Today I am grateful for a sense of unease.  I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it, what started this feeling.  All I know is that I have a profound sense of discomfort and melancholy.  A sense of not belonging and what I want to do isn’t really what I want to do.  Perhaps it’s a sense of detachment.  But the truth is, I am grateful for this feeling because it’s forcing me to really examine what I’ve been doing.  I’m legitimately proud of what I’ve been doing with my projects, but it still feels like a lot of effort for no return.  Regardless, I’m grateful because it’s making me look at what I’m prioritizing and clarifying what I need to do. Having a sense of direction, no matter the cause is key, and often when you’re uneasy, you’re on ground that is about to challenge you or you’re not where you should be.

Today I am grateful for my son’s hugs.  As I mentioned above, I’ve been a bit off.  He woke up this morning and silently stepped into my office and he climbed into my lap and gave me the biggest hug.  It immediately grounded me.  The feel of his little body in my lap and his arms around my neck, the smell of him, the warmth.  It brought me right back to where I needed to be: rocking my son who just work up in my lap.  Not worrying about anything, just being present. 

Today I am grateful for turning a page.  I’m not a patient person and I constantly get messages from the universe that I need to be patient.  I need to let go of my expectations on timing and just go with it.  You’d think after this long that I would get it, but here we are.  Regardless, I admit that I’ve turned a page when it comes to understanding the importance of being patient.  Growth always takes longer than destruction and ironically enough, sometimes growth IS destruction.  It’s always a sacrifice of letting go of what/who you are to become who you are meant to be.  So being patient allows those facets to drop into place and allows for the honoring of who you are meant to be.  I’m grateful to accept this lesson in order to move forward.  You can’t hold onto the same thing forever and expect to change. 

Today I am grateful to get some rest and connect with a few things I needed.  Today felt like a real day of reprieve.  Simple rest and relaxation.  I spent the day yesterday cooking and preparing for the week.  I finished my cooking today.  I got to work out.  It felt good to simply unwind and read and connect.  I went to the cemetery to see my grandfather and then I went to the book store.  The book store is a special place for me and it felt nice to get back there after not visiting for so long.  We all need days to simply connect. 

Today I am grateful to learn what life is about.  I literally thought it was about doing as you’re told for the longest time.  I thought it was about being the same as everyone else, hiding the things you liked to do in order to do what you were supposed to do.  In taking some time off of doing the same thing over and over again, but I see that it’s more about connecting.  It’s about being unique and embracing what it is that makes you come alive.  See, I thought there was a way to straddle both worlds, to play it safe and to get what you wanted.  But the truth is you need to give up what you thought to connect with what you need.  It’s about that awakening, and even if you’re in the middle of your own awakening and involved in the process, it’s easy to fall back into your routine.  Do what you can to break it.

Today I am grateful to understand.  Simply to understand and exist and to decide what we want to do, who we want to be is incredibly empowering.  I am grateful to understand that we can let go of what we thought we needed and embrace what we actually need.  I’m grateful to understand that we always have the opportunity to try again or start over.  Every day is the opportunity to be more aligned with who we are.  Every day is another opportunity to try again and to get closer to your purpose. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead. 

“Pain is inevitable, struggle is optional,” Buddha.  I think I just wanted to share a brief reminder that we can choose how we experience this world.  The more we are able to keep moving forward, the better off we are.  When we allow ourselves to get stuck and stagnant that is when we lose sight of reality.  Not all is as bad as it seems or as we fear it is.  I love this quote because it’s honest.  Living isn’t easy and we all have painful experiences.  We face loss, struggle, fear, betrayal, and heartache and that is just in the daily course of life.  But we don’t have to struggle with that.  We can learn to accept that the beauty of life is making a life in spite of the things that come our way.  We can accept that these are the things that make us appreciate life. 

I think I’ve actually written on this very quote before but I think after time and new experiences there is additional perspective to it.  Eventually you learn that there is sweetness in the bitterness and that we aren’t really alone.  I think we often forget how time changes things both for the good and the bad.  We want to move forward in the worst way but we look for security so we continue the same patterns we know expecting something different.  We forget that we have to give up what we know to get something new.  It is painful to let go of what you know but there comes a point where it’s more painful to hold onto it. 

