If our environment represents what is in our minds, there are days I feel I’m in trouble.  Dishes in the sink even if there’s room in the dishwasher.  Clothes and sheets clean but unfolded and sitting in piles waiting to be addressed.  Papers everywhere.  Piles to take out for recycling.  Toys and clothes strewn about my son’s room like he has no dresser or storage at all.  I know I’m not alone in this and some days are more overwhelming than others as far as the feelings of guilt and shame that come with seeing everything in total disarray.  It got me thinking that there is definitely some credence to the outside representing the inside.  Alas, we are human and need to give ourselves some grace.  There are different reasons for feeling upset about the chaos ranging from shame all the way to frustration that no one else seems to see their own clothes on the damn stairs.  And there are different reasons for the chaos in the first place.  We have a busy life, I do have multiple projects going at once, my kid is at an age where the floor might as well be his hamper, and some days we are just flat out tired.  And all of that is ok.  I want to take some of the pressure off us thinking we are a disaster just because we get a little behind in the housework or a little cluttered with a to-do list that never seems to end (pro tip, the to-do list will never end—it’s a constant shuffle of one priority over another). 

Instead of creating our own stigma that we are somehow messy in mind because our space is messy, we need to look at the root.  First of all, is it circumstantial?  IE was it a bad week etc.  Or are we feeling like the world is weighing us down and we can never get out from underneath it?  Both are messy but the reasons behind them tell us how to handle that mess.  So why is the mess an issue in the first place?  There is a thing called neuroaesthetics—wanting things to look nice and neat and orderly because it calms us, it reduces stress, makes us happier.  This is a scientific fact—when things are organized and put where they need to be, our lives feel a little less heavy.  I enjoy having a place for everything and when everything finds its place.  But here’s the thing: we can’t drive ourselves crazy making sure everything LOOKS good when we have other priorities.  If we have a nervous breakdown because we think we’re falling apart over not putting the clothes away, I’d personally not put the clothes away.  The world will not end because something doesn’t look perfect.  And here’s another pro-tip: I’ve seen the inside of many houses and nearly all of them are in some state that looks a lot like mine and I don’t care.  It hasn’t stopped me from going in their houses, it hasn’t stopped me from talking to people, and I never once thought anyone of those messy houses meant incompetent or unstable people.  We like it to look nice but evidence suggests there are stages in life where it just DOESN’T and that is ok. 

We are our own worst critic and we put pressure on ourselves every day in different ways.  How we want to look.  What we want to get done that day.  Whether or not that idea is going to work—because we need it to.  We agonize over what we said yesterday while planning what we want to say tomorrow, meanwhile we forgot to even put pants on.  No one cares as much about ourselves as we do.  The first thing we should focus on organizing and making look nice—no, making it FEEL nice—is our mind.  Make sure it’s a clean place where ideas can grow (I know, it’s cheesy) and that we can approach ourselves with any problem because we know we can handle it.  The nervous system calms right down when we understand we got it under control.  We see the issue clearly from that state and suddenly it’s just the garbage that needs to go out or the dishes just need to be done—it isn’t that we’re falling apart or failing at everyone.  I had to learn that not everyone lives like an HGTV show like some Martha Stewart where everything is perfect.  I genuinely believed that was the standard people lived by well into adulthood and I wasted a lot of time ashamed of how my house looked even to the point of not having people over.  Sure I still want things to be organized and neat and they will get there.  I often remind myself there will be a day I’m asking for the clutter to be back because I’m missing my son at this age.  Clearing the clutter takes time and so does restructuring messy thought patterns but as long as we do the work, no matter how long it takes, we’re making progress and that’s more important than how anything looks.              

Dr. Julia Kogan stated, “Quitting your job is not going to get you out of the endless cycle of exhaustion, overwhelm, and overthinking that we’ve been stuck in.  Not spending time with friends, letting go of responsibilities and commitments won’t get you out of that cycle either. We repeat cycles because of a build up of stress that causes a dysregulated nervous system whether from the past few years or from childhood; The nervous system drains the body’s resources, it takes your energy making it hard to go about our day.  We don’t want to let go and wind up in the same place because we’re doing the same thing our body knows how to do. We can’t get stuck in the idea that once we leave the job, the kids are gone etc. because that isn’t going to fix anything.”  The premise here is that upheaving our lives with the expectation that will resolve our issues doesn’t work.  We may need a big change, that’s true, but until we address the root cause of our dysregulation, we will repeat the same cycle no matter what we do or choose to change.  We’ve all been there, at the point where we’re so stressed we say “Fuck it,” and there’s nothing else we want to do.  We want to turn our backs on everything we know only to find ourselves right back where we started.  I made a huge shift in my career/life 6 months ago and I knew it was the right thing to do but I 100% was the same person I always have been in the beginning of that transition.  Sure, I knew conceptually what needed to be done and how to do it but I wasn’t that person yet.  Leaving the circumstance I was in didn’t change me–it changed my circumstances but I was still me and now I just felt overwhelmed about new stuff.  Prime example of carrying the same habits to a new situation.

