The best way to get out of a rut is to do something new.  There comes a point in everyone’s lives where what they did no longer serves.  There’s a point to tie up some loose ends and another to simply walk away.  There is also a point when we need to engage curiosity and follow that.  When we get stuck in our ways, sometimes we don’t realize we’re sinking until we’re waist deep in it.  Make the effort to find something new, simply by asking what your heart needs in that moment.  Stand in who you are and follow that belief, that direction.  Always be grateful for options.  Engaging in new things can be tricky because it’s out of our comfort zone.  So the other part of trying something new is to be intentional about it.  If you’re not into heights, don’t rush out to go sky diving simply because you need a “new thing.”  If you’re looking for a rush of adrenaline, then by all means, proceed. 

But the need for something new can mean moving forward.  The need to move on or move forward can mean healing those parts of you that have gone ignored for too long and not some huge physical trip. Many of us hesitate to take that journey.  It’s far easier to deal with what’s on the outside over what comes from within.  But magic happens when you deal with your own stuff because that is the inner depths of connection to soul/universe/purpose.  Those are the pieces you need.  I struggle with control and needing to know what to do in every situation from a trauma place (I lost people in my family early, I tried to prove my worth to my older siblings, I sought other people’s validation of my worth as well).  So for me to move forward, I need to heal those abandonment wounds experienced with actual loss and recognize where I abandoned my sense of self for the approval of others. 

I know we are trained to operate 24/7 with the latest and greatest and to prove who we are at all times and to win and gain and acquire.  All of that makes self-work look boring by comparison.  I’ve fallen into that habit as well.  It’s far easier to go shopping and buy a fantastic new book to keep myself “working on it” or to by a new planner that will “keep me on track,” or even to buy some fun new clothes or decorations or gifts for other people than it is to really examine the core of the wound and make peace with who I am.  I KNOW I’m not alone in this.  But the self work is what makes all the other crap fall away.  That is the work that creates the space for who you really are when you no longer need to identify with what other people think/say/do.  You’re on your own two feet like we talked about earlier this week.  Coming from that healed place will permanently remove you from the rut because you know yourself.  Talk about new!        

There is always something to be thankful for.  All the time.  Even in our darkest moments, there is something to be thankful for.  That isn’t to sound trite or dismissive to real issues, but the bottom doesn’t mean the end.  Sometimes that’s the start.  It is truly difficult to see the positive when we are face down in the dirt.  I don’t ever want to coat those issues with a toxic sense of positivity because that doesn’t do anyone any good.  I want to encourage people to find enough strength in those moments when all feels lost to recognize the light in themselves.  To find the creativity they need to move forward.  We are never trapped.

This year, I have witnessed and experienced countless moments of synchronicity, faith, and love.  I have been given grace in truly difficult times, and I have learned to use my blessings to bless others, to share the light and gifts I’ve been given.  I am grateful to recognize where I need to use my own strength and the times when strength comes from being gentle.  I am also grateful to recognize where I need to grow up, where I need to step up, and where I need to let go.  I am grateful to find my own footing and to see where I need to keep practicing those steps. 

I am grateful to be alive, to have my family, to have my health, to have options.  I am grateful to hold the pen to create the life I’ve been looking for.  I am grateful to share this life, to heal, and to hopefully leave things better than I found them.  I am grateful to give up old patterns and old beliefs and to step forward to something better.  I am grateful to find the light, to be the light.  I am grateful to keep learning and moving forward.  I am grateful for time and I promise to learn to be a better steward of it.  It’s a gift.  Life is a gift.  I am thankful for the abundance of living.

Happy Thanksgiving

Silence.  The quiet feels deafening at times.  We constantly find ways to fill the silence.  My mind constantly races so silence feels far from natural for me and it’s a rare thing when it slows down enough for one train of thought at a time.  If we aren’t filling the silence with thought, we are filling it with doing.  I’ve been evaluating the need for quiet, the need to hear more than we speak.  I’ve asked what happens when you hear nothing after you ask the question. Does it mean you’re being ignored?  Or is the nothingness the answer itself?  Is that the universe allowing you to make the decision?  Or have we become so disconnected with the universal flow that we don’t allow the time for the answer to come?

