“Without a visual reference to what we need to do, we will follow what we see,” Brendon Bouchard.  This is a testament to the fact that we need to have a clear vision of what we have to do in order to get where we want to—we can’t just do things willy-nilly and think we will find our way otherwise we will end up working on someone else’s dream. If we don’t have a plan for our life then someone will fill it in.  I often struggle to find the middle ground so when I’m working out what needs to be done, I go to extremes: either every detail is planned to the second or I have no plan at all and wing it.  Neither is exceptionally effective because we can’t control every detail and winging it really won’t get it done.  The reason this quote caught my ear is because all life is a balance but it is so easy to get off track because we follow what we see.  We all need guide rails every now and then.

I thought of the visual reference as a cue—and that’s really what it is.  What we have in our environment is a trigger for us and it can set us up for success or failure.  No matter how organized we are, what we surround ourselves with has an impact on us.  For those of us with ADD/ADHD there are other challenges there because we may have the best intentions on doing something but we will squirrel off in a moments notice.  So for me, especially now that I work from home with my 9-5, I have had to create very distinct times/areas for me to do specific work.  That isn’t to say they don’t overlap, but in order to get anything done successfully, I need that defined space.  The space itself reminds me of what I need to do.

So this piece wasn’t meant to be a big inspirational deal, more of a reminder to set ourselves up for success no matter the arena.  If we are working toward personal freedom, we need to be disciplined about it and figure out what that means so we know what to do to achieve it.  When it comes to mental health, it pays to clear the unnecessary clutter and do the deep dive to figure out what matters and what we have the power to change in our lives.  No matter what we are working on, the message applies: make sure you have the tools and support you need to do the work and execute a plan.  You don’t need to know every step of the way but you need to be able to see that next step so get out of your own way. 

There is a concept of a unicursal line where no matter which way you go, you will end up in the same spot. The idea suggests that no matter what you choose, you will end up in the same spot so the choices we make are fairly irrelevant.  The don’t matter because no matter what the result is the same in the end. If we treat life like that, the pressure is relieved because it suggests that no matter what we choose we will always get where we are meant to be. Some may look at this as a defeatist mentality and question the futility of life but this is something that gives me hope because it takes the weight off of the every day.  Sure, we have a say in what happens, sure we can choose a different route to get there, but the unicursal line suggests that we were always meant to make that choice anyway—that we always WOULD have made that choice.  So it isn’t so much a matter of doomed to an outcome, but rather we have already played out every possibility and we would have settled on what we chose regardless so we are right where we need to be.

I fell in love with this because at this moment I am experiencing a different type of existential crisis. I’m watching the strongest people I’ve known in my life, the ones who were my guardrails, my guides, my heroes, the giants of what I thought it meant to be to LIVE, I’m witnessing them in their most human and vulnerable of states.  Of course they were always human.  They always had these states and they always had their weaknesses but witnessing the vulnerability of life is a reminder that we are all here at he same time and we will all endure the same fate at the end of the day no matter what our path looks like.  Some are granted a prettier path than others, that’s for sure, but even those with the glittery view will see the same thing in the end.  That gives  hope to a degree—we are all human and, regardless of what you believe the next step in this world is, we all return to the Earth in the end.

I spent a lifetime putting so much pressure on my decisions that I gave myself, not only decision fatigue, but I PTSD from trying to think so many steps ahead to see every possible outcome and what could happen to me.  I recently read that when we grow up in a home where there was a lot of yelling or the kids were yelled at in particular, we learn to be quiet because the smaller we are, the less noticed we are, the less chance we have of being “in danger” of being yelled at. In that regard, I can speak from experience and know this is true and it carries well into adulthood.  In full transparency I wasn’t yelled at directly very often, but I witnessed a lot of yelling in so many circumstances (yes, at myself but also at my siblings, at employees from the family business, from sibling to sibling both in the house and in the business, teacher to student, etc.) and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.  I wanted to be received and accepted and I didn’t want to be shunned—I already felt on the outside enough I didn’t want to add being in trouble to that equation as well.

