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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve always been a do it on my own type of girl because I got tired of doing all the work anyway.  I got tired of asking for help only to be told no, or that I had to wait for a better time when I was expected to jump for them.  In less dramatic fashion, there were only a handful of people who did the latter, but that absolutely traumatized me because I was around that behavior most (like at work).  My family chalked that behavior up to control and I would spiral finding ways to prove I wasn’t controlling, or that if I was controlling something it was the right thing to do.  I got tired of that game as well.  It’s EXHAUSTING playing ping-pong with personalities, mitigating how people perceive us.  I think the reason it lasted so long for me is because I started the behavior so young, I didn’t know any better.  Regardless, that fierce independence (which did have its benefits in some ways) wasn’t independence—it was fear, a defense mechanism and all that led to a lot of isolation.  I learned to do a lot, but I also never learned to connect with anyone. It doesn’t matter if we’re in proximity with someone or if we know each other by work, by name, by anything, that doesn’t mean we’re having the conversations we need to create connection.              

I watched a podcast from a woman who works on improving the mid-life period for other women.  She talks about things we don’t often speak of, not even with our friends and it was in that vein she expressed the need for community—but it needs to be the right community.  We can spend all the time in the world with people (like I described in my former work environment) and still be totally alone. We need community and we isolate ourselves for so many reasons in a ton of different ways. I learned the hard way that spending time with the wrong people just for the sake of spending time with people is a waste of time.  They won’t be there in the end and they certainly won’t help our evolution.  We aren’t connected just because we’re in the same room with each other.  That’s when we can be at our loneliest because we isolate when we don’t speak what’s on our minds, when we tailor what we need to say, when we say yes when we want to say no—or when we say  no and want to say yes–when we have to keep up a façade so people will like us—all of that is exhausting and not true community. 

When we find those spaces we can ask the questions we don’t normally ask or talk about the things we don’t talk about, that is when real connection comes.  We all have our own little brand of weirdness that recognizes that same bit of weirdness in others but we’ll never see it if we don’t show it.  If we don’t have those spaces we need to create those spaces.  I know it isn’t easy because I spent years creating a group I thought fulfilled those needs only to be put outside of it.  It made me want to isolate even more because that was yet another example of how trust breaks.  HOWEVER.  The universe comes in and offers an explanation or a reminder on these things: we DO need people.  No one needs a thousand friends but we truly do need that core group we can rely on, who embrace all we are, who understand our brand of weirdness with just a look.  It can be tempting to just do it all on our own and I’ve talked about going fast means going alone but going far means going together and that hit me again hearing this podcast.  I realized I still needed to find those people who wanted to go far WITH me—not those who wanted me to carry the load the entire trip and then went on their merry way while I caught my breath.  The truth is there are people willing to help out there, people who align with us.  We just got really crappy at connecting.  We’re fine with showing and speaking and playing a part but we still have issues revealing the parts of ourselves that make us who we are because we fear we can’t trust anyone.  We might get burned a few times in the process, that’s just part of life.  But when we learn to walk through, we’ll find the people ready to help us out of the fire.          

Human beings are a fascinating brand of creature.  We’re the only ones who can set about our own destruction and then blame the universe for the bomb that we both built and lit the damn fuse.  I’m guilty of it myself, truly.  Thinking I know best in a circumstance because I’m too afraid to let someone else make the shot and I’m not sure I’ll be able to fix it if it fails…and I am so tired of cleaning up after other people’s crap.  I digress, the point is we’re human and we all do it.  That stubbornness finds us all at some point.  In some cases I say stubbornness does us good.  It means we set a boundary and we stand firm in it.  But we’ve started a trend where we want to be right just to be right, we talk just to talk, we show up just to be seen.  We’ve also allowed opinion to be treated as fact and feelings to be glorified over fact.  We’ve also lost sight of the fact that multiple things can be true at once.  And at what cost?  What length will people go to just to be seen/heard/right?  Well, if we really think about it, we know that answer—people will do ANYTHING for that kind of perceived power.  No one can tell us what to do because it’s our right, blah blah blah. Well, that may be true but it doesn’t excise or excuse any of us from the consequences of those decisions.