I’m a nervous talker and an overthinker and I used to think there was value on everything I thought, that it needed to be shared—I thought the same for everyone, not just me (I’m not that egotistical 😊).  I thought having an opinion on things was valuable and meant you contributed.  That may apply in school, but as an adult, there is distinctly a time when your thoughts/words are needed and when they are not.  It applies to all situations and relationships.  We can have opinions on everything but knowing when to share them is the art.  There is a time and place, not only when we need to receive in silence, but when we need to simply BE silent even if we have something to say. 

The truth is not every thought we have has merit.  It may feel like it, but when you examine it more, is it really true?  Does it really hold weight?  Humans are fallible and there is value in sharing a “wrong” opinion—it’s how we learn!  But there are simply times we have to allow people to figure it out on their own.  They aren’t seeking our voice, they are seeking our ears.  I struggle there too because I expect dialogue on everything—I believe everyone has an opinion on everything so when I have a conversation, I expect a response back.  It’s a pet peeve of mine to hear, “I don’t know.”  Even if you don’t know THE answer, you have a thought on it—it’s not about being right, it’s about sharing and discourse.  But some people are quicker than I at discerning when the moment comes to say, “I don’t know,” and leave it at that.

I’m learning to not let my nerves get the best of me because I speak when I’m nervous.  I’m learning to choose my words better. I LOVE words and I love sharing them but I’m also learning how to use them better.  I’m becoming an observer rather than a sharer.  I’m allowing the silence to sit for a while if needed.  I’m working on that in my brain as well.  I hate the constant chatter—I can choose what thoughts to entertain and I’m working on that as a true positive at the moment.  Not every thought deserves the time and attention it’s seeking.  Put those aside and focus on your values.  Clarity makes things much easier.  If you’re not sure which route to take in a moment, ask yourself a focus question like, “What matters in this moment?  Is this valuable to what’s happening right now?”  If so, share.  If not, allow the silence.  It applies to the quiet in your alone time as well.  You don’t need to think on something that has no value to what you’re currently doing.  Appreciate the silence every now and then, allow yourself to develop comfort with it.  Your mind will be a much friendlier place when you do.

I’ve operated under a weird combination of needing power/allowing, knowing it all/knowing nothing, strength/weakness, and helpless/boss mode for a lot of my life.  I’ve been able to run the show all while people tend to stop listening to me.  It’s very confusing.  I have this resentment when people take advantage of me, but I’ve allowed them to take advantage because I want them to like me and I need them to be able to reciprocate when I need them.  None of it feels authentic and it’s all disorienting.  I share this because I’m working through some truths in my life.  One of them is that I have allowed myself to become soft in every way because I haven’t picked a side.  I’ve chosen to be weak when I want to, just as I’ve chosen to be strong.  I’ve chosen to lead and I’ve chosen to follow.  I’ve chosen to take ownership and I’ve chosen to pass the buck.  This all makes me human—not that I’m proud of it, but that I can own the learning curve and recognize the pattern now. 

When we constantly seek things that work for us in the moment, it makes us less shrewd to how things work overall.  We seek immediate comfort over long term success and that can be just as damaging as walking through the fire so to speak.  For example, I mentioned above I’ve become soft.  I mean that I have become so emotionally weak and volatile that I am overwhelmed by the simplest things.  I feel like I have no power and can’t do anything.  Logically I know this is far from the truth, but in the moment as I look around, it feels like that.  It takes great effort to get moving on anything and follow through is still iffy at best.  It means I’m still looking for the eject button at the slightest inconvenience.  If we are (if I am) to evolve into the person I need to be, then that means shedding the defenses that worked as a child including pretending I can’t do it. 