So I chose the path of least resistance and keeping people happy in order to avoid being unhappy myself.  AT least I thought that made me happy.  It made me pliable and compliant and lost because I was small in so many ways.  When I raised my voice, no one bothered listening or that is when I was outright told I was doing something wrong so that taught me very clearly that I was….wrong.  That my opinion was wrong, that I should just keep quiet because the voice making noise belonged to someone else—not quite on the edge of seen and not heard but close enough.  I didn’t know how to reconcile it, reconcile the fact that I had ideas and knew they were good and that I came here to share ideas and simultaneously was being told to keep quiet.  SO this is my path: it doesn’t matter when I share the message because those who are meant to receive the message will get it in the right time.  I never lost my voice, I just needed to be in the right room to remember my power and to have it appreciated and, mostly, I needed to appreciate it myself.  So nothing I’ve done prior to this has damaged my ability to fulfill my purpose—I’m right on time, right on track, right where I belong.  This is it: life is now and it is everything it was supposed to be.   

“You are not responsible for how your growth journey makes other people feel,” Sahil Bloom.  Full transparency this quote was used in the context of children carrying the burden of adults around them and how not all adults are safe just because they are considered an adult.  This last line Bloom said, however, is remarkable in how it simply hits on the truth of a matter that applies to far more than just children learning to suffocate under the authority of an adult: it speaks to every time we undergo a change or evolution in our character and how people will always try to keep us as we were because it makes them feel safe and secure because they know the role we play in their lives.  Simply put, we don’t need to stay small because it makes other people feel better.  My growth may impact you, yes, it may affect how we interact and what we are able to do moving forward, even who we are to each other moving forward.  But that doesn’t mean I need to curb my journey to accommodate your desire to stay who you were when growth is called for.  And the truth is, I don’t get to decide when and how you grow/evolve nor do you get to choose that for me, so we can choose to grow together, or we can move forward on our path as we see fit.

Growth, change, evolution, taking the leap are about how WE feel, not how others feel.  I’ve borne witness to what life looks like when we have the opportunity to change and we cling so hard to what WAS that we lose the opportunity to move onto that next step.  It becomes a lifetime of wondering what the fuck happened and how we got where we are.  That is a feeling I have desperately tried to avoid at all costs because it is painful, sometimes even more so because it’s also avoidable.  I know what regret feels like (we all do) but I don’t want to regret missing out on the life I could have had because I was too afraid to move forward or I was more concerned about what you felt like in potentially leaving you behind (or the perception of leaving you behind).  Those who are meant to be with us will be with us on that journey and a good rule of thumb is that those who are supposed to be on the journey with us will be happy for whatever that evolution brings—and those who are REALLY in it will deal with their own evolution as well.  That’s how growth works—what works stays, what doesn’t falls away.

As a society we already fall into the habit of living up to standards from external influences and creating an image.  From the lizard brain perspective it makes sense because the more we fit in, the less exposed we are to any type of danger.  From the internal mental/emotional perspective, it’s a hindrance to who we are and, honestly, to those around us as well.  If we never align with the authentic version of ourselves, we inhibit our growth and the growth of those around us who were meant to learn.  What we are meant to be honestly never comes from outside—we know what it is.  When we have that knowing, we know that we can’t base our decisions on how other people feel and what their fears are.  We pass on fears and doubts along with bravery and boldness and we have the choice of what to express in our lives.  We have the choice on what wins and that needs to come from ourselves.  Whether someone likes it or not, we each get to express and live in our truth—their opinion on the matter is irrelevant.  We are responsible for not hurting people but not at the cost of ourselves.  We are not required to hurt ourselves to make other people feel better about their choices.  Grow even if others decide to stay in the dirt—we can’t force them to face the sun.  Perhaps we can give them enough shade to poke through and see the light but if we can’t, we still need to bloom.   

“I feel violent, like I’m dying, I feel broken, maybe I’m just breaking free,” Night Riots.  Ok, one more (tiny) piece on change that felt relevant because of what we talked about yesterday, how when we are scared we have to do it anyway.  Change CAN feel violent.  It’s the destruction of a former life, of what we knew/know and that truly is devastating to a degree—everything we knew is on the line and we have the potential to lose it.  It is truly a death because, as we learn in alchemy, the original no longer exists in the form it was; but as we ALSO learn in alchemy, the old exists within the new, just in different form.  Enduring any change/evolution is the shedding of skin we became comfortable in.  Once that skin starts getting tight, we see our growth is restricted so we have the choice to either stop growing and stay small, to suffocate because we grow within the confines, or to release the skin and step out into the world.  So change may be a death and it is a potentially violent process that breaks us, but at the end of it, no matter how raw we are, we are simply breaking free and stepping into all the possibilities that come with more space.    

