“The only way to protect our peace is making a decision we know will break our heart,” JB Copeland.  Sit with me on this one for a minute.  I spent a lot of my life allowing the space for people to be exactly who they were.  I always folded, always adapted, always did what made other people comfortable—and as we know I did that with the hope that they would eventually do the same for me.  I became quite adept at being the chameleon at the expense of knowing what I truly wanted and developing myself enough to do it.  I’d always almost get there and then allow whatever “stopped” me to actually stop me.  Waiting on others to do what we think we need them to do means we can be waiting an awfully long time for the things we want to come to fruition.  We allow ourselves to get comfortable and content with the way things are going and we convince ourselves what we want will eventually find its way to us.  There are circumstances that will happen—sometime we are just waiting for the universe to align.  But there are others where we need to take better stock of what’s happening around us.  When things start to feel like they aren’t a good fit, like they aren’t working out how we envisioned, that they aren’t what we thought they would be, we have to start questioning the comfort.  Is it worth it to sacrifice the bigger goal and risk regret for the sake of comfort now?

The only way to maintain peace is to make the tough choice to go with what will serve the big picture.  Copeland talks about this as breaking our heart and I want to acknowledge my interpretation of that: sometimes we have a vision that we dedicate ourselves to and we do what we can to protect it even if we know it really isn’t working.  Sometimes we have to let go of that dream/vision simply because it isn’t working.  We have to let go of the idea of what could be and give up something that we may have become attached to as a goal.  We lose people, ideas, even belief at some point and we all get confused.  That is part of the human process of development and evolution.  And it’s hard because this is all a balancing act anyway: what works, what do we want, what do we need, what are our options, when do we bend and when do we stand firm?  And it requires honestly: when are we being too rigid with our vision, when is our judgement getting in the way, are we being honest about who we are and what we want, and is any of it aligned with our values?  All of that letting go, that shedding has the potential to be painful.  But we have to grow regardless.

I want to be clear that there is a difference between comfort and peace.  We can feel comfort while we are at peace, but comfort is an avoidance mechanism where we seek to numb whatever we don’t want to feel.  Peace is a stability and inner contentment that results from faith and belief and trust in ourselves and the universe.  At the end of the day, with all the craziness and unpredictability of this ever-moving, ever-distracted, connected-yet-distant world, all we are looking for is peace.  We seek contentment and this world is all too happy to offer various options that will “give” us happiness.  Time is fleeting and this life has the uncanny ability to be remarkably short and long, both fast and slow all at the same time—and we need to remember that we have the ability to determine how we spend our time.  The only constant we have is ourselves and our ability to discern what works for us.  We need to trust our instincts. We’ve created scenarios where everything is possible but we cut off our own legs or we bury ourselves where we are for whatever reason.  We don’t need to make life harder by waiting for things to fall into place—we simply need to decide and trust that we will do the right thing even if it may hurt in the moment.  Because once we determine what is best for the long term goal, nothing can stop us.  Make the tough choice for peace regardless of anything else, even if it’s a hard choice.  Life gets pretty clear once we know what we are aiming for: temporary pain for long term success and peace is well worth it because that peace from being who we are is priceless.

Today I am grateful for allowing new experiences in my life.  When things aren’t working out how we think they should, it’s easy to fall apart with them—and as much as I’m working on it, I know I still have a hard time controlling emotion.  Personally, confusion seems to be ramping up significantly in my life as well.  Nothing seems quite so sure-footed as it used to, nothing so certain, there really aren’t any black and white answers on anything.  The universe waits for us to make choices and fills in the steps to get there, but what happens when we waver on what the options even are?  A pattern I’ve noticed in my life is that I will make a decision and then some event will happen that will immediately make me contradict my choice.  I spent a lot of time in resentment thinking the universe constantly told me that my choices were wrong.  But I’m seeing now that one of two things actually happens: the universe is waiting for us to choose and then wants to make sure we are certain, or it is telling us that we need to reconsider the path we are on.  The only way we know for certain is if we have enough experience in our lives to show us that we are on the right path—for us.  I took an extra day off this past weekend to enjoy Halloween with my family and ended up spending my days doing some new things—shopping on my own, making candles, going to the town market determined to get things for others, hanging out with people.  I’ve seen with more certainty that I need more time away from my job and more time doing what I need to be doing in my life.  I’m grateful to be around people who have done the same things and are encouraging new choices as it keeps me motivated as well—and encouraged because they’ve been through this and have made choices to follow their own path.  I need to do the same thing. 

