“I think we spend too much time being afraid of our own mediocrity.  We don’t want to sing too loud in case anyone finds out we don’t have a voice like glass.  We don’t write music because we aren’t Mozart, we don’t paint because we aren’t Picasso, we don’t tell people we love them because our voice might shake when we say it.  We try to be pretty criers, we don’t dance because we aren’t that good.  The reality of our humanity is that we are all a little bit average at a lot of things.  The truth is that we are all not that good so stop holding yourself back from enjoying the things that you love because you’re not a prodigy at everything.  Scream the song at the  top of your lungs, and confess your love and let you voice be shaky, cry big ugly tears and dance really badly because life is too short to be scared of being human,” Whitney Hanson. 

As I’ve been talking about the last couple of days, we need to find our own greatness even if we don’t see the immediate result.  We need to be fully who we are because we never know the ripple effect of our actions and how others respond to what we do, what actions we’ve encouraged in others simply by being ourselves. I will say it a million times if I have to—this life isn’t about being perfect.  Perfection is an illusion.  I am not saying settle for mediocrity but I am saying we need to learn to be ok with it as a starting place.  No one begins an expert—we all have to learn.  Even the greats.  Yes, there are levels of innate talent we are born with, but in order to be great and really know who we are and develop ourselves, then we must be ok with being a novice.  We have to be ok with starting.

Think of all the time we waste wanting to be good enough to show who we are when we simply could have shown who we are and learned the rest along the way.  Think of how many times we would have known the answer or we would have won had we simply gone for it.  Who knows that if we had allowed ourselves the initial experience that we may have learned something more and become the example we thought we were never good enough to be in the first place?  Sometimes we need inspiration and other times we need to remember that we are the inspiration.  Grow, try, fail, learn, and try again.  Mediocre isn’t a bad word.  It isn’t a matter of settling, it’s a matter of understanding and becoming who we are meant to be.  Be that person, that version of ourselves that has the courage to go for it.  Be the person we strive to be—don’t be a copy of someone else’s genius—create our own genius.

What is your impact?  I saw a reel about a teacher who had a nonverbal student and in an effort to connect and encourage the student to speak, the teacher left the student a sticky note with a little cartoon on the student’s desk every day.  There didn’t seem to be much progress as the student remained nonverbal for the entire school year in spite of multiple interventions and different tools to assist the child.  Two years passed and the teacher received an envelope with a single sticky note in it that said, “I saved all of your sticky notes.  Thank you so much, you helped me more than you know.”  The teacher goes on to say that we never really know what our impact is but even the small things make a difference.  Story from Matt Eicheldinger.  We hear things like this all the time and we lose patience with ourselves when we don’t feel we are making an impact or if the impact we want isn’t visible, but it is sometimes a bit later when we see the results of our actions.

In a world that is constantly on, connected, and moving, it’s difficult to wait for anything.  It’s hard to believe that something is happening if we don’t see immediate results.  But our human nature is aligned with the nature of the universe and understands that sometimes (all the time) things operate in their own timing.  Most growth is unseen.  The vegetable growing under the Earth, the iceberg under the water, the treasures buried within.  So if all of those amazing things are unseen, why do we have the expectation that our greatness will always be on display?  Perhaps the question is why do we have the expectation that the greatness of our impact will be on display?  It isn’t—and it isn’t meant to be.  We are meant to do our part, play our role, and sometimes that is simply to be a catalyst.  Sometimes that’s to be the stone that initiates the ripple.  Other times we are meant to hold center stage.  And other times we are meant to pass the torch.

The point is we are meant to play our part and that is it.  It’s great to know what we’ve done has reached someone but no matter if we are afforded that opportunity, the truth is we need to simply operate in silence, do what we are doing, share our gifts.  The laws of energy and the universe state that all of that energy will come back to us.  It may not look the same, it may not feel the same, but we will know that it came from us.  The point isn’t to get that recognition—it’s to be the person we need to be so we can encourage others to be who they need to be.  The point is to play our part to the best of our ability and always do the best we can and expand who we are.  That’s enough.  The magic will happen no matter what we do as long as we are aligned.  So don’t worry if we aren’t sure about our growth or impact—keep writing the sticky notes and someday someone else can hold that pen because they saw you write.

