“It won’t end here. Your faith has got to be greater than your fear,” Julian Casablancas. There are moments in life when it feels like time stops. What we thought would destroy us happens, what we thought would break us happens, where we thought we couldn’t go any further happens—and we have to go further. The truth is time is infinite and there is always something more. There is always something else. As long as we have air in our lungs and the ability to function, we can find something else, we can try again. As long as we are gifted tomorrow, we can try again. Don’t let fear be the thing that stops us. Time is our greatest gift and what we do with our time speaks volumes. How we spend our time tells the world who we are—and it’s how we find who we are. We have the very real ability to create the life we want to live, we just need to be bold enough to take action on it. The day we stop connecting with our creativity and stop doing the things we love is the day it is really over. The day we stop feeling joy is the day it’s over.
One of my cards today was that joy is the ultimate creator and another was when I’m connected to my joyful presence I attract support from the universe. Joy is the greatest creator and it can eliminate any type of doubt, and yes, it can eliminate fear as well. Think of the thrill of a roller coaster—we may feel trepidation and fear while we are waiting in line, hearing the screams of people on the ride. But once we get on the ride and get over that first drop, we feel the thrill of it and suddenly fear turns to laughter. We can transmute the fear of anything if we stick with it long enough and focus on the good of it. Fear in context of todays world means different things. There are still people who face very real issues of discrimination and fear of harm to their person for being who they are. But there are fears that have no basis in reality—like being afraid of making a mistake that makes us look silly. Looking silly won’t kill us, that’s just ego we have to get past.
We have moments we wish we could do over for whatever reason and we have moments when we know we need to just keep going. Those are past and present focused emotions. The funny thing about life is we need to find that balance between past, present, and future in order to successfully navigate to where we want to be. We have to integrate what we know from the past with what we have available to us now in order to get what we want in the future. And so much of life is a guessing game—it’s a matter of trial and error to alchemize the life we are capable of creating. Sometimes we are capable of so much more than we thought and we only learn that by knowing there is something else, picking up, learning from the experience and trying again. We connect with the joy of it, the thrill of it, believe there is something greater and we keep going, knowing there is something more on the other side. Believe that, feel that faith and trust every time—and keep going until we get to the other side. Fear is temporary, regret is forever so do not let a temporary emotion ruin something greater.
To make it, we need to have the right mindset and attitude; we need to know what we will do to make the money, to generate the income to support us. The inspiration for this piece came to me while I was watching a clip from my business the other day. The owner/founder of the company has a multi-directional focus that has always called to me but what sticks out the most is that her approach to each of these areas works and unrelated things seem to connect easily—it works and makes sense. On the surface it would seem there are too many pieces to put together and that they don’t make a clear image. The reality is all of these pieces are connected. There is a web that ties them together in a way that makes perfect sense. I need to dive into this so bear with me. For example, there is an internet brokerage with exclusive products in everything from cleaning and personal care, to makeup, to hair/skin/beauty, vitamins, supplements, child care, laundry, tea, pet care, car care, coffee, weight loss, energy, protein—frankly covering that scope of product is overwhelming in itself and that isn’t even all of it. Further there is the shopping annuity with partnerships with thousands of companies. Then there is the coaching and mindset training. On top of that she’s an author. All of these pieces fit together to allow people the option to use/share any one of these areas or all of them. So we are talking entrepreneurship, partnership, authorship, and literally changing health/wellness and how business is run.