Today I am grateful for stepping out of my comfort zone with time and experiences.  I stress when my weekends or my free time is too determined for me.  I still fall into old habits at work where I feel like I need to ask permission to lead my day as I see fit, where I know specific things need to get done but I have to get the blessing of my boss (who is technically only my interim boss at the moment).  Waiting for permission on anything causes delays and I can’t seem to totally break the habit.  This particular weekend has been incredibly busy as we have a lot of activity planned each day so I tend to not feel relaxed (who does when every day has something else attached to it?) but I’ve realized that I have control over it.  I have control over what I need to do, how I spend my time, and what I want to do and I don’t need to feel guilty for it.  Like I said above, sometimes the universe tests us to see how committed we are to our plans and what we think we need to do.  I had to let go of time and just allow things to unfold how they are meant to and commit to the things I said I was going to do.  I don’t need to justify or get permission to do things: I just need to decide and do them.             

Today I am grateful for rethinking what needs to be done in my life.  I spent time making candles with one group of friends this weekend (gifts for Christmas) and then I spent time with old friends, family, and some new friends.  I felt different with each group but there was some level of comfort with each of them as well.  Each group representing different sides of me and I’m learning to integrate them a bit differently.  I spent time with the crafty and thrifty side, the people who support me, and someone who is showing me that what I want is possible and it’s time to take a leap—and to not feel guilty for making the decision I need to if I’m trusting my gut.  It was a weekend of entrepreneurs and creativity.  I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit because my family has been entrepreneurial forever—and I’ve had a creative side because there is a lot of creativity in my blood as well.  I am not around these people by accident.  I know what I am meant to do and they are encouraging me to do it—or at least encouraging me to be in touch with the things I want to do.  I am grateful for these reminders to stay on my path.   

Today I am grateful for putting things in perspective with relationships—we can call it honesty.  I’ve made no secret about the need to people please and how engrained that is in me whether it’s with friends, family, work, or people I’ve just met.  I don’t want to offend anyone and I don’t want to create a reason to be disliked—but that has been put to the test a lot lately because there are people around that I struggled with for various reasons—literal high school crap, non-supportive when needed, only there if I do exactly what they say, making it all about them all the time, I pre-judged some of them as the sum of who they surrounded themselves with—but I never had the courage to talk about what was actually going on.  I let my husband’s behavior and lack of respect for my boundaries spill onto these people because I didn’t initially know how to speak to them and I misplaced my anger for my husband on them.  Last night after finally getting alone with one group, I was able to be honest and tell a new friend exactly why/what the issue I had in the beginning was—everything from misplaced anger from a different third party and my wrong pre-judgement, from being frustrated with my husband and needing space after work and how I knew it impacted the group viewed me, to my insecurity with making people see the truth about me, and then confirming that the people we thought were at the center of the group were really trash talking and manipulating the entire thing—and as soon as the other people in the group started expanding and speaking directly to each other they panicked and needed to be involved.    

Today I am grateful for a new type of energy.  In this exact moment I do not feel the need to repeat patterns.  It’s a Sunday and I’m thinking about what will happen tomorrow and for the first time, I legitimately don’t care.  I know what’s happening right now isn’t working—professionally or personally and I’m seeing where the influence of others has impacted me.  I’m seeing exactly where I need to make my own choices—and this is different than before because before I didn’t feel like I as quite this close to the end of my rope.  Right now I feel like I have no tolerance to do anything that I don’t want to be doing.  Trust me I know that sounds a certain way, but the beauty of being at that point in life is that the pieces that don’t work become hyper-focused and we start to see the path toward what we need to do.  I’m grateful to do what feels right in my life.  I’m grateful to see that making choices like I’ve known and preached for ages is supported entirely by the universe—that isn’t to say it isn’t work to bring those visions to life, but it is a different kind of work.  In spite of the wavering and fear in my own life, I’ve always remained consistent in my messaging that the call of what we are meant to do is strong enough to pull us wherever we need to go and all we need to do is listen to it.  Trust that whatever we need will come to us and that we will be supported—that we can support ourselves.  Take the chance, do the different thing, and if we are confused about what to do next, pause and listen.  And if all else fails, just freakin’ do it.  The worst that can happen is that we find out we don’t want to do what we tried to do and we get closer to what we do want.  Stop wasting time doing what doesn’t work.      

