Today I am grateful for feeling the actual change.  I’ve been waking up at 3AM to work out and modifying my diet for the last month (at least M-F).  This past week I’ve faced some really tough stomach issues to the point where I knew I didn’t want to work out and I felt like crap, especially on Thursday.  I told myself that there is a point where I would have to listen to my body and not do the workout, but until I actually felt like I couldn’t do it I needed to get up.  I knew that if I gave myself permission to stop for a day that it would be all to easy to stop moving forward.  As much as I hate to admit it, I need to be honest with myself and that means being aware.  Stopping isn’t a behavior I do often when it comes to things I commit to, but the truth is I’ve allowed myself to stop things that are good for me when it gets tough all too often.  It goes to the back burner.  And we all know what happens when we plateau regardless: we stop seeing results so we get discouraged.  I’ve also done it where I’ve allowed myself to indulge too much because I started seeing results.  But I didn’t do that.  I got up and I did the workouts—I did them slower but I did them.  They may have been done slower but I finished.  I actually did get sick during one of them and I cleaned up and came back to finish.  That is real progress—it wasn’t forced, I wanted to do the work to keep my momentum going. 

Today I am grateful for following my instinct.  Things have taken a turn in my work environment and not necessarily for the better.  Some true colors are being shown and I was faced with a verbal threat from an authority figure the other day.  In the moment I felt completely trapped, shocked, and completely angered.  The words themselves would never come across as threatening but the context and the manner of the delivery made the meaning crystal clear.  As it would happen, on Thursday the president of our organization sent out an email offering to meet with people at an open table.  Without a second’s hesitation I knew I had to meet with him—not even to discuss what happened to me, but to discuss the potential of my department and where we could offer moving forward.  The state of and future of the department has been precarious due to lack of understanding of our purpose and I knew after the threat I was going to have to do something.  So I discussed with my employee and on Friday we met with the president.  That brief introduction of our ideas led to a request for an additional meeting.  For the first time in a long time I felt excitement again.  Beyond that I felt power.  Not from my ego, but the power that comes from aligning with and following through on exactly what needs to be done.  I literally told myself, “This is who the fuck I am.”  I told another individual who was aware of the situation and they told me I felt better because I followed my instinct—and that is 100% truth.

Today I am grateful for reaching a limit.  Being under a certain amount of stress for too long of a time has absolutely had some adverse effects.  Everything from making it difficult to concentrate to physically feeling like crap—and honestly even a few incidents where I genuinely feared for my health.  I always knew how lax I was with my boundaries but I didn’t realize the full implications of it.  I thought I needed to be nice, to be amendable, to say yes.  What ended up happening was true physical risk along with losing some of my identity.  I didn’t even know what made sense to me anymore.  Working on taking back my health has meant understanding the limits I can push past/ignore and the ones that I need to hold fast to.  I don’t need to be afraid of anyone—we are all human.  My job is to fulfill my purpose and if there are people in my way it is time to leave that crap, all of the pleasing, all of the fear of how they think, behind.  I’ve been fortunate enough to shake hands with billionaires and millionaires and people who genuinely have power and they operate differently than those I struggle with on a daily basis.  If I’m trying to better myself, then why am I worried about those who choose to create chains?  I need to think like those who fly.  I’m at the limit of those around me and I don’t need to be.  Sometimes limits are there to show us that we need to pass right through them, and that we don’t need to deal with that crap-to show us what we are willing to deal with.

Today I am grateful for understanding my needs.  I’ve fought for ages to be clear about what I need and I have found myself in a constant battle expressing what I know I need and convincing those to help me get it. There comes a point where it doesn’t matter if others understand what we need, we need to know what we need.  That means we have to find a way to get it even if we second guess ourselves because of other’s opinions.  We have to trust ourselves—and figure out how to get it.  It may take time and effort and a few creative passes, but do not give up on what we know is right for us.  I got myself the help I needed mentally, physically, spiritually, and professionally this week and I see how having the right resources in place moves things forward.  While we don’t all have the same access, we have the same capability and capacity—and we are able to form our own networks or support.  And support is something we need above all. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“It’s ok to do things scared,” Bruce B.  I love that this followed my talk on fear yesterday.  I want to share this brief follow up because it’s clearly a message we need to share right now, especially if the topic came up two days in a row.  We need to know that it’s ok to do it scared.  I once wrote about how the body can’t neurologically tell the difference between scared/nervous and excited.  So that means so much of what determines how we move forward is how we interpret what our brains are telling us—how we decide to label what we are feeling in that moment.  This is another key reason why it’s so important to really connect with ourselves and learn what our bodies are telling us—to discern between discomfort, fear, and excitement—and to learn how to trick ourselves into feeling one of the higher level emotions.  If the positive and negative are so closely aligned neurologically, then it’s only a matter of deciding how we want to feel in that moment. 