I felt like the code was cracked watching this clip—I understood how people with multiple, seemingly unrelated goals, manage to put them all together in a cohesive package. I have all of these different areas of focus and different passion projects that I want to bring to life and I struggle to put all of it together because it always feels like I should be doing something else when I’m working on one area or I haven’t quite found the common thread in all of it. I spent a lot of time with all of these ideas flowing through me with no real focus and no real belief that anything could be done about it—I believed I could only pick one thing. I went to the other end of the spectrum as well—I tried to do all things at once and all that did was leave me with a bunch of started but unfinished projects. But what clicked while watching this clip was that it isn’t so much finding a way to do all the things, it’s finding the common theme or common message between them and that branches out into different fields. For example, one area that I’m passionate about is health and wellness. That can be applied to medical care, pharmaceuticals, holistic practice, diet/nutrition, exercise/fitness. And each of those can further branch out—specialized practice, a particular focus for drug treatment, massage therapy/chiropractic/acupuncture/oils/herbs, food quality/managing macros/growing our own food/eating to cure and prevent illness, and strength training/cardio/joint health/respiratory health etc. etc. And maybe we spend time in each of those areas. Sometimes it’s closer to a web than a puzzle.
Marie Forleo always said she was a multi-passionate entrepreneur and that phrasing always connected with me– but I struggled to put it into action. I realized after watching that clip that I understand the web idea more than compartmentalizing my life. Operating under the idea of only doing one thing was way too limiting, doing too much wasn’t getting anything done, and then getting overwhelmed and settling for something so far outside the realm of what I wanted to do took me on an entirely different track. I’ve shared many pieces about living multiple lives at once. We can’t do it all. We are human and we can eventually do all we are meant to do but that means getting really specific and finding that common theme, the common thread through our entire lives. Sometimes we are that common thread and we pivot multiple times before we figure out what we are meant to do. Power comes from operating in truth and knowing who we are and, above all, follow through and taking action on it. When we find aligned people who support our efforts and ideas and they put their energy and effort toward the same thing or toward complementary goals, we truly become unstoppable. There is nothing beyond reach, truly. The key is understanding what we are doing and following the threads until we can see the bigger picture. Sometimes that takes some digging to see how things are linked. And as long as we have the right mindset and are clear on our message/theme/purpose, it will all come together.
“Plan your exit strategy,” Allison Abbott. This is an important concept to follow up on creativity and inspiration. When something calls to us and we know it’s more than a whim, we need to explore the options of it. If we find that it’s more than a passing thing, we need to turn creativity into action. And as we spoke about yesterday, creativity and inspiration aren’t limited to certain hours in the day so we can’t try and harness something we know nothing about. We have to spend time with it and understand it, especially if it is a recurring thought. We can’t ignore something that calls to us and expect to learn about it in a meaningful way, and if it is a recurring theme in our train of thought, then this is something that may have additional possibilities for us. We need to give it time to unfold especially if what we are doing isn’t working and we feel inspiration toward something. Sometimes we need to consider that there is a different way and that inspiration may be the way out. We need to step out of our comfort zone and start breaking down the box. Only then will we bring enough light to the situation to see a way out. And once we see the way, we may discover that there is something more for us, something else we may want that we hadn’t considered previously.
If we find excitement in a real possibility of something new, the question then becomes can make an actual plan to turn our lives into what we want? These scenarios are not like a light switch where we simply turn off what we’ve been doing and turn on a light in a new room. Sure, we can finish what we are doing in one room and turn off the light, but when we enter the next room we may have to install the lightbulb or we may have to clean and organize before things fall into place how we envision them. We may even have to do some research on how we want the build to look and find out what we need to do to make it work. Life is a funny balance of planning and allowing, steering and being steered. We know that most things don’t go exactly according to plan but we also know that if there is too loose a structure, things won’t happen either. Talk does very little but so does focus on ineffective tasks. In other words, we can’t do for the sake of doing because that’s just movement. We need movement that creates progress and innovates and opens doors to new possibilities—even if that’s just creating opportunities for discovery. We need to find feasible, real actions and make sure they align.