The reality is we tell ourselves a story and I’m telling myself a story too.  I can play the victim or I can be the victor but I can’t be both.  I can’t create the confusion in myself and then expect someone to fix it or figure it out for me.  Sometimes we have people in our lives to teach us this lesson, who treat us that way, where we feel ignored or unfulfilled so we can learn to fulfill those needs ourselves.  It’s a pain in the ass to learn to stand on our own two feet, but when we do, we can carry ourselves anywhere.  We learn to ask the real questions of what we need and learn what we are able to do for ourselves and where we want a partner and where we need to go alone.  There are times we need to be alone and when we are there, we have to be strong enough to follow that path knowing our own fortitude will get us through.  No one is there to carry us in those moments.  We have to carry ourselves.  It doesn’t mean we are alone, it just means we need to remember our strength.  We are capable of amazing things and we don’t need anyone to tell us that, we just need to do the work.

What does it mean when we can’t find the things we love?  Or when the things we love don’t flow as they used to?  Relationships have ebbs and flows, sometimes you have to carry more weight and there are times when our partner has to carry the weight.  But what happens when the things we love no longer love us back?  Or when we have to be a certain way to get their love?  What happens when there is no inspiration?  At what point do we let it all go?  Sometimes I find myself working so hard to make other people happy that I’ve forgotten how to make myself happy.  We are all guilty of that at times.  I’ve recently hit a rough patch in my marriage and this brings into question basic compatibility.  It doesn’t mean either one of us are right or wrong, it simply means that who we are and who we are becoming may no longer jive.  Doesn’t make it any easier, but it is something that happens. 

In those moments when we feel lowest, when we feel most alone, that is when we have to dig deep.  We have to find what is right for us.  We have to put our own happiness first and that is how we avoid resentment through constantly putting others first.  Human nature isn’t always pretty and a lot of people tend to operate in obliviousness or, at the very least, in their own worlds.  That isn’t to say they are malicious, but they have no concept of how what they do impacts other people and if they are getting what they want, they have little reason to question if anyone else is happy.  It’s easy to feel “love” when you’re getting everything you want.  That doesn’t mean it’s real.  Love is about reciprocal action and mutual respect and effort toward a goal.  When you pair someone who has no sense of their impact with someone who is hyper aware of how their actions affect others, you wind up with one person gaslit, resentful, angry, and lacking.  That isn’t how relationship works.  It can be corrected, but both have to be willing.  The taker has to understand their actions and the giver has to find their worth—and in some cases stop using pleasing to create their own value.

Often when we can’t find the love we seek, we need to find a way to nourish and support that in ourselves.  We have to learn to say no to the behavior that impedes us or causes us pain.  It can be scary and, personally, it feels like the whole world will end if you set the boundary. In some cases it may end things as you knew them.  There ARE some people who simply needed what you gave them and that’s all they wanted, they had no interest in returning the favor.  For those people, let them go, no matter how painful.  Sometimes we simply have to learn to stand on our own two feet and dig deep in ourselves for what we were looking for from someone else.  There are people in our lives who teach us exactly that, the value of standing on our own two feet.  When we can’t find that something we love, that someone to love, then it is time to find that love in ourselves.  When we find that, we can take on anything and our cup fills again.  What can you love about you today?

Today I am grateful for new understanding.  I’ve always been a student of some sort.  I love school, I love learning, I love curiosity.  I don’t know where I became so rigid along the line.  When did I become so set in my ways?  And how did I manage to behave one way consistently if I believed in learning new ways?  I guess over time we all become a little stuck in our ways.  Even if we know there is room to improve or change, change is daunting so perhaps we stick with what we know instead of trusting what we KNOW.  I’m grateful for new insight about allowing as things change.  The truth is, things change no matter what we do, that is the nature of life.  We can adapt or fight it all, it’s how we choose to use our energy.  I choose to attempt adapting better.

Today I am grateful for options.  I’ve spent the last few weeks feeling trapped by indecision and uncertainty.  I’ve been waiting for other people to make their choices in order for me to make my move and I’ve been miserable because they haven’t decided anything either.  I really went down the rabbit hole of self-loathing and despair because I couldn’t move forward.  And then it hit me: I don’t need to wait for them to make a choice.  I can be the one to make that choice.  I may not be ready to do so right now, but remembering that there is always the option for movement felt amazing and liberating.  Just knowing that there is no cage opened the door and created some breathing room.  We are not trapped.