Case in point was a story shared from a colleague regarding a patient with pulmonary hypertension.  There were some issues on a consensus for treatment where the maintenance measures prior to surgical intervention were handled less aggressively than it should have been—other measures could have been taken to ensure better stability.  The anesthesiologist noted the patient needed a cardiac consult due to potential complications from anesthesia (up to and including death) that needed to be and (could be) addressed prior to surgery.  The surgeon ignored that recommendation and scheduled the patient prior to the consult to which the anesthesiologist canceled the procedure citing safety concerns.  The physicians met, the situation was explained, and they still disagreed.  The surgeon contacted the patient and rescheduled prior to cardiac consult again so the anesthesiologist reached out to the patient to explain the risks/issues.  The patient was more upset about the inconvenience to their schedule than the risk to their life.  So, this is an actual life or death situation and said patient chose to risk their life for the sake of convenience.  I’ll note that I have no knowledge of the patient’s situation—was it a work conflict, could they not arrange care for a later date, not thinking right with extreme anxiety, etc.—but for the sake of waiting a day, they’d put their entire life on the line.  And for the sake of waiting a day the surgeon would risk their patient’s life for scheduling convenience. 

With that story and acknowledgement made, I have to express that, no matter the reason, it astounds me what hill people are willing to die on—potentially literally.  Frankly, I admire persistence and grit and drive.  I admire courage to call our own shots and those who seem to live this fearless existence.  What I don’t admire is the need to be right driving people into the ground.  I don’t admire the desire to be seen creating so much animosity and stubbornness in this world that we do things unsafely.  I don’t admire that we’ve prioritized speed over sanity, getting it done over getting it right.  There’s a time and a place for each but ego should not come at the cost of life.  And look, we’re talking about fully grown adults who are capable of making their own decisions and that IS their prerogative.  But we also have the choice to let them be accountable for their own decisions.  The saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink is exactly where we are at in this society.  We can’t change it.  All I know is I don’t want to spend my time fighting the horses anymore but stopping fighting doesn’t make it any easier.  Those horses still exist and a lot of people are listening when they say, “it’s cool to not drink,” until they drop dead.  I want to be an example of knowing when we need to drink and when we need to abstain.  I also want to be an example of learning to know the difference.  We move fast, we push hard, we create realities (some of them not even real), and we love distraction.  We all need to pump the brakes a bit and listen to what our knowing tells us.  When we stop hearing what everyone else says, we hear what the world says—and we have no problem following that. 

Today I am grateful for a kick in the ass.  There’s a time and a place where we simply have to cut the bullshit and do what we need to do.  I had a moment of understanding this week, not from anything negative that happened, but from realizing the degree of change I’m trying to implement in my life requires work—a lot of work.  I have taken on a lot of commitments and, when I agreed to most of them, I chose to do them on my own.  I’ve learned some of those things I will need to follow through on and I will have to follow through because I agreed to them no one else.  This isn’t a matter of feeling sorry for myself, this is a matter of being comfortable with the life I’ve chosen and agreed to.  And I’m proud of that.  I’m happy to be able to do what I do and, yes, it gets in credibly overwhelming and lonely at times, but I know that won’t last forever.  I know the longer I sit in the overwhelm, the worse it will get, so it’s better to just take it apart piece by piece and move forward.  The fact that I can is a gift.  I can’t say it isn’t lonely and I can’t say it was the smartest choice to do it all alone like that, but it certainly is an adventure.