“Walk in your greatness for the doors to open, stop being what others want you to be and just be yourself.  Have the courage to be yourself—unapologetically.  Walk in your greatness,” Aletha Crimmins.  I think we need this reminder right now.  This world is in the midst of so much change and upheaval, and we need to learn to focus on what is good.  We need to focus on the good in ourselves, in our lives, in each other.  It isn’t for narcissistic or selfish purposes—it’s so we can develop who we are and become a tool for good in this world.  We need to walk in our light, in the greatness of who we are so that we can share it.  I like Crimmin’s point regarding having the courage to be ourselves.  Over time we have consistently lost the ability to feel comfortable being who we are.  We wear masks, we behave how we are expected to behave, we know the norm.  As we develop our skills at self-acceptance, we learn to see more and more of what we can do.

The universe surprises us at times.  Just when we think things will never be the same, suddenly they all work in our favor.  Or suddenly that one step we needed is clear, the one piece falls into place.  It’s easy in a society that moves too quickly and that has lost the ability to see true value to devalue ourselves.  It’s easy to see where we don’t fit in over the space we can create. We see value in how we fit rather than in how we move and how we shape.  In order for doors to open that fit who we are, sometimes we have to build them to suit.  This life isn’t supposed to be one size fits all—we are supposed to know who we are and the world we create comes from within. I think over time we’ve built these boxes because we’ve misconstrued what greatness is—we’ve also misconstrued what we do with the power of greatness. We must find who we are not to lord over people, but to help them advance as well.

Walking in our greatness with awareness of who we are and what our goals means we have self-possessed power, not power over others.  We don’t need to make a safe space for people to tolerate us or to understand who we are.  We need space to break free and be who we are.  Not everyone will fit in that space, nor will they be comfortable or understand it.  Our space isn’t meant for other people’s comfort—it is meant to be representative of who we are and what we do.  We do our best for others when we do our best for ourselves.  Others don’t need to hold the door for us—sometimes we open the door for ourselves to find that the space we had been looking for was simply waiting for us as the key.  And instead of trying to find what makes us feel worthy enough for someone to open a door or even trying to be strong enough, we learn that there is another the magic—when we are truly, fully ourselves, the doors open all on their own.  Get close to your heart and listen—it knows the way.

“We can embrace the moment [that happened] even if it didn’t turn out to be what you thought,” NickiMarie.  How many of us look back at our lives/a certain moment/a scenario with regret or, at the very least, the thought we wish we could do it differently?  How many moments do we have where, after some time has passed, we can still appreciate the moment for what it was even if it turned into something else in the end?  Nicki shared the above quote in reference to a particular concert she was about to go to.  The concert was a symbol, a reminder of her ex-husband because the singer she was going to see is what essentially brought them together.  She had to reconcile something she loved (the music) with the fact that while it started something beautiful and wonderful, it was over.  She then had to come to the conclusion and acceptance that even though it was over, it didn’t make it less beautiful than it was at the time.  The experience still happened and gave her clarity, and no matter how bad it got, it still gave her the good that came along with it.

When I look back there are so many things that I wish I could change.  I spent a lifetime dealing with the regret of not doing things differently.  While they always say hindsight is 20/20, that gave me no comfort. I didn’t know how to deal with the pain of not being able to change what happened, especially the things that happened as a result of someone else’s actions—or the things they did to me that I couldn’t undo.  I never understood how people could be so callous with someone else’s emotions.  But as more time has passed and I’ve begun working on the things that bothered me, the things that I could control, I came to a similar conclusion as Nicki: just because one bad thing happened, it doesn’t mean that it’s all bad.  We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak (I’m probably dating myself with that expression).

