some amazing, strong women this past weekend and I see the value of strength in numbers with focused action rather than emotional draws. A focused target and goal makes all the difference. There are a lot of people in this world and we are not all each other’s cup of tea so it can be bitter to realize that we simply don’t mesh with people we thought we did. It can be distasteful to find that someone isn’t the person you thought they were. But it is a relief to know that there are those who DO understand us, who reciprocate, who work toward the same goal, who aren’t there to undermine you. There’s a whole new world waiting in those scenarios and they exist. The world and our experience of it can be whatever we want it to be. We just have to make the choice. Who we connect with and surround ourselves with is well within our control. I’ve learned to choose wisely.
Today I am grateful for being a bigger person. We had an unfortunate incident this weekend where one of the kids who was out with the group was lost for a brief period of time. He’s young, got confused, and walked off with another group of kids. The short version is that this is a happy ending and we found him. The long version is that this was the child of a woman who has been a source of pain, anger, and frustration over the last few months. When we realized the child was missing, there were no questions asked—every single one of us dropped what we were doing and we put our energy toward finding this child. None of the bullshit mattered and every single one of us saw that and joined in to find this child. We even managed to end the event with a hug. The discussion on the status of our relationship will happen another day, but in that moment we rose above and did what we had to do.
Today I am grateful for honesty. It’s not that I’m not an honest person, but I will admit that there are times I try to stick keenly to the middle. It isn’t a matter of me trying to make people happy, it’s a matter of trying to keep the peace and make sure that I do understand all sides of the situation. Given the scenario of what has happened over the last few months, I could no longer do that. At the same get-together mentioned above, I had the chance to confront the people who’d been responsible for a lot of the issues we had this summer. I explained my side and what happened even though I was told, “I don’t need to see receipts.” I could have acquiesced and tried to choke down ownership for the entire thing. Instead, I said, “Clearly you do because this isn’t what happened. I tried to contact each person 3 times—that’s 9 points of outreach and no one responded to me so I don’t want to hear that I didn’t contact people.” And I showed the proof of it on the phone. Proof that it wasn’t me who ignored the request to talk. I also firmly said that there were wrongs on all sides of this and that I will not take responsibility for the entire thing when I’ve put in this kind of effort to explain, make amends, was ignored, and the behavior continued. It was clear that with this group, the view is that we are the enemy so to speak (or at least the problem) but clearing the air with a few people has changed where I’m at–It’s taken months but I finally got it all out. And it felt good.
Today I am grateful for truly learning to flex. Flex my time, flex my ability flex my understanding. We have 24 hours in a day and I am a control freak about sticking with a routine and doing things at the time they’re meant to be completed. I wanted to break that habit and it’s been a pattern I too often fall back into. But I’ve realized that live doesn’t always go how we want it to and sometimes we have to give up our idea of how it is to see how it is. Nothing is perfect. It doesn’t have to be—yet, somehow, it is perfect as it is. How it happens is fine—it turns out fine. That is the reestablishment of trust in my life—that’s an entirely additional battle so to speak, but it’s a gift. So when it comes to flex, I realized that being in the moment is where we need to be. I wasn’t feeling well at all yesterday and spent most of the day down and out physically. I still had work to do so I managed to get done what I needed to and then relaxed. I didn’t rush, I didn’t panic, I didn’t stress. I just did what I could and then listened to my body. And here I am, on Sunday, still working, looking at the gaps in my schedule for next week knowing that I have all the time in the world to do what I need to do. It’s my choice. Time moves no matter what we do—it’s up to us what we do with it. Use it well.
Like we spoke about yesterday, we seek validation for so many reasons. Human nature related to the desire to belong or the desire to be heard, the desire to be right. We want to know our existence matters and there are times we feel we’d do anything to KNOW we matter. While I was working my 9-5 the other day, listening to music, I was brought into the moment with a line from a song by SpillTab-Velcro. I’ve heard it a million times and I’ve always loved it but something in that moment caught me and I realized how important and significant it really is. The line says, “Every other chance I get to go without you, I go out to see if I’ve lost my stride or if I still run; Betting on a plan with no variables I’m easily thrown by every little influence under the sun.” It speaks to needing to know who we are, to not get so wrapped up in other people, overly attached to what they do, their thoughts and opinions. We need our own identity no matter what. We are ourselves first and always will be regardless of who comes into our lives.
We bring our whole selves to our work and relationships and we create something new—we don’t immerse ourselves so deeply in something that we BECOME that thing or that we lose who we are to that effort. We express who we are through these pursuits rather than use a pursuit to give us meaning. It’s because we are connected with our work that we find purpose. We guide ourselves and we keep our awareness of our direction, mission, vision, goals outside of what we do with other people. We need to believe in our own strength and identity because at the end of the day, we stand with ourselves and we have to look at our actions and determine if they were right—we only know that if we know our own values. If we are influenced by everyone else, then our best laid plans will never pan out. We can have a goal, a singular focus, but if we take other’s input to heart too often, then we will never cross the finish line of our own goals because we will spend more time trying to incorporate and bend to what other people think is right than doing what we KNOW is right for ourselves.
We’ve previously spoken at length about what it means to seek validation outside of ourselves In terms of relationships and work and anything we do hoping to get some sort of approval from others. We tie our worth to what we receive from the outside, what people think of us, and soon we become the chameleon, adapting and shifting and changing with each situation. That’s the fastest way to lose ground on our personal identity. Every now and then, even in the HEALTHIEST of situations, we need to take time to recenter and make sure our actions are aligned with our values and beliefs and that we aren’t doing something simply for the sake of getting a specific reaction out of people. We always need to remain separate because the truth is we are not halves made whole by any other person—we are whole beings on our own with specific talents that require our mastery and knowledge so we can bring those skills to use in whatever we create. No one will fill the gaps we may feel related to finding purpose—we must recognize those gaps and create the means to fully express what is needed. No one can do that for us. So go out and remember how to run to our own rhythm and don’t allow the outside to throw us off.
The Intentional Dreamer 