It wasn’t until I learned where I needed to adapt that I understood where I needed to heal—and this couldn’t be where I thought I had to change, this had to be the root.  I had to be willing to dig and see what was actually holding me back.  I had the time I wanted, I had a role I’d wanted for a long time, but I was somehow still in the same place I’d been.  Sure, change doesn’t always happen over night, and that was a huge change for me.  But it wasn’t just a matter of having more freedom and a life away from the office.  It wasn’t just about having to adhere to what people told me and why I suddenly felt so averse to it.  All of this spiraled from a fractured relationship with time and lacking self-confidence.  I’d spent years begging for more time, complaining about the amount of time I spent commuting, the nights I’d have to stay long working on things that made no impact whatsoever on my long term goals, and now I had this abundance of time that I’d been begging for and it somehow still seemed to fill up with crap that made no difference.  I was looking for things to prove my worth on a new team, I was trying to find a way to be that person the team was happy with, to be the person learning a new role, all while learning a new way of life.  Learning how to incorporate the things I wanted to do with new obligations and new timelines, new expectations.  I had to give up what I wanted people to think of me for what I actually wanted to be.  I had to find the strength in myself to get really honest about the habits versus the actual responsibility.

**No one was breathing down my neck anymore with arbitrary and ever-changing demands and deadlines.  I didn’t have to spend 90% of my day dealing with staff who liked drama for the sake of liking drama.  I didn’t have to devote serious focused time and effort on a project only to be told it wasn’t the right thing/that someone else had already done it/my input wasn’t needed.  Yes, I still had a 9-5 but it was a 9-5 that I could set my schedule any way I wanted.  That 9-5 spans 24 hours and there’s a lot that can be done in 24 hours. **

So what was the real issue?  I had spent so much time keyed up trying to meet other people’s expectations because I was taught to prioritize everyone else’s stuff over my own that it felt like I had to sneak time in for what I wanted to do, like my life was what happened in the left over time from working on everyone else’s crap.  I felt guilty getting what I’d asked for.  So this was a case where I’d turned my life upside down for the right reasons, I just hadn’t oriented myself to where I needed to be.  The other issue was that I had a habit of being afraid to go it alone.  In a lifetime of mis-prioritization and resentment, I’d lost the ability to trust my instincts and just do the work I wanted to do, thinking I couldn’t do it on my own.  I could blame others for not achieving my goals that way.  I could clean up other people’s messes but I couldn’t face my own.  I couldn’t accept that my mistakes were to be expected as well, especially learning different facets of life, of who I am.  Especially while learning new skills and how to apply myself.  I had to accept that not everything would come as easily to me as it had before, that I may not know what I don’t know and that was totally NORMAL.  It wasn’t just about upheaval, it was about the strength to navigate that change and to be willing to trust I could figure it out.  This past Sunday I shared in my gratitude that I realized I had a certain level of clarity that brought me to the conclusion it’s time to do the work differently.  I said “instead of waiting for everyone to be on board, just start building the ship.”  That means learning to prioritize what I need to prioritize for my health/sanity as well as for my goals and dreams.  I could stop telling myself my goals take too long or it’s too hard or that the dishes have to be done a certain way at a certain time.  I had to stop telling myself we need everyone to see things exactly how we do before we get started.  Just start because it isn’t their responsibility to bring our vision to life anymore than it’s our responsibility to bring their vision to life.  The vision doesn’t necessarily begin how we think it looks—sometimes it takes a minute for people to catch up and when they do all the pieces click.  And sometimes moving forward is about proving to ourselves that we can do it.  That we have what it takes to get where we want to be.  So, we already  have the sketch in our minds, get it out in the world.

When we embrace our power there are things we have to remember.  There are people around us who became comfortable with us in a certain role with them. They enjoyed what they could get from us and they took what they wanted with no thought for what we needed.  There are people who only wanted our presence when we made them feel good about their own insecurities or mistakes but they reveled in ours.  There are people who, once we start growing realize we could surpass them in some form or another (whether or not that’s the actual goal) so they want to keep us where we were.  None of these are reasons to suppress our own growth.  And none of these are reasons to assume that person’s discomfort with our progress has anything to do with us.  Below is a piece from Jay Douglas elaborating on this topic and, truly, not much more is needed to be said when we find ourselves in situations like this.  It’s a reminder that we don’t need to carry what isn’t ours and we don’t need to pause our lives for the sake of people who fear change/growth.  An affirmation that we are not responsible for people’s feelings in their perception of us.  This is a reminder that our growth, not someone else’s comfort is priority for us.  Embracing our power and welcoming the version of ourselves we were always meant to be means letting go of what we knew and who we were and that scares people—still not our problem.  We live in our reality, our presence, our power, not the fears someone else tries to put on us and certainly not the feelings someone tries to make us responsible for when we celebrate the steps we’re taking in our lives.  Our light makes it brighter for other people to see how to make themselves shine so don’t stop shining because someone is afraid to see.