We can learn to appreciate what happened even if there were some bad parts.  There is usually still some good that comes with the bad—a lesson, some shining spot.  The point is to start looking at those shining spots and creating enough light around the rest that the dark doesn’t even matter.  We can’t allow ourselves to be bitter over the ending of it—and I know that’s hard because there is always a part (at least for me) that feels like it “should” have gone a certain way.  Like why didn’t it go as planned?  The truth is we never know all the reasons things turn out as they do.  Sometimes we simply have to embrace that they did.  It doesn’t take away or negate the joy (or whatever else) we felt during the experience.  The experience was still real.  Don’t look at the end as an indicator that something went wrong—look at it as an indicator that it has served its purpose and we are ready to move onto the next step.  We are allowed to mourn the loss, and we should mourn it.  But we are allowed to celebrate what was in spite of it turning into something else.  We control the narrative, we assign the meaning.  Make the story mean something that matters, make it all matter.            

Today I am grateful for gathering.  I’ve always been pretty independent and autonomous—I’ve had to solve a lot for myself so I developed a mentality where I didn’t need a lot of people.  But the truth is I don’t think I understood how much I actually did need people.  Community always felt like a shackle to me because I felt like I had to give up all sense of who I am either for the collective good or to support the goals someone else had set for me.  I thought I lost myself in community because they didn’t want to hear or see what I had to contribute.  The only way I could make myself heard is to agree with what they said.  I heard recently that the light has been blocked out by others, others have intentionally held us back because they didn’t want us to shine.  So it wasn’t so much about what community did or took from us so much as it was about finding the right community.  We need to be with the people who value our contributions and opinions rather than those who make us adhere to theirs or believe that their opinions are the only ones of value.  Find the ones who brighten our light instead of block it.  Community is a beautiful thing if we are with the community that values us.  Don’t mistake company for understanding and camaraderie—the company needs to match the intention we have and the vibration we have.  Then our voices all harmonize together, each complementing and assisting the others to be heard.  We each have a part.  So we gather with those who understand us and that is how we thrive.

Today I am grateful for acceptance.  Normally this is something along the lines of self-acceptance but this time I’m referring to situational acceptance.  Things are very different than they were last year at this time.  We are preparing for back to school (our school doesn’t go back until after Labor Day) and we have a party every year for the kids to get together and blow off steam for the end of summer.  We invited a large part of the class and then some so everyone feels included—last year we had a huge group of people come throughout the night.  This year things have changed in the group and timing was a bit off so we didn’t have as many as before.  We also had different excuses than before and the atmosphere with those who did show up was different.  See, as I’ve been working on self-acceptance, the things I tolerate from people have changed.  I made it clear the door was still open for those who had decided not to come but I didn’t beg them to change their minds.  We had some tense moments related to boundaries and I didn’t let it bother me.  I allowed it to be as it was.  Acceptance allows clarity and we all still had a good time.  We all survived.    

Today I am grateful for seeing patterns in myself and in family and friends.  We can grow up in really different situations and still develop the same patterns—different causes can create the same reasons for protection.  Seeing the patterns objectively has shown me what needs to break for the next generation.  I have seen first had that many of the patterns I’ve adopted over the years do not work.  I’ve learned to take on some new patterns and start defining my own way of dealing with things.  Breaking those patterns has led me to treat certain relationships differently and to not allow certain things—it’s allowed me to better identify patterns in other people.  Friends who need to be the star of the show, friends who need me to feel for them, friends who need me to solve things for them (and who only come around if they need something), things that make me shy away even if I need to step up, things I need to maintain boundaries on.  The people we thought would be around us forever don’t always stay and sometimes we find those who help us through a time and see they aren’t there forever.  It’s ok to get what we need and it’s ok to get what we want—it doesn’t make us selfish, it makes us aware.    