Today I am grateful for understanding rest.  I wrote about this many times before but this is a different type of lesson.  So I wrote above about just having to do what I agreed to do and accepting it—and I stand by that . But what I didn’t look at before was the fact that I had previously taken it on as punishment, as if I had to do the work all the time until the job was done, like be available 24/7 with no focus on anything else until the job was done.  That’s when the to-do list became a life line instead of a tool.  I couldn’t survive without knowing what to do next because I was so overwhelmed with the length of it (I’m not exaggerating when I say it was pages long every day).  That’s when it hit me that I was working to rest and not resting to work.  Something I’m sure I’ve preached yet not practiced a million times.  When looking at the scope and extent of what I had to do it seemed like if I ever stopped it would just never get done.  Keeping up with the day to day felt impossible let alone everything else I had to do and the things I agreed to do.  There was little time for what I wanted to do even though that was the avenue I was banking on to get me into the life I wanted.  How would that happen if I never did anything in that arena?  It wouldn’t.  So I heard a lesson about rest being necessary to help us work as opposed to something we needed to earn.  I’m still not totally comfortable with it because I hate sitting around when there are so many things to do.  But I also know if I keep burning the candle like this, the candle won’t exist anymore.  We need rest—it’s not lazy to recharge. 

Today I am grateful for help and cooperation.  My husband very thoughtfully picked up a ton of salt for my parents because of the icy/snowy weather we’ve got right now.  he knew they’d had some issues and had run out of it so he picked it up without asking and we spent a few hours bringing it out to them and making sure all was well.  During that visit, my sister showed up and it felt like the whole of us were together in this making sure our parents have what they needed.  It’s such an awkward thing to transition to caregiver for those who took care of us, especially when we’re having our own mid-life crises and still trying to figure it out for ourselves, but it is so nice to have the shared support to get through it. And it feels wonderful for our parents as well, knowing that we are all there to help them, knowing we will be there when they call, knowing we want to do this for them.  It’s a hard stage in life and we have to support them as well as ourselves because we are all in this transition together.  It’s a whole new way to see the love in the family as we work to support those who cared for us. 

Today I am grateful for the brakes.  I’ve been absolutely miserable, stuck in my head, until about a week ago.  Full transparency, I still have some things to work through but I’m human and I’ll get to those eventually.  But what I’m grateful for is understanding now that there is something going on that leads me to this position where I really can’t do much. I HATE it, please don’t get me wrong, but I’m grateful to understand that there is likely a reason for it.  The way I’ve been going about things for the last several years have been incremental changes toward what I want to do and I’m proud of that but I think I’m at the point now where the leap needs to be bigger, the commitment deeper, the drive stronger to get where we want to go.  The other side of it is I think the universe has had it with my multi-directional shit where I don’t even know which way I’m going most days.  The universe is telling me certain things are NOT my priority right now and I really need to buckle down and focus on what matters.  I’m still sorting that out because what I thought was priority has been shifted again.  Even in the middle of scheduling the posts for this week, I lost an entire piece.  How the hell does that happen?  There is nothing more draining, maddening, terrifying, and saddening when you lose something you’ve worked on.  It means I have to pivot on what that was.  I understand now that the universe wants me to slow down even more and be even more intentional with what I do.  More focused.  It’s still frustrating but I have no choice in the matter.  So.  Perhaps I’ll take some time off and work on getting more of those things done. I could use the shift in gears to be honest.  I’ll keep going and understand what the reason is eventually.

Today I am grateful for alternatives.  I’ve learned a lot about alternatives this week.  I thought I had been pretty comfortable with pivots and shifting gears—even if I bitched about it or felt sorry for myself when crap went awry.  Sure, there were 100% things I was a stick in the mud about and tried to stand my ground for, but my life has taught me that doesn’t always work to get our way.  There are paths we have to take for a reason even if we aren’t sure why.  Alternative ways to get done what I need to get done.  Alternative ways to teach my child about responsibility in spite of his fits about it.  Alternative ways to get things done around the house.  Alternative ways to create more stability in the home.  Alternative ways to expend energy that don’t drive me insane.  Alternative ways to care for people even when I feel drained.  Alternative ways to rely on my own energy.  Alternative ways to focus on things and even alternative paths to take to get the job done.  Alternative ways to feel about what needs to be done so I’m not overwhelming myself in my own crap.  Alternative ways to let go of the emotional crap I’ve put myself through.  Alternative ways to move forward with those I love.  Alternative ways to care for those I love.  Alternative ways to listen to people and understand what they really need.  Alternative ways to focus and find a path to what I’m working toward.  Life is linear in only so many ways—we have options at nearly every turn, the grandest choose-your-own-adventure there is.  It’s time to consider all the alternatives and see where they bring us.  There are so many ways to do things and when the door clearly slams on something we are used to, even fi we thought it was working, there is another way, another lesson to learn there.  I’m still working that out, but I know that there are ways to get it done.     

