Today I am grateful to simply be.  I’m guilty of living in a state of pushing toward the next thing, the next goal, the next achievement, the next thing to do.  I thought it meant I was vigilant and that it would help me get even further.  All it has done is create confusion, impatience, and frustration because I’ve started a million things without finishing.  This last week we’ve been dealing with some changes in my family as well as some changes in the family dynamic with my parents.  I had a moment today, while expressing frustration at feeling like I’ve wasted my life where I realized that maybe life isn’t about my plans; it’s about recognizing the beauty in the moments we have.

Today I am grateful for a break.  Even though I haven’t had any real time off for a while, today I feel rested.  I slept well for the first time in a few weeks and I feel like I woke up with a different perspective. I didn’t do any meal prep today, I played with my son, we went and looked at some animals while we were at the pet store, and we stopped by my parents’ house just to say, “Hi.”  It was simultaneously the least productive but the most productive (emotionally) day I’ve had for a while.  Living in a state of constant “have to do” really takes its toll.  Honestly, it amazes me every time I forget how much work mental spinning is.  The mind is an amazing thing—you can gain clarity one second and then completely block it out the next.

Today I am grateful to get a little closer to purpose.  As I mentioned above, it’s easy to forget the work you’ve already put in when you are a creature of habit.  But it takes a different mind set in order to see and understand purpose.  I had a moment today, when I realized the importance of where we are now, where I felt relief as well as sadness.  Accepting where I am means letting go of a certain amount of where I’d hoped to be.  But, as I’ve said before, it is only in accepting where we are that we are able to see clearly enough where we are going.  It’s hard to accept that I can’t do it all—but focusing on one thing that I can do will get me closer to what I need to do. 

Today I am grateful for love.  Something I’ve been grateful for every day.  I am blessed to have so much love in my life and I am so sorry to have squandered it, wishing things were different.  I’m sorry I squandered it in the days I hated myself.  I’m grateful to have the chance to do better and try to love myself better.  To love those around me better. 

Today I am grateful for second chances.  I’ve spoken many times before about my gratitude with having fun and with spending time with my son and recognizing what is really important in my life.  But today, I am grateful to do more than that—to realize that I need to experience joy in my life.  Spending every day lamenting and wanting things to be different sends the message to the universe that things aren’t good enough.  Joy goes beyond repeating patterns.  Joy means finding happiness in every day—and realizing that sometimes the every day is enough as it is. 

Today I am grateful to piece together a bit more of who I am.  I had a moment in the last week where I truly felt like I didn’t know who I was.  I didn’t see anything of me in the life I’ve built and it felt like I have been living a continual pattern of trying to keep my head above water.  It hit me that even those choices are things that I can choose differently moving forward.  Yes, I am still feeling like I’m being dragged by the current, but I feel like I can at least start coordinating my legs a bit to pull to the side if it gets to be too much. 

Today I am grateful for what comes next.  Even if I can’t see it, the fact that I get a “next” or “another” is such a privilege that so many people don’t get to experience that I do not take it for granted.  I have no idea what is next.  I know what I want to do—and I’m trying to stay optimistic that I will get there—but I can’t predict it.  Maybe we aren’t meant to see everything perfectly.  Maybe we are just meant to trust. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The universe has big plans for me and it’s time to claim them.” Gabby Bernstein, Super Attractor deck.  I’ve never hidden my control issues or my fears of letting go—of anything, really—because I have always known on some level that they aren’t healthy.  Knowing where the control issues stemmed from has also made it easier to cling to them because, let’s be honest, we can always logic our way into holding onto familiar habits.  And truthfully, for many of the big things in my life control has served me well.  It has kept a roof over my head, I have only faced moderate struggle (mentally that’s a different story), and I have made a comfortable life for myself that even afforded me to step out of my box a little. 

That comfort zone has kept me safe and in a place where I know I can call the shots, and coming from a childhood where I craved sameness, that comfort zone has been so important to me.  As we’ve discussed before, those comfort zones can also suffocate us if we aren’t careful.  We live on repeat day after day, and that isn’t living as it was meant to be.  So life is great at throwing curveballs.  Even if we have moments of stepping out and going after something we want, sometimes life still has a different plan for us.  THOSE moments, for me at least, are the most challenging.  I take it personally when I’ve decided to make a change and am immediately faced with some obstacle that puts me right back where I started.