Today I am grateful for those who pay attention.  I’ve struggled my entire life with time.  I’ve also learned that in order for me to feel safe, secure, unrushed, if we have something coming up then I like to take little steps to prepare leading up to it rather then do a huge rush to get ready the day before or the day of.  I struggled this past week because I was trying to finish up work and I work longer days than my husband does, so I had an expectation of what would be done in his free time.  I frustrate myself to no end in these scenarios and I know this—it’s a pattern I need to break.  But putting things together yesterday and being with people who support us showed me that it does come together in the end and that some thigs don’t require as much preparation as I thought they did.  I also saw as the night went on that people were bringing up the changes I’ve been going through physically as I’ve been taking better care of myself.  I appreciated the compliments people have given me, especially as I feel I’ve plateaued a bit with my efforts because of the events of the last 6 weeks.  Sometimes our efforts aren’t seen or noted immediately but as we keep going on, we feel different and we see we are an inspiration for others.  I am grateful to those who pay attention because they do keep me on the right track.

Today I am grateful for the ability to help and give back.  I loved seeing how much fun the kids had here yesterday.  I loved seeing them swim and run and be free and then change their minds and go to the park and walk independently and run around the yard and all of the games they were making up and riding the bikes with each other, giving each other peg rides like we used to when we were kids.  The spirit of being a child is universal and it is a beautiful thing to witness.  These kids wanted to come in the house and watch TV a handful of times but we told them no and watched them take up the challenge of being outside and present with each other—and they did great.  During the past week I’ve had to work on a challenging relationship with a friend and colleague because there was a lot of emotional cross over and we needed to set boundaries.  I could see that I had set this individual off (unintentionally—I had adopted my pushing behavior thinking this person was ready to move onto the next level and making excuses) so we sat down several times and worked through where we each were at and what was next.  That night I received an email asking be to be a stakeholder in the next round of decision making for the system when it comes to our department.  Being able to give back is a powerful thing, and I used to think that focus on what we were good at would limit what we could return but I’m seeing that it’s a power source for it—it amplifies what we are capable of. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Something I will never do again is carry the burden of a difficult time alone…It doesn’t make you weak to ask for help,” Alexandra Cooper.  Regardless of the context of a difficult time, the lesson is the same: we are capable of getting through tough situations.  As humans we tend to classify what deserves help and attention based on the circumstances.  While I don’t pretend someone facing a bad grade is on the same level as someone facing death, the one truth that remains is that a difficult time is a difficult time no matter what it is.  We don’t get points for how many hard things we can survive or solve on our own—this isn’t a contest of emotional strength. It is a matter of building tools to navigate different situations.  Each situation may require different attention and resources to resolve.  It isn’t about comparing the severity of the difficult time, it’s about learning to navigate them successfully.  Part of that is releasing judgement and being able to recognize scenarios for what they are—look at the situation objectively.  It can be challenging to manage thoughts/feelings during these circumstances, but the truth is there is always a solution. 

I agree with Cooper’s analysis in that it doesn’t make us weak to ask for help.  We need to know that there are people who have faced what we are dealing with no matter what it is and there may be a way to shorten the learning curve and reach out for assistance.  It doesn’t make us weak or incapable to need help navigating something others have done before or something that others do differently.  We each have different experiences and we are meant to use our tools to come together to create a new way of approaching things, a new way to solve things.  Our skill sets are meant to complement each other’s so we aren’t left on our own.  We were never meant to handle anything on our own.  We were meant to build off of each other and to support each other.  As I have spoken about numerous times, we are an expansive species and that means we need to utilize each other’s skill sets and knowledge so we can create new things, so we can develop new things and so we can adapt to the ever changing universe just as much as create that change.