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Creation is your way to document your view on the world.  To refine your thinking. Sharpen your tools.  It’s an integration of mind and body that allows you to build confidence in which you already know.  You’re mapping the edges of your brain.  Exploring who you are through your creation.  You’re adding something new to the world.  It’s evolution, iteration, innovation, and this is the feeling you’re seeking.  It’s your pathway to abundance.  Because your goal is not success or money, your goal is happiness peace and fulfillment.  And you won’t feel any of these things if you create form a place of scarcity, if you create to fulfill external expectations. Because you’re not optimizing for what truly maters which is that you enjoy what you’re creating.  If you don’t, you’ll hate the life you’re building no matter how much money or success you have,” Rea.Earth.  Our intuition is what tells us what we enjoy, it is the path we are meant to follow, it is the answer to what we are meant to be doing.  We are meant to create in this world, not merely be passive receivers to the experiences of others.

We get lost in the chaos of this Earth, thinking we either need to be creating specific things to be worthy or we end up creating so many different things because we are simply trying to hang onto something.  What we need to take into account is that our views of what we create change all the time.  New experiences integrate and then form new ideas and we develop those ideas into new experiences.  That is the way of the world.  If our experiences are ever-changing then why do we expect our views to remain the same?  Why are we expected to choose one way of being when we are barely even out of our basic education and then told that that is the identity we need to hold onto the rest of our lives?  Creation reflects those experiences and we are never meant to stay the same.  If we choose to stay the same then we will live the same day over and over again.  If we are to be happy, then we need to learn to adapt and accept our evolution and express that experience in a way reflective of where we are at. 

We’ve been talking about intuition and following the things that call to us for the last several days and I want to be clear that this isn’t just speaking loftily about finding/following dreams.  There is real importance in connecting with that intuition we are born with because it is the map of who we are and where we are meant to go.  What we make of the world is our legacy, it is our history, it is our story, and it is a story that we are able to adapt and write as we go.  It isn’t something we need to wait for people to tell us, it is already written within us.  Intuition knows what we are meant to do and until we are able to give up distraction and stand firmly in who we are.  There are a lot of precarious, scary, and uncertain events happening in this world right now and many of the powers at be are relying on that confusion so we are swayed a certain way, swayed toward an agenda that serves their idea of what the world is supposed to be like.  That is the other reason why intuition is so important: it is literally our guide to what we know is right for us and what we want to do with our lives.  It isn’t always perfect, but when we use that intuition to create rather than spending our time creating something other people think is right, we connect with the universe in a way that spreads to the rest of the world.  Creation is our legacy, not how much we have.  It’s about what we can give, what we leave behind, not what we accumulate.  We evolve and change and we express who we are at any given time: connect and believe in who we are and don’t let the world sway us—show the world who we are.

“Your intuition is always one step ahead of you; I get still and I listen and what I hear is usually not logical, but I decide to take action off of what I’m hearing deep within.  And as time goes, things start to work out.  And so be still and listen to the depths within you because it’s speaking,” JB Copeland.  I pulled some cards today and one of them was, “Let me be still today and listen to the truth in silence,”  so let’s hear what the silence has to say.  There’s a lot of noise out there—constant voices, stimulation, entertainment, distraction, fear—and it’s easy to get swept up in it.  People misinterpret the value of silence as doing nothing.  What do we gain from sitting and doing nothing?  Well, let’s ask a different question: What do we get when we run around being busy, expending energy with no focus?  Are we seeing results?  So what is the bigger waste of time?  Expending energy on things that never come to fruition?  Or taking time to figure out where to put that energy? Some may argue that neither is a waste of time because in either case we are learning something, which may be true.  Trying and learning a different way to do something is different than telling ourselves we are helping anything playing a video game or scrolling social media for hours.  Listening is a skill, and hearing even more of a skill.    

The only way to know what our intuition tells us is to listen to it and to practice hearing it and following through (trusting it).  The brain truly is not designed to cope with constant stimulation and addition of information.  We simply can’t keep up and integrate anything because we can’t distinguish what’s important or even tell what’s real—we do not have enough context or information to do that especially with the speed information comes at us now.  In order to reconnect with that intuition, we need to remove the external noise and we need to be comfortable sitting with what our minds tell us.  It takes some practice to get comfortable sitting with ourselves, with nothing pummeling our brains, nothing dripping dopamine into our system, no switching from topic to topic…just sitting.  As Copeland states, there are times what we hear doesn’t make sense, and that is when we need to explore.  It takes time to figure out what the brain is actually telling us and I’m not saying that we need to follow every whim that flows through our minds, but we need to be able to trace it back and integrate it into the bigger picture.  The mind works in patterns and those patterns are often influenced by what we are most exposed to (reading, television, social media, news, email, conversations, etc.).  We can change those patterns.  We can learn to dive deep into our knowing even if it doesn’t make sense and we can trust it as long as it makes sense to us.

