Today I am grateful for a reality check.  It never fails that I overwhelm myself with some series of projects or things to do.  I truly don’t even mean to do it and I almost always never feel the overwhelm while I’m agreeing to these things. Most of the time I even have a really good handle on it.  But there inevitably comes a point where I start to fray and crack a little realizing that I have too much on my plate.  Then I start berating myself for feeling overwhelmed and believe that I should be on top of whatever it is I created and that I should take care of my own mess.  I’ve realized I need to reframe all that thinking.  I always start projects with the best intentions but I tend to overestimate my energy for some of the work I commit to.  The mind isn’t designed to be in a constant state of “to-do” 24/7/365.  The brain can’t handle it.  We need rest, we need reprieve, we need to recharge.  So all of those noble projects can get done (and they will) it’s just a matter of a little bit of a different timeline.  Sometimes I have to learn to admit defeat and ask/allow help.  I have to let go of the reins and acknowledge that I can’t do it on my own.  Straining to do it all taxes us mentally and physically and we know the long-term repercussions of that—it’s all deterioration of some degree.  I can’t keep saying yes, I need better organization, and I have to let my pride go and ask for help when needed.  I also need to recognize when I’m being lazy and can put in the extra effort for those days when I’m not quite up to speed.  Acknowledge the rhythm and follow through with the actions to support the words. 

Today I am grateful for rest.  This past week I have felt off in a way I can’t really describe.  It’s not like I was necessarily sick or anything, but I felt incredibly lethargic, unmotivated, even a bit weak and SO easily overwhelmed.  It felt like I was minutes away from total breakdown for NO reason almost the entire week.  I couldn’t get enough sleep no matter what I did.  I guess it could have been described as a general malaise.  Regardless.  I didn’t get much done in the way of what I normally do around the house.  I didn’t even work out.  I felt a little guilty because that isn’t like me.  I’ve pushed through way worse, only stopping when truly physically ill.  But there are times the body has other plans and it’s best to listen—or our minds are telling us we need to reset and stop fixating on all we have to do—that to-do list will always have something added to it, it will NEVER be done so stop stressing.  I still have a bit of fogginess and “bleh” feelings, but I am taking it as a sign that I needed to relax for a bit.  I’m integrating new information at work and it’s taken a lot out of me so I feel, in part, it was time for me to break my normal routine for a bit and accept that I couldn’t do it all. Now was not the time to push anything.  So I am grateful for a little rest even if it wasn’t planned.    

Today I am grateful for trying again.  As exhausted as I’ve been with the constant running and mind spinning, I am proud that I’ve kept going.  I have felt like throwing in the towel no less than 100 times this week alone and I’ve come close.  But I never gave up.  I’ve had to slow down, I’ve had to reset, I’ve had to push, and I’ve had to rest.  But I woke up every day and I kept going.  I feel like my family is trying to cling to the past, trying to revive something that is long dead because we see now so clearly what it could have been and what we wanted it to be and this is so far from that.  That in itself is tiring—we can’t turn back the clock and the pieces and players we are looking for were lost long ago and they proved they weren’t what we thought in the first place.  We’re living between what was, what we wanted it to be, and what is and it’s exhausting feeling so torn apart and we don’t know how to operate like that.  And still we keep going.  At some point we will give in and the white flag raises for all of us but until then, we gather our strength and keep going.  The screams in us will eventually quiet and we will relent and we will all go to the next version of living again.  Until then, we wake and we do the best we can with where we are now.  We will keep going even if it means slowing down.  Don’t rush it.  Just heal, breathe, and keep going.    

Today I am grateful for strength.  We can live our lives in the in between mentioned above, on the borders of some imaginary idea of what is/what should be or we can dive into what is.  It takes strength to live this life, never really certain what we do is right.  All we co do is our best and keep moving forward and that too takes strength.   We just need to show up and try—and if it doesn’t work perhaps we take some solace in that we will somehow, somewhere, someday, some way get another chance to do it right.  We leave our mark and that legacy carries on.  We love what we have, enjoy the journey.  Be strong enough to know that we can choose to do it differently while we are here.  Know that if we don’t choose to do it differently, that’s ok too.  We’ve complicated life enough and that has made it difficult to connect with what we know of ourselves and of our truth, but we can also uncomplicate it and accept that we can make a change.  We just have to decide to do it differently.

