Photo by theformfitness on Pexels.com

One area that I have always struggled with is patience.  I am NOT a patient person.  That isn’t to say I’m not understanding of times when things happen, but I am absolutely all about getting it done and doing it as soon as possible.  My mind has operated under the premise that the goal is to accomplish the goal.  It isn’t to waste time doing other things—it’s to accomplish a task.  I’m not saying I felt like the task couldn’t be fun, but I did believe that I wanted it to get done so I could go onto the next thing.

The universe, in its infinite wisdom, sees fit to put me in situations that often feel like a test.  For example, people cutting me off constantly or driving under the speed limit, or me needing to work competing with my son needing attention.  My card today said I am patient knowing that whatever is of the highest good is coming to me—Gabby Bernstein.  I also had a conversation with one of my employees about patience as well.  I’m working on a project at work—a significant piece of work that is going to affect the direction of my entire department.  I keep facing a lot of delays and I’m concerned about some of the ideas that have either been turned down or changed.  The conversation with my employee turned into a discussion of how we have the right ideas, but it may not be the right time.  I have trouble accepting facts like that.

Now, again, the logical part of my brain knows that things like that happen all the time and that I should just learn to be calm and work with it.  The forward thinking, goal-driven, future oriented me struggles with this because I have specifically been charged with accomplishing a major change and moving forward, and I don’t understand why we let certain things get in the way.  Then I have put myself in the situation with two new animals in the house so I essentially have three toddlers.  My attention is spread thin and because I am so goal-oriented, I do feel like I should be able to do it all.  I hate not being able to be able to handle it all.

That is where I know I need to check my ego and listen.  No one is ever able to do it all no matter how capable.  This is self-inflicted chaos.  It is a challenge for me to learn to settle down and listen to what needs attention in the moment rather than working on what I want to be doing.  In all fairness to the human spirit, we ALL need to be allowed to work on the things that bring us joy every now and then.  We have to have that one thing that is solely for us and that makes us feel happy.

It’s especially challenging when dealing with people who also have engrained behaviors that will not change for any love or money and they fervently deny those behaviors.  I fell into a lot of anger today for various reasons.  I felt disappointment, concern, frustration, sadness and all of that was conveyed as anger.  Am I angry simply because I am impatient, or am I angry because the ego is impatient?

I struggle tonight because I feel like I failed as an employee, as a boss, as a wife, as a mother, and as a person.  I struggle because I have allowed my anger to steal many moments from me.  I realize that I behave as a petulant child at times.  Had I just taken the time to communicate my needs rather than stifle, and work, and accomplish, and drive, and burn the candle at every end, I may have enjoyed more.  I truly have resolved to work on this so I can appreciate the moments in front of me because, for as angry as I am, I am also well aware that they will be over all too soon.  I don’t want to look back on my life with regret.  I don’t want to feel like I missed out on what I had because I was so focused on what I wanted.  So for my own sense of peace, I am just going to breathe for now and know that tomorrow can be a better day.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

After yesterday’s struggle, I awoke trying to put myself in a better mood.  Today’s card was “The universe is always conspiring to support me, guide me, and lead me compassionately toward the highest good” Gabby Bernstein, Super Attractor Deck.  I realized that the lessons I need to learn, even if I “fail” the first time around, are there to be just that: a lesson.  They aren’t there to make me a perpetually miserable person, they are there to help me elevate my game.

I watched a video from Marie Forleo and she spoke about always being on.  Specifically she spoke of recognizing that there are seasons and it isn’t possible to always be in bloom; we have to go with the flow, the changing of our own seasons as much of those in nature.  We are a part of nature and we need to go with what changes in our lives.  Constantly being in bloom will lead to burn out because we struggle to keep ourselves in a constant state of on with no chance for a recharge.

It’s ok to have the days we are down.  It’s important to recognize them as a need to reconnect with source and our purpose.  Everything is a lesson in trusting timing and going with the turns that come our way.  This resonated today, especially after feeling like a failure yesterday.  After that, I found another meme saying “Be patient with yourself, nothing in nature blooms all year.”  Yet another sign to trust in the changing of the seasons and that everything happens for a reason.  Evolution, change, even the changing of seasons can be a difficult thing to weather because there is always uncertainty to the outcome.  But as I think about it, there hasn’t been any circumstance that I have not gotten through.  No season, no change that I have not weathered.  Change takes time, and setting the expectation to always be perfect or always ready to adhere to your new mindset is unrealistic.