Those patterns and repetitive thoughts that speak to us repeatedly, constantly calling to us, those are the things we need to listen to or at least explore in more depth.  This is more than trying a viral recipe we see somewhere, this is the thought that constantly tells us we need to do something, the thing that always piques our interest.  There are things that connect with who we are, that resonate with us innately that we will never be able to explore.  Those are the things we are gifted and meant to follow—and develop and share.  There are times we find the answers with the help of others, with connection and finding complementary talents, ideas, and beliefs. In order to find what is complementary to us, we need to know what our ideas, talents, and beliefs are first—that means putting aside all distraction and doing the work to be who we are meant to be.  It can be overwhelming to connect with that inner knowing because there are times we won’t feel ready for the information we receive.  We have to learn to override that and do it anyway, especially when we’ve done the work of hearing our soul.  When we KNOW it, take the chance and trust it, even if it doesn’t make sense to ourselves.  Intuition is meant to guide us, not derail us, and the only way we know the difference is in silence.  So, always remember there is real value in silence, because silence is the key to everything within.

I have this odd affiliation with plants that started when I first saw The Secret Garden as a kid and I adored the wildness, the protectiveness, the seclusion of the beautiful garden that grew just as it was meant to, just as it wanted to.  I think on some level my soul always knew that I wanted to be just as wild, just as free, just as accepted exactly as I was.  I didn’t want anyone to tame me or tell me which way to grow.  Ironically as I grew up and worked through life, that is the furthest thing from what happened—I lost the ability to discern and just do what I wanted to do, I couldn’t tell what I wanted to do.  I had lost the ability to listen to my heart telling me what I needed to do and I needed people to tell me what the right thing was.

Just like we must prune back good flowers, we must constantly be pruning back our life to make room for the more abundant and full.  It is ok o let go of “good” things so you can hone in on the “great” things.  This was on my calendar the other day and it got me thinking about how there are things in this life that we try to grow, hoping they take hold and branch off into something beautiful.  Truthfully I’m still learning a lot about plants and gardening (I tried and failed—but I will try again!) and I noticed I had a habit of leaving things exactly as they were.  I didn’t want to trim pieces or prune back what looked like perfectly good flowers even though people told me to, I didn’t want to make it any different, I wanted the plants to grow how they were meant to, more how they wanted to 

I’m learning now that with gardening there are times you must pull back the flowers in order to make the plant grow healthier.  Making the decision to let some things go in order to make room for more is a concept we talk about frequently in self-development yet I tried to cram all things into one plant without pruning anything to allow more stalks to bloom.  The entirety of our lives can’t fit on one plant—we are meant to grow and branch out and create a firm system that creates and is able to sustain the story of our life.  I’ve said it a million times: life is about growth and expansion and our evolution requires that we cut away what doesn’t work—we are taught this in nature.  So my very nature I felt calling to me as a kid recognized the wildness and the ability to foster growth early on and wanted to connect with that spirit.  Just as I’m learning to grow things, I know I can learn which pieces I’m ready to let go of and which I’m ready to expand on.  No one needs to tell me which way to go—the heart knows the way.      

“I can be changed by what happens to me but I refuse to be reduced by it,” Maya Angelou.  We make choices all the time and we can choose to allow situations to break us or build us.  We need to keep perspective that when we experience something in life, we are also creating that experience.  Our choices take us down certain paths and how we respond to those opportunities is entirely up to us—we create the garden in our mind so we can either see something filled with possibilities and blooms or we see something filled with fear and anxiety about how it will turn out, how it will look.  The goal of the universe is never about how it looks—it is beautiful in its own right and it doesn’t seek validation from us in order to be beautiful or to know it’s beautiful.  The same is true with us: it isn’t about how things look, it’s about what we make of it. 

Stating the obvious, but terrible things happen in this world all the time—we all experience varying degrees of loss and tragedy and we all have to learn how to cope with those experiences.  Then we have things happening on a global scale. We can take situations we have no control over and become the victim in it or we can learn to take what we experience and turn it into something that serves.  Just because things happen a certain way doesn’t mean we have to turn it into a life sentence.  Sometimes we are meant to learn about the power we have to take a crappy situation and make it beautiful.  It’s easy to feel powerless and scared or like there is no hope when we are constantly exposed to what’s going wrong in this world.  But we have the option to make things right and make them beautiful and continue on. 