Today I am grateful for slowing the firehose.  I’ve been approaching life like drinking out of a firehose, like I have to somehow take all of that information and all life has to offer in at once.  We aren’t designed to take in anything like that—it’s too powerful and the force of it all, especially all at once can rip us apart.  This world has a lot to offer us and it can be hard to accept that we may not get to see all of it.  That’s where knowing what we want and what we are meant to do is key because we can sort through all the other nonsense and be on the lookout for what is for us.  We don’t need to approach the world like we have to master all of it.  We can slow it down to what we need to know and what feels right for us.  It gets overwhelming feeling like we are responsible for knowing and handling every single thing on this planet—that’s part of where anxiety comes in.  We may feel like we have to take it all and do it all but we aren’t built like that.  Some of our impact starts with a small ripple, with knowing what we want to do and going for it.  That ripple is enough to expand out to the world even if it isn’t our hands directly.  We are all on a clock of sorts and we never know when it runs out—yes, that is horribly depressing and sad—but what we can do with that time is nothing short of a miracle and exciting.  What we CAN do is more impressive and FAR more important than trying to do it all.  Be the best we can and do our part—that is the goal.  Slow down the firehose, drink from the garden hose instead and join the pace of life meant for us on our own path. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Not everyone wants material things.  Some just want a weirdo to go on adventures with, someone to laugh with, drive the backroads, watch sunsets, enjoy actual dates, and appreciate the simple things in life,” Daniel Chidiac.  Life is all about appreciation and joy.  We’ve all heard sayings like, ‘We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time,’ and there is a certain truth to that.  It isn’t about what we acquire and at times it isn’t even about what we accomplish—it’s about the experience of life.  Today happened to be a “Monday Mental Reset Day” for me and from all the decks I work with the common theme was Joy.  The world becomes a reflection of how we think and feel and if we focus on the key things that bring us joy, most of us find that it isn’t the things that bring joy, it’s the connection.  All the things described above can be boiled down to connection and how we find joy in connecting with the things we like to do as well as the people we like to have around us. 

Life is pretty simple at the end of the day.  We are here to follow our paths and to fulfill our purpose.  Along the way we have become distracted with things and conflicting/contradicting goals.  When we look at the things that matter (upcoming post on Monday) we find that not one of those things relates to anything man made beyond the people and talents involved.  The world is magical and we’ve become more concerned with an image that we present to the world that we’ve forgotten who we are at our core: a communal animal with capacity for great creativity and expansion.  The world convinced us there was no room for that and we needed to fight for our place at the table.  Society wanted us to believe there was only room for one when the reality is we were each given our own table with its own menu tailored to our needs and purpose. We have everything we need available to us through the grace of this world—why we ever believed it wasn’t enough is beyond me.

If something calls to you, I encourage you to listen.  Hear what it is and hear the need behind it.  Hear what you are meant to do with that.  If people never heeded their call, we’d never see the variety of life we have out there.  Everyone knows it’s possible, just not everyone is able to dive in and embrace their path.  We were taught to seek comfort when we really needed to see comfort with our gifts. Trying to attain the same thing as all those before us is pointless because it gives us no personal satisfaction.  Living in our light, our authenticity, our creativity, expanding and sharing our purpose—THAT is what gives meaning to life.  It’s one thing to repeat the same day year after year and call it living.  It’s another thing to repeat the pattern someone else gave you.  And it is far another to break that pattern and live according to their calling.  The right people will always support us on our adventures, hear our ideas, and encourage development of self.  For those who relegate our creativity to crazy and who choose to go after the things that all fade away, authenticity is scary.  For the others it’s freedom.  You get to choose.

“Nothing is coincidence.  Every soul you meet is written in your destiny to teach you, heal you, or love you,” Daniel Chidiac.  This is an old concept.  Humans tend to look for reasoning behind everything so we can make sense of our place in the universe and how and why things happen.  It’s unsettling to think that everything happens randomly, especially when we consider the nature of human events throughout history.  Order makes it easier to get it, we understand cause and effect.  The human mind simultaneously struggles with the idea that some of the awful things that happen in this world may have a reason—what would be worse in the worst case scenario?  The fact that there might be a reason behind that moment or that there WASN’T a reason? 

I can’t speak to all the reasons for things happening in my life but I can say that I have learned that more often than not, things are most definitely not coincidence. My path has crossed with certain people at specific times in ways that I can’t attribute to anything other than some sort of divine reason/manifestation.  Even the timing of specific themes in my life.  Nearly a decade ago when I sought to recapture my strength/faith, I attended church and the sermon on that very day was about the strength of women and recapturing their power.  I met my husband through a series of what can only be described as the universe pushing us together.  Even if I think of the losses in my life, and when I’m hard pressed to look at the big picture surrounding those losses, there seems to be a cadence to it suggesting a reason. 