“Let me clear something up for you so that your mind can stop racing about why people treat you how they treat you even through you’ve done nothing but good to them, for them.  But this will explain why people act the way they act toward you.  People aren’t bothered by what you own, they’re bothered by who you are when you walk into a room.  They’re not jealous of your stuff, they’re uncomfortable with your spirit, with your presence with the way you show up whole without shrinking without asking permission.  It’s the confidence that doesn’t need applause, the peace that doesn’t come from circumstances lining up, the belief you carry in yourself even when things aren’t perfect, even when life hasn’t been kind to you. That’s what shakes people.   Material things can be earned, they can be copied and replaced but character has to be built, peace has to be cultivated, joy like yours that comes from the triune God himself and only Him can’t be faked. Some people look successful on paper but feel empty in private so when they see someone grounded, someone hopeful someone steady it exposes the part of themselves they’ve been avoiding that’s when the tension starts, not because you’re doing to much but because you’re doing something they haven’t figured out how to do yet. Your optimism threatens their excuses your consistence challenges their chaos your light reminds them of who they stopped believing they could be and instead of asking “how do I grow?” they ask “how do I dim them” so they criticize they minimize they distance themselves but hear this: your light is allowed, it’s honest.  The right people aren’t intimidated by honesty, they’re healed by it they feel safe around it they grow around it and the ones who can’t handle it were never meant to stand close to you anyway.  So keep being you, keep loving how you love, keep believing how you believe, keep showing up with your whole heart because the world doesn’t need less light it needs people brave enough to keep shining even when others don’t understand it,” Jay Douglas.  

I have another confession.  I don’t know if this lesson was explicitly taught to me this way, but I know the message I received growing up was that the things we enjoy are frivolous.  The things we enjoy are only acceptable when we have time for them.  We get to have fun when and if there’s time for it—and there is always something to do so you better make sure that it’s ALL done before you go for the fun stuff.  Because of that I had a tendency to go absolutely wild with my friends to the point of disrespect to them and those around me.  I was so overly disciplined at home (both from explicit and implicit direction) that I never let myself experiment or go against what I was told.  As I’m now in mid-life and understanding full well the real issues behind “mid-life crisis,” I find myself near desperately searching for what I want to do.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of stuff I’m interested in and I have millions of half-started projects to prove it but I still found myself evaluating which of those interests would be “worth” my time.  Instead of operating with curiosity and abandon and just going for it to go for it, I found myself determining what I wanted to do/ultimately would do based on what other people would think and if I would get a return out of it.  That’s not living—that’s trying to stack the odds and it came from having to decide what was worth my time to have fun with as a kid. 

To that latter point, even when I managed to find something I liked, I took it SERIOUSLY.  I needed to be SERIOUS to prove it was a worthwhile endeavor.  Like, if I wanted to craft with Lisa Frank sand art, I better know all the details and do it perfectly.  If I wanted to sing or write, I better hit those notes and make that point perfectly.  So that kind of sucked the fun out of fun because that demanded its own level of perfection—not authenticity.  Diving into new interests doesn’t need to be stressful, and damn it, the fate of our eternal souls isn’t hinging on us changing our makeup one day, or learning to make sourdough, or finding out we like to box, or learning to take care of ourselves holistically.  But I will say this: the weight/fate of the world MAY be.  Hear me out, I’m not trying to be dramatic.  The more we deny ourselves joy and fun to figure out who we are and where our passions and skill sets collide to make our purpose, the less we are able to fulfill our role in the bigger picture.  How sad that the world would be denied our art or wisdom because we decided reading that book on gardening wasn’t worth our time because we had a spreadsheet to finish?  It isn’t selfish or frivolous to do what we are meant to do.  It’s ok to know what we know and enjoy what we enjoy—that’s how we find the core of who we are and we realize that we aren’t just one thing.  It isn’t an inconvenience to be ourselves.  This isn’t about ignoring obligations, this is about understanding not everything is OUR obligation.  This is about boundaries and prioritizing creativity and interest so we align with and express our authentic identity.  The world doesn’t need more fake energy based on manipulation to achieve our goals or to help someone else get richer off of our energy and effort.  The world needs more people aligned with true source and excitement and joy because that is fuel for the soul.