Change happens whether you are ready for it or not and the sooner you embrace it, the sooner you will be able to move forward.  The sooner you will be able to adapt and move into what you are meant to.  It’s a decision, and I know how challenging that is as someone who desperately clings to the past.  Making a decision means that you’re letting go of something else.  The key, however, is that in every decision we make, we also have the capacity to decide how we feel about it, or rather how we perceive it.  We can choose to accept the pain or struggle against it.  The pain happens, but we can be brief about it and recover or we can sit with it and constantly cut it open.  I choose to move forward and allow the healing.    

I shared my experience at work and the guilt in setting boundaries yesterday.  I also spoke of how good it felt to express myself and be heard.  I wanted to elaborate on that with the follow up.  We have weekly team meetings in my 9-5 and the events of the week prior weighed heavily on my mind.  The saying goes something like, “If it still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up in 48.”  Well, I didn’t get to speak up in 48, but I still broached the subject with the group.  One of the two individuals was in the meeting and I simply addressed the group with the facts.  I informed them that there is a lot going on with each group that no one has a clear understanding of and that we need to stop jumping into action when we assume something is broken.  I suggested that if we see something broken we need to come together and have a conversation in order to avoid assumptions.  We need to address the wound, not band aid the solution because we see numbers going up.

A few of them were slightly taken aback because no one has addressed them like that before.  Normally there is passive aggressive “confrontations” followed by weeks of speaking about each other behind our backs.  But this isn’t something I was going to sit on any longer.  I’ve never been one for unproductive work.  I’ve also never been one to try and plug a dam with my fingers.  It never made sense to me.  If there is an issue, I want to address it at the root.  Going after the symptoms isn’t going to stop the problem from happening.  I may be a people pleaser to this day, but I will not jump if there is something I know doesn’t make sense.  If there is a better way that is what we should be doing and I advocate for it.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that this will change anything with this group, but I am proud I took the chance.  I am happy I stood my ground and that I took the opportunity to express what was going on.  There is no way that anyone can say that I didn’t voice the concern when it came up.  People sometimes need time to digest a message and they sometimes don’t know how to address a crisis when it comes up.  My previous traumas have taught me when to react and when not to react to a perceived crisis.  Death is a crisis.  Severe injury is a crisis.  A miscommunication that leads to a few more accounts in a work queue is not a crisis.  So, now the information is out in the open and I can wait and see what happens.  You never know, maybe this is the moment that awakens some of them.  It set a boundary for myself on what I will and will not tolerate with the group and I’m glad it came from a place of authenticity.  Keep speaking up.

I had a moment in thinking about boundaries because I felt lonely.  It feels uncomfortable to set boundaries because we are afraid that they won’t be received or that we will end up alone.  We are afraid that boundaries mean we are cutting ourselves off.  The truth is boundaries are simply the limits within which we operate.  They are ever changing but they help clear up that definition of who we are as well as the alignment of what we will and will not tolerate on our paths.    

This past week I’ve had to set boundaries both at home and at work—and I had an intense moment of guilt with each of them.  But part of setting boundaries is learning to let go of that guilt.  There are moments in our lives that we need to be ours and ours alone and there is no reason to feel guilty about that.  There are moments when we can no longer support the behavior of others in our lives and we set the boundary.  Either they will respect and accept that or they will fall away.  Anyone who was comfortable crossing your boundaries doesn’t have respect for you and they were more concerned with getting what they needed or wanted from you than building a relationship with you.

So when it came to setting boundaries at home, I never really considered how much guilt I carried.  I mentioned in my gratitude post that I was upset the family wasn’t helping me clean this past weekend. I had a learning opportunity that I had to attend and I also had some writing to work on and the house was a mess.  I had things I wanted to get done prior to starting my work.  I made my husband and son get off their butts to help me and then I had to yell at my son to get out of my office. I normally let him play but I couldn’t afford any more distractions so I told him to get out.  He was upset and bored and even asked what he was supposed to go do because he didn’t know how to entertain himself.  I told him to go use his toys and his imagination because I couldn’t help him in that moment.  It hurt because I’m used to giving him what he needs, but I know that in order to get where I need to be, I need to focus on my work. 