Trusting that the universe is always guiding us where we need to be and understanding that change is a natural, necessary, and inevitable part of life is a nice reminder to be gentle with ourselves.  To just allow—flow, not force.  I have learned to constantly adjust my mindset to break the cycles that have always been so familiar to me.  It’s still a difficult thing for me, to completely buy in because I have been taught self-doubt for so long and to lash out.  I will admit it is getting easier to believe and to read the signs and to trust.  Trusting that our path and everything that comes with it is a natural course of life, that you don’t need to see the end and just take the first step, that all is well in the world is a massive undertaking.  But we can do it with one small step at a time.  For me, it was understanding that failure can be reframed-and sometimes it takes MANY attempts to be comfortable with the layers exposed when we let the old fall away.  It’s ok to take the attempts—never give up.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Pexels.com

“My ability to receive is measured by how much I practice good feeling thoughts”– Gabby Bernstein, Super Attractor Deck.  This was the card I drew this morning as my daily inspiration.  I awoke today at exactly 4:44AM and immediately felt a connection and I felt grateful for the synchronicity.  After yesterday, I felt an immediate sense of awe at the continued flow of connectedness.

My resolve and my connection quickly was tested.  As soon as I arrived to drop my son off, he began complaining about his stomach.  He was lethargic and I knew he was both hungry and had to go to the bathroom as he hadn’t eaten much the night before and he hadn’t gone to the bathroom the entire day previously (he has a known issue).  Immediately his caregiver said that I should stay with him and not go to work.  I sat with him and he seemed to perk up and he ate a little bit while I was with him so I went to work.  I called to check in on him several times in the morning and I was told that he was still not doing well and I should be with him.  My gut was that I WANTED to be with him but I knew he was ok and I had to work.

Against my judgement, I went to go pick him up and as soon as I walked in the house I could see that he was completely fine.  I immediately felt angry because I didn’t listen to my gut and I wasted time at work and I learned his caregiver fed him lunch at 10:30 in the morning—something that we had previously argued about as I never feed him that early and it makes him struggle in the afternoon.  I let it go because she said he was hungry and I knew that he probably WAS hungry because he hadn’t eaten for a while.  I got angry and felt like no decision I made was right.  I left in a huff and called my husband to complain.

I felt like a failure because I knew I reacted badly—I was completely out of control and out of connection.  I realized that the reason I felt so bad is because of my own insecurities.  I was listening to someone else’s judgement about what I should be doing and I did something I didn’t want to do.  I should have been strong enough to stand my ground and not leave work and trust that I was right—I knew what was wrong with my son and I didn’t need someone to tell me what needed to be done.

After some reflection, I am still not proud of my reaction, however, I am proud of my recovery.  I quickly realized that it was my insecurity and not this person making me feel terrible about my parenting decisions.  My boss had been supportive and knew that I was bothered by it and let me go check the situation for myself.  All of my anxiety about something being wrong with my son, about my boss being angry at me for having to leave work again, and my anger at myself for both not listening to my instinct and for wanting to work was all for nothing.  But I recognized what needed to be changed.  I was disappointed in myself but this failure was something that could be corrected.  So understanding that I am still able to reconnect helped me get back on track.  Sometimes it takes a few detours into “failure” to understand that we are still worthy and we are still good.  Sometimes we have to remember that we are always connected even if we take a few steps back but that we can always come back to our center and remember who we are.

Photo by Supushpitha Atapattu on Pexels.com

As I mentioned in my last article, I enjoy reading a lot of different spiritual texts and self-help texts as well as a lot of .  A new book by Gabby Bernstein came out at the end of September, Super Attractor, and initially I wasn’t planning on buying it right away.  Recently I heard that she also released a deck to go with it and for whatever reason I knew that I had to get the deck.  Her work on this deck included positive affirmations and other sayings to help bring out a sense of well-being and feeling good and it seemed so appropriate to my situation that it drew me in. As soon as I watched a video she released sharing readings from the deck, that solidified it for me.

So I went to the store and found the deck and came home to enjoy it.  Energy surrounded me as I opened the deck and anticipation ran through me.  I pulled my first card and it said “Believing in spiritual guidance gives me certainty and the freedom to keep dreaming even when I can’t see the result yet.”  My heart exploded.  I knew that I had been guided to get this deck in particular and that reading absolutely confirmed it.  The last few weeks I have stepped out of my comfort zone continually, trying to do something that I wouldn’t normally do on a daily basis.