There are other benefits to knowing what we love with no guilt and fully expressing that: When we are around those who see us and know us for who we are, we get a recharge.  We get a jolt from the source and feel revitalized.  It’s a reset.  Doing the things we enjoy, is energizing.  Too often we bog ourselves down with all the must’s and to-do’s we think take precedence over the things that simply bring us joy.  With all of the “going” we never stop to consider what we need.  We keep going until we run that battery right out and wonder why we’re frustrated, crabby, irritable, unable to think straight, and outright exhausted—or worse, actually sick whether mentally or physically.  Friends, when that phone battery dies, it doesn’t turn back on.  When it’s out of juice, it’s done until it gets more of that juice.  The same can be said for us—yet we somehow expect ourselves to keep going when we’re on 0.  The thing is, we can always plug the phone in and boost it back up.  If we push ourselves past that point of 0 too often and for too long, eventually we will run ourselves into the ground and there is no coming back from that.  There is no do-over from that level of 0.  We need to find the time to prioritize fun because there is a different type of energy that happens when we connect to that authentic joy.  It’s different than the endorphins of exercise or the dopamine of achieving a goal or the oxytocin from a genuine hug.  The energy from prioritizing fun through authentic joy is like all of that together.  And here’s a lesson I’m learning now: that type of joy isn’t frivolous—it’s life giving.  We spent enough time doing it on our own or doing it how we were told and how did that work out?  Are we feeling good?  So how about we take a step back and find some time to laugh again?  Youth and life come right back with every authentic smile and giggle—and that is invaluable.  That leads us right to source and we never feel depleted again.     

I wanted to continue on part of this discussion about loving the season we are in.  We are where we are and we have to be ok with it because we can’t change what happened to bring us here.  We have to be comfortable with who we are in order to love where we are.  This is about more than self-acceptance, this is about enjoying who we are and what we do.  We are in a time where we think acceptance is about being brash and in each other’s faces and making other people deal with it.  That’s not acceptance, that’s pushing the limit to see what we can get away with.  We aren’t children and that game needs to end.  Real acceptance is openness and kindness and welcoming others as they are, where they are.  But we can only do that if we give ourselves the same grace and learn to stand firm without animosity, just a willingness to let the other crap flow around us while we stay where we are.  Or we allow ourselves to flow and move on.  We stop fighting to make things how we think they should be and we embrace the entirety of who we are and we see the fun in it.  I spent a lot of years hating myself for things I knew I could never change and that resulted in crappy self-image, crappy habits/self-care, and a lot of control issues related to other people.  It led to a lot of physical and mental issues related to anxiety, and in the healing process and learning to accept where I’m at, I started to look at where it all really came from—and how it impacted all those in my family. 

Through no fault of their own, my grandmother and mother raised their girls to feel shame and guilt about their bodies.  They didn’t know any different because that’s how they were raised.  Since we couldn’t control what we were naturally given, we were supposed to cover it up, to hide it like it didn’t exist.  That naturally led to anxiety about who we were, denying who we were, and trying to fit in and be someone we thought we were supposed to be.  It led to a lot of confusion because I had no clue how to manage myself—I didn’t know how to follow my instincts, what I really liked—what was really me.  I was told for so long how NOT to be that I never focused on how I wanted to be.  I didn’t know I could.  I didn’t know how it separated me from myself and from other people and my joy, my true nature. And there were physical issues too– My entire family has gut issues ranging from IBS to Crohn’s to food intake issues.  We also got a healthy dose of mental health issues including fear, anxiety, unexpressed emotions, issues with trusting our intuition and trusting others and good old fashioned depression, lacking self-confidence, and self- rejection.  These things were not a recipe for finding pride in ourselves, in how we looked or in what we wanted to do in life (what we believed we could do).  We were meant to be quiet and out of the way, and if we needed to be seen, we needed to be totally modest.

I decided that addressing the shame and guilt in how I looked and for my body needed to be addressed because this was clearly a generational trauma type thing.  How could I love and accept where I’m at if I hated where I came from and who I was every step of the way?  How could I heal my body from the emotional and physical crap I’d considered normal if I wasn’t looking at how they correlated and where it came from?  I knew these things were impacting my mind, body, and soul and I had been too afraid to look at them and I felt guilty “blaming” my mom and grandma because I know they did their best with what they knew.  But my need to heal, especially as I’m aware of my own biological clock, outweighed the need to protect what can’t be undone or hidden.  So I did a bit of a deeper dive into some of the spiritual meanings behind stomach issues because that called out to me first and it was something my entire family deals with.  A general Google search returned that stomach issues often related to fear, anxiety, unexpressed emotions, trust issues, and not trusting intuition.  So perhaps healing the physical problems means healing those emotional wounds from denying who we were this whole time.  We can’t accept ourselves if we deny ourselves, and I have an entire family case history to prove what emotional issues does to the body and a lifetime of experience of my own.  I don’t pretend that I can look at myself in the mirror and magically love what I see now, but I can figure out what is really there instead of what I was told to see—and there is nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s ok to be proud of how I look and not hide from it.  There is nothing to hide—this is my life, this is who I am, this is what I’ve been through.  It’s only out of that shadow and loving/accepting the place I’m in that  I can see where I’m going.       