The other side of doing things scared is having faith in our own abilities.  Often times we think we need to be perfect at something to do it or to voice an opinion on it.  Like if we aren’t an expert, we aren’t allowed to say anything on the matter—or try it.  The truth is we learn through sharing ideas and inklings of things.  Just as often as we think we need to be perfect, we hinder ourselves because of our own interpretations of who we are.  For example, we think people won’t accept us as an authority or a resource on something because we are too short.  In those cases we need to remember that we have no confirmation of what people truly think of us and we aren’t meant to.  We are meant to know ourselves and decide that we are going to move forward, that we are able to do what we set our minds to.  I know for me I have to throw in the issue with ADD because we lose faith in ourselves when we don’t follow through on things because we are trying to do all the things at once.  I’m learning to give myself grace in those moments and try to train myself to focus on one thing.  But I still do the thing.

We can’t get discouraged if we don’t feel like the lion in the moment.  We have to tell ourselves that our progress is ours alone and that a single step is all that it takes to keep us going in the right direction.  We can’t progress on all things at the same time at the same rate.  We are meant to focus on one thing and take the time to develop that skill, develop our confidence until we can do the next thing.  So don’t be afraid to start with one thing.  Don’t be afraid to not know everything about that one thing.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward.  Allow ourselves patience and grace and acceptance of who we really are, trust that we are guided and that we will find the answers we need—and then do the thing.  Even if we aren’t able to tell ourselves that we aren’t scared and manage to move forward, then we need to do it anyway.  Don’t let our minds play tricks on us so we fear what we need to do—just do it.  It gets easier all the time until the thing is done.            

“It’s not the absence of fear, it’s overcoming it.  Sometimes you’ve got to blast through and have faith,” Emma Watson.  For millennia people have shared similar sentiment and it’s something I want to echo.  There are parts of life that are super complex—the intricacies of survival and determining what we need and what we want and how we are going to live aren’t necessarily easy.  Perhaps a simple decision, yes, but easy to execute and stand by, no.  Life requires a certain finesse of knowing when to alter our decisions and when to stick with our boundaries and when to hold back and when to go for it.  There are absolutely times we need to put that fear aside and simply tackle what we want head on.  We need to understand that sometimes life is less about doing and more about having faith—and sometimes it’s having faith enough to take action no matter the potential of the outcome. 

There will always be something that terrifies our primal brain—we simply work that way as it is part of our survival mechanism.  Additionally, none of us are born without emotion so there will always be some type of external influence.  We just need to learn to manage that and we need to learn what is ours to carry.  Some of those fears aren’t even ours and we need to learn to put them down.  It really is ok to say, “I will not be burdened with something that was never my issue in the first place.”  That can apply to generational things as well as current coping/adapting behaviors—a parent being afraid of failure doesn’t mean we have to be afraid and just because people demand our energy doesn’t mean we have to give it.  The beauty of fear is that every time we face it we learn something more about ourselves that we are capable of.  And in order to overcome it, we need to face it.

At the end of the day the only way to move forward is to face everything—especially our fears.  The more we run and choose to ignore what’s in front of us, the longer we delay living or doing what we actually need to do.  Plus I can’t tell you how many times the act of facing something I didn’t want to took so much less energy than avoiding it.  We build up the things we don’t want to do to a degree they become this unpassable mountain in our minds.  Truly, even if there ARE challenging parts, all we need to do is put one foot in front of the other and allow things to pass as they are meant to.  It’s a matter of tackling life one thing at a time.  The biggest mountains are in our minds—and so is the biggest prison.  Master the mind and understand what we need to do and the rest becomes easy.  Have faith that we will always know what we are meant to do—and then do it.