Today I am grateful for reminders of support.  We spent Saturday night in the ER with my son after he spiked a nasty fever, and I reached out to let my boss know we were there.  She responded to each text and she engaged—not just brushed it off but asked questions.  I woke up this morning to her reaching out to see how things were going.  There are real issues happening at work and it’s not always a comfortable environment, but I am so grateful for the people I have there.  I am not alone even when it feels like it. It’s a reminder that there are really good people everywhere and I am so fortunate to have them in my life—even if I push them away at times, they are there. That is a gift.

Today I am grateful I am for a few moments of peace.  I took my son to a labyrinth and we walked the winding stone path together, enjoying the cold weather for a few moments.  Sun beating down, not giving any warmth, but providing light just the same.  It had been years since I’d been there and it took a minute to find the entrance to the path itself.  I told my son, “It’s either around the back or the front, but I think it’s this way,” and as I looked, a gorgeous hawk swooped low over the forest in the direction I was looking.  I smiled and we proceeded to follow the messenger bird and found the labyrinth.  I felt the instant connection with the universe knowing we were meant to be there together at that moment.  There is something sacred in walking the path, centering.  Connecting to self. 

Today I am grateful for a bit of faith.  As we walked the labyrinth, I thought of my friend.  We are not overtly religious with each other because we simply never have been and she practices with an organized faith while I tend to be more spiritual.  Regardless, she offers her prayers to me and she is aware of what I’m going through, so the other day she reached out and told me she was praying for me.  Today there was a particular moment in the frigid air with the sun beaming directly on me that I felt like I was in church.  I’ve never needed a physical building to express my beliefs, but the feeling I had today resembled that physical space even though there were no walls.  There was spirit there and it was divine.  Being guided by the hawk, hearing my friend’s words, all felt more than coincidence.  Sometimes we simply need to be where we are. 

Today I am grateful to garner more strength.  The last few weeks have broken me in ways I’m not sure I will recover from.  I have only alluded to some of it and I want to emphasize that I am getting help.  But the truth is, I’m learning in new ways, blatant ways, that there are simply things that I will not get where I’m at in life.  I will not get what I want from anyone but myself.  I’m having to reconcile that truth with what I actually want and what I can accept letting go of.  If there are things I want, I will have to do it.  It is an incredibly lonely feeling.  You never anticipate finding yourself on the precipice of being alone when you entered into something with someone.  There is no accounting for what time does to people.  And that’s simply the path of life sometimes.  It has a natural ebb and flow.  What is full must empty, and what was once supported must fly.  We have to walk on our own sometimes.  I am grateful to find strength to do that.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The quickest way to joy is to let yourself soak in this moment a bit more,”  Ashmi Path. The essence of joy comes when we allow.  I wrote yesterday about the fruit being sweet meaning the wait is worth it, the journey is worth it while learning the art of balance and time and what you put value on.  What is valuable in your life, on your journey, doesn’t look the same as what is valuable for me.  I won’t spend my time seeking what you do if it isn’t of value to me and vice versa.  It’s so important to know what we value and the way to know what is of value is to be in the moment.  It’s in evaluating how you spend your time and what goals you’re trying to achieve.  And sometimes it’s in doing nothing, rather pausing, and listening to what your soul is telling you.  Presence isn’t as simple as “Be present, be aware.”  It takes practice.

For hyper-active mindsets, minds with racing thoughts and lots of goals/ideas, minds with lots of divided responsibilities, this is especially challenging.  There is a constant sense of tasks and needing to move onto the next thing, like there is always something better we could or should be doing.  This is when we revisit an old practice we discussed: get back into the body.  Even if it just starts with the breath, get back into the body.  Feel your heart beat.  Find some belief that all is well and that you are ok.  If you can’t be in the body, look at what’s around and find something that catches your eye.  Appreciate what’s around you, look at what you’ve built.  Try to hear that inkling of what comes next.  Try to hear what your soul is telling you.  Then try again a little later.  And again.