The other boundaries were at work.  Our boss was out of the office this week and I am onboarding two new team members while monitoring an action plan for one of my other teams as well as their new module and work queues.  Two of my coworkers have been primarily involved with another project regarding some state legislation and there were tweaks made to their queue that caused it to populate erroneously.  Instead of calmly looking at it and realizing the settings were off and making IT fix it, they demanded everyone jump in and help them.  I’m already divided thinly and working on limited time.  I did what I could for them and then I had to hop out.  For these two, that wasn’t enough.  I told them that I had done what I can and it escalated into an argument about what my team does.

I simply informed them that it’s very clear they don’t know what work I do and they actually agreed.  When my boss returned, I told her what happened and I asked for some time in our group management meeting to further discuss this.  I let her know that I’m tired of having to defend myself and my operation to my team and that perception isn’t always reality.  She also agreed.  So while the conversation started off with some challenges, I think this is a time for us to clear the air and make sure that they aren’t making judgements on what they think they see. 

This is something I’m proud of because none of this was in an effort to prove I’m right or anything like that.  This was about not letting people dictate my day.  My coworkers came in with the expectation that I would drop the work I was doing and jump into their role.  They weren’t happy when I did what I could do but I didn’t jump.  I kept the course for what I needed to do.  The universe jumps to support us, sometimes when we least expect it and in ways we may not expect.  For boundaries to matter, we have to up hold them even when it feels uncomfortable.  From this last week, it felt amazing.  It is something I will continue to do. 

I felt something last week. I felt a new electricity, an aliveness that came to be when I saw a friend of mine.  I’ve been denying this feeling for a long time, the need to be seen and heard and understood.  Honestly, it’s pretty obvious that’s what I’ve been looking for.  Everyone wants to be acknowledged.  I’ve been telling myself I’m learning lessons from my current state when the reality is I’m just stuck in this pattern and tired of repeating the same day over and over again. When I saw my friend, there was simply a connection, an understanding that I hadn’t felt in a long time.  It made me question where I was in that moment, the things I’m going for, and the type of person I really am.  I had a moment where I knew I needed to sit and simply be with myself.  I know I need to find who I am.  I’m trying new things.  I’m working on myself.  I’m doing what I need to do and I understand now that it isn’t a destination.  The identities we cling to are really good guide posts to help us determine what we want to do, but it shifts.   

With that being said, learning who we are is one of the most difficult things to do.  Our behavior is predicated on the identity we create and that creation comes from the environment we are in as long as a genetic component.  But learning who we are requires an openness we are not taught because we are given the construct from the moment we are born.  Humans are certainly not comfortable with being open because we risk exposure or being “attacked”.  The truth is it takes time to figure out what is the right path for us and sometimes it takes seeing someone to remind us of who we really are.  I’ve read before about how sometimes we can know people forever and we can be screaming what we need at them and not be heard. And then there are times we can meet someone and they understand us like no one else ever has.  Time has nothing to do with it. 

Seeing this person helped me realize that, in searching for ourselves and in laying the foundation, we have to have some flexibility.  What worked for us years ago may not work now and that is ok.  So much of finding who we are is creating a fundamental building block of what I want my life to look like—it’s the same for you as well and it’s what we’ve been talking about for a long time now.  Yes, it helps to have someone understand us because they can give us support that we may not even know we need.  But it’s more important to be aware of yourself so you recognize those people, and you form relationships with those people who know who you are.  It’s about setting up a clear guide of what you will and will not do, what your day looks like, what actions you need to take that are aligned with who you are. 

In these moments, it would be easy to spiral out, but we need to find gratitude and grounding.  We need to be grateful that there is something in us that resonates with other people and that we aren’t alone.  We have to be grateful that we grow.  If we were to stay the same our entire lives, we wouldn’t progress and neither would those around us.  We are meant to shape each other.  And that dynamic changes with those around us.  I guess at the end, it’s really just to say that we need to pay attention to how we feel.  We need to know what makes us come alive and what alive means to us.  We need to know those things that spark the fire in us so we stay in that alignment we’ve been looking for.  Pay attention to the people who make you feel that way and go toward them. 