All of this comes down to clarity of purpose. We can do anything we want in life, truly. I don’t claim that all possibilities are open to every person at any time, that’s not what I’m talking about. We aren’t meant to do all the things, to be all the things, to know all the things—that’s why we have other people in this world so we can complement and create and collaborate and innovate. But we CAN do all of the things we are meant to do, we just need to believe and take risks and plan a way out of what we know so we can enter a new realm and make the unknown familiar. That is how we grow and develop. We imagine, we decide, we learn, we plan, we execute. Those things that we imagine are meant to be unleashed from our brains so we can make a new reality. The possibilities are endless even if it’s a focused area. Become the expert, answer the call to curiosity and do it over and over again until we have such a wide berth that we become the expert and suddenly we are out of the previous confines of what we knew because we believe differently. We follow that belief to create those possibilities. Nothing is permanent as long as we keep our minds open to the different possibilities, the calling. All we have to do is answer and the rest falls into place—the plan makes sense and we attach real action to it and suddenly we are living that vision. With real purpose we have a way out.
Today I am grateful for lessons in presence. Oh, this has been a huge on so many of my gratitude posts over the years but I am continually reminded (and grateful for the reminder) on how important presence is. I am hyper aware of the things I need to be doing in order to move forward. I am also aware that there are so many things I want to do that my attention is far too scattered 70% of the time. I spend (and spent) so much time wishing for things to be a certain way that I lost sight on how to make them that way. I lost sight of how to just be. Even the times I’m aware of it and working toward that presence, I still find myself feeling like I need to be doing something else. The realization came over me the other day that the constant going isn’t serving anything. It’s still—after all this time and awareness and reminders to myself—it is still just movement. I may be widening the circle but I am far from making the amount of progress I want to be. So. The answer is focus and presence, but I want to talk about this from a grounding perspective—and perhaps a bit of ADD/ADHD. There are times presence is simply going to mean doing one thing at a time. Other times it is going to mean doing nothing. Other times it will mean focusing on our breath. There are times we will have to navigate 30 tasks and need to prioritize them quickly—so we will need to be present in different places at once and then decide the focus where we are. We can only ever do one thing at a time. Stick with it long enough to see progress, not just movement. We can’t control the outcome of so many things, but we can control how we look at it—and that requires being where we are. It isn’t about how much we do, it’s about how we do it.
Today I am grateful for the reminder that life goes on—and feeling life again. My Aunt’s cat played for the first time since we got him here in September. On the surface that doesn’t seem like a big deal—wow, a cat played with their toys. My Aunt died in September and I think I’m allowing myself to feel the actual emotions behind it. It was so shocking—one of the most shocking deaths I’ve experienced in my life, actually—that I believe I’ve repressed so much of what I was feeling at her loss. The initial surge of shock, yes, then the anger. And now I’ve been feeling the sadness of it, the actual loss. I hate the fact that she is gone. When we got the news she had passed, we knew there was a cat in her home—I’d never met the animal, none of us had. The condition of her house was so hard to deal with, we couldn’t find the cat at first. He’d been alone in that home without food since she died, so when we were notified and allowed in the house, we left food for him. He ate it but we he wouldn’t come out for us. He’d been living with only my Aunt so he had never met kids, men, other cats, or dogs—she was relatively reclusive at the end of her life. We brought the cat home and it was a journey to get him to trust me and then to work with him to be with my son, husband, and the other cats and our dog. He made slow and steady progress but he was always cautious, still hiding during the day, shying away from my husband and son still. Over the months he started to come out and join us—quickly peeking into the loft and then running back in the room until he started sitting in the corner watching us. Then he decided to move into my room and he slept with me at night. Then he came down stairs with me to my office. Then he started eating downstairs in the morning. Then he was ok being downstairs when my husband was home. Then he started eating dinner downstairs. And now he greets us all when we come home. And today, he played with his toys, the toys I brought from my Aunt’s house for the first time since he’d been here. I’m sure he still misses her—I know I do. But I will do my best to give him the love he needs, and help him live his best days with us.