All of that is ego.  I can be consciously aware of that and still be frustrated because I’m clearly missing the point somewhere along the line.  But really, the point is that sometimes the universe has different plans than we do.  Yes, that can be incredibly frustrating, especially when we feel that spark of, “I’m on to something!” and then watch it fizzle away because it didn’t come together.  I’m trying my best to understand that, in those moments, we have to keep going.  It needs to be a matter of saying, “Thanks for the lesson, let’s move on,”  or even, “Thanks for the lesson, what’s next?”  It’s only when we put aside the emotion behind not getting what we want that we can move forward.    

I know this is cliché and I know we’ve probably all heard it before, but sometimes the thing we want the least is exactly what we need to get where we want to go.  The book, “Hello Fears” has a chapter where the author describes going on vacation and wanting to go to a museum with her husband.  Her husband planned the day around going to the museum, meaning they would get some food, walk to the museum and explore what they wanted to.  The author basically planned a day walking toward the museum but exploring the town and the things around her, stating that if they got to the museum they would go.  It made my skin CRAWL reading that section.  My brain says, “If you want to explore the museum, get to the damn museum! Don’t waste your time poking around when you have the ability to go exactly where you want to go.”   Side note, I’ve always been annoyed when people put unnecessary obstacles in their own way, i.e. if you know where you want to go, don’t drive in the opposite direction and whine that you couldn’t get there! The author said that she had always lived life wanting to see what is around her, not necessarily trying to get to the destination.

Two lessons for me, then: 1. Because I have such an adverse reaction to not achieving a goal, that is something I need to work on.  Not achieving a goal isn’t necessarily failure, and even if it is a failure, that isn’t the end of the world.  2. Maybe I need to focus more on living my life around me and not just on the destination.  I have such adversity to that because I’ve never really stopped to live life.  I’ve always been working toward the next thing, because I thought your purpose was to check things off the list. I never really stopped to look at the purpose of having those experiences that happen while you’re working toward a goal—I just wanted to get to the museum. 

If we’re honest, I think for a lot of people, those lessons are true.  Whether it is about being task driven or if it’s about having one fear that keeps you in place, sometimes facing the exact thing that scares us or drives us crazy is the only way to see what the purpose really is.  The universe has big plans for all of us.  All we have to do is get out of our own way and do it.  It may not look pretty, but life isn’t meant to be wrapped in a perfect package, unopened.  We are meant to rip it open and dive into the heart of it.  It may not look like we want it to or how we think it should.  The universe knows what we need to do to get where we are meant to be.  Trust it. 

I had an upgrade for my main software at work today and the connection to the server was lost.  All of the work we have in the program isn’t able to communicate with the website so it’s stuck in limbo.  It’s not completely broken, but we can’t figure out what the issue is.  But one thing we saw is that the site is busy—too busy to understand what’s happening. 

It made me think of some of the habits that I have.  I have a busy mind.  Like multiple things on multiple tracks at the same time, type of mind.  I honestly assumed everyone functioned like that—halfway between one action and the next, never really completing something without interjecting a bunch of other activities at the same time.  Even while I work, I find myself doing something and thinking of something else and having to start a third thing because I’ll forget it if I don’t start. 

I don’t want to live like that anymore.  It’s too stressful and it feels lonely because I feel disconnected from everything.  Yes, I am ambitious and want to accomplish a lot of things, but not at the sake of my mental health anymore.  It isn’t that I can’t accomplish it all, it’s that, maybe, I’m not meant to do it all at once.  When we divide our attention and expect perfection, it’s a recipe for disaster.  The mind doesn’t know what to do first and it creates a constant state of overwhelm and even frustration.  So, I have to learn to slow down and take one thing at a time.

I’ve also struggled with finding which thing to focus on first.  I enjoy a lot of things and have varied interests but I have a hard time deciding when I want to do what, so sometimes nothing gets done—and then I feel like a failure for not doing anything.  I’m having a moment like that now.  And I know this isn’t a moment to push because nothing productive will come out of that, either.  I learned that from working with our database team on the site as well.  The connection won’t be fixed by forcing it. 

So, just like I had to with work, I’ve stopped pushing myself.  I’m taking a minute for some self-care and to take care of my son and to sit with my cats, maybe read a little bit.  Anything to get my mind off of the circular thinking about needing to be productive but not feeling productive.  I’m focusing on one thing at a time, and making sure it isn’t about getting things done.  It’s about pausing to see what is really important to me. 

