I recently came across the fascinating story of Betty Reid Soskin through doing a series about finding her voice.  The piece I saw opened with her saying, “I have been so many women, it’s hard to remember all of them.”  it’s true on so many levels. Too often we become stuck in this version of ourselves and we have no clue who we are.  She shared that she had a mental break down at 40 and started singing songs and that she had been discovered a number of times, that she didn’t become a park ranger until she was 85 years old, and that at 101 years old she now feels as if she is starting over.  Think of the lifetimes we live.  In that context, think again, Betty says, “I have been so many women, it’s hard to remember all of them.”  How simply poignant and prophetic?  We can redefine who we are at any time.  I often speak of finding ourselves and creating a foundation and I guess I never gave much thought to the longevity of that.  Yes, I’ve also spoken of the importance of evolving and keeping up and staying true to our course, but even that, I guess, is still too rigid because it suggests finding a box to belong in at any given time.  There are so many miracles and wonders in life, we never know what is going to happen in the big picture.  We need to constantly exist in flex and trust that it’s all for the good

There is no need to stress about what’s happening in any given moment, there is no need to remain stuck in what other people tell us we are, there is no need to wallow in the emotion of what other people “make” us feel.  It’s all temporary.  I still don’t think we have an awareness of how much of our own suffering we create, how much we trap and limit ourselves.  We can decide to change that course at any time.  We do not need to define ourselves with or by temporary people and their opinions.  Keep sight of the bigger picture and learn to operate from there without the noise of others.  It’s important to know that our purpose can change as well.  As we adapt and become who we are meant to be in whatever season we are in, we will continue to “become.”  I’m learning very clearly that not everyone is for us, not everyone will even like us.  And that is ok.  It isn’t about being liked.  It’s about liking ourselves.  Change as often as necessary.  Each version will be true to ourselves as long as we follow the calling of what speaks to us.  Follow the whims and curiosities and see how they weave together in a beautiful story that makes our lives. 

The point is life begins at any time, don’t be afraid to start over.  We decide what we want this life to be.  We decide how we want to feel and we can start afresh in any given moment.  We can lean into how we want to feel and ask ourselves if it aligns with who we are, and we can shift course at any time.  It takes a massive amount of strength and will-power, but it is more than possible.  We don’t want to attach because nothing is permanent.  We don’t want to define because we are so many things.  Time is generous if we allow it to be and if we follow the presence of where we are.  We aren’t here to live for others, we are here to fulfill a purpose, and yes, that purpose should benefit others, but it isn’t FOR them, it is the expression of the universe through us.  It requires an allowing of the true versions of us to come through.  It doesn’t matter what season we are in, we can adapt or shift as necessary.  Find our voices and use them. 

“The search for truth does not end with the search for the truth of the world.  The search for truth begins with the search for the truth of yourself,” Ashmi Pathela.   This is a great follow up to yesterday’s piece.  Nothing external will give us the answer to who we are.  It takes work and effort to remain clear enough with ourselves that we know who we are and where we are headed.  As mentioned in yesterday’s piece, sometimes we get lost in the proving and the doing instead of the becoming.  Even if we still have those habits, I want to remind everyone that just because something did or didn’t happen years ago, doesn’t mean there isn’t still time for it to happen now.  There may be a certain loss in the sense that we can’t get back the time we had, but there is great hope in what we can do with our time remaining.  Things can change in the blink of an eye and shifting that perspective can just as quickly propel us forward.  Don’t get hung up on what didn’t happen—make those things we desire happen now. 

I found out last week that a former classmate passed away about a month ago.  I wasn’t friends with the girl, I knew her, but we weren’t anywhere near the same groups.  I honestly couldn’t even remember her last name so I pulled out one of the old yearbooks and looked her up.  My son asked what the book was and I explained that it told the story of the highlights of the school year when I was a kid.  As I ran through the book, I re-read the articles and stories.  At first it was a cute feeling of nostalgia and after a few minutes, it turned into a sinking feeling in the stomach.  I barely found myself anywhere in that book and it sent me down a deep spiral of anxiety and anger and shame.  It seemed I forgot who I was a long time ago.  What have I done with my life?  Where did the girl with all the ambition go?  Where did the girl with no fear go?  Then it went deeper; earlier that week I’d been walking around work on the verge of depression when I asked myself: What did I expect?  I’m still in some of those same environments I was that long ago—no wonder I still feel the same.  Cue instant anxiety…well, maybe anxiety isn’t the word.