Today I am grateful for getting out of my head. Perhaps a continuation on presence, but I want to speak more to the idea that sometimes we need to do different things to be where we are. The mind is such a powerful tool that we can be anywhere and everywhere all at once even if our feet are firmly planted right where they are. We’ve been engaging with some new people, building a friendship with them, and we’ve been doing new things together. We’ve also been working on our basement without breaking the bank. And working full time, and working on my side projects, and spending time together, meal prepping, and working out. So I’ve been spiraling. Regardless, I realized we were in a bit of a tight spot for a few things this weekend and whatever it was in me, I couldn’t bring myself to get upset. Like, my normal reaction would have been to absolutely freak out, but I didn’t feel that this time. I told my husband to go out, try and have fun and I wanted to have a “mommy/son date” with our little (who is seriously not so little anymore and I’m freaking out that he’s already 8). I helped my husband with a few things and he went and then I told my kid to stop playing his video game. We made different flavored popcorn, cut up apple slices with caramel and cool whip, had some healthy cookies, and some mint chocolates—and he even got to drink a pop. We watched a movie together and we tried to play a game (it was getting a bit late for our attention span at that point) and then we watched a baking show together guessing what was cake (FYI so much fun). We cuddled on the couch together and laughed—and I didn’t feel an ounce o stress. He fell asleep around 11:30PM right after my husband got home, I read a little bit, spent some time with my husband and then went to bed. It was perfect.
Today I am grateful for really good books. Ok, I’ve always loved books. I’ve always made time to read books—perhaps not as much time as I would like, but I’ve always carved out some time in the day to read, even if it was five minutes. I’ve transitioned to a few different genres recently and I’m reading a series right now that has made me laugh out loud again. I love the artistry, the pacing, the context, the content of story telling. I have immense respect for well-told stories and even more so when they are literally engaging. I mean, there are fun stories to read, for sure, and there are very well written works—but there is nothing like that push to the limit of both engagement, immersion in a new world, belief in the characters, and going on a journey with them. Right now I’m reading a really well written one. It’s a fantastic fantasy/villain/adventure/strong female lead/redemption and slight romance, and it has made me feel all the feels so to speak. (Kudos Hanna Nicole Maehrer).
Today I am grateful for inspiration. As we start the week we need to remember that everything is mindset and energy. We decide, we make moves, we explore, we try, and we try again. I love the inspiration that comes from seeing people engrossed in their craft and their passion. It is truly awe-inducing to see someone so wrapped up in what they are creating you can see they are in another realm. It’s inspiring because it makes it so tangible that we can do the same. We can each create our own world, filled with the things we love, filled with purpose and joy. When we have that level of focus or dedication, the world opens up. I will talk a bit later this week (or next, I haven’t decided yet) about having a focus/theme in this life, an overarching premise that guides us. Instead of trying to make everything fit, when we have the theme, we see how those pieces automatically fit. There is no force. I see people doing the things I’m trying to accomplish and I used to be jealous. Now I realize that these things wouldn’t be drawn to my life if I wasn’t somehow capable of doing them, if I wasn’t on the same frequency to have the capacity to do it. I am grateful to find that and appreciate that and do it for myself as well.
Imagination and innovation aren’t limited to certain hours of the day. I can’t remember where I heard this but it stuck with me as I’m trying to pin down my goals and put them on a calendar so I can check all the boxes toward what I want. I have a schedule that I know will help me get where I want to be but my brain isn’t always operating on that clock. Like right now I should have been working on these pieces but I had somethings to navigate through so I ended up writing about something else. And I have to get ready for work in about 20 minutes so I’m already “failing” at meeting the planned schedule I have—and the more I let myself veer away from that schedule, I get further away from the goal and I feel guilty at myself for not keeping my word. I limit myself to the hours I have set but the truth is imagination and innovation aren’t limited to certain hours of the day. Sometimes what I want to do doesn’t jive with what I have written down but I know if I don’t follow it in the moment, I will lose the thought. If we operate under the premise that we aren’t limited to certain hours of the day, it makes it easier to pick up where we left off. Maybe we don’t put in as much time on a certain project when we had it planned, but if it was meaningful time spent then we still made progress—and progress is the real goal.