Let’s elaborate on Sunday’s gratitude.  I ended that piece with noting there are some days we are on top of the world and other days we stub our toes getting out of bed.  The key is to accept them all.  I’ve been carrying too heavy a burden for too long and that has made me put unnecessary pressure on life in general.  I’ve placed too big an expectation on those I love including my husband and my five year old.  I’ve demanded things of them that I want for the life I’ve expected myself to give them.  That isn’t living.  My son and I went on a walk on Sunday and we saw an entire neighborhood of children out playing.  We felt the sun on our skin and the breeze.  In that moment there wasn’t another care in the world.  There was literally no other moment than the present. 

I woke up on Sunday morning super crabby because my son hasn’t been sleeping well so I haven’t been sleeping well and I had things I want to do in the morning and, quite honestly, I have been sick and tired of feeling like crap because I can’t sleep a night through or my son freaks out if I’m up doing something to take care of myself.  But I moved my body, I made bread, cleaned, wrote several pieces, shared my cards, made breakfast, put the laundry away all before 10am.  I felt on top of the world.  As I was putting laundry away, the thought about how some days we can do it all and some days we can barely form a coherent sentence popped into my mind. 

But the gold comes when we learn to accept them both.  We learn to be in flow with them.  We learn that the days are good and we can do more and the days we struggle are ok as well—we just need to reset.  That reset isn’t a negative by any means.  We’ve lived with the expectation that we need to be on top, in control, perfect at all times.  That just isn’t feasible.  We need to go with the natural ebbs and flows of our nature.  We need to live our lives according to our own patterns.  The pattern given to us by nature.  What feels right for us.  There are times that means it won’t look like it’s working from the outside.  Or that we don’t have it together.  That isn’t true.  We are simply having a moment. 

Life is successful when we find that rhythm and we learn to access it at any time.  Life is happy when we know who we are and we move with it.  Life is peaceful when we honor exactly where we are at.  It won’t always feel great and we will have to accept the lows with the highs.  What DOES feel great is the ability to transition and move with what comes our way.  The recovery, the get up, the do over, the try again.  That’s where the magic is.  The beauty is that as long as we know who we are, we are able to keep going.  Find your rhythm.  Love the good days and be grateful.  Learn from the tough days, recover and be grateful.  All is well.  Don’t put too heavy a burden on the tender wings of this life.  Learn to let go and fly.

Today I am grateful for clearing space.  It never ceases to amaze me how much clutter can accumulate in our lives.  Between what we physically bring in to what we carry mentally, it all just seems to sneak up as we constantly try to shelve what we feel.  Taking the time to make space and clear physically and mentally is so important.  I will go for a long period of time feeling like I’m ok or like I can handle what comes my way.  Then something will happen and suddenly the world falls apart.  In order to prevent that feeling, it’s necessary to take time each day to compartmentalize what you will and will not take in.  IT IS OK TO SAY NO.  It’s necessary to keep that space.

Today I am grateful continuing clarity.  I’ve taken some chances on a few things lately and I’m not sure how they are turning out.  For one of them, I’m not completely sure that it’s what I want to do.  It pushes me out of my comfort zone and it takes up a lot of time from other things I need to be doing.  Yes, there is POTENTIAL for return, but there isn’t any return in the moment and now I have to weigh whether or not I have the capacity to give time in this moment for something that isn’t paying off.  The other opportunity I’d really love to dive into because that is a course that will absolutely take me where I need to go.  It’s hard to nurture several different limbs at the same time, but I’m grateful to know what will and will not work for me.  I’m grateful to create the clarity I need to take the next steps.

Today I am grateful for lessons.  Yesterday I had a moment where I freaked out that my husband wasn’t helping me.  He was watching his phone while I was running around the house trying to get things organized and cleaned up.  I finally lost it because he prioritized watching a clip on a video game over taking care of what we have going on.  He asked me, “Why are you so upset that I’m not doing it right now?  It’s going to get done.”  Now, I am the first to admit that he is right—he had the intention to get it done and he is usually good at following through with things like that.  But the issue is that I know if he doesn’t feel like doing something, it won’t get done whether it needs to or not.  This wasn’t a time to not help out.  So I learned to take perspective of the situation and to think about what was happening and not what I was telling myself.