We can allow the course of this world to change us and shift our direction, but we don’t have to make it make us feel less.  We aren’t diminished in who we are if things don’t go our way or if we have some particularly difficult moment etched in our memory.  Those moments don’t define who we are but those moments often show us who we are.  They show us what we are made of and what we are capable of.  We don’t have to be struck down and feel hopeless in who we are and what our options are just because something unexpected happens.  We get to choose what that means to us and we decide who we are.  The events that unfold in our lives can change who we are, but we decide hat that means.     

“Plant your garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers,” Jose Luis Borges.  This seemed timely following yesterday’s piece.  Generations ago we were taught we needed permission to do just about anything.  Our family and our elders and society and how things functioned determined our access so we got in the habit of believing we needed permission to do what interested us.  We got in the habit of creating access issues to certain things whether we decided only certain people could participate, only those who could afford it, only those who proved their worth, etc. and we created a system that supported the exclusivity of doing what we love.  We learned to protect that rather than protect ourselves, our integrity, our values, and our own interests.  We learned to survive by blending in with the crowd and shoving aside our natural instincts in favor of what we were told was the safe route.  That is a recipe for regret and disaster in our personal lives.  While those at the top thrive in that environment, it isn’t set up to help those moving the wheel.  So if we are called to do something, we don’t need any more permission than that.

When we wait for someone to create the life we want, we set ourselves up for disappointment, resentment, delays, heartache, and any other myriad emotions that come from hinging our dreams, goals, and desires on the actions of other people.  As social creatures of course we want validation, but we all get to a point where we are no longer interested in doing the same thing to fulfill other people’s dreams.  We have to find our own path and we need to take action rather than waiting for someone to do it for us.  As I talked about yesterday, life is too short to wait for anyone to do for us what we need to do for ourselves.  The irony is when we do the things we love we suddenly have all the time in the world.  So there is the answer to this conundrum: if we don’t want life to pass us by, we need to find a way to slow time down, and since we can’t actually physically do that, we need to learn to fill the time we have with the things we love to create more of it.  Joy, passion, hope, drive, creativity are all things we plant ourselves or things we were born with.  Our job is to tend to it just like we would a garden.  Take care of those seeds and let them bloom into something that will grow into the garden of our dreams.

I want to touch on the idea that waiting for someone to bring us flowers means we are waiting for someone to cut the blooms off of their own garden (or take it from someone else) in order to fulfill the dreams we are responsible for.  It can take a lot of patience and effort to make something like that bloom for us and we need to believe that we can make it bloom.  We have a vision and we need the patience and dedication to make it happen—and we can only get that by learning to cultivate the life around us.  Follow the signs, the seasons, the natural flow of our lives.  Let go of what doesn’t serve, rest when we need to, plant when we need to, and utilize the tools we have to make that garden grow.  The vision is ours and no one else is responsible for making that happen.  We don’t need to defer our dreams for the sake of someone else or some idea of what we are meant to do.  We are meant to nurture and plant and cultivate our dreams until it blooms fully and we can sustain ourselves and be a light to others as well.  Align and do what gives us light in our own lives and we ignite something far greater than someone else’s idea of what we are supposed to do with our lives: we answer the call of our soul and it turns into the most beautiful thing we have ever seen.

We are meant to create and there doesn’t always need to be a reason that makes sense to other people: it needs to make sense to ourselves.  If painting calls, paint.  If making miniatures calls, build miniatures.  Love what we do because there isn’t enough love in this world.  The more we love, the more we fuel our growth and encourage growth in others.  We’ve been taught that unless our dreams are so big we get a name for ourselves that they aren’t worth it, and often times when dreams are that big we are also told they are unrealistic.  The universe doesn’t care the size of our dreams, it only cares about the purpose in them.  It cares about the care we put into our passion and drive and when we have that level of dedication and commitment, the world explodes into color and we find new ways of doing things, of looking at things, of creating our own possibilities.  We just need to make the life that makes sense to us.  There is beauty in this world and we are part of that—that is all the validation we need to follow the call of our soul.