So where do structure and creativity blend? I need to have focus but I need to have the freedom to create—this is true for all of us. And perhaps I need some guidance with prioritizing and sticking with my plans. Perhaps I don’t know it all and there are other avenues I need to consider toward reaching my goals. This is where ego comes in and I’m still too naïve thinking I understand people. I don’t always like reaching out for help because it has often been the case where I don’t get the help I need or people take over. The truth is I will never understand what it is to put ourselves ahead of others so much that we hurt other people and tell them to deal with it. Where does ego stop and genuine hurt begin? And when is the self-sacrifice so much that it verges on martyrdom? I’m not sure but I know creativity and relationships are tied together because we have to prioritize and weave relationships and our need for expression together. I know that I want complete freedom of expression and creative flow and in order to do that, I need to let go of control—but if I don’t control certain facets of what I’m doing and narrow down the focus, nothing will get done. And we have this beautiful range of time—we aren’t limited by anything other than what we set—I have 24 hours in a day the same as anyone else—I don’t need to quadrant off my time so much so that it stifles parts of me—and people don’t get to tell me how to feel.
I think we all live multiple lives because we are trying to figure out what we are meant to do—perhaps it’s that we are trying to figure out who we are. And in order to find the right place, the right skin, we often have to try on different things. We don’t know if it fits until we try it on. I think at the end of the day what we want scares us as much as it thrills us. As much as we desire it we fear it. And that has a lot to do with the unknown—we are used to what we have around us, all that is here is a result of what we were thinking anyway. And that is a result of what we KNOW. There is so much more to know out there so we have to eventually step out of our space in order to create more space. Even if it’s something as simple as giving up a habit so we can focus on establishing something new. It’s scary but it’s worth it because the fact is this: everything that is unknown has the potential to be known but we can’t get there until we take the first step, no matter how small. All of the limits we see in the world are a matter of our perception. We can change them and break free at any time. Creativity and inspiration hit when they are meant to even if it feels like an inconvenient time. We have now and we can’t control when we receive the influence/inspiration. But we can choose how we perceive it and what we do with it. Speaking from experience, say and do what is needed in the moment otherwise we stack the deck against ourselves. Creativity and inspiration are meant to flow and I want to relish in the full force of it.
“We weren’t as happy as they were in earlier decades, but we were happy. We made love and fell asleep to this song in the 90’s and woke up today; what a time machine music can be,” unknown. I have a little bit of a nostalgia post. In reconciling the need to live my life all the way up, without restraint, and honoring the work my entire lineage did before me, I have a moment to discuss. I see all the work they did and how they had the same feelings I have about wanting to do something else and be something more and I see how they consistently held themselves back. I was listening to some music from my younger days and now people my age are coming back to it and making comments like the ones listed above. And I suddenly feel even more connected to my parents and what happens as we get older. Suddenly we feel our youth slipping away like our trajectory is taken out of our own hands and we are thrust on this path from someone else. There is so much potential in youth and we spend so much time trying to stifle that in kids—I do the same thing to my son. I want him to be respectful and listen and do what he’s told. And, with the exception of the respect thing, why is that so important?
I always did exactly what I was told and when I had to lie or manipulate to get what I really wanted I felt guilty. Perhaps more accurately, I felt guilt at doing and being what I wanted to be and feeling it necessary to lie or manipulate to get what I wanted. Why do we do that to our kids? I don’t want my son to feel guilty for being himself because I felt guilt all the time. I had this power, I FELT this power in me and I used to challenge adults as kids, but I couldn’t find my footing with those people my own age so I felt weak. I felt like I couldn’t get anywhere with what I wanted to do. WE always think the past was easier and better and I think I finally get it: there was ENDLESS potential in the past. We hadn’t decided who we were, we FELT who we were and we did that without fear until we were told not to. There is always a moment when we decide to give up who we are for who we are told to be. And we live in conflict with that because we know we feel something else but our actions don’t support that. Our entire history of humanity has been nothing but a giant experiment to figure out what works best as individuals and as a whole and we have found some really good points in time and we have some really dark moments. It isn’t that we were happier, it’s that we had more options. And options I guess do make us happier.