With some rest and a break, hopefully some clarity comes in.  This is a reminder to everyone that sometimes we all need a break—and that is perfectly ok.  It’s necessary.  Sometimes we don’t even realize that we have lost our connection to ourselves, or our connection to source, and in order to reconnect, we need to find a way to reboot.  So, that’s how I’m looking at this:  I’m rebooting so I can do better tomorrow. 

After a year of sustained mental trauma, let’s look at where we were at this time last year to where we are now.  People started as angry and scared and confused, and now, people are angry, scared, and confused, just for different reasons.  During this whole time we still haven’t managed to change much other than our tolerance for ambiguity—and that is because we will do what we want regardless of the directive.  Physically, we have lost over half a million people in this country alone and that number is climbing.  People are scared and looking for ANY answer to change what this looks like.  They are more willing to risk themselves for the off chance that they will be able to live a normal life again than they are to simply stop.

I don’t pretend there are/were easy answers to any of this—anything that was decided would have been incredibly difficult to implement and it would have meant massive change for everyone, even if it was only for a short time.  But I also don’t pretend that any of this was managed well.  That is because we focused more on protecting our economy than on protecting the people.  We believed that managing an economy, a man-made system, would somehow save the people.  We forgot that we can create a new way to thrive—economies rise and fall and fluctuate all the time.  We can replace it.  We can’t replace the people we’ve lost.

As far as how we function, I’ve personally felt a particular sense of being rushed and needing to accomplish more and more.  It wasn’t all my personal drive, it was because I’ve been pulled in a million directions, trying to “save” something.  I’ve felt so disoriented that my mind spins trying to make sense of anything and that is why I’m trying to finish so many things—I’m trying to make all of this have meaning.  So many people are trying to make things make sense—it doesn’t matter if it’s the right answer, they just want to have some sort of answer.    

That is completely natural.  Humans are designed to evaluate danger and either kill it, run from it, or fix it.  We have been trying to treat this like every other crisis that we’ve faced before, and you can’t make a natural disaster, a global pandemic behave how you want it to.  While I agree that we didn’t necessarily have the time to “wait and see,” this situation required a certain level of patience and responsible observation.  It wasn’t ours to control—that’s evident by the evolution of the disease.  It is ours to learn to adapt and to recognize that we don’t have all the answers.

I’m frustrated because we are essentially where we were a year ago.  In so many cases we haven’t learned anything.  I still see people behaving so desperately that they no longer know how to function with other people.  They are still entitled and demanding and don’t seem to get that the world doesn’t bend to their will.  Above all, THAT is the lesson: the world doesn’t move according to our schedule.  It moves on its own.  I believe that we will get out of this and I also believe that it will happen faster if we stop for a moment and look at this with fresh eyes.  Then we can start to heal.      

Lexico.com (powered by Oxford) defines growth in several ways. 1. The process of increasing in physical size.  2. The process of developing or maturing physical, mentally, or spiritually.  3. The process of increasing in amount, value, or importance. 4. The increase in number and spread of small or microscopic organisms.  There are more, but I feel this covers the general point.  Which, in fact, many people question when they look at growth.  What is the point?  Is it to become something else?  Or is it to become a better version of what we are?  I believe it can be both.  I want to add my own definition and say that I believe growth contains the spectrum of forward progress indicating forward momentum beneficial to the majority.  Put simply: live with intention for the good of all by adapting to new ways of doing things in place of outdated functions that no longer serve. 

Growth indicates change—a topic we will be discussing closely—and all of that means recognizing that something isn’t working.  Sometimes it’s a little thing.  Sometimes the whole world as we know it falls apart.  Growth also means redefining goals and how we get there—and understanding our place in the grand scheme of things. 

I am the first to admit that my ego gets in the way all the time.  I have a terrible habit of wanting to do things and then not fully appreciating the work involved—so I don’t do it.  It isn’t that I feel it’s beneath me, I just don’t feel it’s worth the effort.  This can apply to a lot of things, I’m really not picky.  Sometimes I’m just lazy and prioritize comfort over progress.  We all do it.  We’re human.  But in order for us to grow, we have to look at the world a bit differently.  We have to understand our impact on the world and that how we decide to behave will affect things.  That means realizing that our ego can no longer call the shots and making decisions with a clear frame of reference outside of personal opinion.

But here is the catch: you have to know yourself well enough to know what you are able to contribute so that means there is a degree of recognizing what works for you and what doesn’t.  It’s like asking the moon to be the sun instead.  It can’t happen, and even though it t knows the concept and it shines, it has to shine in its own way.  It’s not about ego, it’s about recognizing purpose.  It’s pointless to ask a flower to be anything other than a flower—it can’t be done.  We are the same but we are fortunate enough to apply our abilities in a different way.  And, that too, is growth.    