 “If you can’t beat the fear, just do it scared,” Glennon Doyle.  This is an old one but it seemed important to bring it back now.  It’s not surprising at this stage in my life, there are a ton of changes happening and I’m in the throes of documenting some of the most difficult experiences I’ve ever had to speak about on top of reconciling changes in nearly every relationship I have at the moment, a new job, and construction in my home—it’s 100% chaos right now and every choice feels like it’s blurred/clouded.  Nothing is straightforward at the moment.  The truth is that I AM scared right now because these changes encompass everything from mortality to shifting life paths, creativity and purpose, power and struggle, and identity and the mask.  Everything is exposed, it’s all on the table (and in the case of my home quite literally all on the floor) and there are parts of me that I thought I could never live without that I don’t have a say in whether or not I get to keep it.  And I know that’s natural, that is the definition of life: change and evolution. I started to struggle with analysis paralysis and decision fatigue and realized that the first issue was that I was/am overstimulated and that makes it hard for anyone to think straight.  We know the universe sends us signs and for me it was hearing this quote again used in the context of a speech Ryan Leak was giving and it reminded me of what I say: when you don’t know what to do, do nothing until you can do SOMETHING.

Ryan expounded on this concept when he said, “Who’s to say you can’t be scared and still do it nervous?.”  If we continue to do nothing then nothing will ever get done and we will find ourselves in the same position for as long as we sit there—unicursal path or not, if we don’t move, we certainly won’t get anywhere.  Fear isn’t the deterrent, it’s our inability to get past it.  For me it’s ultimately the fact that I don’t want to look back and wish I had done something differently or to realize that I missed out on what I was supposed to do.  I also watched some videos of high divers/cliff divers and couldn’t fathom the idea of willingly jumping off of something to plunge into the water.  The height is terrifying but they still do it—the still find the courage to launch their bodies off whatever platform they are on and hit the water.  I realized that, even though I’m not jumping from 30-60 feet, the feeling of change is similar: we’re jumping off the edge of what we’ve known into something we can’t quite see the other side of.  There comes a point where you can’t go back and I heard in one of these videos that it was bad luck in diving to turn back once they were on the platform—so for us, once we are at that point, there truly is no turning back.  And that’s ok because if we are going to end up where we need to be then the concept is the leap was part of the journey all along.

There’s always the before and after—what it was like before we did this thing and then after.  What it was like with this person and then what it’s like in their absence.  What it was like at this job and then in a new job.  There is no way we can ever prepare for every single variable that occurs when we face a new challenge.  If we were required to do that, literally everything would stop because we wouldn’t be able to handle more complex issues than yes or no and, frankly, every decision would feel like life or death.  With that being said, the reality that we will have to do things while we are scared takes on a different look.  All we can do is prepare for what we know, for what we think may happen, and plan for what we want so we can somehow connect the two and close the gap between that before and after.  Sometimes the chaos is too much, sometimes there is too much change at once and it feels like we’re going to drown.  In those moments it is fully acceptable to stop fighting and try to float to gather our bearings.  But once we right ourselves again, we have to keep going.  It’s all part of the process.  It’s 100% true that once we take that leap we so often see it wasn’t as scary as we thought it was and part of life is figuring it out along the way.  Even if we are scared, we have to do it anyway because the alternative is looking back and wishing we had and not being able to do anything about it.  Change is a gift because it means we are alive and the truth is we have made living pretty scary sometimes.  It doesn’t have to be and even if we are afraid, life still moves forward so we may as well make the choice to leap when we want to.       

Today I am grateful for completion.  We’ve had the main level of the house under construction since March.  It’s been delay after delay, lesson after lesson, and frustration after frustration.  I can keep it in perspective and acknowledge in the grand scheme of things, this is not a huge issue.  I would be lying, however, to say that there was no impact on us mentally.  Having your house in some degree of unrest for any length of time is a pain, but to have the entire thing torn up and shifted over and over again and to have plans pushed aside and rerouted unexpectedly multiple times is wearing on ANYONE.  So this past week we received the last pieces of our project and we have been able to start to put things back together.  The relief is immense and I am so grateful that we can make some progress getting things where they belong.  It’s also awesome to see a vision come together like that.  I can’t say that the wait was worth it because 90% of the delays had nothing to do with us but I WILL say the vision is spot on and it is beautiful—it took time but it got to where we wanted it.  And I can breathe again.