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

It’s time for my own little reality check/gauge of where I’m at-and the reasons why.  I’ll skip to the latter part first, the why.  It’s me.  I’m why I’m here.  I’ve been stuck in the past for years because I kept looking backward.  I kept looking at a time when I felt safe in my life, younger, protected by my parents.  And I craved that protection because felt I was born on the outside and didn’t have a lot of people in my court.  I won’t deny I was born with a certain level of stick up my ass, thinking I knew how to run the world—no one has the confidence of a kid who knows nothing of how we operate in this society.  But at that time I still felt a certain level of acceptance by people who could protect me.  It seemed they accepted me and perhaps, as a kid so far separated from my siblings, I think acceptance is what I was looking for.  This isn’t revelatory information, I’ve shared about that plenty of times.  But I never looked into why I wanted to stay there.  Sure there are facets of my life that make me uncomfortable now.  I still don’t feel like I fit in and it’s because I’m trying to fit into places not designed for me.  The other issue is control and fear—I wanted to be perceived a certain way and I got all too familiar with being the victim, real or imagined.  I became incredibly familiar and comfortable with those ideas of victimhood.  That taught no one has the confidence of a person stuck in a specific space who has been there so long they actually do know everything about a topic.   

The work I’ve done and the stories I’ve shared are true, and the fact that I’ve been redundant at times, trite at times, perhaps melancholy and boring, doesn’t minimize that truth.  Nor does it minimize the truth of the experience and the actual trauma that came with it.  It just took me a really long time to realize that I’m choosing to stay stuck there so I can keep spouting the same lessons I’ve shared before.  I’m proud of the work even if it is a bit redundant because I know people have come in and read this at different times for different reasons and maybe some new spins on the work caught the eye. I genuinely feel like I’ve been able to help some people.  But I know I’ve been lacking lately because….I’ve been lacking.  I’ve been missing the energy, the excitement, the effort to create because the message felt stale, even to me.  It was never intentional, of course, but I allowed myself to stop prioritizing what mattered which was to refine the message and STICK with the real message and the how of helping people become their best.  The holidays hit hard this year because the end of the year snuck up on me like a freight train and, as a family, we were faced with some significant challenges with our parents.  Challenges that made us deal with mortality, our own mortality specifically and it felt like the world was moving too fast.  But was that because I’ve stubbornly persisted in trying to stop it from moving?  Maybe.  But it was also because all I had to work with was old information in new circumstances—a wake up call to practice what I preach every day.    

My support system has systematically been removed from my life and I can say it serves the point to help me realize my own strength but the truth is, when you lose the truest sense of safety at key points in life, it creates fear and anxiety.  It’s living under the constant tension of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve lived in anticipation of crisis nearly my entire life, always prepared to handle it on my own.  I’m great with crisis, terrible with minor inconvenience.  Regardless, that level of readiness has caused its share of issues including a fear to move forward and break out into something actually new.  Something relevant.  Again, the work I’ve done stands, but I don’t want to continue looking for ways to share the same message.  I’m cool with finding new ways to share those lessons, but the world is moving forward quickly and there is no stopping what’s coming.  No matter how much I feel I’ve progressed, there is still more to do—and more productive things to do—to encourage real progress.  I fought like hell to hang onto the past because it felt safe, it was real, I knew what happened there, and I honestly thought the people around me felt the same way.  That’s hard for me because I’m a stick-with-it-if-it-works type girl so it was also about my comfort.  If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  Well.  There are things that needed to be fixed that recycling the same issues wasn’t going to resolve.  And it still won’t.  Seeing how quickly people can drop from our lives and for whatever reason, has made me acutely aware that confidence, security, clarity only comes from ourselves.  We need support, yes, but that can and will change.  So, bear with me as I start the process of the 1% shift every day.         