The more you can be aware of joy in your life, the more joy you allow in.  You recognize what feels good and it only increases from there.  Sometimes that wait for the fruit is challenging.  It isn’t always easy to find joy in the journey because there are parts that simply don’t make sense or there comes a point where we simply want what we have been working for.  It happens to all of us, we are human.  Part of life is experiencing the miracles around us and sometimes that means allowing things to unfold as they are meant to, not how we want them to.  It won’t change the fruit at the end of the day.  But we have to learn that even if we somehow end up with an orange instead of an apple, it can still be as sweet, and we still achieved our goal.  So we just have to allow.            

Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet.  That’s another tough one that I quickly wanted to acknowledge.  I mentioned I’m a fast thinker—not always to my benefit—but my mind races at top speed nearly 24/7.  It’s painful and something I’m working on addressing.  Clearly patience is not my strong suit.  If you struggle with patience, chances are you also have anxiety or you don’t see things through.  They all go hand in hand.  Throw in some racing thoughts on top of that anxiety and you aren’t getting much done.  You may start a million things, but that doesn’t mean you see them through—it’s more for fear of failure than anything.  If you let it go because you see it going a certain way, then you can’t get hurt.     

The art of slowing down is just that: an art.  It takes time to feel your way into trust, knowing that results come.  And even results that don’t turn out as expected are results.  Life is a learning curve and no one ever said we were supposed to get all things right on the first try in perpetuity.  Sometimes we have to jump and try again and again.  It’s such a fine line between putting in the work and knowing when to quit.  You only learn it through experiencing it.  The truth is when the flower blooms, it’s worth it.  We wouldn’t rush nature by trying to open the bud, so why would we do it to ourselves?  Give yourself time and allow things to unfold. I’m working on it too.

“We are all responsible for everything in our lives,” Louise Hay.  This is a tough pill to swallow.  Louise Hay spoke these words in the context of relationship with the universe, trying to explain how the universe responds to energy in the form of the thoughts we give out.  She plainly and simply states that there is no judgement from the universe, it can only respond to what we give it—what we give, we get.  We’ve spoken often about the power of our thoughts so this is not a new concept.  But when it comes to being responsible, that suggests an intent in the form of selecting our thoughts.  If you’ve ever read Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love you know Richard from Texas states you have to select your thoughts like you select your clothes.  In all honesty I never thought it was that simple.  I never appreciated the milliseconds of pause before a thought comes out where we get to decide if we want it or not.  Granted, my mind moves at an alarming pace on multiple tracks at times, but I’m no exception, that pause is still there.  We choose our perception.

In the dirty depths of mind-work and developing self-esteem, there are some truths that I frankly HATE—or at a minimum struggle with.  Being responsible for everything in our lives is one of them if I’m fully honest.  I don’t like the implication that we work in a vacuum or that we are supposed to have super human powers and not react with emotion—as humans do. I also struggle with the idea of selecting thoughts (although this isn’t so visceral for me personally).  I like to make quick decisions and that means familiarizing myself quickly and making equally fast judgements.  That doesn’t give a lot of time for thought processing.  Truth be told, I know this hasn’t ALWAYS served me well, but I find value in keeping the momentum moving forward.  The other concept is that we choose everything we do.  This falls in the same vein of responsibility.  I struggle with this because it again suggests that vacuum.  I feel it oversimplifies human nature and our relationships with others.  While I fully support that we CAN’T control other people, I believe a relationship is an undertaking where people operate within agreed upon parameters.  Not to say they need to be robots (we are human after all) but that there should be an implied and understood knowing of how to work with each other.  Put simply, I’ve always felt we are allowed to react based on people’s actions before our thoughts.