Today I am grateful for surprises.  We’ve been invited to a conference for our business.  We haven’t been able to attend the last several years for various reasons but we received the invitation, and because we are gluttons for chaos, we accepted it.  Truthfully, it will be chaotic, there is no denying it, but this is a huge gift and we couldn’t have anticipated this.  This is an opportunity for us to really get things off the ground and make huge strides for the business and for other connections.  This is a networking gig unlike any other and I am so happy we have better awareness of what’s to come and what we will do moving forward.  This is a chance to move things forward in our lives and I am so happy to keep that in perspective. I wouldn’t be able to do this without my current role, without the changes I’ve made over the last few months.  I am proud, I am excited, and I am ready.  The time is right.  This is one of those moments that proves things happen when they are meant to.

Today I am grateful for family.  There are a lot of dynamics at play right now and I am learning to simply take people as they are.  We often don’t realize how much we expect people to live up to our standards.  I’m truly not speaking in the malicious sense, I’m talking in the way we think people are, we think we know them because they’ve been a certain way for a long time, and suddenly they are this different person.  They no longer fit the mold of how we knew them.  It’s an adjustment and it can be painful but the roles we play with people change.  I’m grateful my family is around no matter what role they have in my life.  I love that I still get to see their names come up on my phone, that I get to hear their voices.  It’s a gift.

Today I am grateful for finding peace.  I never realized what a journey it would be to find peace.  It sounds like such an easy thing—just be peaceful, allow peace, stay away from what causes unrest.  Buddhism talks about life being suffering and how we can’t avoid it but we have to work with it.  Because of suffering we know what joy is and because of unrest and disturbance we know what peace is.  Life will never be smooth sailing all around.  It will never be easy all day every day.  But what we can do is find a way to create peace in ourselves.  We can find a way to manage peace with who we are because when we find peace with who we are we know we can handle anything.  Peace is an acceptance, that’s really all it is. It’s a knowing that no matter what comes our way we can handle it.  I’ve allowed myself to be rattled for too long and that isn’t a place that feels good.  For me it’s almost instinct to find the negative/fear/unrest because there’s a compulsion to solve things in a way, to find purpose.  We find peace when we know our purpose because the rest of the distraction goes away.  So in a way, peace comes not only with acceptance, but with focus and action (more detail coming).  Taking steps and moving forward gives us peace because we have a direction and that makes all the difference in the world.      

Today I am grateful for purposeful action.  Conceptually I’ve been aware of purposeful action my entire life—we have a purpose and we do something about it.  In practice, that didn’t work so well.  Between distraction and people pleasing, we lose sight of what matters at times.  I’ve also never been a person who could do one thing at a time.  Multiple goals, multiple projects, and things to do—the goal itself was to complete as much as I could.  Part of that was natural interest and curiosity—I have interest in a variety of things.  But jumping from thing to thing gets us nowhere.  I am grateful to be reminded that sometimes slow and steady wins the race.  We can’t drink out of the fire hose—sometimes we just need to slow down and prioritize.  At some point we realize that there are no mistakes and we end up exactly where we need to be no matter what we do.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Your future self is always watching, always being built,” Dritan Hodo.  Ah, the universe has a way of reminding us at all times that we are on track.  Just as we talked about yesterday with letting go of the past so we can embody the future, we need to know what that future looks like and what we are striving for.  Know who we are and allow that vision/version of ourselves to shine through—let it come out in all its glory and color.  We have to make the choices based on where we are going, not on where we were with the exception of learned lessons.  The future is waiting. The past is done and we can do nothing about it.  That’s why it hurts when we hold onto it for so long and it becomes a detriment because we are carrying something unnecessarily.  We’ve learned the lesson, we need to move on.  If we are to be a model for our future self, we need to let go of the past otherwise we will continue to get the same thing. 

The future changes all the time which may seem contradictory to the concepts of the singular path we’ve talked about recently.  I think even that singular path is meant to embody changes—it already comes with the twists and turns and it will still get us where we were headed.  So we can alleviate some of the pressure in that regard and allow the path to unfold and make the choices that feel right.  I believe that is partially why the future is constantly changing as well because we are meant to adjust.  Our intuition is a self-steering guide post/marker.  If I want something, I need to be a version of myself that can get it, an inspiration to what my future self will want to do to fulfill that purpose.  What we decide now does impact who we are tomorrow and when we zoom out, we see that we were always who we are and that choice would have brought us to that version anyway. 