Your thoughts are not in permanent marker—erase and edit accordingly.  After our mid month check in, I figured we’d need a reminder that, if we aren’t where we want to be, all it takes is a shift in mindset.  This isn’t a race by any means, this is a pulse check and sometimes we need a nudge to see if we’ve been true to ourselves.  They say something like 90% of people have already given up on their resolutions. That’s scary enough but the truth is I’m not talking about resolutions—I’m talking about our life dreams.  We need to serious about them.  We need to make sure we create space for them.  We need to make sure we prioritize them now or we will continue to put them off until we are saying we will do it next year.  That is how thoughts become habits and habits become who we are and then we convince ourselves this is just who we are.  We just stuck ourselves.  We are still so early in the year that there is absolutely NO reason that we can’t give ourselves a little reality check/kick in the butt and get started again.  It’s never too late to start again or to remind ourselves that we still got this—because we do!    

The key is to remember that the goal is change that serves our purpose.  Sure if we’re working for something specific, the steps we take will be geared toward that and we make room for surprises.  Habits are tough to kick and to ensure lasting change, we have to go where it starts: our mind.  We spend the most time with ourselves and we need to make sure it’s a good place to be.  Our job is to make sure we set ourselves up for success with clarity and adaptability.  Nothing is permanent unless we make it so.  The more we repeat a thought, the more likely it is to become a habit.  So work on repeating the thoughts that support those new habits.  If we’ve already started to revert and aren’t making the progress we want to see, stop.  Just take a pause and readjust.  EDIT those thoughts, edit the actions that come with it.  It takes a good  amount of time to reshape habits—be patient.  Edit as much as needed, as often, as many times as it takes.  We are human and we make mistakes so accept them, re-route them, edit, fix, try again until we are seeing the progress we want.

We’re already half-way through January.  Are we still power-housing through our goals like our lives depend on them?  Have we given up because it’s overwhelming already?  Truth is, it doesn’t matter.  The timeline doesn’t have any impact on us—although I will fully admit I felt a few twinges of the anxiety telling me how fast this is already going.  The brain is a tough cookie to break when it comes to habits and thoughts and fears etc., etc. so I figured it was time for a little check in—something we need to do early and often to keep ourselves on track (or at least near it).  We need a reminder that we are right on time, right on track, right where we are supposed to be.  I know this because THIS IS WHERE WE ARE.  If we were meant to be somewhere else, we’d be there right now.  But we are on this journey together and this is where we are.  And that is perfectly fine.  I lived by schedules and deadlines and expectations on how and when things would be done and how I would behave and let me tell you, I had no clue who the hell I was for a HUGE majority of my life.  I had FOMO, a sense of loss for the things I wanted to do but couldn’t, for the things I didn’t even know I wanted to do.  The panic made me want to do everything at once and then I’d get overwhelmed and do nothing because I didn’t know WHAT to do.  The time came to say “screw that.”

I’ve done nothing better or worse than most people on this planet so there is no reason my brain should hold itself to higher standards than anyone who has lived before me.  That isn’t to say I don’t have high expectations of myself—I do.  It is to say I can’t go beyond where I’m at now.  None of us can.  It’s ok to have to take the baby steps into that vision, toward the idea, the answer to the call we feel.  When we set deadlines on things we have no control over we create unnecessary drama and stress in our lives.  We can’t plan for every contingency in this world and sometimes what we thought we wanted turns out to be awful.  We can’t predict that.  So we can’t put any type of timeline on things we can’t see.  Sure we can plan a little bit, we can make a best guess at how things will go.  But we can’t predict and demand that life adhere to our timeline in any way.  I always found it so funny because time management was one of my greatest skills as both a worker and leader and I used to hold that as a mark of success-how my team never missed a deadline and we always delivered what was asked.  After time, that life wasn’t sustainable and I began to crack.  I saw the stress in the people around me and how they seemed to forget that I was human too.  And I realized I wasn’t showing them my human side.  Then life hit me and I had no choice but to go with what life threw at me.  We are not in control of everything.