Knowing there’s a reason doesn’t always make things easier, it doesn’t always settle the situation, but it can provide perspective and perhaps some guidance.  When those we love hurt us, they are teaching us how not to be.  When those we love leave us, there is a piece of them that remains, a piece that connects us to them and teaches us to love while we are here, to not wait.  And for those that come into our lives for a season that seems harder than others, they are teaching us a strength that we can only find on our own, they are showing us the way to ourselves. Take heart and understand that even if we don’t understand, the people in our lives are there for a reason.  They are there to support and guide us or to help us stand on our own.  So look at them with gratitude and allow them to be who they are while you continue to be who you are.  Stay the course.

“Do not absorb other people’s whack ass energy.” Daniel Chidiac. It’s as simple as that: make sure you know your energy and protect it. Don’t allow anything that doesn’t feel right to infiltrate your mind.  Don’t allow your mind to think someone else’s thoughts and make them your own.  The mind convinces us of some pretty remarkable things and it is THE most powerful machine the universe has ever created—it’s powerful enough to create an entire universe for each of us and a universe that is big enough for all of our own.  When we let someone else’s energy influence us, we lose sight of ourselves.  We lose sight of who we are and our own path when we believe what others tell us over what we know.  Our mind will believe what we tell it so we have the power to change what we think.  When we change what we think we can change our entire world.

Energy is the currency and language of the universe and as we emit a frequency/vibration, we take in frequency/vibration.  When we speak in authenticity, we are aligned with that frequency and we will attract those that understand it. It makes sense that people try to get us on their frequency through their actions, creating confusion in our own thoughts and feelings, because when we are supported and know that people feel the same as we do about certain things, we absorb energy.  Manipulating people to behave a certain way isn’t authentic and if we want genuine results, then we must learn to attract what is meant for us and that comes from expressing our authentic vibration.  I wrote a piece a long time ago discussing how authenticity is the highest frequency vibration to leave the body.  The universe speaks that and resonates with that.

So back to where we started: do not take in other people’s energy.  Learn to set the boundary and keep their energy at bay—that isn’t selfish, it is necessary.  Energy should be complementary and amplified but the frequency only responds to what we emit so if we want to increase a positive vibration, we need to stay in a positive state.  Energy impacts us, that is what it is designed to do and w e can allow energy to influence us as long as we are discerning in what that energy does to us.  It comes down to intention and it is always up to us what we allow in our circle of influence.  The key is to learn to become the influencer.  Be the higher vibration.  Be the one to emit an energy that calls to like because once we have created a sphere of influence based on our authenticity, we are harmonizing with the universe and anything becomes possible.  We can only do that if we are very clear on what our energy is and what is ours. So keep your eyes open and your awareness tuned into what is yours and what is not.   

By Jay Douglas

You can’t keep living in yesterday’s storm and expect today’s sun to feel warm.  Heal. Move.  Because the past isn’t home.  It’s a hallway and you’ve been camping there for to long.  See the brain loves loops.  It replays trauma like a favorite playlist not because it likes the song but because it’s terrified to skip ahead. That’s why healing feels like betrayal at first.  Your nervous system doesn’t trust silence after years of noise. And heres’ the truth: The past doesn’t even exist anymore.  It’s a museum your mind keeps buying tickets for.  And every time you walk back in you mistake the exhibit for real life. Even God doesn’t live in what was.  He said, “Behold, I make all things new.”  Not some, not later—NOW. And if Heaven itself refuses to recycle yesterday, why should you?  Let’s be real, you’ve got things to do, dreams to chase, life doesn’t stop just because your heartbreak did so stop checking the rear view like the road behind you is going to suddenly change.  I remember carrying old pain like luggage, dragging it through new doors.  Every conversation felt heavier because yesterday’s baggage was sitting in today’s chair, and one day it hit me: I wasn’t building a life, I was building a museum of my own hurt.  Holding on your past is like watching reruns and still getting mad at the plot twists.  You already know how it ends so why are you still yelling at the screen?  Real talk, the streets don’t care about what-if’s.  Life keeps moving, either you walk with it or you get left behind replaying losses while everyone else is playing for keeps.  You’re trying to grow roots in ashes.  But ashes can’t hold you.  They’re just reminders that fire once lived there.  If you want fruit, you need fresh soil.  And I get it.  Letting go feels like losing a part of yourself. But healing isn’t erasing the past it’s carrying the wisdom forward without dragging the wound.  You’ve got too much ahead of you to keep bowing down to what’s behind you.  Move.  Dream. Run. Because your future is starving for the version of you that isn’t stuck rehearsing pain.  Breathe this in for a second: What would life feel like if you stopped living in the reruns and actually stepped into the premier?  Your spirit was never meant to orbit your scars. God gave you new mercies every morning for a reason. Every sunrise is proof you’re supposed to move forward.  So heal. Move, because the past had it’s turn.  Now it’s yours.  Jay Douglas.