“Stop rehearsing the past and start embodying your future,” zuluisms.  I’ve spoken numerous times about letting the past lie, how we can’t carry the weight of it with us because it gets too heavy.  One of the biggest mistakes I ever made (but didn’t want to fully admit until I was an adult because I didn’t want it to be my fault) was that I held onto everything from the past.  Part of it is my nature because I am a record keeper.  I detail and remember everything—sure that’s gotten a bit hazy as I’ve gotten older and have been dealing with more periods of stress—and the past was something that played over and over in my mind and the mind can’t tell what is real and what isn’t.  If it’s playing in our mind, it thinks it’s happening right now.  So if I’m reliving what was already done and thinking about the emotion of it, then I’m carrying and living through that emotion again in the present.  If that isn’t something I want to experience then I don’t have to.  I can envision and start living a new vision—something better to come. 

This can be easier said than done—I am a living testament to that.  I was afraid to let go of it because I was afraid I would forget and my entire life I wanted to remember.  I was born behind the 8 ball so to speak—all the major family events were ending by the time I came around, the parties were ending, the gatherings were dwindling, the usual meetings on Sundays were further and further apart and no one seemed to want to do anything about it.  I wanted all of that, I wanted the memories the rest of the family had so I clung to everything, desperately trying to instill and feel that nostalgia and that inclusiveness that they had.  But that led to some difficult habits because I lived in a manufactured past, something that wasn’t my own.  And that led to remembering all the things I didn’t want to, every mistake, every minute error that wouldn’t be an issue to anyone else yet seemed to drive me insane because I couldn’t change it.  It was a past I wanted and didn’t have and past I had but didn’t want and both of them kept me from being where I was.

Presence is one of the simplest yet most challenging things we have to accept the concept of.  We remember things so linearly but that isn’t how time works.  It all IS and that’s what makes time so complicated.  We are here and now but we have all of those pieces of the past in us.  Throw in the influence of those around us, the blood in our veins, and the happenings of the moment, and we can very easily get skewed in where we are going.  We are all multiple versions of ourselves at all times but we know who we are at the core and we have to remember that and live that no matter what we go through.  The future us is there no matter what we do and we need to make sure we are honoring the version of ourselves we want to be.  I had to learn how to create a vision for myself so I had an idea of where I was going—where I wanted to go and who I wanted to be that honored who I was but also who I AM.  We don’t get to where we are without being who we were.  It’s complicated and painful at times but it is always beautiful because there is no erasing what we’ve been through—but it isn’t what has to be moving forward.  We simply need to BE.

I’ve had a long standing question/struggle about ego.  I couldn’t tell if certain instances bothered me out of pride or out of genuine bother.  Like, was I really the wronged party or did it just feel shitty?  Was I angry or was I embarrassed?  Was this a matter of needing to be right and control or was this truly about disrespect and not being heard?  I’m coming to terms with some habits I have with my relationships that I’m still recovering from my past life. I bend over backwards for people I love—and I love quickly.  Once you’re in my inner circle, you’re in and there is no holding back.  I realize now that there is a pattern of trauma bonding and oversharing in order to make myself validated and needed and accepted.  I asked how I keep attracting these people who have little to no regard for what they do to people or little or no regard to how other people feel about what they’ve done yet they are hyper aware when they feel they’ve been wronged.  One can always argue that we are only responsible for our actions and with free will we can’t make people behave a certain way and they can’t make us feel any way either—we are responsible for how we feel.  The truth of the matter is there IS truth to that but it is far more complicated than simply choosing to not feel a certain way.  We are animals, feelings are wired to reactions.  So knowing that, I think it’s reasonable to say that we all have a role in how people behave.  No, we aren’t responsible for someone’s reaction but we are responsible for our intentions.