I had a long day the other day and I found myself walking around the halls of my job like a zombie, lamenting that I wasn’t outside or with my child.  I realized that I often say no to playing with him because I’m exhausted—even though I’m constantly begging for more time with him.  When we start playing he never wants to stop and I appreciate that because it shows me that there is purpose in play and that we can always push beyond.  At the same time, because he never wants to stop, that often piles onto the exhaustion.  Even if I say yes, it’s still not enough—someone is always demanding more attention.  I know wholeheartedly that I am exhausted because my cup is empty.  Ok, not totally empty, but it is often depleted.  I know I’m in an unhealth environment (and I have for a long time) but this is confirmed when I am up at 3AM to work out every day and I feel great but then automatically feel fatigued when I get to work.  There are places that simply take the life out of us.

When we surround ourselves with light and joy there is always time for play.  We don’t have to shirk responsibility but we also don’t have to take this life as seriously as we do.  Play creates bonds and alleviates stress and offers a creative platform.  But it has to be genuine play that stimulates us, not forced play where we have to give more than we have.  We have to find work that complements us, that allows us to share our gifts but also replenishes that cup so we have the desire and drive to do more.  We need to do what we need to do to fill our cups including taking a day or making something we really love doing a priority.  This is the only way to truly connect, not only with others, but with ourselves.

I could go on a rant about how this society, the way we live today is thrilled to have us exhausted.  That it’s designed to keep us exhausted so we are kept in our place.  I don’t want to go off on my theories about that but I do believe it’s true.  When we are distracted and tired we become complacent and less likely to push for our own desires/dreams or our purpose/joy.  Too often people are comfortable putting those feelings up as the norm—that because the majority of people feel that way that it’s normal.  The truth is that in the animal kingdom there is always a hierarchy, but that is often based on survival—and I have written many pieces about the transfer of the human need to actually survive and the evolution into the ego’s need to survive.  We truly don’t need to waste our energy and resources in this pissing contest of power and the game of who got more.  In fact playing that game feeds into the system even more and perpetuates the cycle.  We need to wake up to our lives and embrace them, love them, and fully live them. To do that we need to play and we need to set boundaries, make time for what is important to us.  You never know, maybe that will be the example to others.     

“Think of all the times you’ve upgraded certain aspects of your life.  All of this is the power of what it feels like to continuously evolve and view life through a higher lens.  Life’s number one skill that you need to develop is programming you..deciding what outcomes you want, setting goals,” Rob Dyrdek.  Rob shared this wisdom after telling the story of how he bought his first ’93 Honda Civic and knowing that he overextended himself.  He said he overshot the mark.  But he shared this in the respect that he was upgrading his life and that he needed something a little beyond reach to keep him moving forward.  To get bigger you need bigger goals and bigger vision.  You need something to keep you growing.

I never enjoyed the kind of pressure of taking on a project I knew couldn’t be achieved.  I mean I had an outright aversion to it.  Plus I had a chip on my shoulder about being the kid who did the project all those years in school—if I didn’t want a bad grade I had to do it myself.  Ironically, even though I have this aversion, one of my favorite quotes is from Eleanor Roosevelt, “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll still land amongst the stars.”  I love the idea behind it, but I secretly always knew I would hit my mark—if I wanted the moon, that’s what I would get.  I wanted more but I settled for mediocre so I wouldn’t get stuck with something I didn’t want long term.  Putting the idea of going for something just out reach into context with Rob’s quote, I understand the point because if you aim for more than what you have and more than where you think you can go, you will get further than you would have with a smaller goal in mind—even if you don’t get the exact goal.

For me it was a matter of fear—fear of judgment or other people telling me I could/couldn’t do something.  I didn’t want to make a big production out of it because of the fear of failure.  And believe me, I always had a contingency plan.  I always knew what I would do if I failed—I would make it not my fault saying so and so needed me or I was supposed to do x and when those things didn’t come through I could say it wasn’t my fault.  I was scared of the task, I was scared of success.  I didn’t know how to listen to my body or my mind or my soul—it was all outside influences and fear that directed me.  Now I want to set the bar a bit further ahead because I don’t want to stay here.  I don’t want my progress contingent on what other people do.  It isn’t so much about the pressure, it’s about learning what we are capable of.  If we tell ourselves we are only capable of x, when we hit x we will stop.  So go for y.   