I felt lost.  Like I wasn’t able to get my footing for a moment because I realized that I never became who I wanted to be because I stayed stuck in who I was.  Existential moment in full force, here.  There are moments I still don’t understand how I’ve ended up repeating these patterns as long as I have, I think about it all the time.  I got lost in the proving and the running around making myself feel better.  I never took the time to simply follow my heart after getting honest about what I wanted to do and accomplish with my own life.  Seeing so many of my peers pass away gives me almost a numbing feeling because the reality is I see the life they lived and how much life was in their lives and how quickly we can lose that—why am I wasting this precious time doing the same things over and over again, allowing the cycle of fear and depression to creep up when I know there are healthier places for me to be.  it isn’t about proving anything anymore, we can waste an entire lifetime trying to prove.  It’s about surrendering and allowing. 

The truth is I’m glad I had that little breakdown/existential crisis because I have a tendency to miss the obvious.  I can shout the obvious all I want, but that doesn’t mean it hits me the same way.  I need a big change.  I thought I was the person who could change my life with a combination of sheer will and attacking multiple things at once.  That endeavor has failed and it’s gotten me in deeper than I wanted to be.  It’s time to stop doing.  We all feel that way: we can only take on so much before we feel like we’re drowning.  In those moments we have to learn to let go and float.  We will be able to orient ourselves better when we stop fighting where we are.  I know it feels like we will get pulled under, but we can trust that we will find our way.  We have to give up the familiar in order to find the greatness of what we are meant to do.  We find our way, and sometimes we need a reminder to stop squandering this gift.

We all need this short reminder today: The lion never apologizes for roaring, the wolf never apologizes for howling—never apologize for using our voices.  Ego makes us want to silence others and there are times our own ego will silence us.  We question what we know and we worry about how people will perceive us if they don’t understand what we are saying.  Yes, there are cases where the ego can make us talk too much—there are always people who just want to hear the sound of their voice—but I’ve even learned to appreciate those people.  Hearing the voice at least gives opportunity to discover what people really think or get to the root of it.  Sometimes it takes people longer, more muddling, more words to get to the root of what they really feel and need to share.  The point is, never be ashamed for using our voice.  Learn to hone it and learn when to use it appropriately, and all the power you need comes.  There is value in our voice.  There is value in what we have to say.  Using our voices appropriately and creating space for each other creates connection—but the connections we need, not the connections of convenience or the connections where we have to behave a certain way, but the connections with those who see us.  Our voices make it clear who we are and allow us to be seen by those who need us, and who we need.  Use our voices without shame and allow those connections to form. 

I’ve known for a long time that something is off in several of my environments.  Call it intuition or simply picking up on unhidden signals, but it’s pretty obvious that something isn’t right. Yet I keep going back because part of me needs that environment in the moment because I am not yet able to transition out.  I get hopeful as I heal and believe I can handle the situation, thinking that I can react differently, or even feel differently, and then as soon as I get a bit closer in the circle, I’m right back where I started.  If you want to stop the merry go round of emotions and feeling stuck, learn to trust your gut.  This isn’t about being liked or accepted, this is about knowing what is right for us and doing that.  There are some people who are not for us, and if we have that feeling for even a second, believe it.  There are people who will make you believe they are your friends but they are out to destroy you.  We aren’t for everyone and we aren’t meant to be.  Learn to be ok with that.