Today I am grateful for admitting my faults.  I think the moment we stop wearing any kind of mask and start showing who we are, real change can happen.  I’m not perfect at this—and I want to be clear, when I do something wrong, I’m the first to admit it and I work to correct whatever I did, especially if I’ve hurt someone else.  But there are habits and nuances we never show the world.  This isn’t about over-exposure or trauma bonding so, again to be clear, I don’t think it’s wise to lay out every inner working just to do it.  We need to keep some things for ourselves.  However, we need to have that type of brutal honesty with ourselves.  We can’t hide those things from ourselves or deny they are part of us because they will start to fester and demand attention in ways that create more issues we feel we must hide and so on and so on.  So getting into the dirt with ourselves is highly encouraged and I would say necessary.  It took me a while to sort through the fear around admitting I am some of the things I tried to convince those closest to me I’m not (IE the areas where I am spoiled, the times I’ve acted on ego).  It wasn’t until acknowledging what I really am and what the motivation really was that I started to break through.  The funny thing is I’ve been the first one to take blame and lay my neck on the line for things going wrong for years.  I also was very adamant about not taking blame for specific things, however, the point is that the idea of being wrong was never the issue—it was the perception over what I was wrong about.  It’s in that vein I acknowledge and welcome the lessons from my imperfections.   

Today I am grateful for learning to live again.  I let myself sink into a spiral of depression, confusion, chaos, and self-hatred over the last few months and it has been mentally awful.  I truly couldn’t put my finger on what caused the spiral.  Towards the end of last year I went through a period of general malaise where I was in a funk and I just couldn’t get out of it no matter what I did.  Everything sucked and there was absolutely no reason for it—and I knew that. It eventually passed but I never figured out what triggered it and it came back with a vengeance.  It felt like life was slipping through my hands, and to be fair, my family has been facing our mortality right in the eyes for a while now.  I’m not on good terms with death in the grander context and life events as well as the current time of year haven’t made that any better.  It also won’t change any of the inevitable things that come—my own demise included.  But I can stop acting like everything is dying right now. I’m here right now, typing this.  I’m in my home right now, my husband and son still asleep.  I’m breathing right now.  Those little steps of “now” bring me to the moment.  I’ve also been holding out on the things I love doing. I haven’t been out of the house on my own for a while, I haven’t gone to the book store, looked at clothes, got some food I wanted just for me.  It’s fine because for a while, I really was just trying to survive.  But now I need to introduce some joy back in and that means doing things I love again.  That is living again.   

Today I am grateful for signs.  I’ve been on tenuous terms with religion/spirituality lately.  We attempted to find some peace in faith/religion together through going to local services and it was completely appropriate for us at the time.  I’ll even admit it felt good.  I was seeking proof of that type of higher power so I could learn to trust again and it started off that way.  Nothing bad happened and we agree we still enjoy what we participated in but we haven’t figured out what else we were seeking to get out of that as a family.  We got sick over the holidays, things flipped with the larger extended family, I questioned my place in the world (like literally what I’m doing here), and we didn’t go to services for a while and it’s felt like a barrage of reminders that I’m alone for a while (I’m being dramatic, I know, anxiety is a bitch).  Out of absolutely nowhere, a song came to mind from when I was a child, about 6 or 7.  It was one of the first songs I memorized as a child and I never forgot it.  I looked it up on YouTube so I could hear it and wouldn’t you know—there was an entire verse I NEVER knew about.  I would have sworn on my life that I knew this song in its entirety, I sang it that much as a kid, my sister used to make me sing it because she thought it was “cool” that I knew something she liked.  One night she was on the phone in our shared room and she jokingly said it was on the radio right then and she flipped it on and sure enough it actually was.  So I have history with the song but apparently it might be skewed.  Anyway.  Seeing/hearing this new verse threw me for an absolute loop—like did time bend or something?  Plus the lyrics were so on point to what I’m feeling right now that I sat there with my mouth hanging open.  To me that was a sign that Someone is listening and understands.  There was no reason for me to look that song up when I did other than a whim to hear it again.  That was also a sign for me to look at the past differently.  Maybe things didn’t happen as I thought they did.  I always prided myself on a near eidetic memory and that showed me how the emotion clouds a situation.  Although to be fair, I swear the radio version I remember was never as long as what I listened to.  Regardless.  It was also a sign to keep going.  Keep shedding the illusion and vision of the past and step into the reality of what is and the vision of what we want it to be.     