“If you feel like there’s something out there that you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and just do it,” Wanda Sykes.  It all comes down to action and I have a strong feeling this next week in particular is going to be filled with decisive action.  I vow that I will never spend another moment feeling as rattled by other people’s actions as I did this past week.  There were so many moments where things felt surreal, like what I was hearing couldn’t be real, that people didn’t actually behave this way, that it hit me like a flash that I won’t deal with this any longer.  We know the corporate world isn’t always the safest place, especially as you begin to climb.  The longer I’ve been part of this world, the more clarity I have that I don’t belong in this situation.  The corporate world operates under it’s own rules—it’s its own living entity and we protect it.  The second we don’t play by the rules we are told we are putting the organization at risk as if that’s more important than the people involved.  There is no flexibility there for humanity.  As more time went on, it became apparent that flexibility for the humanity of leadership was even less and that leadership was even more controlled and drowned out than those not in leadership.  That hasn’t sat well with me for a long time—so I convinced myself to treat this as an interim, a means to an end until I could be placed where I really wanted to be in an environment that interested, fulfilled, and supported me.

I’ve known for some time that I was heading in a different direction, particularly different from some of my leadership.  I’ve been aware of the potential consequences of that and I’ve moved forward anyway and had great results both confidence wise, and with my work.  As things in my personal life became more uncertain this year, I fell back into some old habits—because that is what humans do.  And then reality became more and more skewed with what we allowed people to get away with.  The most recent incident is something I didn’t have words for and the guidance and leadership I needed to navigate through it wasn’t present.  In fact, the leadership I received was how poorly I’ve handled this up until now and how this has been my fault.  I know it’s not entirely true, I’ve had to tread carefully for a while with a particularly sneaky individual but, yes, could I have been more direct and even escalated a few incidents, yes.  Did I? No—part of me was trying to be nice, part of me trying to avoid conflict, part of me just didn’t have the energy, and part of me didn’t want to stir unnecessary shit.  That in itself led me to the conclusion a long time ago that I didn’t want to deal with this crap any longer—couple that with other interests and sparks of creativity and I knew this wasn’t the side for me regardless.  I was already tired of dealing with the fires created by people who imagined clearance to be a different thing, and the interest in the work was long gone.  Then throw in insanity and it’s over.

The lesson is this: when we feel a pull toward something, don’t ignore it.  That pull, that draw, is the energy of what is meant to be for us calling to us, the vibration of what we love bringing us closer to our purpose.  But if we put that action on the sidelines and ignore the call of what we are meant to do, then we will perpetuate the cycle until the cycle is done with us rather than being in control and connection with our feelings and guiding our ship to where it’s meant to be.  So when something creates passion in us and we discover we have joy for certain things, don’t hesitate to follow it.  When we take the means to an end rather than following our own creative path, we are simply trying to get to the end.  What’s the point of that?  While life is short, there is a lot of life to live in those moments as long as we are following what is meant for us.  The part that’s short is the fact that we can’t waste time screwing around doing something that doesn’t bring us joy or serve a purpose—or that helps us serve our purpose.  Life won’t change if we don’t change and that requires action, focus, and honesty.  All we can do is be true to ourselves and listen and feel what truly makes sense to us, and the best thing we can do, is then follow that drive and work in alignment with that particular energy.  Don’t allow ourselves to be swayed by fear—step into reality and look at all sides of the situation: if it doesn’t fit, make arrangements to take the next steps to find something that does.  We get one shot this go around, don’t waste passion and energy doing anything less than what brings us absolute joy. 

Today I am grateful for realizing results.  I’ve spoken on here frequently about health, most often mental health but I haven’t shared much of my physical journey.  I turned 40 earlier this year and there was something about that number that sharpened my focus on what was important.  It was with the utmost clarity that I realized I couldn’t screw around anymore and there wasn’t going to be anyone to advocate or fix what needed fixing in my life—yes, that is even a topic of which I’ve spoken here as well.  I couldn’t spend anymore time waiting for what I wanted to do, or wait for signs of what I want to do; I needed to listen to the feelings and start doing, and one of those areas was physical health.  I have some areas of my health that I watch closely due to family history and early symptoms I’m seeing in myself.  Plus, with honest self-awareness, I knew the years spent in non-committal ventures professional, health, entrepreneurial, and other areas, I decided it was time to commit to something in these arenas.  And our health system isn’t the most supportive of health-care (we practice sick care) so this is something we all need to take into consideration for ourselves. I started a journey addressing my physical health and I am down 34.4 pounds.  This has been a tough journey of learning discipline and figuring out what my body really needs and putting what I knew into practice.  The results speak for themselves and it is a great reaffirmation of the power of focus, commitment, and allowing change.          