As I mentioned yesterday, we’ve been pushed to grow a lot over the last year.  I don’t want anyone to feel that time spent in this in between has been in vain.  Even if you feel like you accomplished nothing, flip that right now.  There has been so much collective healing going on from simple things like realizing our own toxicity and the need to change all the way to concentrated efforts to start something over.  Awareness is always the first step.  It’s also a matter of being open to change and what comes with it. We’ve seen over and over again over the last 365 days that, more often than not, the world doesn’t go according to our plans.  Growth is scary because it means giving up something you wanted in favor of something that may not go how you thought it would.  Sometimes we have to get our hands dirty and sometimes we just have to let go.  Either way, learn what that thing is that makes you go, “Hell yes” and do that.  Marie Forleo says, “If it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no.”  That is a wonderful guide because those inner messages we get, those sparks of intuition that tell us to go for it or not, are always with us.  Practice listening to those flashes more often and you will start seeing those feelings as guides toward the growth you are called to experience.  Do that and see how your world changes.

“The level up will require you to push yourself past what you know yourself to be”—spiritual quora.  The last year has brought us things we never thought we would see whether it was working and schooling from home, to wearing masks everywhere, to experiencing holidays apart, to not going out with friends anymore.  Some of that is fine and well but we haven’t really processed the level of loss that really came with the whole thing.  We have been deprived of real human contact for over a year.  We have had to learn new means of communicating as normal.  We have lost jobs, homes, people.  Life is no longer what we knew it to be—and I think that is for a reason. 

The last year in all of its horrific experience has put us in a position where we are supposed to grow.  We are supposed to be uncomfortable, we should be horrified at what is going on, we should feel sadness witnessing what is happening all around us.  Without those feelings how would we level up?  Complacency no longer serves us and nature is quite literally telling us that what we have been doing no longer works—we need to level up.

I’ve often quoted the line that says, “Sometimes when things seem to be falling apart, they are falling into place.” Everything we know is falling apart, and I have wished repeatedly in the last 365 days that people would just stop.  Stop rushing to get through something that we don’t understand.  Stop trying to make the abnormal normal.  While it’s fine to adapt, it isn’t fine to adapt in ways we always have—and that is why the pause is so necessary.  We have to take the time to see what is different so we can see how to approach this.  We have to let what no longer serves fall away so we can remake something better for all.

I know I’ve spoken of that often—and I’ve failed often at seeing it through.  I’m human as much as the next person.  I didn’t make any noble gesture and quit my job or start setting up systems to aide people.  No, I kept doing my job.  I had some weak moments in buying unnecessary things to comfort myself.  And I made decisions like I’ve always made them.  We all do what we need to do to make it through the day, so I understand how people end up repeating what they are used to and how the pause is uncomfortable.  However, in looking at the big picture, we have to sense that we need something different.

All we can do is be more cognizant of our actions and more aware of the big picture.  So I will keep talking about it.  I will keep spreading hope that we can make the changes needed to make this world a better place for ourselves and for the future.  I will keep acknowledging my humanity and that of everyone else because our paradigms are shifting and we need a new foundation that steadies us in what we really are.  Leveling up doesn’t mean acquiring more—it means releasing more.  Letting go of more fear, more wants, more “have-to’s.”  It means looking at our own needs and being comfortable acknowledging that everyone’s needs are the same—and we all have the right to meet those needs.  It means following what we are called to do.  It means bravely stepping forward and showing who we are.  That is the most important thing we can do now.  The rest will fall into place as we push past what we are comfortable with and into what comes next.

Today I am grateful to release some guilt about other people’s opinions.  I’ve lived my whole life making decisions thinking of the consequences.  No, that isn’t a bad thing, but I put those consequences in the perspective of every other person and their expectations.  The last few days my husband and I have been going through something and in the end, it is my decision.  Yes, it impacts both of us, but it is my choice how this plays out.  And I am looking at where I am in my life.  I’m looking at where I want to be and how things are going to fit in for me.  The impact of this decision will not be easy by any means, but I know this isn’t something I can just “let” happen to me.  I need to be an active participant and be ready for what comes with it.  For the first time I feel amazing because I have some clarity about what I want to achieve and I’m looking at how the pieces will come together.