I’ve come to the conclusion that most people never mentally age beyond their high school mentality because we are forced to choose who we are in high school.  We continue to discount who we are in favor of what we were forced to choose.  So the environment I’m in is a lot like that.  Unhealthy communication, lots of ego, lots of attempting to outdo each other, LOTS of talking behind people’s backs.  I know that I am on the outs with this group, for lack of a better way to explain it.  They know nothing about what I actually do and they assume an awful lot about my capacity and what I “should” be doing.  I know what they say and how they feel even if they don’t say it to me—I can read it all over them, I can feel it when we are together.  A lot of people think that simply because they don’t say it, we don’t know it, but that isn’t true.  As we have worked together, I’ve seen the behaviors repeating again and I am now at the point where I can no longer tolerate it.  I don’t have the energy to prove anymore, or to make them see what I’m doing—I never should have had to. 

I wrote a while back about environment, and our environment can make us sick.  Sometimes people will do everything to make you believe you’re the problem when the reality is the environment is so off, the place and the people just aren’t for us.  You can never truly heal in an environment that made you sick.  We are allowed to see things differently and not everyone can come with us when we are on a different level.  This isn’t about superiority, it’s about a different view.  We have a vision for a reason and there are people who will simply never see what we do.  See it anyway, trust it anyway.  Don’t allow anyone to cut you down because they don’t share in the vision.  If people start treating you as a burden or an option because you have a viewpoint that isn’t like there’s, that’s more than a red flag.  Don’t ever forget that options are always available and we don’t need to stay where we got sick.  Most importantly, if you KNOW something is off, don’t force it, and don’t try to appease—acknowledge and try to move on. 

Today I am grateful for honesty.  We all need radical honesty in our lives at some point.  I’ve considered myself honest to a fault with myself because I’m the first one to point out my flaws at any turn.  But I don’t’ think I’ve been honest about my abilities.  I like to think I can do anything—and yes, there is a point where I can do it all, anyone can if they need to.  But I have to admit that I’ve always felt this extra push to need to prove I can do it.  I have been, at a minimum, disrespected/ignored/looked over, and at the extreme end, tortured most of my life because of the way I look.  There is this automatic assumption that I can’t do it.  I’m guilty for playing into that for things I didn’t want to do, but there comes a point where I don’t need to have to do anything extra to prove the point that I can do what anyone else can.  I don’t need to put in the extra hours to show my effort if I’ve managed to get the work done in half the time.  There is no point in going beyond when that effort is not rewarded, and perhaps that’s ego as well, but in my field that doesn’t go anywhere.  Knowing when to put aside ego and being honest about when it IS ego is key.

Today I am grateful for healing.  There comes a point in working with honesty and knowing what needs to change that the healing begins.  I know this isn’t an overnight process, it’s something I’ve been working on for years, but knowing where I need to put in the effort matters.  I’ve also noticed how cyclical it is.  As soon as I think I have a hold on it, I feel like I’m dragged back to where I was.  That could also be my ADHD to be fair—jumping from thing to thing before I’ve actually managed to finish a task.  I’m grateful to shift perspective and understand what it means to actually take control.  I’ve still been working on controlling external stuff, things I can do nothing about.  Healing has nothing to do with control, it has everything to do with clarity.  Shedding what we aren’t in favor of what we are.  Healing is the letting go and allowing. 

Today I am grateful for time.  I have the upcoming week off work and I am thrilled.  The overwhelm and busyness of my mind has gotten out of control, and even with new medication, I’ve felt like I’ve been spiraling.  I need the time to think, the time to plan, the time to organize, the time to clean, the time to have fun, the time to dig deep, the time to figure out what I want to do next, the time to get really honest about what decisions I need to make moving forward to live the life I actually want to live.  I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but the time is so important.  I’ve had way too many irons in the fire and it has simply started to burn and consume me.  It’s time to start prioritizing and taking aligned action consistently.  Know who I am and do the things that that version of me does.  Simply start doing.  Let go of ego and let the old fall away, stop trying to be something that fits in multiple worlds.  Become.