Today I am grateful for flexibility.  In the spirit of discussing difficulty letting go of the way I’ve always done things, there have been several bumps in the road this week (some of which we will discuss later next week).  These things required me to make quick decisions completely against what I would normally decide.  I had no other choice but to go with it and, honestly, I found some peace.  I don’t know if it was the rest my brain needed, the jog to get me in a new state of mind, but being away from the standard day and then having to work on a day I normally don’t offered new insight.  Sometimes we really do need the silence to guide the mind.  Being able to work without distraction totally changes the playing field, but when we deal with the hustle and bustle all day, constant distraction, working distraction free becomes awkward or even unfamiliar.  We are trained to think it’s unproductive.  It’s the most productive we can be.  Our worth isn’t determined by how many fires we can put out at once.  It’s about how we can be flexible enough to know when we need to adapt and sometimes thinking outside the box to find an alternative solution.  It’s about being open to finding a new way of doing things—you may surprise yourself at how good it works out.

Today I am grateful for communication.  Even the cards today spoke about communication.  Sometimes we know what we want but we struggle to articulate it.  For years I’ve felt this thing inside of me that I really couldn’t explain.  It was this vague sense of knowing, of feeling a certain way, of seeing things a certain way and knowing that was what I wanted but having no idea how to get there and no idea of what it actually was.  I was burned emotionally so much as a child and young adult that I struggled to find safety or trust and I learned to mistrust myself as well. Plus the feeling of not knowing what I actually felt or how to explain it created deeper mistrust in myself.  But as I’ve been practicing, these things have been becoming clearer and clearer.  With learning to trust feelings and expressing what we want we learn how to voice what we need, what we feel and we learn how to get it.  I know I spent too much time worrying about how my actions impacted people—it had its positives as well because I could plan ahead for the best outcome, but it left me a neurotic mess because I was afraid of the negative implications of doing what I wanted.  But we have desire and drive and the ability to communicate in so many ways—we just need a little practice sometimes.

Today I am grateful for friends.  Sometimes we need those people who force us to come out of our shells, especially when we don’t feel like it.  I watch a friend of mine with a beautifully complicated dynamic—she is incredibly giving and loving and caring while also being super firm in her boundaries.  I admire her because she has 0 fear in expressing who she is but she openly embraces people for who they are and she understands things about them, the little quirks that make them special.  Me being a people pleaser struggled to understand how someone could be that bold without feeling shame or regret, and I realized, I have those ideas as well and I’m vocal as well—but she actually does something about it.  We need people who complement us, who make us see the other side of ourselves, who not only accept us, but who encourage us to be who we are meant to be.  It took me a long time to find people who accepted me like that and I am so grateful that I did.  Their unique talents, their ability to weather any storm, the assistance and community we have built.  It’s a gift.

Today I am grateful for living.  Going through any change is challenging, especially when we are working on ourselves or our development in particular.  Sometimes we want things to be a certain way or we feel so tired that we don’t want to push on (or feel like we can’t) and then something comes up and we have to expend more energy.  The other day I was so tired after work and I had a massive headache.  Work has been challenging and super busy, I’ve been up early to get in a productive workout, my son has been sick so I’ve been up with him for nights, and I’m balancing an endless to do list.  I knew I had to work on Saturday so the last thing I wanted to do was entertain but my husband told me he invited our friends over.  I initially told him I was so tired and my head hurt that I really wished he had told me before having people over.  At the end of the day, it was best they did come over because we had some good laughs, good foot, and we were able to support each other with our presence.  We can never pause life, as much as we may want too, so it was nice to embrace the moment and I am grateful that we have friends who cared enough to join us.  Our home, table, hearts, and stomachs were full—what a blessing.