Today I am SO grateful to move my body.  I’m really proud of the progress I’ve been making with taking care of myself.  I’ve been waking up early every day this month and I’ve been working out.  It feels amazing.  The last few weeks I haven’t slept well because my son is having some trouble at night and he’s scared that he won’t find me in the morning.  He woke me up twice last night and four times the night before so I was exhausted and I woke up to find him in our bed this morning—apparently I was so tired I didn’t feel him the third time he came in the room.  I got up to work out after finding him and he woke up to follow me.  I had a moment where I kind of snapped on him and felt the mom guilt.  But I got dressed and I went and worked out regardless.  As soon as I moved my body a bit, I could feel the pressure dissipate immediately.  I’m proud that I kept my response under control and moved myself. 

Today I am grateful for options.  I’ve been caught in my head for so long that learning to break habits and one of my worst habits is a negative mindset.  Like, I immediately freak that the most awful things are going to happen and I constantly allow overwhelm to cloud my thoughts.  But I’ve been practicing some mindfulness and with that I’ve learned that the overwhelm I feel is overstimulation.  I’m so grateful that I have the ability to work with people and help them and that we can connect—the overwhelm isn’t about taking advantage, it’s about fulfilling my purpose.  The options I have mean that I am alive and that I can choose where I spend my energy.  That is a BLESSING.    

Today I am grateful for ease.  We spent a lot of time on the move today, but none of it was rushed or coerced in any way.  We simply did what we had to do.  We cleaned the yard, we picked up a few things at the store, we spent time together.  I made more bread, I worked out and appreciated my body.  Finding that rhythm made all the difference in the world.  There are some days we are on top of the world and able to handle anything.  Other days we stub our toes getting out of the bed.  The key is to learn to accept them all.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

A friend of mine went to a party this weekend and it opened a floodgate of emotions.  I was so happy because this person has put in a ton of work on a venture and the party was to celebrate that success.  But I felt lonely.  I saw the beautiful community this person has created and the support they have and it made me see how stuck I’ve kept myself.  We’ve been in this little bubble for the last couple of years trying to stay physically healthy/safe and it has been super isolating.  I mean, everything happens for a reason, but a wave of “what have I been doing with my time” passed over me.  I’ve made progress but I see how hindered it has been by going it alone.  And in spite of where I’ve gotten, I feel a certain emptiness around me. 

My husband and I made a move about 9 months ago now.  We purchased a new home with the intent of having space to assist my parents as needed.  We brought a ton of things with, mainly from my past and the house is full, but it isn’t alive.  It feels like a museum, a shrine to what once was.  There is no life.  Don’t misunderstand, I am beyond grateful for the experience those things represent.  I am beyond grateful we were able to set up something feasible for my parents if they need it.  But we are sitting here, surrounded by what is no longer.  Empty rooms, waiting for life.  It’s all  here and waiting for us but we have no one to share it with now.    

I think it’s a matter of the expectations of what I thought life would be like kind of sliding through my fingers like sand.  I’m ok with that, honestly, because I believe if it wasn’t meant to be it will fall apart.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t unnerving.  There is no foundation yet because I’m not sure what’s next.  None of this is me.  It’s a façade of what I thought life should be, a continuation of an expectation from long ago that can’t be fulfilled in today’s circumstances.  Creating something new is predicated on a solid foundation and life gets scary when you don’t know what that is.  It is the reaching out to people to create a net when the net you were given breaks apart.  We are never really alone.      

It’s in these moments when I have to focus on gratitude for what I have.  It’s also where I focus on gratitude for learning what I need and recognizing what I have to do.  It’s ok if certain things didn’t live up to my expectations.  I know we could look at is as we got what we wanted and now we don’t want it anymore, but that isn’t the case.  The truth is sometimes we have to experience certain things in order to redefine what we need.  Creating clarity is the key to getting unstuck.  Yes, I had a moment of being angry at myself for working so hard for something that seems futile.  But that doesn’t mean this won’t serve a purpose.  Sitting with those emotions can be hard, but it’s more about breaking patterns than letting it consume.  Sometimes the universe calls on us to do crazy things.  It’s ok.  Those crazy things lead us where we need to be, to create a foundation that’s real.   