Today I am grateful for forgiving.  I never realized how important forgiveness is on a healing journey, not just forgiving others, but forgiving myself.  I didn’t exaggerate in the earlier gratitude that I’ve struggled with worth because of outside opinions all of my life.  Truthfully, I always saw myself as capable regardless of what others thought, I just always had to work twice as hard to show it.  That made me angry and resentful at every turn.  I didn’t know any better because of the hurt I felt in those moments.  I couldn’t understand how people didn’t see the truth of what I am simply because they couldn’t overlook my height.  I hated myself for not being able to change that.  I have to forgive that hatred I felt for me.  I don’t know what it is, but there’s a reason I’m like this.  I can refocus that energy on hating who I am and direct it toward becoming who I REALLY am.  Forgiveness is healing.

Today I am grateful for generosity.  We went to my son’s former teacher’s house as part of a garage sale this weekend.  First of all, I have to say I completely am in awe and respect for the ingenuity, organization, creativity, and energy teachers have.  This woman has been out of school for one week and she managed to pull together thousands of items she had and prepare them for this event—including signs and decorations and tents.  She offered incredible discounts for her former students and to up and coming teachers for some amazing tools to help shape these kids.  Teaching and helping people was evident in her core at this event.  What a gift to have this woman in our lives.

Today I am grateful for connection.  One of my employee’s family was struck by real tragedy this past week and she opened up to me about it.  So many memories came up as my family experienced similar events, and I am so grateful for any support I was able to offer her.  Hearing a human break is one of the most viscerally gut-wrenching things we can go through.  Knowing how to hold people up at their lowest is a gift—not in the respect of “look at how strong I can be for you,” but in regards to the connection that comes from being human and knowing what that bottom feels like.  As painful as it is, there are times we need to be reminded that there are moments all we need to do is be there for other people.  We can’t fix it, we can’t make them heal, we can’t make them see what they aren’t ready to see, we can simply be present for them so they can lean on us and stand back up.  It truly is a gift.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.    

“It is getting harder to say yes to anything that is not a full body yes.  If a pathway does not move your heart, call to your soul, make you giddy with excitement, it is feeling more difficult to commit yourself to it,” Ashmi Pathela.  I have never agreed with something more viscerally than I have with this statement.  It’s partially where I’m at in life, learning to lean toward the things that make me happy, the things that bring me joy, taking care of me in a way that is aligned with my soul rather than people pleasing.  It’s also just a profound, simple truth.  We consider it natural to sacrifice and do things we don’t actually want to do.  We think it impolite to point out that we have differences from other people in regards to taste or how we want to spend our time.  That diminishes our natural instincts.  I’m not saying that we need to say yes to everything, I’m saying that we need to get in touch with that voice inside that tells us what we really like and what we really want to do.

There seems to be something in the air lately that makes this statement stick out.  It’s getting harder and harder to find motivation to do work that serves no purpose.  There was a time when we’d simply go about our routine and do what needed to be done.  That was the point.  Now it’s harder to do things that don’t matter on a personal level.  There’s a reason for that.  I think as we see more and more systems fall apart, the more we question what our purpose is, the more challenging it is to do anything that feels like it doesn’t fit.  I also believe that is by design.  As more fields are exposed that their operational design is to keep people on the hamster wheel, we see we don’t want to be treated like we only have one option in life, to keep that wheel going.  We want to feel alive and be free of what we are told to want.  We hone our instinct and realize what we need.  Like we talked about this week, doing what makes us come alive is how we live.  Why spend our time doing anything other than what we love? 

Time is the most valuable resource we have and it should be filled with things that excite and energize us.  We tend to our own desires over those around us.  Again, I’m not saying to ignore others or not help others, I’m saying don’t sacrifice our own dreams and desires for the sake of helping others.  We need to learn to respect each other enough that we don’t hold others accountable for our dreams.  Our dreams are our responsibility and that’s why it’s so important to do the things that make us feel good and it’s equally important to allow others to respond to that as well.  We aren’t all going to be on the same page all the time, and we aren’t all going to want to go after the same goal at the same time.  We have no interest in competing for something that requires no competition in the first place.  Simply lean into what feels right, the things that bring excitement in.  Those are the things we need to be all in for, the things we need to spend our time working with.  When we can’t do the same routine anymore, ask what brings that spark back.  Go do that, and then find the next spark.  Then continue.  Soon our bodies and souls will be lit with the energy of doing what we love.  DO THAT.

