True freedom lies not in the ability to say yes, but in the courage to say no.  Trust our instincts and only pursue what feels right for us, what call us.  do not allow others to tell us what needs to be done with our precious time here.  We get to decide what works for us even if that doesn’t work for someone else.  Living with anxiety for as long as I have has taught me that I allowed the fear of someone not liking me over power my ability to simply be who I am.  I said yes to everyone, I wanted everyone to be happy with me.  I thought love meant that everyone constantly approved.  I never understood people could and would still love me even if they didn’t agree with every single decision I made.  Living like that meant I was deciding for someone else.  Getting in touch with that voice after not heeding it for so long has proved challenging.  Doubt is still louder than trust on some days, but I’m learning that this time we have isn’t so forgiving when it comes to waiting for our opportunities: we have to take them.

Saying yes is important, that isn’t the point.  We can’t sit around doing absolutely nothing and expect that anything valuable will come of it.  Saying yes to the things that matter is key, specifically to the things that matter to us personally.  There is a difference between saying yes in order to feel included or to be accepted and saying yes because it feels like the right thing.  The right thing feels different to everyone, but the only way to truly make it valuable is if it has meaning to us.  So learn to be discerning in the yes AND the no.  If it doesn’t feel right or it isn’t aligned with personal values, don’t do it.  Doing that only drains our energy and leaves us wanting of someone else to fulfill us.  If we become more discerning with what works for us, we tap into source directly, we aren’t waiting for someone else to fill the well.  Marie Forleo calls it “The full body yes.”  If it isn’t a, “Hell Yes!,” it’s a no, and that is ok.

When it comes to the courage to say no, we are talking about keeping our boundaries and not allowing others to sway us to do something we don’t want to.  Even if it goes against a group, or a person who really matters to us, when we aren’t feeling it, we need to be able to stay firm in our choice and say no.  It’s hard because we have equated being agreeable with being likeable even if it doesn’t sit well with us.  This is such a false message and it’s dangerous.  We aren’t meant to agree all the time otherwise we wouldn’t have new ideas.  We’d never come up with different solutions or generate ideas,  We need multiple perspectives because we live different lives.  Saying no is a good thing because that creates the boundary as much as saying yes does.  It’s our decisions that shape us through our experiences, and we need to be able to define who we are to know what works and what doesn’t.  Don’t be afraid to say no, and for the record, “No” is a complete sentence. We have nothing to explain.

Living is harder than giving up, and it’s time we take a moment to appreciate the gift of life.  Simply stop and be grateful for the fact that we are alive.  Be grateful for the magic we create and what we are able to do with this life.  Once we understand the magnitude of the fact that we are here, walking and talking meat bags and then throw in the things we are able to do, it’s a pretty significant and humbling experience. We see we are both large and small at the same time.  I opened this piece stating that living is harder and I don’t mean that in the respect that we should lament life or that “it’s too hard.”  To me, that sentiment is a choice.  Living is the harder choice and giving up is easy because living requires making decisions and taking responsibility for them.  But when we understand our place in this universe and connect with our purpose, suddenly living becomes the only option and it feels amazing.  We have so much more power than we think we do, and it is a gift.

We’ve been talking about foundations and visions and doing the work with the time we have.  We’re very good at negating life and our accomplishments.  We are quick to say “it wasn’t a big deal” when we should be saying, “thank you for the compliment”.  Stop diminishing the magic that is this life.  Stop wasting our time thinking it isn’t an amazing thing to be alive.  Stop wasting time waiting for permission to live.  Stop wasting time making others believe we aren’t good enough so they can tell us we are.  Our worth is inherent and it is in us—all of us.  There may be days we feel like giving up and those are the days we need to decide—is this a pause or a break.  There are days we may need extra support and we need to decide—do we wallow waiting for someone to give it to us or do we nurture ourselves and stand back up?  It isn’t easy but we are far more resilient than we think we are.  We are far more creative than we think we are.