“When you tell stories, you become Gods,” Chris Pike.  There has always been something magical about the written word for me.  I have always felt at home amongst books, amongst the stories people shared.  I truthfully couldn’t explain why it felt that way but I was always enthralled and captured by the intricacy of stories.  I loved hearing about people’s lives and understanding what makes people tick.  And when I heard this quote, I suddenly understood what it was: there is power in the word, we are the creators of our lives and our stories.  We are the ones who direct the course of the story and in the world of the written word, absolutely anything is possible. 

Whether fiction or the story of our grandfathers, the written word is a powerful thing.  The pen is mightier than the sword is how that goes.  Look, I don’t claim to want to be a God, not by a long shot.  But the quote conveys the sacredness of telling a story.  Story invokes emotion like no other thing in the world.  There is an intense power, an intense connection that is formed when we share story.  I adore being transported to different worlds, I love seeing the technique of putting words together to create a shared experience and I also love how our experiences may impact how we interpret story. 

We can’t ever let the art of the story fade nor can we let the story be altered for our benefit.  Sure we can change the story anytime, we can change the trajectory of the tale to make ourselves the hero, the victim, or any other part in our story.  But what we have to remember is what I said above which is that there is power in words.  Choose the words and thoughts carefully.  Look at how we describe ourselves, our lives, and the characters that are with us.  Choose the roles we play and how we operate.  Choose the story we tell carefully because one day that story is all that will be left.

“The top 5 regrets of the dying: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself; I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, had the courage to express feelings, I wish I had stayed in touch with friends, I wish I had let myself be happier,”  Bronnie Ware.  When we look back on our lives we see how it all fit together.  We know how we got from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.  We see the losses and wins.  We see the struggles and triumphs.  We see the moments we got smacked upside the head with a 2×4 or wish we had been.  By the time we realize it’s over, it’s too late to go back and do any of those things listed as a regret.  The question is how do we ensure that we live a life without that regret?  We make sure we LIVE with no regrets.  Sure, it’s easier said than done.  Programming is programming and it runs deep.  It is locked in the cadence of our breath, our walk, what we share with people.  We are programmed down to the DNA for what we do and do not like and what we will and will not do along with our beliefs.  The purpose of understanding life, specifically the regrets at end of life, is that we are meant to figure out how not to be that way IN life.  We are meant to figure out the way to live while we are here.

All the moments we hold ourselves back for one reason or another shape the very mold of our minds which creates the reality we live in.  We can’t go back so why do we insist upon living the highlight reel over and over again?  Looking at all the beautiful gifts this world has to offer, why would we waste a second fixating on the garbage?  Pick it up and move on.  Again, I know this is easier said than done—it takes practice.  And sometimes that programming is still so deep we find ourselves behaving with old habits without even being cognizant of it.  Presence is a tough when the brain fights reality.  Yet the brain is our greatest ally if we let it be.  If we spend some time with it with deliberate intention, se start to reform the patterns we’ve developed over the years.  The reshaping feels uncomfortable and uncertain at times.  I’ve even fallen victim to the feeling that alignment is “too easy” and that it doesn’t feel right when things flow.  We aren’t used to calm in our minds or bodies because we’re trained to constantly go/be/do something creating tangible results to prove our worth.  We don’t get a lot of time here in the grand scheme of things—we are literally a blip on the radar of time.  That doesn’t mean we are insignificant.  On the contrary, sometimes those with a short presence have the greatest impact.