Work harder on yourself than you do your job.  If you work hard at your job you can make a living.  If you work hard on yourself you can make a fortune.  I love this one because it speaks directly to the core of what we need to change.  We’ve lived for millennia trying to secure a living doing things that make other people rich.  We’ve lived by standards that were designed to keep classes in effect for the illusion of power over others.  We thought it worked until we realized the extent of the damage that causes.  We are told working gives us purpose but that is a lie.  Working on our purpose is what creates value in our lives.  We no longer live in an age where sacrifice is truly required by anyone, we just like to think that others have to suffer for our gain or that we need to fight each other for resources.  Both are false.  When we take the time to work on and with our inner path and find our purpose, all that external crap falls away and we find our needs are very different than what we were told.  We question things like why we would devote our lives to someone else’s dreams.

That isn’t to say that dreams don’t align with other people and we can’t come together to focus on that cause, but the system we have in place where we work the majority of the time to make others rich is no longer enough for any of us.  We realize it’s wrong and we also realize that this pie we’ve been told has a limited number of pieces is much larger than we thought.  Or damn, that we can even bake our own pie if we need to.  We still operate from a position of lack when there was a time of limited opportunity.  In today’s age, things are limitless.  We don’t need to sacrifice our time and energy for the sake of someone else any longer.  We can change how we operate.  So.  When we take the time to connect with who we are and learn our path, when we decide to devote ourselves to that path, when we realize that our gift is meant to be shared with others, that is when we realize that the inward focus benefits not only us, but others as well.  We were told to have a singular focus and the job would take care of us but that is not the case.  We were told focusing on our goals and desires (those outside of what society prescribed) was selfish.  That is also false.  All of it is false.

See, the point of working on ourselves isn’t to be indulgent or selfish.  It’s to learn who we are and to share that.  Why do we feel the need to share anything of who we are with the world?  Well, there are some people who simply like the attention but I’m not talking about that.  But there are people whose experience resonates on a different level with others.  They aren’t seen simply because they want to be seen, rather they are seen because they have some common ground that people resonate with.  We are meant to give each other hope.  We are meant to inspire creation in each other.  Working on those skills matters.  Jobs come and go, desires come and go, but our purpose remains constant.  The point of a job is survival, the point of purpose is to thrive.  We can have multiple purposes in life, that is true, but overall, we are meant to spend our time connecting with each other rather than having power over each other.  Master who we are and the rest falls into place.    

Social awkwardness was bestowed upon me as a young child—I know I’m not alone in this.  I always tried to be older than I was to fit in with my siblings which made it challenging to make friends with kids my age.  Not that I didn’t have friends, I managed to secure a great group of people who have been in my life for upwards of 30 years now.  I just didn’t know how to relate to people on a superficial level.  I still struggle with small talk to this day.  I’m always ready to dive in and get deep with people.  Not everyone is ready for that and I know it can turn some people off or even feel intrusive.  For others, they simply aren’t ready to have those conversations.  I think, like many of us, I’m trying to figure out a deeper meaning to it all and I’m overanalyzing people when I just need to relax.  Journey and destination again. 

With all of that being said, I have managed to find some people who I truly value as an adult.  It’s a different thing to find people when we are older.  It’s a fortunate thing to find someone we connect with and care about.  Those people are gifts and meant to be in our lives to bring us to a different level.  They are meant to help us work through things at different phases.  For example, my son’s friend’s mom.  My kid truly connected with her kid, and through their relationship, we’ve developed a new friendship.  It was about the kids at first and as we’ve talked, we’ve learned a lot about each other and we have a connection now.  And one thing I love about our generation is that when we learn to speak to each other from a place of real connection, we see that we all deal with the same shit.  Our experiences, while they happen to us, are more human than personal.  The more we can share, the more connection we have.