Difficult times change the shape of what we know because it forces us to see what we think we understand in a new perspective.  Those different perspectives give us more opportunity to solve things as well as different and more effective ways to relate to other people.  Problems give us a chance to relate to others because we shift our focus to a common goal.  Our society has shifted to a mentality that we need to be strong all the time and our definition of strong has more to do with power than it does skill.  Survival is about learning how to navigate things together, about how forming community and cooperation makes us stronger.  Asking for help brings us to a solution quicker—and depending on the situation it’s a teacher.  We are not meant to do it all alone—our strengths are someone else’s weakness, and our weakness is someone else’s strength.  It’s a beautiful thing to come together and a nice reminder that not everything has to keep going as it is—we can shift the weight and learn to carry it differently.  That makes it easier for all of us.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths,” Walt Disney.  This is a great statement I just found that follows what we discussed on Sunday regarding being understood and the human desire to understand.  Curiosity serves to show us how vast the universe really is.  Like a giant Mandelbrot set, we understand we are a fractal, a repeating pattern in a much larger scale.  We open all the doors we can seeking to find the pathways to the answers.  We know the more doors we open the deeper the rabbit hole and the curiosity will keep leading us further and further in.  If true, we will never find the end but we will always seek the answers.  That isn’t meant to be negative in any context—it is meant to further explain why we continue to develop new pathways, new ideas, and why we keep digging.  We know there is only so much we can see with the naked eye, but we know how much we feel.  The depths of those feelings are infinite, and logically, we understand that we can make sense of how we feel somehow.

While Disney’s quote refers more to the opening doors of creativity and developing new wonders for people, it also refers to the infinite nature of our role in the universe.  The very cells and patterns that create the human body and make us alive—the things we use to define us as alive—are seen repeated on the grandest scale of the universe.  We are part of a giant living organism, and each of us as a tiny cell in the big picture has a role to play—we each have a function.  We in turn, create other living organisms with unique purposes and the pattern repeats, each of us a potential door to something new.  This is why answering the call of what works for us is so important: we need to be able to fulfill our roles, our part, in the function of the larger organism. 

We are curious because we are always looking for new ways to do things, new ways to fulfill our purpose.  Curiosity is a way to do our job—the universal job, not the 9-5 we think we need to survive in a world that already fulfills our needs.  We’ve created systems that allow us to function outside of the natural realm—for example, we’ve created schools that teach our kids things.  The premise of school itself is actually cool and useful—let’s bring all the kids together to teach them about what has happened so we appreciate the past and learn from mistakes, let’s teach them about how things function today, and let’s guide them toward their purpose.  But what ends up happening is we lose the individuality of our own passions as school no longer supports self-discovery.  School has become a place where most kids become part of the machine to take their place in a system that only serves to benefit the few—and that is NOT part of the natural order.

Disney understood that curiosity brings out the magic in the world—it makes it front and center.  And while there are natural laws that govern curiosity as well, curiosity allows us to see beyond what we have created as a norm for people to function.  Curiosity allows us to marry our own ideas to the physical reality.  He also understood that curiosity creates a new reality—curiosity not only opens the doors but it creates them. We aren’t meant to be limited and bound by the rules we have created.  We are meant to work in the rules of nature, to understand our role with nature, and we are meant to be ourselves so we can build and expand.  Our very nature is expansive and that, too, is the role of curiosity: to expand our minds and physical reality because he understood that our minds create reality.  What is your mind telling you to create?  What doors do we see? And if we open that door, who else are we opening the door for?  Let ourselves run forward because we never know what example we are setting, and what else we can create for ourselves and others.        

We got Loki’s ashes back yesterday evening and the profoundness will never escape me.  How can an entire life, all the energy, the love, the looks, the weight of an entire being be reduced to a bag of grey ash?  There is so much to life and in the end that is how we all end up.  We want to talk about the ripple effect, that is it at its finest.  Action is profound.  Connection even more so.  Energy is unparalleled.  Energy forms those connections and motivates the actions and interactions we have with others.  It doesn’t matter how big the physical being, their impact can reach out and touch us for ages.  Of course there are people who understand the depth of a relationship with an animal but I am aware that there are some who don’t feel that way—that is fine.  For me, this is a before and after moment.  The reason this has hit so deeply is because 1. It was unexpected on every level and 2. I’ve never experienced the level of connection and understanding with any other creature like I have with that cat.  When I talk about in sync with every one, that animal was almost supernatural in identifying need—right up until the end.  The last night we had together, he pulled himself out of that carrier to come to bed and I picked him up and put him in the bed.  I wrapped around him and held his paw like I always did and he put his entire face in my hand.  I’ve held his face before but this was different.  I knew he knew that was it.  I knew he was in pain and he didn’t come out of that carrier entirely for himself—it was for me.