I spent a lot of time hating myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  I was the child born too late, years after my family had already established themselves.  I was always trying to prove my place, to feel like I belonged.  I was too small so I tried to make myself bigger.  I equated my worth with my productivity and my ability to perfect everything I did.  I had no connection to source and thought I needed to earn that type of connection, not understanding source is available to all.  I looked at myself in the mirror at work the other day and I lamented something about the way I looked and a voice immediately popped in my head, “How dare you.”  It took me a second but I realized it was right.  This body has done amazing things—it has carried me through 39 years, it has given life, it has helped people through their toughest moments and my own.  I have built a family and a home and I care for my friends. That is no small feat. It is no small feat that my body functions on its own (or that any of ours do) in spite of all the crap I throw at it.  This life is nothing to sneeze at—this existence is a miracle.  Do not give up and think that we are not enough—EVER.  Stop diminishing any second of the time we have here by thinking it isn’t good enough.  Celebrate every magical, miraculous moment we have on this planet and do everything we can with that time.  Living is harder, but it is the greatest accomplishment we can do.  Don’t give up. 

The idea of the spark and foundations have been hitting me hard this week and I started thinking about how quick we are to deny the greatness of what we’ve done.  How quickly we forget the miracle of living and the creative process. How fast we will shut down an idea (possibly a divine idea) before we even try it on because we are afraid that we can’t do it or we are afraid of what other people will think. I caught myself getting really down about my appearance the other day, and as I looked in the mirror, a thought literally flashed through my head: How dare we diminish ourselves?  Our appearance has nothing to do with our abilities and what we accomplish.  The way I look has no bearing on the fact that my body has supported me for nearly 40 years, that my body carries me and sustains me every day, that my body has created life.  Life is a miracle, full stop.  That isn’t even to count the power of the mind.  On a physical level our bodies are meat sacks filled with electrical impulses—a bio computer that can reproduce physically and mentally in the form of ideas.  The function of the mind is another miracle.  Look at the lives we have built, look at everything that we’ve done—nothing is too small.  That is a miracle.

We are trained to be “humble” and not to brag in order to be polite so we are essentially trained to people please to perfection and ignore that work.  But there comes a point when humility becomes degrading.  We need to change the narrative: ignoring or diminishing who we are and our talents is a disservice not only to ourselves but to the world. When we diminish ourselves, we shrink our world and we are denying our gift to those who need it.  And I’m talking about diminishing ourselves in any way from speaking poorly on who we are, our talents, or what we look like to not taking pride in what we’ve done.  Our existence is pure magic and to deny or negate any piece of that is a slap in the face to the power of this universe. Think of the process of living and what we go through in a day, the strength we have in simply standing day to day.  The birth, the death, the emotional struggle, the weight we carry from fear and other burdens put upon us by a society trying to simultaneously take all of our energy and prevent us from creating that energy.  Our lives are a gift.

Instead of diminishing ourselves in order to stay humble, learn to celebrate the wins.  Learn to appreciate the moments we have.  Learn to appreciate our creation, our existence, and our talents.  Finding that appreciation allows space for more—and we all know what happens when we create space for more: new ideas come and we find that spark and suddenly we are laying the foundation to a fabulous new dream.  Appreciation, not downplaying who we are, creates opportunity.  It creates an authentic connection with who we are.  There is nothing too small, there is nothing to prove.  It’s all amazing and we are all meant to accomplish our dreams because those dreams have the power to inspire others.  Everything we do is a miracle.  Don’t take that for granted.

What is fear costing you?  What would live look like without fear? I LOVE these questions.  They are simultaneously fascinating and thought provoking, infuriating and terrifying, liberating and sobering.  We’ve been talking a lot about potential this week, and fear has a lot to do with keeping us from realizing and acting on our potential.  Fear has a lot to do with not honoring that spark and moving forward.  Part of it is biological and natural and the other part is learned.  Fear is, at its core, designed to protect us so when we bring out new ideas that we haven’t seen before and are told that we need to go out on our own for a bit to create them, it can be intimidating as hell.  Our brain tells us the unknown is dangerous, so even if we have that curiosity and desire to work on something new, there may still be alarm bells going off.  But if we learn to override those bells and follow what’s in our hearts, we CAN lay a solid foundation and bring out the most amazing ideas.