Today I am grateful for boosts.  I mentioned above that I’d stopped doing the things I love for a while.  I’ve let myself get so wrapped in what I think I’m supposed to be doing that I’ve definitely over extended, over committed, and yet again, took it over-seriously.  I’ve treated nearly every situation in my life as life or death and I have got to stop being such a drama queen.  This is some of that self-honesty thing I’ve been working on.  Anyway.  When it comes to mental discipline I needed a reminder that self-care includes not holding back on the things we need and love.  Even if they seem trivial.  Sometimes we just need to surround ourselves with what we like to do to remind ourselves who the hell we actually are, not who we want people to think we are.  I literally spent over an hour in the book store with my caramel Frappuccino, carrying dozens of books in my bag, different genres and authors, I kept going until I found the book I was really looking for, I found a couple of new series, indulged in a few, finished a few. Then I went next door to Ulta, and admittedly I felt a little out of my element there so I didn’t buy anything, but I found the items I had considered buying and I didn’t rush through.  I took the time to reorganize my office, to read, to nap.  It felt amazing to just be in my element for a little bit.         

Today I am grateful for a different kind of clarity.  I always knew where I held myself back and I told myself it was because I needed help.  I needed someone to do it with me.  Whether it was grocery shopping or just going to the book store, choosing what to make for a meal, choosing what to wear/how to style my hair or makeup, I convinced myself I needed to be told what to do.  Until I needed to be told what to do.  This is a layered and complicated realization, it really is, because it means owning the fact I held myself back unnecessarily, that I wanted people to see me a certain way and cared more about that than I cared about DOING something meaningful.  It means that I could have had an entirely different existence but it also means that I still can have an entirely different existence now.  Sure, some of what I thought would be a joint effort will be mine alone, but that’s the work I’m doing.  It’s my work and perhaps the excuse I’ve used that I needed to have my partner with me to do it isn’t true.  Perhaps I’m meant to just do this on my own in the best possible way.  I’m meant to explore that level of creative freedom.  My current 9-5 offers a beautiful and delicious amount of freedom that coincides perfectly with the projects I’m working on outside.  There’s no reason to wait for anyone’s approval on that.  Instead of waiting for everyone to be on board, just start building the ship.      

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

Just a brief follow up to hold myself accountable to growth.  My husband and played pool the other night.  We haven’t done that in a long while and I’m not very comfortable with it as it isn’t something I did much before.  Sure, we’ve played together and I think I have a few pieces I wrote about it, but it’s been a long time.  I’m about to embarrass myself again, but here it goes—I struggle with the game in the most selfish fashion possible that I’m letting go of. I struggle with the game because it reminds me of his life before me and the habits from that time he brought into our life together that hurt me.  It took a lot for me to admit a trigger like that could still knock me down.  It’s ridiculous to think about it, but there was real pain in it.  Playing games like that with him also shows me how good he is at these things (which I don’t begrudge) and triggers my insecurities that I’m not good enough—I’m too short, too uncoordinated, etc.  That is NOT a him problem in any way—that is the stuff I need to heal. Regardless, we played together and something came over me.  I slowed down and focused on where I was and all that crap running through my head stopped.  I reminded myself that I had felt that way when learning to play darts as well, and all the times I got angry served absolutely nothing.  It hit me like a brick that I didn’t have to let that anger or fear run over me, I didn’t need to repeat that pattern.  So I didn’t.  I was in control and I stayed that way. I accepted where I was at both in my life and in skill level and it changed the perspective.  I didn’t get angry at all and we had a good time. We are no longer those kids doing dumb crap to hurt each other—we are married and have a child together, a home, and none of that crap matters because we are here now. I ended yesterday’s piece talking about being patient with me while I get back to the basics and this was a real time example of doing just that.