Cats are notorious for hiding their symptoms and I feel he did that for us too.  He has been around all of this turmoil for a while and every night he came to us and made sure we were calm and centered with him.  He did that for myself, my husband, and my son.  EVERY day when I’d get home, no matter what time it was, no matter where he was in the house, he would come and greet me.  He tried his best to do everything he always did-until he couldn’t.  He didn’t want to let us know he was sick because he was taking care of us.  Animals operate differently.  They act on instinct and they have 0 ego with anything.  For those who aren’t cat people, I just want to assure you that they absolutely form bonds like any other animal and for those they love, they do anything.  Maine Coons are particularly well known to form these bonds with their people and that was my Loki.  I know at the end of the day I gave as much to him as he gave to me.  I always protected him no matter what.  I got up in the middle of the night to syringe feed him, to give him water, I took him to all of the vet appointments, I begged for help to fix him.  In the end it wasn’t enough.  In the end he simply put his head in my hand and went to sleep.      

It’s hard for the brain to reconcile what we know we have felt with something when all we see is a pile of ash.  We know that life was so much more than that.  But all we get back is ash in a box.  Time will heal all of this and the pain will continue to lessen—that is the gift of time.  But this will happen again and again as it is the nature of life.  We are here briefly, some even briefer than others—and no amount of time would ever be enough for those bonds like I’m describing here.  So the lesson really becomes about appreciating what we have while we are here and being fully present.  The fact that we are reduced to ash is somewhat poetic in that the physical is never a real representation of the energy something carries.  What we see is no match for what we feel, and even in death, the echoes of a life lived are still felt far and wide.  The pain gets easier but the absence is always there—so the brain finds ways to carry that energy with us.  My little box holds the ash of a life that I will always remember and appreciate—the first time I held him, when I named him, when he first slept in my bed, when he met my son, when he sat on my lap and I cried a million times, the way he curled up with me at night, the way he gave me his paw, his purr, the actual weight of him (he was big lol), the way he played, how he crossed his paws, how he stared to let you know what he wanted (and somehow you always knew exactly what he was saying), all of that.  It will always be there.  So don’t let the ash confuse the significance of a life we shared: let it hold the weight of the love we felt and the memories.  Let it be as big as it needs to be in our hearts even if it only holds a little space on our shelf.

I received a lot of messages about changing energy and choosing energy—being deliberate with it.  I started to look at some of my patterns and understood that I put out a ton of energy to the world and instead of learning to function with it in a reciprocal, I consume in order to make up for the tired.  I never learned to properly receive energy from others.  When we continue to spew energy, we struggle to keep up.  Life is about doing, not doing productively.  For me, I have interest in a lot of things and instead of planning focused time to address them, I kind of throw darts and see what tickles my fancy in the moment.  Part of that is the creative brain—when a thought comes to me I feel the need to follow that train to make sure it’s fully expressed and I like to be in the flow of inspiration—I’ve learned to follow the thought so I don’t lose it.  But the other part of that is lack of belief in myself.  I’m afraid to follow through or be disappointed in what I’m doing so I don’t pin point my focus—I’m scattered.  And when we have scattered focus, we have scattered energy.