I often feel like I woke up and was this age without my knowledge or consent. I have no idea how I got to this point where I have this house with an 8 year old and a 23 year old relationship. I picked a course and couldn’t quite figure out how to get to where I wanted to be so I settled into a routine I felt I had control over, taking the safe steps toward what I thought I wanted, trying to control how it would happen. The more I controlled the less options I had. And then those decisions became my life. Truly I’m not complaining about any of it because I am so blessed and fortunate. It’s just scary how we can live a life without really living it. I’m working to heal that and bring back the options I had when I was younger. The truth is they are still there and no, it won’t look exactly how I thought it would. I don’t have the kids I thought I would, I don’t have the money secured exactly as I thought I would, we no longer have the family business and we have lost people along the way. But there are still glimmers. I’ve held so tightly to a vision for so long that I wasted time I could have just done something else and gotten the result sooner but I was so attached to what I saw that I couldn’t let it go. And now it’s happening to a degree and it feels good, but it also feels like I could have had it a long time ago if people had just played ball. Like if this is where we were going to end up like I called it, why didn’t we just do it sooner? And overall we are happy. I’m happy. There are a lot of amazing things happening and even greater things are coming with attention and focus. So we don’t have to go back to how it used to be—we can create that level of safety and desire to be here and now. That is how we heal: be here now. We appreciate the past but we live where we are.
“My own work of art, here where I stand,” Toby Lightman. This was a song I heard years ago and I loved it then and for whatever reason it recently popped back up for me. But this simple line is something I needed to hear. I have made a ton of progress over the last year and I still feel shaky about it, like it can be taken away. Like I don’t want to fall into old habits and go back to how I was but I feel myself slipping every now and then. And I have so many goals, so many irons in the fire, with open projects and things that I’ve started that I can’t (and don’t want to) stop that I feel a little all over the place. I’ve been working really hard on keeping the organization up and ramping it up to a higher level and I’ve been planning more specific details of what I want to do—clarifying and specifying the goals. And when I see that I feel a little overwhelmed.
Here’s the thing, I am beyond privileged to be in the position I’m in and I do not take it for granted for a second. But when we take control of our lives and we suddenly are transitioning to a new way of living, it can be scary as hell. It’s intimidating and it’s very easy, especially in the beginning stages of the rubber meeting the road, when we get some traction, to fall back into old habits. It’s a constant test of asking what is it that we really want. If we are trying to change then we need to match the action to that desired outcome. I’m lucky that I have the means and energy to make the changes I want to make. I’ve decided that I am breaking away from the past and I am doing something new, I am creating something new and I am healing the old patterns. And that in itself is art. The person I am meant to be is art.
Even art needs to be refined every now and then and there is nothing wrong with that. I still have moments of intensely feeling behind the times, like I should have started all of this sooner and that I should be further on my journey. But I am here now and all I can do is work with what I have. I allow my brain to live in fear of what I’ve missed and that is where I have to learn to accept that I am where I’m meant to be. This life is perfectly as it is meant to be. I had a moment while working on my book where I felt almost existential, I could feel myself going out of my body comparing my life to that of my parents. I always thought they had it so together and were so much more mature than me, that they knew what they were doing all the time. I never considered they were my age and probably felt just as insecure and unsure. And it’s that insecurity that keeps us on the fence. So, that too, is a pattern I’m breaking—I’m diving in.
Life is a creation and it is a work of art and we are handed all the raw materials to make something of it. We should never be ashamed of what we make or how we feel or the direction we are called. We are meant to honor the art we are and the life we make. We are meant to be proud of our creation. I held back so many facets of my life because I didn’t want to get too big. I wanted to be accepted. And now I have enough understanding that I was always meant to be big and that people felt it, even when I was a kid, that I understood things differently. I didn’t see the obstacles—if I wanted something I saw the way to do it and I did it. I’m not saying it always worked out, but I am saying for all those times that didn’t work out, I was the reason. My brain stopped me, my fear stopped me, my doubt stopped me—I was the biggest obstacle. Had I unleashed all I was earlier, I would have learned to harness it and direct that power. That’s true for all of us. So don’t be afraid to live with our art turned all the way up. The world needs that now more than ever—live life completely turned up.