So we are halfway through January and I still think it’s appropriate to do a check in.  Check in with the mind and heart and see how we really feel about the goals we have set for the year.  Do they still resonate?  Do we still feel good about them?  Are we adapting to what it takes to allow those goals to come to fruition?  We can never emphasize enough that it’s ok if things don’t go according to plan.  Most things in life don’t if we’re really honest.  Things happen we aren’t ready for, the things we thought we wanted so desperately never happen.  And we still live, we still go on.  So this early in the year, if we are feeling a little down and discouraged, just remember that the deadline we set was set in our minds.  No one is judging us for what we have and have not done this early in the year.  No one is judging that we haven’t lost 20 pounds in 15 days, or that we haven’t made $1,000,000 already, or that we don’t have that raise, that new role, that starring position, the book published.  That’s all in our head.  So take a deep breath.  Remember this is just the beginning and we are all just starting in so many ways.  Take the pressure off and begin again—we get to do that every day, not just some arbitrary day in the middle of winter we decided was “the beginning.”  Start where we are.  THIS is where we are.  But this is not where we are staying.  Keep going.       

I don’t eat sea food, I grew up in the mid-west so I have no familiarity with fishing or crabbing traditions (and I don’t pretend to), but I heard a story that caught my ear the other day.  It said that when you catch the first few blue crabs and put them in the bushel, you need to put a wet towel over the bushel or they will climb out.  When you get a few dozen more crabs in there, you can remove the cover because they pull any crab back that tries to climb out.  They compared this to our relationships with those closest to us and continued stating these are some of the closest people around us—they aren’t against you, they just don’t want you to be so successful that they look bad so they find a way to keep you with them.  It makes them uncomfortable to see you doing anything that looks like you’re out of reach or doing something they aren’t familiar with.  The people who truly support us won’t pull us back.  They encourage and push us up and out and over the edge into whatever we’re trying to accomplish.

It can be tricky identifying the crabs in our lives because they always start out on our side.  They always start off seeming like they understand us and want what’s best for us.  They might spike little fear into our conversations or a little doubt but they don’t do anything to suggest they’d pull us back in.  But as we get closer to the edge, the tone of the conversation changes.  They insinuate things like we couldn’t do this(whatever we’re trying to do) without them or that we’re changing and they don’t know us anymore.  They place guilt in place of praise disguised as concern.  We all have a natural aversion to change in varying degrees, that is natural, it’s a defense mechanism.  When people start showing other interests or finding new people, it can lead to some feelings of abandonment.  But those who truly love and support us don’t hold us back for fear of their abandonment.  They understand our growth means their growth as well.  They have an opportunity to discover something new about themselves as well, whether in the same vein or not.

I’ve been through enough in my relationships with friends and people I considered friends over the last year to fully understand this behavior.  And here’s the thing, I ran both ends of the spectrum from allowing myself to be pulled back down into the crowd to being fully ostracized.  I’ve seen what it looks like when someone else’s fear of abandonment turns into ostracism of someone who truly cared for them.  I watched friendships be torched for the sake of someone’s opinion on the matter, for an inability to discuss what was really happening.  It bothered me for over 6 months and there are still twinges of it every now and then but hearing this story of the crabs and their behavior put it into perspective for me.  If you absolutely refuse to stay in the pot, even if you’re the one trying to bring everyone with you, they will push you out when they can’t pull you back in before they willingly walk with you.  Doesn’t matter how close they are either.  Be aware of the crabs in our lives and if we upset the bushel, don’t be afraid to walk or even crawl away when they decide we no longer serve their purpose.  Consider it a blessing that we missed getting caught in the net or snare set by people who said they loved us.  Their fate is not up to us—we get to save ourselves.