I had a moment this past weekend that has weighed on me a bit.  We watched some trash TV that embellished some real events and I had a revelation: there is only so much the human mind can take before it breaks.  Even the strongest people can fall apart.  We all try our hardest and sometimes the universe has some curve balls that come our way.  It isn’t that people are “crazy,” it’s more that they are broken.  They’ve experienced enough trauma in their lives that their minds do not work as they once did.  I know, this is not truly a revelation, but the part that got to me is how the media skews events.  This story was so outlandish that most people wouldn’t believe it was real and it was presented to the world as victim versus villain (but you got to decide which party was which). 

How we tell a story and what we tell ourselves really matters.  The mind is so powerful.  We haven’t been taught to discern facts.  We’ve been taught to regurgitate stories without questioning their full scope or all sides.  When you start to see how people shield themselves from pain or how they learn to cope with pain, you see that their worlds make sense.  We can’t look at a snap shot in time and make a decision about who a person is.  There is context missing.  Now, I know that we can’t always spend the time to do a deep dive, but we can control that impulse to judge. We are all doing the best we can.  Just because it isn’t what someone else would do doesn’t mean it’s wrong.  Humans aren’t meant to be deciphered in 140 characters or less—we are the sum of a lifetime of experiences so ease up a bit.

“When you realize no one cares about your failure, your fear goes away,” Gary Vaynerchuk.  The truth is people are so obsessed with where they are and their own actions that they really aren’t focused on what you’re doing.  It frees the mind to know that you aren’t performing for anyone.  Yes, failures can sting, but there are so many lessons in it.  It makes the victory that much sweeter when we get it.  It makes all the effort worth it.  Better yet, understanding that no one is watching you because they are more focused on their own stuff is incredibly freeing.  Suddenly those opportunities don’t seem so scary.  The pressure lifts.  We find things we are capable of and we learn new ways to do things we didn’t think were there.  

We put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves to be a certain way because we created these standards for what people should do and who they should be in any situation.  We all have different definitions of right and wrong and the truth is, even those definitions get skewed when we are put in different scenarios.  I mean, we’ve all broken our personal rules at times for one reason or another and I’m pretty certain we would defend ourselves to the death if we were physically threatened even though we think killing is wrong.  Yes, the latter point is dramatic, I apologize, but the point stands nonetheless.  We create these rules of engagement with life, its people, its animals, the Earth because we decided we needed to control it.  We fell out of the natural rhythm because we wanted to be perceived a certain way—as powerful.  We think we are manipulating a perspective when we will never know the truth.

It’s funny how often we let what we think others think dictate our actions.  I’ll say it again.  What we THINK others think dictates our actions.  It’s crazy.  We have no way at this time to get into people’s minds and hear what they are thinking.  We will never know.  Anything we tell ourselves about what they have going on in their minds is simply a story we tell ourselves.  It’s all made up.  Yes, for those of us who are slightly more intuitive, we may be closer to “knowing” what someone else is thinking or feeling but we will never have the full context because we are not that person.  We do not get a play by play of what thoughts run through someone else’s mind.

The safest thing to do is to simply be authentic.  Lay all the cards on the table.  Yes, I can absolutely guarantee you will get hurt.  People will judge, people will misunderstand, you will feel raw and exposed and alone.  I still say do it anyway.  You will never have to question anything about who stays with you when you know with absolute certainty who you are.  The people who stay are undoubtedly for you, and you for them.  It’s also imperative to see reality for what it is.  The more comfortable we get with truth as beautiful and reality as truth instead of a staged production, the easier it is to let go of the idea of failure as wrong.  It’s easier to let go of the idea of failure as failure.  The biggest thing to know in this day and age is that, even if people are watching, they will still interpret what you do in their context.  It doesn’t matter.  Do it anyway.