This isn’t to be morbid or depressing but we all know what fear costs us on some level.  Ask ourselves what we regret and we all have a handful of moments we either wish we had done something differently, said something differently, or acted on our gut.  There is unrealized potential in every one of those moments because we never know what may have happened.  This may be overly simplistic but the life can change with a simple yes or no.  If we think too long on the ramifications of those little words, we may overwhelm ourselves into indecision, but those choices all have an impact.  Applied to a grander scale, when we choose to ignore our calling, we delay what is meant to happen and we deny the world of a gift that has the potential to shift everything. 

Life without fear (and to be clear we ARE talking about illogical fear where there isn’t any physical harm involved) looks and feels incredibly different than what we live now.  The hours we operate change, the creativity flows differently, laughter comes more easily, we carry our bodies differently, we treat ourselves and others differently.  Fear closes us off where as stepping on the other side is an expansive act.  We see new ideas and opportunities rather than danger.  We see potential instead of repetition.  Live without fear answers questions, creates more questions, and then answers them again with even bigger questions—it goes on.  Fear shrinks us so it costs us the space we need to become who we are.  Don’t let that happen.  We can keep our ideas private at first but eventually we need to get comfortable with our purpose, and when we share that, there is no stopping it.  Live without fear and we will never have regrets about what could have been—and we will always have the story of what we became. 

Have the vision, lay the foundation even if others don’t see it.  Other people will always see the negative first, especially with things they don’t understand—they struggle to wrap their minds around the as-yet unknown. It’s natural to feel that way because the brain is trained to see danger in the unknown. It can be retrained.  Use the potential we spoke about yesterday to keep moving because the more we move forward, the clearer that vision becomes.  It doesn’t matter what it looks like now as long as we have the vision for what it looks like, as long as we understand what the goal is and go after it, the path will open up.  The way things have been done is so engrained in us that sometimes having an idea outside of the box feels uncomfortable and it can lead to uncertainty about doing things a different way.  The truth is, our visions are for us so that means not everyone will understand what we are doing.  They aren’t meant to.  It’s our job to bring forth the ideas gifted to us. 

Put another way, It isn’t about being accepted or having the vision accepted when we initially talk about it, it’s about the process of creation.  Humans have the deep need to create. Sometimes we are fuzzy on the how, but taking that first step will put us infinitely further ahead than simply dreaming about it.  Use our precious time to create something we love.  This isn’t to say spend our time proving ourselves, it’s to say that when we have that feeling, the spark we know we need to flame into something bigger, there are parts of the course we walk alone.  That process is for us to bring forth something amazing.  When we get these ideas and the inspiration we may not fully understand it at first either and going through the creative process alone allows us to tap into different areas of potential.

The most important take away regarding vision is to never give up on it.  Ideas that are meant for us never leave us especially when they are related to our purpose.  That voice will continually get louder and louder until we do something about it and answer the call.  So even if it feels like something may never come through, walking away isn’t the answer.  Working with it is.  People may be discouraging or fearful of the light we bring with our ideas but that is no reason to keep it in the dark.  The more light we shine on something, the more we can see it and the less scary it is.  And realistically, we will never get everyone on our side anyway.  The important thing is to do the work so we can share our message with those who need it, our people so to speak.  You never know who needs what you have.  No idea is too small or too great—we are meant for it all. 

It all starts with a spark of potential.  Follow the innate callings and abilities we have.  Learn to shed the weight of what others told us we had to be and the way things have been done for centuries.  It’s time to do something new.  It’s time to make something worthwhile.  It’s time to shift the focus onto something better for us so we can ignite who we are.  It all starts with a spark.  We know what that spark feels like.  It’s the subtle voice that says this isn’t what I want to be doing.  Then it’s the slightly louder voice saying I think x would be fun.  Or What if this is possible?  Wouldn’t it be cool if x?  It’s the curious thought or that hunch we just can’t put away.  Quite frankly, it’s that nagging thing that just won’t go away every time we think about what we have to do but would rather be doing something else.  Then we take a step toward it and it develops into something more. 