Stepping out of my comfort zone and taking action in spite of not seeing the final result has opened up some amazing channels of energy.  The simple act of following intuition, recognizing you are connected to source energy, creates such a pervasive feeling of protection and calm.  The feeling that everything is right, to me, feels like my shoulders relax, my jaw and neck relax, I smile more, I laugh more, I am more productive, I am more creative.    It’s a state of allowing that opens up your entire world to the life you were meant to live.  It’s the acceptance that the universe will take you exactly where you need to be.

Photo by nicollazzi xiong on Pexels.com

I’ve lived a big chunk of my life being a pleaser, believing my needs weren’t as important as other’s needs.  I believed that it wasn’t right to go after the things I wanted.  I believed that the things I wanted would only come to me if they were meant and I added the idea that “meant to” meant that I had to suffer for it.  That started a vicious cycle of turning down opportunities thinking that it would come back to me in the future.  In hindsight I know that I should have jumped over any opportunity that came my way and that I didn’t need to hurt myself to get what I wanted.

As I progress through this journey of self-discovery and self-appreciation, I continue to awaken to the things that feel right in my life, the things that make me come alive.  I find that I have no desire to people please any longer and that I am not interested in being submissive or quite and waiting for directions from people NOT living my life.  I want open, energetic, free-flowing ideas, expression, passion, working on MY dreams, MY purpose.  The simple truth is that I’ve grown beyond the behaviors that kept me safe.  Those behaviors may have made some people look favorably at me, but it didn’t bring me the joy that I know exists in this life.  I don’t want to be the dutiful respondent—I am the universe in a tiny package, I have a gift to share.

I’m learning to accept my imperfections as perfect and understand that I can still live my life just as I am now—I don’t need to meet some arbitrary standard of perfection in order to be worthy of what I want—I am worthy now.  As we ALL are.  I am aligning with my gifts and ready to experience everything meant for me and just enjoying my life.  I’m a fire cracker, high energy, feisty, passionate, loving and fierce, devoted and protective.

I’ve realized there is no reason to live in someone else’s bubble idea of who I’m supposed to be.  I did well in the box.  I excelled in the box, doing exactly what I was told.  I will do what you give me to do and I will do it well.  But I don’t THRIVE in the box.  I need air, sun, water, earth, I need to stretch my limbs to the cosmos because my limits aren’t here.  I’m here to elevate others and make people think, break down what you thought you had to do and start a new way of being.  I don’t fit in the box any longer and I used to shove myself into the furthest, darkest corner to make room for others.  It made my mind like a caged animal.

Now I’m making this about experience.  I’m focused on how cool it is to exist rather than lamenting it.  Being who I really am allows me to enjoy and be a better version of myself.  That is when my talents shine through and that is when I am at my best.  The façade I so carefully created is breaking away and I couldn’t be happier.

It always amazes me how much we complicate things, how we make things unnecessarily difficult.  I’m completely guilty of this so I’m not pointing fingers.  But being in a state of flow and genuinely accepting things as they are makes me wonder why we ever settle for anything less.  Why do we feel connected one moment and then allow ourselves to buy into the same drama almost immediately?

I started thinking about my relationship and I know there were many times I lost my mind because things simply weren’t going my way—more importantly they weren’t going according to my expectations.  I’ve been with my husband for 18 years and believe me we have had more than our share of ups and downs.  Nearly every incident that we fought about or caused some sort of discord between us could have been handled with more grace simply by taking a step back and letting go of the expectation of how it “should” have been.

Love isn’t about being right and it doesn’t care about who has more of what.  Love is about an unconditional acceptance of an individual for who they are.  It isn’t setting expectations and saying “If you don’t adhere to this it means you don’t love me.”  Love isn’t about molding someone into a version of themselves you think they should be.  I did that for so many years in my relationship with my husband and with my friends as well if I’m totally honest.  I realized earlier this summer, just before our 18^th anniversary that I often didn’t allow my husband to just be who he is.  There were many reasons for this, all of them around fear and control—I won’t get into all of that here—and I realized that if I wanted to make my relationship work then I had to readjust my approach.

My husband and I became an item when we were fairly young.  Old enough to be considered adults but not mature enough to know what life was really about let alone who we really were.  It’s only now that I can honestly say that I fell in love with his potential over who he really is.  That broke my heart because I KNOW that my husband IS an amazing person.  Charismatic, smart, outgoing, and easygoing—everyone loves him.  I love those traits about him as well but I focused so much of my energy on making him more of what I thought he should be.  I wanted him to be working for the same things I wanted and I never gave a damn about asking him what he really wanted.  After so many incidents we had with each other, I let a lot of animosity build up and I felt he owed it to me to be the  person I wanted him to be and to get me the things that I thought would work for our relationship.