The reason I’m still confused is that I can still see both sides.  I’m an emotional person and I can be quite reactive—and quite explosive in my reactions at times.  But I’m also a very clear cut person.  I don’t beat around the bush when it comes to letting people know how I feel because I don’t like to play games.  If I’m at the point where I’m telling you something bothers me, I’m serious. So if the behavior continues when I’ve made my feelings known, then that has been a choice on YOUR part.  You are aware of how I feel, I’ve asked you to stop, you’ve chosen to do it again.  At that point I have a choice, of course—I can discuss it again or I can walk away.  But either response at that point is a result of your choice to engage with me in that manner.  I don’t feel like those are circumstances where one can fairly say, “You’re responsible for how you react.”  There are people who behave in pointed ways designed to poke the bear and when the bear responds, that isn’t an unexpected thing.  You can’t claim to be the victim when you’ve instigated the very reaction you knew would come.  That is spiteful, vindictive, and intentional.  So in that regard, I’ve come to a sort of conclusion: it isn’t necessarily ego, it’s energy and if I FEEL your intent behind it, then the reaction is appropriate and it isn’t about ego. 

We respond to energy and energy never lies.  It is always sending messages and frequencies.  Sure, some energy triggers our ego but other energy is simply telling us what’s going on.  It’s amazing how much we lie to ourselves in this society where people treat us like we don’t know what they’re doing and we’re not allowed to talk about it because somehow calling people on BS is rude but we don’t talk about the manipulation or anything else prior to that, the thing that caused the response.  We can have philosophical conversations all day about how we don’t need to respond to certain behaviors, but I reiterate, we are animals and the bottom line is this: people shouldn’t do shitty things to each other.  We shouldn’t do shitty things and expect people to take it.  The truth is if we are evolved enough to manage our reactions and emotions, then we are evolved enough to know how to treat people and read the room.  And common sense dictates that we wouldn’t do something to cause harm to ourselves in that fashion.  The other point is that I don’t expect people to manage my emotions—like if something bothers me, I will handle the response (this is different than the reaction).  But I am not responsible for behaving in a way that ensures you feel a certain way—that’s manipulation.  To expect someone to behave a certain way so you feel something specific is manipulation.  So at the end of the day, I stand by what I say and can worry less about ego.  Sometimes it’s just the energy you’re giving out.

“When you’re proud of yourself, you don’t really pay much attention to what other people are doing,” Mel Robbins.  Yesterday we touched on self-esteem and understanding it’s ok (and necessary) to walk away from those who don’t see our value—our job isn’t to convince the world of our value.  Robbins brings in an interesting point in that if we see our own value, the opinion of the rest of the world sort of falls away.  The outside world becomes irrelevant because we have found our own rhythm with the nature of OUR world and we are driven by our purpose rather than approval of that purpose.  We have accepted our place and know we are doing the right thing.  If we find peace and are happy/content doing what we are doing, then we don’t really need to worry if someone else is ok with how we find that peace.  Having that purpose and following it to our own satisfaction eliminates the distraction of seeking approval and that is when we can get the real work done. 

Pride can be a confusing word for some people because it comes with a lot of implications. When I first heard Mel say that, I cringed a bit because I personally have a sour relationship with that word mainly because of how people interpreted my own pride.  I wasn’t allowed to be proud of anything because it was considered showing off so pride held a negative connotation for me.  If we are proud, are we egotistical?  If we are proud, are we arrogant?  And the truth is pride in anything can very easily turn into either ego or arrogance or both.  It’s also important to not confuse pride with attention seeking—we are allowed to share our work and if we can do that for the sake of the work rather than the reaction of others, we are on the right track.  The human animal needs a certain level of pride in what they do to succeed—it’s an evolutionary thing to fuel us in what we do well and to direct us toward our purpose.  Those moments when we are too proud and seek control over others to satisfy our own whims is when it gets to a bad place.  But we need a healthy dose of pride to keep us focused and grounded—pride to fight for what we know is right and for what we know we have done well.

I think my comfort level with this quote is more around the concept that if we are satisfied with what we are doing, we are allowed to be content with that, and yes, even proud of it.  The point is that when we have that internal satisfaction, we tend to not focus on what other people think.  We can ignore someone else’s idea of what is enough because we are focused on the work for the sake of the work, not to gain someone’s approval.  Again, when we are proud of what we do and we find contentment in that purpose, we don’t seek validation from external sources.  My own battles with pride are my problem and I know some people might find it strange to be triggered by that word (of all things) meant to inspire us but I find that we need to reconcile that inner driver with what makes us happy so we have our focus aligned correctly.  The focus is the goal, the work itself, the things that make us happy—not if other people accept that we are happy or living up to their expectations.  We are more than capable of finding peace and contentment when we are satisfied with what we are doing and that’s exactly what we need to do.