You are what you repeat…whether it’s what you think, say, feel, and do. Believe it or not I saw this on the lid of my breakfast the other day, which, for the record, was a really nice way to start the day. As we’ve been working through some changes in the house that we unexpectedly had to tackle (now instead of later), coupled with the changes (very unexpected changes) at work that I’ve shared, I feel like we need this reminder that our thoughts determine our reality. How many thoughts do we repeat day in and day out? When looking at our current circumstances, what do we see? Do we see the positive manifestation of what we have done or do we fixate on what isn’t how we want it? So here’s the thing: I’ve been begging for changes in both my work and home for a really long time. These have come about in ways I wouldn’t have chosen myself but the events have still brought the changes that I ultimately asked for. The universe responds to energy—it doesn’t care about the how, it just responds to the frequency and it brings about the result.
So when we look at the picture of our life as it is right now, what do we see? How do we feel about what we see? And what do we want to see? There is a saying that what we have around us we thought about years ago. What we have now is the result of our thoughts we used to think. Sidenote, I feel like this is why we have a tendency to dismiss the present because we are so used to instant gratification that when we recognize we received something we wanted a long time ago, it has sort of lost its luster because we are no longer in that moment. Anyway. It’s like the light of the stars—we aren’t seeing that real time, we are seeing echoes of what used to be. The universe takes time to catch up with our dreams. It isn’t a wishing well. Sometimes we are more tuned in and we are able to bring about our desired results more quickly, but usually we have to give it some time. The universe doesn’t offer one-click results.
The point is this: the universe will answer, always and without fail. The universe responds to our thoughts. And while the catchy phrase of our youth, “You are what you eat,” still sits with us and we refuse to change our habits, we need to recognize that the same message applies to our lives: we are what we repeat. Everything in our lives is the result of a thought and an action (or inaction, or half-action). We get what we give, we receive the energy we put out, and our results are based on the effort we put into something. When we fixate and focus on something, the universe will pick up on it even if it takes time to deliver—but we are the ones responsible for our lives and what we see around us. So. If we aren’t getting the results we want, it’s time to look at our habits and what we are thinking and to make the changes. We have control and the ultimate say in our results. Take some time to evaluate.
I am grateful for the reminder that things change all the time and to have examples of what it looks like to accept life with grace. I am also grateful to have examples of remembering what is important and that we can’t hold onto things thinking they will bring us back to where we want to be. A woman I work with is in her 60’s and she and her girls have very little attachment to things—like she was able to get rid of ornaments that her children made and her girls didn’t want to hang onto them either. She was able to give up the home she lived in nearly her entire marriage, the place where she created a family she is so in love with in order to build a new house and start over now. I so admire that. She is the example that things aren’t where we hold the memory, things aren’t important. It is the life we create, is the presence in our life to create those memories and understand what joy is.
I have been inspired by someone I follow on Instagram, specifically her house once again. This page calls to me because she is able to do so many of the things I want to do. I am so intrigued with how the family operates and she does so many of the things I want to be doing like baking daily, like gardening, like working out, like home-schooling her kids when needed, like following the bible, like vlogging and spending time with her family, like going out and having fun being active whether it’s being on the beach or wakeboarding or snowboarding. The parties she throws for her kids are epic, the holidays are beautiful. Even when they do things differently, it’s still amazing. Like this Christmas in Hawaii. I have no idea how they managed to pull off what they did with all of the gifts and the Christmas Eve bag and the time with family. It was another reminder that it isn’t the home or the place that holds the memory—we do. We make the memory.