“Be in a great mood about this season and the next,” Chalene Johnson.  Johnson said this in regards to our age and accepting ourselves where we are at.  She encouraged letting go of the habit of trying to stop/reverse where we are at and learn to embrace the point of life where we are at, how we are there now.  It got me thinking about my own level of self-acceptance and honesty about myself up to and including the issue I’ve had with relating to my stale writing lately.  I know full well I didn’t entirely accept who I was/am because I didn’t even feel like I was where I was at.  I lived in a sort of delusion around time, that I was still young and had time.  But Johnson is right as is the path to healing and that means we accept ourselves for who we are, where we are.  In accepting who I am, I have to admit I’m in midlife now.  I’m embarrassed to admit this but I’ve behaved like a child far longer than I ever wanted to, afraid to face the reality of adulthood (even though I’ve been adulting for over a quarter century now).  I felt young in my body, I related to things younger people were doing, I thought I was keeping up with the times when in reality I was keeping myself behind trying to be like that version of me again and again.  I was ashamed for a long time that I hadn’t decided on what to do with my life, that I couldn’t see beyond a certain point and wasn’t sure what I could make of it.  I hated how quickly time passed so I was absolutely rebelling against the season I’m in.  The funny thing is, as a kid, I fought like hell to be perceived as older, I wanted to be taken seriously and I just spent the last decade reverting to old habits around shame, fear, judgement, and even patterns that I should have outgrown decades ago—in essence, still acting like that teenage/early college version of myself. 

I’ll give myself some grace and acknowledge that part of that behavior came from very specific trauma around specific people.  I will also acknowledge that I wasn’t like this all the time—I maintained all my responsibility and I had very real moments of awareness where the 40+ age hit me.  In those moments, I’d go into panic attacks, unbelievably terrified of how much time I wasted talking about doing things and doing nothing, how much time had really passed and how much time I had left.  See, with all the shame we talked about yesterday, I think I wanted to go back and do it again to help myself regain some of that confidence sooner and it made me vastly unaware of what was going on around me.  I preached about not going back, about accepting ourselves but, for the millionth time, I didn’t fully practice what I preached.  I believe in what I said, it’s all true but to feel it is something different.  To do it is different still.   So, if I am to be in a great mood about where I am, I need to stop acting like a child.  That means no longer repeating the patterns of the younger version of myself.  That doesn’t mean act like what I think a 40+ year old person acts like today, it means behaving according to the life I built and the life I’m trying to build.  It means action and follow through and accepting responsibility for EVERYTHING that is as it is now.  It means working with the pieces that actually fit rather than trying to fit the pieces meant for someone else.  Let go of the old to welcome the new—well, to welcome the me I’ve always been.  I’ve learned that it truthfully is never too late to make a change and it’s time to  move forward with a different type of grace.  Bear with me while I go through some of the basics over again.  Hopefully this helps others recognize the pieces of themselves that need to grow up as well.  No, it isn’t a good look to be an adult reveling and reliving youth by doing the same dumb shit over and over again.  But it is a good look to be honest with ourselves.  It’s a great look to have courage and confidence, and that’s exactly what it takes to turn things around and enjoy the season we are in.   

“Change what we’re feeding our brain, get around a new group, feed information that makes us excited about life.  We aren’t meant to dry up and wither while life moves around us.  Sometimes we need an adjustment and we need to be around people who represent where we are now, not where we were,” Chalene Johnson.  While we’re on a roll here, let’s continue the talk about group impact on the brain.  There is very much a real thing called “group think” which essentially discourages creativity or individual responsibility.  People are so alike that there’s an accepted way of doing things and anyone who thinks differently is “othered”.  It’s a get on board or get the hell out mentality.  These types of people make you think it’s for the best or that they have our best interest at heart but what they really want is to control those around them down to and including how they think and act.  It’s easier to manipulate people who kind of already think like us and are kind of already scared of us….it’s a power thing.  And we all know those people who just like to be close to power and those who like to exert power.  Thinking just because someone else thinks that way isn’t really thinking.  Like anything else of course there’s different components to this—like the thinking of shared experience or feeling or even nostalgia.  Regardless of what it is, we can’t get caught up in it.  Even with shared experience and nostalgia, we aren’t there anymore—we’re here and now.  That’s something I really struggled with.

I went full opposite on consumption for a while.  I stopped watching all news, I very specifically curated any social media to have nothing but positive/life affirming things, I focused on things I was curious about and pretty much turned my life into a bubble.  I’ll give testimony that changing what I allowed myself to take in made a huge difference.  The anxiety about the world lessened, I didn’t care as much about controlling anything, I finally got to look into some of the things that caught my attention but I never had time for—so changing what we observe changes how our mind works and how we feel for SURE. But I have to admit I went the other way and got anxiety about being in the world, about time and being stuck in circular patterns, wanting to go back to before.  So this is where the right friendships and right information matters.  We can’t get so stuck in our heads that all we see is ourselves and the world becomes a scary place but we can’t be so out in the world that we’re either terrified of everything or trying to control everything.  I would never suggest changing friends like shoes or anything like that, but I would suggest finding a group that truly represents the stage of life we’re in.  I’m not saying don’t try new things or have new experiences, I’m saying try the things that feel aligned with who we actually are.  We can’t be anywhere but where we are.