Today I am grateful to bring myself to the here and now.  Following my first point, I am grateful to be present in this moment because it clarifies what is necessary and what is really important.  That is the right place to make a decision from.  This is what is real and this is where life is happening. 

Today I am grateful for the beautiful sunset.  I see the light, staying out later and later, signs of spring coming, snow melting, people outside.  It feels like some life is returning to the world after feeling frozen for so long.  Last spring we were entering a pandemic, and this spring, even though we are still in this pandemic, it feels different.  There is a restlessness, but for me, it feels like there is hope.  As cliché as it sounds, it truly feels like a beginning for me, like the timing is right. 

Today I am grateful for resilience and persistence.  I’ve taken the next step in taking care of myself and have begun working out daily.  Light strength training and stretching just to get myself acclimated to it again.  I went for a walk with my son yesterday just to enjoy being outside again.  He had a blast and that is one of my favorite things in the world: watching him just be a kid and love running around.  Listening to my body has brought me here, and it feels good.  I’ve always loved cooking and I’ve been consistent with that for a while so this is the next step—and I’m proud of sticking with it even if it’s only been a few weeks so far. 

Today I am grateful to have the freedom I do.  For so long I felt the weight of “having” to do things a certain way.  Putting things in perspective, I see now how much space I have to move around.  Ironically enough, some of that space comes from the fact that I don’t have to move at all.  Harry Kraemer speaks of the difference between activity and productivity often, and I realized that I jump and move from thing to thing—and this is one time where I don’t have to do anything.  There are certain things I want to do, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t need to do a damn thing right now.  I can take a breath and I can figure out a way to get where I want to be without burying myself.  I have to choice to do this differently, and I am going to take it.     

Today I am grateful to witness talent.  This is just a little side note…I’ve been studying some shows and listening to some musicals and I feel so fortunate to witness this type of art.  The ability people have to put the human experience into words and song is something that I have so much respect for.  It’s a way to relate to the human experience and to feel less alone.  Sometimes we need that—especially when we are still so separate from real interaction.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead!

We watched an old episode of The Magicians tonight, the Life in a Day episode from season 3.  In that episode an alternate timeline takes place where two of the main characters are separated from their friends but they manage to build a life for themselves.  Nothing grand, but incredibly fulfilling.  Their quest during this episode was to build a mosaic representing the beauty of life.  It wasn’t until their lives together were over when one of them discovered the missing piece.  The whole point of life is the time we spend with each other.  The love we have for each other.  What we make of what we are given and how much joy we bring forward.

We can spend our whole lives looking for something and miss the point of what is right in front of us.  We all do it.  We repeat the same day over and over again, looking for meaning in what we get lost in—work, alcohol, sex, drugs, TV, food, social media.  We do anything we can to avoid being where we are, to avoid feeling what we are really feeling.  I do it myself.  So many days I wake up, work out a little, get my kid ready and drop him off, go to work, come home, eat, work a little, watch some TV, go to bed, repeat.  There is more to life than that.  It’s amazing spending so much time with people yet we still miss the life that goes on around us.

The first time I saw the episode was when it came out and I remember feeling really emotional and crying.  Seeing it for the second time last night, I bawled my eyes out.  Sometimes we get to a point in life where we see the meaning of what we do differently, and for me, I am rapidly changing my views.  I feel the passing of time more acutely, I am more aware.  The beauty is that we don’t have to wait our whole lives to enjoy the time we have now.  We put so much unnecessary pressure on ourselves to achieve and acquire that we have lost sight of the beauty in being, the experience of being together. 

I’m older now than I was when I first saw it, I’ve had more experiences with loss and potential loss, my parents are older and our roles are shifting, plus we’ve been in the sustained trauma of a pandemic for the last year so my sensitivities are up.  For the longest time I feared not doing anything with my life.  Now I fear being so preoccupied with doing something that I miss what is right in front of me.  It has been a blink of an eye and my son is four years old.  I’ve been with my husband for 20 years.  I’ve had multiple jobs, trying to define who I am.  And now, in all that time I’ve had, so much of what I’ve done doesn’t matter.

But now as I draw closer to unleashing who I am and believing I can support myself, I am more comfortable with seeing what is really important and what is really important to me.  I’m not saying I’m comfortable with living that way yet, but I am comfortable starting to do the things I need to that truly make me happy.  Life is so damn short, so precious, there is no time to live anywhere but here, in the present.  There is a lot of power in the present because it is all tangible.  Worrying or remembering does nothing other than keep us stuck.  Stop making decisions based on the “what-if” and make it based on what you are working for.  And always seize the moment, love those around you, and appreciate what you have because you don’t want it to be too late when you realize all the potential you had.  Live now in the beauty of what you have.  Live.