As I’ve spent more and more time doing some soul searching, I’ve realized that this isn’t the way to make any relationship work.  I also realized that so many of the traits I was critical of my husband for I also exhibited myself.  Not having a defined direction, spending money, laziness…I wasn’t free of those behaviors either.  I wanted to actually do something about it.  I wanted to be a better person and I wanted to change my life.  That meant honestly examining who I am, my motives, what I wanted to do with my life, and to stop making excuses for not going after what I wanted to do with my life.

Now, that isn’t to say that some changes weren’t definitely needed on my husband’s part as well. But I had to accept that the only thing I could change in the entire situation was my behavior and my rigid expectations.  And more importantly, I had to define what it was that I really wanted in my life.  All I could do at that point was lay out my findings to my husband and see if we were still on the same page.

It was a painful process because I had to break down the image of who I thought I was.  I had convinced myself that I WAS absolutely this person and I had to achieve a certain goal and obtain certain things to make it worthwhile.  As I broke that down I realized that I was virtually none of that.  It was terrifying.  You spend a lifetime “knowing” who you are and in a moment you feel like your whole world has been taken out from underneath you.  But it was a willing sacrifice to make because I gave up an image, an idea, for reality.  I learned that I could allow myself to be who I was and that the first relationship that I needed to be real about (totally honest) was my relationship with myself.

As I continue to work on my relationship with myself, things evolve in my marriage as well.  I have a clearer idea of what I will and will not tolerate and I don’t hold onto the fear of being alone because my sense of identity isn’t tied to my marriage.  That was an amazing feeling.  It has created more bumps in my marriage because my husband had to get used to the idea that I was changing just as much as I had to get used to the idea that I needed to accept him for who he is and not who I thought he should be (no matter how much potential I see in him).  At the same time, it makes things easier because the boundaries are clear.

Love isn’t one thing and it is almost always different than what we think it is.  I am fortunate enough to have known many different kinds of love in my life (daughter, grand-daughter, sister, cousin, friend, wife, mother) and I consider myself privileged to have the support I do.  But it is a weight off of my shoulders to define my own identity and not build my persona around who people think I am.  It helped me rebuild my foundation.  Sometimes when we are trying to move forward we need to just stop and stabilize where we are starting from.  When it comes to love and relationships, that means starting with  completely accepting and loving ourselves first.

This Sunday reminds me how important it is to be grateful.  It’s a quintessential, gorgeous fall day.  The temperature is perfect, the sun is out, the leaves are changing and showing their new colors.  It’s early afternoon and a gorgeous sense of calm fills me.

Today I am grateful for the reminder that all things change and it’s a natural, beautiful process.  Staying with change and accepting things as they are allows for a sense of appreciation and an ability to adapt.  Holding on to things that no longer serve creates a sense of disconnect and discontent that makes us feel like we have to fight the natural flow of things.

Today I am grateful for connection.  Being in touch with what I am feeling and responding to those needs allows me to enjoy and respond to the situation I am in rather than controlling and making what is something it is not.  Connecting with my husband and allowing him to respond to his own needs creates the space we need to not only care for ourselves, but to recognize more fully what the other needs when the time comes.

Today I am grateful for an emotional toddler because he reminds me that sometimes other people’s needs are more important than my own.  It also makes me more aware of understanding the signals someone sends when they have trouble articulating what they need.

Today I am grateful I got to take my son to his last basketball and soccer classes for the season because I got to enjoy those moments of him learning something new and forming relationships with kids his own age.  He is growing so fast and to have this time with him is something I cherish with all of my heart.

Today I am grateful for friends who seek to include us in watching the game because they remind me that there is always time to enjoy the little things in life.  Being with people who not only want you there but also make the time for it is a lovely feeling.

Today I am grateful for the synchronicities I’ve experienced this week because they are all leading me to where I need to be.

Today I am grateful for trust.  Understanding that my needs are met and simply following what is right for me, listening to my gut helps keep me in flow and heading in the right direction.  It has increased my anticipation and excitement for the future more than any amount of controlling has ever done.

Today I am grateful to just be here, experiencing this moment, and enjoying life.  Life moves quickly and it doesn’t pay to hold on tightly to things we can’t control.  We are meant to be in a state of trust, in flow, in open responsiveness to what the universe has planned for us.  Today I am most grateful for the reminder of how to be open to all the universe has to offer.