There is immense power in acceptance because we get to experience life as it is and all the parts that come with it whereas if we’re constantly pushing forward or trying to go back, we only have a vision of what we think we want with no action or of a past that we can’t change/get back.  We have to realize that there are good parts about every season we’re in.  Sure things can get really crappy but if we spend our time around people bemoaning life and fixating on the troubles/aches/pains/struggles then that’s where our mind goes.  There are people in all stages of life doing amazing things like moving countries in their 70’s because they want to, travelling alone for the first time, starting businesses, reclaiming health and sanity, learning new skills.  In our lizard brain change represents danger or instability but the reality is we aren’t fighting for survival in that way any longer—there are people and resources everywhere to help us no matter where we are.  I’m not saying it’s comfortable to break the mold and admit being a beginner, especially in mid-life.  I AM saying it’s necessary to keep our brains, spirit, mind, and soul healthy and functioning which includes evaluating what we let in our lives up to and including the people around us.  We aren’t meant to hit a certain stage in life and just stop evolving/living/doing/dreaming.  We aren’t meant to make a decision about what we want to be as a five year old and only be that.  We are meant to take in all the bits and pieces of life that make the thing we want to be, ours.  Make the adjustments and have fun on the ride.  New mind, new results.    

We talked about connection the other day and discussed how surface relationships and proximity don’t equate to connection.  When we reach a certain point in life we may feel like forming new friendships isn’t worth the effort.  It’s a lot work building relationships, especially healthy relationships with trust and humor and respect and care.  It’s doable, but it can be difficult listening to our training and feeling like other women are competition but the truth is there is something special about female empowerment.  There is something uplifting about embracing the power of women unified, the power of women holding each other up.  I had a lot of male friends in my life because girls kind of burned me.  I tried repeatedly at different stages of my life until I DID feel like it wasn’t worth it.  It takes me a while to learn those lessons, so that feeling came quite recently in the grand scheme of things.  It’s so silly how we are pitted against each other and how we take the bait and treat each other as opposition, not partners.  Some women have no real issue with this and that is amazing, I wish I had that kind of energy.  For many of us, finding that bond just doesn’t come that easily.  It really is something we should all strive for, not just for the sake of having something to do, but for our health.

During that same podcast I mentioned in my last piece (Chalene Johson if you’re wondering), there was an interesting fact that I started to look into.  Johnson said, “The longest running study around longevity and things that impacted aging conducted at Harvard, looking at things people do to improve for their health and happiness, [determined] the number one factor [impacting aging], was not omega fish oil, not collagen, not enough sleep, not anything pharma, not weight, not where we live– the number one thing that impacts how well we age is when we meet new friends;  We may think we’re an introvert and don’t want to meet new friends but female friendship helps regulate emotions, reduce stress, improve mental health, habit consistency, feeling understood, and long term happiness.”  Naturally this applies to being with the right friends.  It got me thinking about my patterns and how little I reach out to my female friends for real help.  And it hit me that every time I DO reach out, every time I talk it out, I feel better.  I feel stronger.  We are not solitary creatures no matter how much we may like to think we are.  We all need someone to bounce things off of, we need someone who understands the inner workings of our minds.  Think about the weight that’s lifted when we’re able to let the thoughts flow without tailoring or restricting them.  That’s real energy movement and it’s other women that help women move specific types of energy—it is science.  Life gets a lot easier and feels a little lighter when we have someone or a group of someones’ in our court.   

I know, there are certain things we do have to figure out on our own, that’s just life.  But that isn’t everything in life.  Consider all the things we try to accomplish on a daily basis.  Think of how many times we have to pivot in an hour let alone a day.  Really, truly, deeply dig into what that feels like and how that feels like in life.  If we’re honest, it sounds pretty lonely.  A step further in honesty, if we want to run life on our own with our own DIY plan, we’d have to really ask—how is that working out for us?  Frustrating? Lonely?  Exhausting?  We do NOT need to boss bitch everything, my friends.  Sometimes we need to soften a little and allow the help to come.  We need to allow ourselves to be open to the possibility we need to learn what we need to know.  We need to know the right facts, to know ourselves and we do that with people we know and trust and who know and trust us.  We ask the things we’ve never asked before, the things that embarrass us.  Look, I am ALL for embracing power but there are different types of power and a time for each.  There’s a time to run all the shit, there’s a time to sort all the shit, there’s a time to reassign the shit, there’s a time to avoid the shit—and sometimes there’s a time to throw the shit in that person’s face who made you forget who you were in the first place.  I digress.  The point is this: life is about balance and it ebbs and flows as does our power.  We go through seasons and we aren’t ever one thing all the time—so we find those who help fill in the gaps and keep us floating, and like magic, we never sink.