The cliché that you don’t know what you got until it’s gone hits home at the moment—or at least it resonates for this piece.  Nonetheless, it’s true.  We spend our days wishing for the next thing, the better thing, the newest thing instead of resting in the presence of appreciation for what we have.  This life is a gift and the fact that we have a say in what we do with our lives is incredibly rare.  We get to play choose your own adventure on the grandest scale and there are a lot of possibilities.  Take the chance because it’s often said we regret what we don’t do, not what we did.  If we reach the end of our days wishing we had done something else, lived a different way, then we have been living a half-life.  We will lever know what that other potential could have been, but the taste of regret is bitter.  Or perhaps it’s because we know what could have been that it tastes sour. All we give up in the name of something else, all the work we do for the fleeting bit of attention, all the energy wasted on peacocking the lives we’ve created but don’t live masks the truth: we know who we are and we know we can’t keep doing this.  We just don’t know hat else to do.  So m answer is this: DO SOMETHING.  Pick something, any of the dreams racing through your mind while you sit at work wishing to be anywhere else.  Then do something with it.  If it doesn’t work, who cares?  If you succeed, who cares?  We are just a moment in time but the point is that it is OUR moment.  So live without regret, live fully, live with love so when our time comes, we can approach it with a smile and peace of mind that we can sleep having lived a full life.

Today I am grateful for inclusion.  I’m talking about the kind of inclusion that doesn’t revolve around any type of title or belief or appearance or stigma.  This is the kind of inclusion where there are no criteria whatsoever to acceptance—you just ARE. There is no greater feeling than being understood and being able to explore all facets of personality deeply and find connection.  But there are some people in our lives, perhaps we’ve crossed paths before earlier in life, who don’t need any explanation of who we are or what we are—that doesn’t matter.  We could have known versions of each other from long ago and there is no gap in time.  There is no explanation needed about where we are now, the door is just quite literally open.  There is no greater feeling than not having to say a word because it isn’t about who is doing what, it’s about BEING present and aware and simply enjoying the moment.  That type of inclusion is a gift and something I strive to offer people.  If the door is open there are no expectations or qualifications—I’m doing it to learn about you, to understand you because there is no point in learning another fake version of someone.  We don’t need to add names to our lists, we need to add quality to the relationships we have and we do that by simply creating space.  I know it feels wonderful to be on either side of it—to have your intricacies welcomed and to be the one to make people feel welcomed. 

Today I am grateful for creativity. Oh did I open up a can of worms for my brain.  A few weeks ago my sister sent me some pictures from a night she learned how to make wreaths. I fell in love with what she made and it making wreaths was something that had been on my mind for a while but nothing I ever pursued.  When she sent that picture and I told her it was something I would love to do, she invited me to come with her.  I fell in love with it.  This is a side of my creativity I don’t often see because I’m working on so many other things AND I know my personality that once I start something like that it will very easily snowball into something bigger.  Regardless, I agreed to go because I really wanted to learn.  I felt parts of my brain awaken and it was such a needed reminder that we need to spend some time doing things just because we like to do it.  We need to feel our way to a connection with something that we don’t often do but still speaks to us.  There is beauty everywhere and we need to find ways to connect with it as often as possible.  I am so grateful she invited me because of what I got to learn.  Taking a craft and forming a connection is so important because it’s a connection to ourselves through creativity as well as other people and their ideas.  Any way to keep the brain going is key and it opens up new areas to ourselves.  

Today I am grateful for connection.  This is sensitive at the moment because this connection came from totally different places.  As a kid I often hung around my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin.  I met her sister in law (my uncle’s sister) many times as a kid but we never spent a ton of time together.  My Aunt passed about a year ago and my sister spent a lot of time working with her and it developed into a relationship built on old connection as well as the trauma of losing our Aunt.  We learned to make the wreaths mentioned above from her.  It was a beautiful reminder that, while we lost some family, we still have family in unexpected places.  Not only were we dealing with losing an Aunt, she was dealing with losing a sister in law.  The family’s are intertwined and that connection is still there in spite of the loss.  It was wonderful to be able to keep the connection alive while not fixating on the sad parts, to know that we could still find ways to connect and keep traditions alive even if a person was missing from the table.  There are seats we will never be able to fill, pieces of our hearts that feel empty, but there are ways to carry forward and remember the moments and people that matter.  That is how we keep people alive. 

Today I am grateful for connection.  I’m repeating this one because it is connection in a different context.  Relationships become contentious when we aren’t fully honest or open with our communication, that includes the things we hold back about.  Hearing my partner’s honest opinion and concerns (something I’ve asked for for a long time) has been a game changer.  I knew it would be and I am so happy that we’ve gotten to the point where we understand that the next evolution in our relationship is about that type of honesty and open communication.  We recognize what we need and what we want and we have learned how to share that with each other in a new way.  I don’t need to be overbearing or belabor the point and he doesn’t need to keep everything inside.  There is a middle ground and sharing those feelings never should make the other person mad—it’s a way to find out more about who the person is inside.  I’ve been with my husband for 24 years total and we’ve had amazing conversation and communication along the way but there is something so valuable about introducing new facets of our personalities to each other after this much time. There is always something to learn about ourselves and the people around us and it is that flexibility and creativity and understanding of each other that makes for a healthy relationship.  Connection and understanding are key.