Today I am grateful for second chances—and third, and fourth, etc.  Sometimes our boundaries are tested in multiple ways.  I made the decision earlier this year to not speak to a particular individual because of a former mutual friend—I had put the boundary in place that I wasn’t going to speak to the mutual friend because I was no longer going to tolerate people who behaved how she did toward me.  I wanted to enforce respect and show that I respected myself by not having someone in my life who treated me that way. I’m no longer willing to people-please so I wasn’t going to deal with that crap any longer; I simply have no room in my life to waste time on people who aren’t treating me well.  That brought in this particular individual: I didn’t personally know her but I knew she had a friendship with the mutual friend so, maintaining my boundaries, I didn’t have room for people who associated with people who disrespected me.  As the universe would have it (and a particularly stubborn husband) this individual began coming around more often (different reasons) and I lost my shit at first.  Then I realized that the relationship this individual had with the rest of our group wasn’t going to change.  That meant it was up to me to decide how to move forward: cut out the entire group or look at this person differently.  We had some decent conversations but I have learned to not wear my heart on my sleeve too early in the relationship so to speak.  But what has evolved has been nice so I grateful for both giving and receiving a second chance to see the type of friendship we may spark.  We never know why people are brought into our lives so sometimes we have to be patient to figure it out-and it’s always worth it.   

Today I am grateful for seeing the truth.  When people show you who they are, believe them.  This applies on several levels: character, personality, general habit.  A friend of mine often quotes Nietzsche’s saying, “I judge a person by their patterns not what they’ve most recently done…. and that can be tricky when an individual shows contradictory sides—while I can dive into the reasons for this behavior, the truth is this: how one person treats an individual around you, they treat you when you’re not around.  I consider myself fortunate to live around people we can rely on if needed and we can have fun with—it’s a tight community.  But there is a pattern from one couple that tells me something: they befriend everyone to be the ones people trust.  At first I didn’t notice anything strange, they were open and generous and kind and had a way about them you just trusted.  Little things started happening like off comments about other people, often in humor.  After time, they were talking shit about other people in the group but it was in a loving/humorous way if that makes sense—like talking shit about funny anecdotes etc.  Then it evolved into personal stuff and talking about other people’s character.  The we turn around and suddenly they’re hanging out with these people.  It suddenly seemed they only hung out with people as it was beneficial to them.  Who knows, maybe this is human nature and this is how relationships work: we talk shit about the ones we love, I don’t know.  But the truth is this—who they show you behind other people’s back is who they are behind your back and we have to form our own opinions.

Today I am grateful for breaking habits and making a decision.  My job is needlessly stressful, mainly due to personalities and lack of clarity, but this past week I got myself so worked up with a few incidents at work that went beyond any normal stress.  I realized I was dealing with several unhinged individuals.  I don’t exaggerate behavior and this is something I’ve never encountered with other adults.  A level of maliciousness and demand on other people’s behavior that is entirely inappropriate.  When I shared the nature of the incident with someone higher than me, this person basically told me it was my fault regarding not documenting specific action in our HR system.  I have record of everything, it’s just not all documented where this person thought it should be, and she told me I have poor follow through with other employees as far as corrective action.  Let’s be honest, no one likes dealing with disciplining adults, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t addressed poor behavior and department expectation previously.  This particular employee presents multiple challenges so I tread lightly.  Plus HR isn’t so keen on documenting or supporting disciplinary action for events toward the manager—management really isn’t supported.  This past week went to a new level in shitty behavior from this employee and from this higher up. So my decision is to always remember they are human and that I don’t need to tolerate this from other humans regardless of some hierarchy—there are many opportunities out there and I do not need to settle for this type of crap—I am worth more.  I knew there was discussion behind my back about misperceptions and I had that confirmed and then this event happened and it revealed all that disturbs me in people.  I can move on to something else—and that is my plan.         

Today I am grateful for getting closer to the feeling of how I want to be.  Often times we don’t realize the level of stress, denial, pain, fear, or anything else that we are in until we really begin to peel back the layers.  In deciding that I won’t tolerate shitty behavior toward me in any environment, and that I have every right to speak up, I know I’ve been afraid of trusting my own intelligence.  I’ve been afraid of standing on something without all the facts and having holes punched in it because I didn’t remember the facts correctly.  I feel like I can’t rely on my mind any longer.  Stress affects how memories are formed and recalled, and I’ve been under a degree of stress I’ve never encountered before (and aging doesn’t help either)—so I don’t trust my mind.  That is something I can remedy both with emotional management as well as taking the time to focus on what really matters and learn about it.  By slowing down and managing my health, appropriate discipline and focus, I can remedy a lot of this.  And as I step through different levels of letting go of bullshit, things get clearer, the patterns recognized earlier, and I can correct sooner.  I see more and more how I want to feel and that means letting go of some trust issues and other long held fears/beliefs about relationships and simply recognizing what does and doesn’t work. It means no longer playing a role, trying to be someone else—it’s fully embracing who we are and leaning into what feels right.  I am an adult, time is short, there is no reason to hide/hold back who we are.  Sometimes we just need that reminder. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