Potential is energy stored for use and it’s our choice on how to spend it.  Yes, we can ignore it but a few things could happen when we choose to pretend we don’t hear our calling.  1. We could become like the spring loaded hopping toys that just kind of fizzle and fall over. 2.  We constantly feel like we are missing something and carry resentment and may not acknowledge why. 3. We always know we should have been doing something else or that we could have done more.  On the other hand when we start tapping into our potential, we see things open up.  We feel differently about ourselves and we see possibilities that we may not have before.  In using that potential we learn 1. How to use it effectively and how to continue to regenerate it into actual momentum. 2. How to expand ourselves into something more.  3. The fire growing into new ideas.

When we allow ourselves to get curious, we see things differently because we no longer operate in the narrow parameters set for us.  The walls we’ve so carefully created begin to fall away and we become this conduit for creativity of a different kind.  Instead of using that energy to continue the cycle, we break free and start to create a new way.  And here’s the secret: every single one of us has that potential in us.  Every single one of us is meant to shine our light and that means listening to that voice inside that tells us there is something else, that there are other possibilities.  It can be intimidating to take the helm of something new, but each of us is more than capable of guiding what is already meant for us.  Don’t be afraid of potential, learn to work with it, be grateful for it, find a way to honor it and see what it can do and where it leads.  It’s just the beginning.    

The longer you wait to do the thing, the less time you have to spend in it.  We have a similar message to yesterday’s piece about choosing to stay in the dark times, in the fight.  The longer we wait to pursue what we love, the less time we have to enjoy those things as a reality.  This is another reason to make the choice to go through.  I can’t repeat enough how often we choose suffering because we think it’s the noble thing to do.  There is enough joy and light in this universe to go around and there is no need for anyone to sit in the pit of self-doubt, fear, or sadness.  We have simply been trained that those emotions are finite and have a limit, that they are only available to people in power.  How did those people get power?  They took it and decided to make us believe that in order for some to have the power, many couldn’t have it.  What we need to remember is that the power is in us.

We were all given gifts and abilities and it’s in our power to develop and use them.  If we were given the idea, then that is the universe’s sign that we are meant to take it and run with it.  We have these feelings for a  reason, we’ve just been trained to ignore them or to believe that we are only allowed to pursue them at a certain time (usually after we’ve spent the majority of our day working on someone else’s dream).  We are told that there is time to work on those things later, that there is more time to do it when the weekend comes or later in the night.  We are never told how much of our time we need to sacrifice to pursue our dreams.  The truth is, we don’t have to sacrifice any of it, we simply have to choose better.  I’m not saying these things happen overnight, but I’m saying that the more we shift our focus on those callings, sooner or later the balance tips and suddenly we are living the life we have dreamt of.  It isn’t just a dream, we can make it a reality.

The truth is that we all have a finite amount of time and none of us knows how long that is. I know it is also true that we can choose again and again as many times as we need to until we figure “it” out. I also know is that I don’t want to look back and regret missing out on things that I had the choice to partake in but didn’t allow myself to because I was listening to someone else’s guilt about what I should have been doing in that moment.  I choose my time now and suddenly there is all the time in the world.  I think we need to start reinforcing the idea that our dreams are not the same—and they aren’t meant to be.  The things we receive are meant for us and we don’t have to waste time earning it or proving our worth to pursue it because it’s already there for us.  Don’t waste any more time working on the things other people tell us we are supposed to.  Develop the ability to hear that inner voice and shift the focus on something we feel is worth going after. Our time is our greatest asset and no one can tell you how to use it.

Go through to get to, we aren’t meant to stay in the valley.  I heard this the other day and it clicked.  I’ve felt like I had no choice in so many instances in my life and I wallowed exactly where I was instead of learning to take the lesson and move on.  How often do we do this?  The choice to repeat the pattern in hopes that something new will come of it is a fear response and it keeps us exactly where we are.  Regardless of the reason, staying where we are is a choice.  If we want to get to the other side, we need to get through it.  We aren’t meant to stay in the thick of the fight, the fear, the pain, the pressure, the sadness.  We always have the option to get to the other side.  Many of us don’t want to admit that we are addicted to the fight.  We are accustomed to living in stress and we wear it like a badge as if that is some determining factor of worth.  Our struggles can teach us or define us and many of us choose to have it define us, like we have to approach every situation like it’s a fight.  If we let it teach us, we can say thank you and move on. We move through.