Today I am grateful for progress.  I’ve had to refocus a lot of my projects lately.  I tend to start things and get scattered in the wind with what I want to do or I pivot a project and it doesn’t quite work out so I let it sit.  But I’ve gotten better about that over the last few months.  The things I want to do won’t do themselves and taking steps forward has been a solid reminder that the things I was overwhelmed with and the things I wanted to do but felt I couldn’t are achieved by taking a step.  Take one small action in the right direction and it is either one step closer or it is the momentum we needed to get things done.  Sometimes it’s both.  We move forward one step at a time and there are moments we have boosts that push us further down the road—but no matter what the key is the same: we have to put one foot in front of the other and take action.  Change isn’t easy and it doesn’t always look how we thought it would.  So staying the course and making those little baby steps eventually leads to great strides. Eventually we turn around and we don’t see the starting line anymore, we’ve moved beyond what was holding us back and the only way through is forward.  So keep going.  Make progress no matter how small.  And always remember that we will get where we need to be through those small actions every day. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Remember how important things seem at the time?  And we laugh about it now?  Can’t we imagine that it could apply to everything else as well?” Jack Lawrence. Following up on yesterday’s piece and how we build things up in our minds, this hits the nail on the head.  Whether it’s fear or the build up, like I said yesterday, we find that most of what we have on our minds isn’t that important in the long run.  Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time in fear and regret, I will 100% attest it’s a waste of time.  I remember and replay the incidents of my early teen years, things that wounded me so deeply at the time and I still feel that impact.  Yet I know every person involved in those stories has moved on and most of that crap is long forgotten.  For me as well—I’ve lived an entire lifetime since then filled with amazing things.  Why in the hell would I choose to stay stuck in the shitty moments that were indeed merely moments?

I can only imagine that we build the importance of specific events in our minds because the human mind is aware of the fact that all we have is now.  Even with the greatest imagination it can be difficult to fully envision  what the world has in store for us long term.  Life throws some curveballs—there is always the next thing.  Everything changes—good or bad, it all changes.  Every moment passes to the next one and we can’t stop it.  So rather than lament it or try to make everything we do perfect, simply LIVE.  Do the things we want to do and relish in life while we have the opportunity.  In the end we see it’s not that big of a deal and understand that we’d rather take the chance than not.  We can’t go back, we can only move forward and that doesn’t just apply to the moments that stand out to us—that is life. 

“Remember life is happening right now and most of what we do or what we’re scared of is just bullshit,” Jack Lawrence.  The fear is bullshit.  It’s that simple: what the mind tells us to be afraid of outside of legitimate life and death situations is only in our minds.  Most of what we’re afraid of is entirely in our heads and if our minds can’t tell the difference between thought and reality, then we have made ourselves captive to imagination rather than allowing that imagination to live and breathe with something far better than we could even imagine.  Fear keeps us small.  Remember that in the long run, most of what we do really doesn’t matter.  This is a giant playground that we are meant to figure out how the pieces work and what they can do. 

The truth is we are looking for meaning, both immediately and long term.  What we often forget is that the meaning of life is to live it. Legacy is a beautiful thing, we learn from history, we have that long lasting effect on the Earth. Sometimes that legacy and meaning comes in the present and we have to remember that we are learning new rules and ways to do things that teach those after us.  Sure it’s nice to sit in the shade of the trees we plant but it may very well be the case that the fruits of our labor feed those who come later.  And that’s ok because our presence is what fuels the now and creates that ripple effect.  Fear is imagined just as much as the good is.  What we focus on is what appears so why not choose the good?

Life comes with no guarantees of any kind.  We aren’t promised anything up to and including our purpose.  Just because we have a birthright doesn’t mean we fulfill it.  The only way that happens is with attention and intention.  We have now, that truly is it because the only guarantee is that we don’t know everything that’s coming and we certainly don’t know how our stories end.  Wasting time afraid of anything cheats us and the future of anything good that comes from taking the chance now.  Fear is in the mind.  It’s all in our minds so choose our focus wisely.  Choose awareness now.  We may have to climb some hills and we may have some losses along the way, but what we gain from action and learning is invaluable.  The risk is work the experience.