I’ve been feeling slightly off today, concerned about the future and how things are going to turn out (and when they’re going to turn out) and how to maintain some of the progress I’ve made with some changes that are coming.  I did some self-help diving.  Gabby Bernstein always has some words for me and I found an old video where she asked, “If what you say you wanted arrived tomorrow, would you be ready for it?”  I thought about how fervently I have wished for different things in my life: a house, a job, even a book and I think about how fixated I would be.  I’d think about it obsessively, what if it worked out, what if it didn’t.  It took a really long time to understand that I was sending mixed messages to everyone around me, to the universe.  I would take it so personally when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to when really, I was culpable in the things I wanted not manifesting. 

A lot of those self-sabotaging thoughts are simply from insecurity and the need to control.  When things aren’t turning out how you want them to or when things go in the opposite direction, we feel unstable.  The things we want in life can’t come to us if we aren’t stable enough to receive them or if we aren’t sending out a clear message that we are ready to receive what we’re asking for.  I’ve thought I wanted a lot of things and I’ve been so frightened that I wouldn’t receive them that, if I’m honest, I pushed a lot away.  It hit me that there are also times that I’ve asked for things and got them, and then still pushed it away.  Whether that is self-worth or fear—or both—I’m not 100% sure, but I know I’m not alone in that. 

Really, the point is to trust the timing of the universe and to understand that sometimes we don’t get what we think we want when we want it because we aren’t ready for it.  That used to infuriate me.  I’d get insulted, as if I don’t know what I need.  But there’s no point in getting the keys to the kingdom if you’re not sure what the purpose is or how to use/apply it. 

When things aren’t moving on our time, that is often a redirection toward what we are meant to do.  So when we aren’t getting what we want, Gabby offers a prayer that says, “I pray for creative possibilities for growth, change, healing, and worthiness.  Thank you for revealing the next right action for the highest good for me and for all.”  That helped me ease the frustration I’ve been feeling, and some of the uncertainty.  I have to trust the things that are happening are for a reason. 

Sometimes life throws you curve balls.  Some of them are devastating, some of them turn out to be the greatest thing in your life.  They’re mostly scary because of the unknown.  You have to become someone different and do things differently than you’ve done before.  It never feels like you’re ready.  Often times that curve ball is the last push you need to become who you’re supposed to be.

Change has always scared me and I’ve always felt like I was being thrown into the deep end, not knowing how to swim, being forced to figure it out.  I’ve faced it a lot in my life, having to figure it out on my own and feeling like I was never good enough because I never knew if I was doing it right.  But I’ve learned it wasn’t a personal thing.  It was an evolutionary thing. 

I’ve spent the last four years developing my leadership skills and what it takes to be a good leader.  I’ve watched other leaders fighting to prove their worth, making people do things that they were assigned to do, to achieve master plans designed by people in offices whose feet never touched the floor they walked on.  I’ve watched them prove their worth with hours worked and be rewarded with the next project.  Spending time away from their families in order to get the next thing off of their list and be berated by frightened people. 

I’ve learned that we don’t have to be the giver or sacrifice to be a good leader.  Being a leader means more than getting the attention of those we are trying to impress—it means being human and helping others develop their skills as well.  I used to be a person who wanted to prove and take myself higher and higher and get to the next level.  A curve ball for me was realizing what it cost to get there.  What I thought I wanted was nothing close to what I wanted.

Sometimes that’s scary too.  We have to relearn who we are and learn to get in touch with what truly want.  But it’s a gift to be able to create a different path.  It’s a freeing feeling to be able to take what is thrown at you and know that you’re ok, that you can handle it, because you know which way to go based on your needs and wants.  Your path isn’t meant to look the same as anyone else’s because you have a different purpose which means different priorities. 

Additionally, I realized that simply because my priorities are different than other people’s, it doesn’t make them wrong.  Sometimes curveballs look like destruction and sometimes that destruction is necessary.  Over the last four years, making the decision that I could lead in my own way even if it didn’t get me where I thought I wanted to be, I realized that the systems we have don’t support our natural state.  So, take the curveballs, no matter what they are.  Embrace the fear and take the lessons.  Dive in and learn how to swim.