I’ve learned that it takes a lot of honesty to form those connections.  Most of us still want to make it seem like we are a certain way or that we don’t struggle.  Some people look at struggle as weakness when it’s an opportunity to come together to find a way to tackle things together.  We’ve forgotten the value of cooperation.  It can be hard to work with people who don’t share a common life experience as us because we each have different expectations of how to tackle and solve a problem.  But the more we share with each other, the more we learn to see other options and other angles.  My adult friendships have shown me that there are always ways to survive, there are always ways to get through.  My own experience has taught me that I can survive things I didn’t think I could and that I have input for others as well.  I value the friendships I’ve made as an adult because it seems there is an openness and less proving. It’s more connecting and that is what we all need: to be seen and accepted as we are.            

There come a few points in life when we realize what we are doing or the environment we are in isn’t working any longer.  The things that used to feel good or that we used to tolerate become painful and intolerable, seemingly overnight.  This isn’t to say that where we are is bad, it’s just that we recognize it’s no longer a good fit for us.  Similar to the lobster we talked about a few weeks ago, we outgrow both who we are and where we are.  When there is limitation to expansion, we feel that discomfort.  We are meant to use those signals as motivation to analyze where we are and make adjustments to the environment or ourselves.  That realization can be scary.  We spend a lot of time curating our lives and we do find a level of safety and comfort in what we build.  Saying that those spaces we create for ourselves no longer fit feels like a threat.  Like the lobster, we are soft without our shells, and that means we are vulnerable if we ever have to shed that shell.  Plus, why would we want to leave a place we spent so much time perfecting?

That’s where most of us get stuck.  We look at what we’ve done and fear what we need.  Building an entire life based on who we are in one moment seems kind of pointless without understanding that we won’t be that version of ourselves forever.  We have this expectation that we decide who we are at 18 and that we must be that forever.  Some people are gifted enough that they know their identity at that age, but for most people, the prefrontal cortex is still developing until our late 20’s.  That means we are still learning to identify ourselves until we are almost 30 years old.  Plus the ability to make a decision at a young age and carry that into later life is becoming increasingly rare (ie you can’t choose one job and stay there for over 30 years any longer—no pensions, health insurance etc.).  Things change too quickly to stay the same any longer.  Technology has made it so finding any level of comfort in repetition is pointless because we have to adapt to any changes. 

So getting back to environment, I felt my lobster moment several times this past week.  In a conversation with my boss and again in a conversation with my husband.  In both circumstances, I realized that I simply don’t fit in that environment any longer and it isn’t healthy to try and force myself to enjoy something that causes me frustration and pain.  At work, I’m at the mercy of higher ranking individuals and I’m tired of living my life waiting for the axe to drop, often for things that have nothing to do with my performance.  I’m also tired of leading from a place of control.  Leading from the heart has resulted in a mess, and no one responds to control. With my husband, I drew a hard limit on a specific behavior because it is no longer serving him or our relationship.  Certain patterns are no longer attractive to me and I know the stress they cause is completely unnecessary so I no longer accept that from my partner.  In the former circumstance, my boss recognizes this and she started a more open dialogue about other options for me. In the latter, my husband acknowledged where the behavior is causing issues for him as well.

The point of all of this is to accept radical honesty from ourselves about how we feel, about letting go of fear and knowing when our shells are constraining us rather than allowing us to be who we are.  Awareness and communication are key.  Making any leap is vulnerable and that makes it scary.  Those are the moments we have to decide we will do it anyway.  Being who we are is what allows us to break the cycle and do something new.  Our lives crave new, and they crave it in the vein of who we are, not who we’ve been, not in fulfilling the past of our parents, or not in the path society says will help us.  Break the habits and break the cycle by honoring the gifts we have inside.  Get honest and get aligned.  When we are able to see ourselves for who we are, growth happens naturally and we don’t fear it.  Allow the habits of who we are meant to be to fill our lives and soon we will be living that way.  We will know how to live without a shell and to protect ourselves in other ways.  Trust.