I spent so much of my life attached to the places and the things thinking that is where my memory is. That’s why it was always so difficult for me to let go of anything. It’s why I still have a hard time letting go of certain things. But I see there is real value in keeping things simple. When we don’t crowd our space with things, we are better able to navigate through what we need. And I have another reminder today about what it looks like when we are fully supported and cared for by those around us-not just clearing out the physical mess but also the people who aren’t for us. This is someone I follow on social media who went through a divorce and now she owns a small restaurant and does a podcast and it’s awesome to see how accepting all the pieces of herself has made her stronger and happier. When she was losing what she built it hurt her, but she kept going and she is the better for it now. So I’ve taken some time to continue the purge as we are in the thick of winter and I am looking toward Spring. I’m finally accepting that it’s never too late to embrace change and let go of what doesn’t work, that we don’t need to fill our lives with stuff to feel fulfilled—time with those we love is truly the most important and that will create the way to our goal. We don’t have to be one thing, we can be all things and we will find someone who supports that in us. This is a letting go—and it’s all for the better.
“When people feel stuck it’s because they’re only using part of their capacity, part of their brain. When people are hungry they change their life. How do you get yourself to take new action? You need new emotions,” Tony Robbins. We get stuck when we are in the same routine, doing the same things, with the same stimulus every day. Doing the same thing over and over again doesn’t allow for us to discover and explore new options for problem solving or new life experiences. We repeat something like 90% of the same thoughts we had the day before—if we do that enough over time that means we establish some pretty firm grooves in the brain. The same thing can be said with those emotions—if we allow ourselves to feel the same emotions over and over again and are trained to have certain reactions, we will continually respond the same way to similar circumstances. When we feel the call/need to do something else, that is when the hunger starts to form. We feel the potential for something else, an awareness of other possibilities sparks in us. We start to reframe what we feel about things and we ask ourselves if that is what we really feel or if that is what we trained ourselves to feel. When we feel differently, that perspective shifts, even if it’s the same circumstance again. With new perspective, we can take a different approach because we see a new option.
We are meant for greatness. It’s a simple fact that we have all the potential of the universe inside of us. It’s also a simple fact that it’s up to us what we do with it. There is the quip where we ask for a cake and spirit/God/Source gives us all the ingredients to make it, the cake doesn’t just appear. The same is true with any facet of our lives. If we get the call to try something new, whether a subtle nudge/reminder or the fabric of what we knew being torn, we need to breathe and acknowledge that we need to do something new, that there are other possibilities for us and perhaps the routine we currently follow isn’t honoring all that potential in us. No one ever said we have to be great at everything, we just need to be great at being ourselves and if we are going to unlock that full potential, we need to have a bigger perspective. We need to understand time and how we spend our days. We need to be highly in tune with who we are so we have constant awareness of what is us versus what is a push from the outside. We need to unlock the full potential of who we are through that connection to self, source, and then to the world around us. We can’t be pushed by the world, we are meant to influence the world.
It’s difficult to create that space in a world that demands constant attention and immediate decisions. We place urgency on things that require none, and it gives us this sense of FOMO if we don’t respond immediately–so we act on impulse rather than instinct. Those are two very different things. An impulse is a reaction, often without thinking, whereas an instinct is a natural response from within. Impulse seeks a quick fix and may feel like an instinct, but the impulse is fleeting whereas the instinct will always be the same. For example, we see candy while we’re checking out at the store and we decide we need the sugar fix right then and there versus us seeing the candy and understanding we are tired and hungry and need to eat something we prepared at home. Same thing as far as the need for food in the moment, but the impulse would have a quick, unhealthy solution whereas the instinct tells us to address the problem correctly, not just find instant gratification. If we are going to elicit new responses from ourselves, we need to get to the feeling behind our current circumstances and then recognize how we want to feel. It isn’t enough to want to feel it—we need to know how to embody it and become it. We are never stuck—we are a little stagnate, and we can start the flow again. How do you want to feel today?
The Intentional Dreamer 