When the stumble turns into the need to let go of what we thought we’d never have to say good-bye to—people, things, ideas, hopes, whatever it may be.  We have to learn that sometimes the most painful thing isn’t letting go of the thing, it’s letting go of the idea of the thing, what we thought it represented to us.  We define power in certain ways and each of us has a certain level of power we want and that can include the ability to bring that vision to life.  We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be a certain way and achieve certain things and make certain things happen.  I talked about upholding traditions at the sacrifice of who I was—and I did it willingly.  I wanted people to be happy, I wanted to make them feel happy about what I had done.  That was a version of GirlBossing it for me because I was making things happen.  I wanted to have it all together and elicit certain responses out of people.  I couldn’t accept that time moves on and that I was responsible not for repeating the patterns that made other people happy, but that I was responsible and it was possible to create a new tradition of my own.  I was afraid to let go, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find myself.  I was controlling the wrong things.   

As it would happen, I just read Stassi Schroeder’s book You Can’t Have It All: The Basic Bitch Guide to Taking the Pressure Off.  In this book Schroeder talks about how seeking power can run our power out.  I recently spoke about how there usually is a reason why things fall apart and it is more often so we can become the version of ourselves we need to be.  I spoke of the discomfort of letting go of what we know especially when we feel what we know is working.  So far Schroeder has been talking about the decline of the GirlBoss and the unhealthy habits that culture has inspired—that idea of power we have and hold onto.  The one that says we can’t let any sign of weakness show—most of us equate this to a business environment but we GirlBoss all over.  Truthfully I still love the idea of the GirlBoss where we are in charge of our lives and we navigate the terrain ourselves, we call the shots, we make things happen.  What I accepted a long time ago is that the GirlBoss culture didn’t need to look the same so I don’t have the same focus on appearance or making myself look a certain way—I want to embrace the GirlBoss that’s comfortable in her own skin and making that type of life that she wants, work, no matter what it is. 

I recently wrote about how we sometimes have to quit to win, the sunk cost fallacy.  We need to recognize the signs when GirlBoss isn’t working and we need to cut ties to the ideas we had.  We need to let that portion of our lives go because it’s holding us back rather than acting as a float.  The trouble with GirlBoss is not knowing when to let go when things aren’t working, when we hold onto the idea so tightly that even if we stumble, even if we are hurt beyond learning a lesson, we try to make it happen.  Ironic that just as I’m having this epiphany in my own life and trying to decide what we are doing moving forward (basically trying to figure out what we really want instead of what we want to show we have), I stumble across this writing that talks about how we need to let go of what the image is, how we need to let go of what doesn’t work and get back in touch with what we feel and understanding what works for us.  Typing out thousands of words all the time is a joy for me, I love doing this.  And I talk about how we have control of our lives and there are skills I haven’t applied to this yet.  But what am I trying to control?  Am I trying to prove I can be in control of every situation, that nothing phases me?  What happens if I turn that energy toward what I really want instead of what I feel like I have to do?  We can still GirlBoss all day but when we are in touch with that side of ourselves, it’s more authentic and we aren’t draining ourselves.

We are the boss of our own lives, that will never change.  If things aren’t going exactly how we thought they would, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong.  It just means we need to pause and take stock of what we really want.  If it isn’t working then perhaps we need a different approach.  Like I’ve been talking about this week, sometimes no isn’t no forever, it’s meant to guide us to where we are meant to be.  We can’t have it all but we can have all that is meant for us.  We can have it all when we learn to turn the stumble into the dance and when we learn to transmute pain—or better, when we learn to let go of pain that doesn’t serve.  We get in touch with our power when we stop pushing for power for power’s sake and we embrace who we are.  The loss of an idea or understanding the potential of an idea isn’t panning out doesn’t mean we have failed.  It means we are adaptable and able to pivot toward what works.  We know ourselves enough to know what we really need and we let go of the rest.  We don’t need to force anything, we take the chance to fully be who we are meant to be, pain, power, and the stumble all melding into one.  Don’t force the image, simply be.