I’m not saying those reactions are correct, not by any means.  I even acknowledge that taking a beat and really feeling out how we feel is more valuable than bursting out in anger.  But I still stand beside the fact that if someone says something, they mean it.  It’s a contract of sorts.  If someone knows better and still chooses to act a certain way, then a breach has occurred in my mind.  Holding someone accountable is a perfectly reasonable thing to me.  I didn’t choose their indiscretion—they did, I did NOT choose to bring that into my life.  That responsibility lies on them to make it better.  That isn’t to say we don’t have a say in the matter of forgiveness or how we move forward, but to suggest I chose someone else’s actions is unfair.  I CAN choose whether or not to continue with this person, that is true, and yes, that is where the responsibility lies.  But suggesting we came to that juncture out of thin air, that we are responsible for someone’s behavior towards us, or that we allow our boundaries to be crossed, is out of line.  We do NOT have that power.  Yes, once it happens we can decide if we continue to surround ourselves with that behavior, but when we are hurt, I’m not comfortable with the idea we choose to be hurt.

There is a middle ground.  While we don’t choose what people do to us, and we may be owed things in way of apology, we can learn to stand in our self worth and know we didn’t deserve it.  We can choose to firm up the boundary and remove ourselves.  We can choose to wait for what we need.  We can choose forgiveness and second chances.  We CAN embrace the pause and evaluate the feeling, what’s really going on underneath it all.  These are things in our control.  At the same time we are allowed to feel what we feel and if we are hurt, no one gets to tell you you’re not.  No one gets to say that you chose to be hurt when it comes to what others actually do to you.  Those are not supportive people.  While we ultimately do get to choose what happens, sometimes it’s nice to have someone acknowledge to the “offending party”, “Yeah, what you did to so and so was really shitty.” Instead of saying to the person whose hurt, “Well, you stayed, you chose this.”  Because it’s not that simple.  Sometimes the person stays because there was an understanding.  With that said, one thing we can all choose is kindness.  Don’t hurt people, and if you do, take responsibility because THAT responsibility goes both ways. 

“The Self-LOVE journey begins when you realize you’re worth changing your life,” Mel Robbins.  And we are back to this, my friends.  How many of us actually love ourselves? How many of us know what love really is?  We throw the word around like a hot potato, or like an endless supply of tickets at a gaming place.  Have we ever really stopped and considered what love means?  The literal definition is an intense feeling of deep affection or a great interest and pleasure in something—straight from Merriam- Webster.  What does that MEAN?  And how do we apply it to ourselves?  Do we need it?  The short version is, as social animals, yes we need love.  We need to feel accepted and validated and cared for in order to thrive.  That doesn’t need to solely come from someone and not that others are responsible for providing it, but we do need to know on some level we are part of something outside of ourselves.  That we have worth. 

Mel Robbins talks about the relationship to self as foundational in creating a good life and for moving forward.  I couldn’t agree more.  When our foundation crumbles, when we don’t see our worth, when we need validation from others to move forward, life stagnates, we lose sight of what we are doing and why, and we seek the answers on the outside.  When we throw in the concept of self-love, that changes things.  Suddenly the answers are on the inside and we need to trust what we are feeling.  I’m not necessarily talking about an emotional reaction, I’m talking about when something feels right.  There are times when it feels like all is falling apart.  That is usually a good indicator that we need to reflect on how we feel about ourselves.  You have to ask why you continue to allow things to happen if you’re getting the same painful result. 

When you no longer want to move forward as you have been, or you feel the inkling that it’s time to make a change, that’s usually the indicator you need to follow your gut and something needs to change.  That isn’t to claim it’s easy.  That isn’t to say it feels good.  It certainly isn’t to suggest switching directions and listening to something new is comfortable.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do.  Sometimes the right thing is one of the most painful things we must do.  It’s still worth it in the end.  Learning to love ourselves is awkward and scary and uncomfortable because we know everything about ourselves.  We know the mistakes and all the perceived flaws we were told to hate.  We have to go against everything we were trained to despise.  And on the other side, you find the foundation to stand on.  It’s shaky at first, but with more practice, you stabilize and center.  You are worth love.  You are worth loving yourself.  It’s better than what you’ve been doing, so give it a chance and watch how your world changes.