I understand that part of the fear of getting through is that we aren’t always sure of what’s on the other side.  There are no guarantees.  What if we aren’t prepared for it?  What if it’s more than we can handle?  The thing is, there are other options if we start retraining our thought process to process these events differently.  What if the other side is more beautiful than we can imagine?  What if the valley was just a stepping stone to show us where we really want to go?  Suddenly we open to the possibility that there is magic on the other side.  We become capable of anything on the other side even if we aren’t sure what comes our way.  Simply believing that we can makes it so—or at the very least sets us up to have the capacity to make it so. 

The choice is always ours.  We aren’t meant to stay stuck.  We are meant to move beyond the limits we set in our mind, the fears we inherit from family and society at large.  We are meant to get out of the valley.  We were never told we have to stay there.  We were simply told to walk through.  Take the lesson and move on.  There may be other valleys but those aren’t our home either.  Our home is in the movement and ability to flex our beliefs including our beliefs in our ability.  Our home is in the faith that no matter where we land we are able to make something of it.  Getting through means trusting our own wings and applying what we know.  Getting through means making the choice do so something differently, to choose again.  We aren’t meant to be miserable.  We are meant to live in love and joy so when we face challenging times, know that we have to continue to move forward.  Move forward with appreciation for what is, safe in the knowing that all is well on the other side.

I look at the beautiful gifts I have received in life and I feel a ton of gratitude.  I also feel guilt and frustration.  I look at the things and I cherish them because the people who gave them to me mean a ton and I look at whatever it may be and I see the effort and love—and I feel gratitude.  But I get frustrated because sometimes that isn’t my love language and I can’t always reciprocate with things like that.  Let me explain. I have never required material things to know how people feel about me, but I’ve learned to equate that because so few people have opened up and know the real me.  Instead of taking the time to have the conversation or to spar with me intellectually, they think they are placating me by getting me something or giving in to what I’m saying.  That never really hits home, never really forms a complete connection.  How do we become close with people if we haven’t taken the time to fully know who we or they are?

As I’m getting older, the quality of my relationships is more important to me.  I want to feel and express genuine understanding, love, empathy, and connection.  I’m not interested in superficial conversations and the typical, “How was your day?” bullshit.  I want to know that we are on the same page and that we know the state of emotion as well as how to handle the other person’s feelings.  I’m not talking about wanting to take over how a person feels or assume responsibility for them, I’m talking about the ability to share a space with someone and be willing to witness and possibly assist as we process our state.  I’m talking about forgetting the need to demonstrate our love with material and insincere displays of over the top affection.  I’m talking about feeling safe and seen with someone and trusting that our most vulnerable state is accepted.  When I look at the material, I’m not so sure I was always understood.  What was given to me to silence me?  What was given as a misconstrued desire?  What was given from the depths of the soul—and understanding mine?

Material does not equal love.  There isn’t a physical symbol on Earth that can represent the complexity of our relationships because relationships aren’t always physical demonstrations—they are emotional states of being and can bring out the best or the worst in us.  Love is a difficult thing to describe because it encompasses so many feelings, thoughts, and actions.  It’s hard to show it and we have a compulsive need to express it through physical expression in one form or another.  If we learn to sit with it, perhaps we learn a better understanding of what it means.  It’s amazing that in spite of how challenging it is to describe authentic love, we all know it when we see it.  That means we can learn to be with and learn to express it in a healthy way and to receive it in a healthy way.  I’m grateful to all the people in my life who have demonstrated love in the ways they know how, I do not take that for granted.  I look forward to building this new understanding with them.  I look forward to understanding the real them, to seeing them.  I look forward to continually learning to love me.