As I was sitting with that realization and working on some creative endeavors, my son happened to put on Bluey—I will say again that I actually love this show.  It’s not overly saccharine and it absolutely hits home in these little 7-8 minute episodes—it’s beautiful.  So the episode he was watching was about relaxing and what it means to relax.  The family went on a vacation and all Chili wanted to do was go to the beach and read and she made herself so anxious in the process of getting there that when she got there she couldn’t decide what to do: read, focus on the water, go back with her family.  It put her brain in overdrive and she ended up going back to the hotel room where Bandit asked her what was wrong.  She stated she didn’t know how to relax.  Within a few minutes of truly gathering presence she was able to find herself and let go.  As soon as she did, the kids wanted to go to the beach just as she had wanted to originally.  There are certain things in life we simply have to let be.

So when it comes to managing energy the only thing we really can do is become connected with the moment.  That way we are deliberate with our energy and our choices.  We aren’t wasting energy, we are directing it.  The more we direct our energy, the more we are able to develop it and become a light for ourselves and others.  Relaxing isn’t just about flow, it’s about how we manage our entire being.  We talk about relaxing as a luxury when we really need to look at it as a necessity.  Relaxing is how we allow the flow of energy to come through us as well as guide us.  That’s when we learn to guide it and create intention with it.  There are constantly signs from the universe and it will never cease to amaze me that these lessons can come from a kids show.  There is a different understanding of life around the world and I think these are the lessons we need to teach our children.  These are the lessons we need for ourselves.  Presence, clarity, calmness.  The art of allowing.  The choice is always ours.

“With gratitude optimism is sustainable,” Michael J. Fox.  Sometimes we need a reminder that things can look pretty crappy on the outside and still be ok.  Not everyone is meant to deal with the same scenarios we are and we aren’t meant to deal with everything someone else is—we are uniquely equipped to handle our lives even if we think we can’t.  There are stories we don’t want to handle, things we don’t want to experience, some things we don’t even want to witness—but if we are handed that card, then it is ours to play.  We have choices no matter how challenging, difficult, ugly, impossible, uncomfortable a situation may seem, but as we hold that card, it is for us to manage.  I’m not going to be trite and say it all happens for a reason because there are things that happen that just don’t make sense.  I’m also not going to say it all feels good or that it is easy to deal with because we understand the big picture will make sense.  No, sometimes things happen in life that suck—and we can’t change it.  The only thing we can manage in those situations is our outlook.  We can handle our responses.  We can handle the challenges. 

When we are grateful, we see options.  And look, I know that in the thick of things going down, it isn’t easy to be grateful.  Crisis of any kind is raw and causes pain (or any other emotion).  As we are cut and have to staunch the bleeding, when we are hurt or dealing with an initial impact, we need to stop that blood first.  When we focus on what’s going right and what resources we have available, it’s easier to see those options and choices.  When we are grateful we embrace our ability to fly through the storm rather than relying on the branch to hold us.  With everything my family and I have experienced this summer, I will not pretend that it doesn’t hurt, that loss isn’t hard, that things happen that we don’t understand.  All of those things are real and they can break people down.  But when we are grateful for the lesson we add a tool to our repertoire.  We learn to integrate and accept the hurt as part of the lesson and add another tool to our belt.  The pain (or whatever we feel) still exists, what happened still happened, but it doesn’t run our decisions. 

Optimism and gratitude are high energy and it does take a lot to maintain that state.  So when we choose to look at the positive in the negative, we create a broader vision we can use it long term.  As I said on Sunday, we seek to understand and learn and utilize our skills as a means to guide our lives and form connections with people/places/things while we are here.  When we experience things we don’t understand, we seek to make it fit in the puzzle, so looking at those pieces with gratitude makes it easier to find the fit.  If you ask how we can be grateful for those things, I say this: even those parts (pieces) that feel crappy/painful/raw/sharp-edged/scary/unclear are part of the big picture.  We need those pieces to make the story we are experiencing.  And just because it doesn’t look like it fits at first, it may be part of someone else’s story that needs to cross with ours, or it may be a piece that brings us into contact with the person who has a piece we are looking for—or the person we are to provide a piece for.  It’s all part of the grand scheme.  And above all, as we are grateful and fill our lives with optimism, we see optimism as a power.  Gratitude creates the source, and it is sustainable.