Today I am grateful for decisions.  I know that some tough decisions are coming up soon.  I know that I need to be prepared for some of these and to do that I really need to be in touch with myself—I have to get really honest about what I want because these are the decisions that are going to change the course of many things to come.  There was a time I would let myself get overwhelmed by any decision, and there are times I still get overwhelmed by even the tiniest inconvenience (I’m working on it).  Now I see it as a gift.  I have so many opportunities in front of me, and as long as I find the clarity and focus, I will make the right decision—and I know it will be the right decision because if I am in that frame of mind I will be aligned with what I am meant to do.  Decisions aren’t meant to overwhelm us, they are meant to be a gift to help us cut away the extraneous in our lives, to help narrow our focus to what matters.  All we need to do is be honest about who we are and what we feel and the deciding becomes easy because we know exactly what we need to do.  Embrace the tough choices because at the end of the day, they really aren’t that tough—they are meant to get us where we need to be and we are lucky to have the option to make those choices.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”  I saw this quote and it wasn’t attributed to anyone but I fell in love with it.  As I’ve been on this continual journey of evolution, development and improvement, I am constantly seeing ways I can improve and I’ve realized how much I still stick with what I know.  I don’t know if I’m waiting for the right time or the exact right amount of time, money, energy etc., but I do know that I haven’t been quite where I want to be.  Driving home from work the other day I legitimately had a moment where I felt complete presence.  I found myself thinking, “This is exactly how I want to feel.”  It was a feeling of warmth, calmness, certainty, and peace that where I was was exactly where I needed to be.  The realization came after I’d been chewing on some events from the day and I suddenly understood that I don’t need one particular individual in my life.  I’d been hiding behind this person at work and like lightning, it hit me that everything I’ve done in the last few years has been without her.  It used to infuriate me—and it is still frustrating—but in that moment I realized that all of those accomplishments were my own—and I didn’t need her to open any kind of doorway.  I’ve created my own.

As I continued down that train of thought, I went further into the work I’m doing even in my personal relationships and I realized that I truly don’t need any of them either.  All my life I’ve waited until other people around me were ok with my decisions before acting on them.  I thought too many steps ahead and all it did was keep my brain spinning instead of actively making progress.  I will NEVER deny the people who have helped me progress and I am so grateful for every gift I’ve been afforded in my life—I wouldn’t be here without the actions of family and friends, and yes, even some coworkers.  But the reality of it still is that I did the work on my own.  People have provided me tools and resources that I needed but at the end of the day I did the build myself.  So that evening when all of these things swirled through my head, I finally understood that power.  I understood that if I had done all of that on my own, I am fully capable of building what I do want.  Again, these aren’t new lessons, these are just new visceral experiences of them.

There are so many layers to healing that calling it a rabbit hole doesn’t even do it justice.  I’m in this phase where the experience of the things I thought I knew is totally different from what I thought I knew.  I never knew what it was like to experience that certainty and that calmness.  I had a feeling something like this was coming because I had that moment of calmness during my interview last week.  All of the games we play, all of these facades and charades we have, are simply that: fake faces we wear in a poor attempt to protect ourselves.  This life is a cosmic gift and even if we don’t know the full meaning of it, I know we are meant to give it some form of meaning.  The story I told myself for so long was that I needed to be in a certain place at a certain time or I would lose out on the things I currently have.  But what if the things I currently have and the way I’m living are the things that are holding me back?  I’m fighting to keep this façade, this image going when really I should be expanding and building on it.  And I work on this every day, trying to incorporate these lessons, failing and flying all in one.  Make it an adventure.

I watched my son struggle with a trick he wanted to do on the playground the other day.  He was frustrated because he’d been able to do it a few days prior but he struggled to replicate it on our most recent walk there.  I saw myself in him, the need to get it right immediately on that first try back at the playground.  I found myself telling him that it’s about making progress.  We both fixate on the end result and struggle with what it takes to get there.  I struggle because I feel there is a specific reward for specific action and he struggles because he conceptually understands things but doesn’t know how to practically get there—and he expects to have it on the first try.  We both struggle with that, actually.  But I felt a certain wisdom channel through me and I also told him, “When you don’t get it right away there’s an opportunity to learn something new or to get better at doing it.”  Something I need to practice/remember myself, as well.  

But right now we are here in Spring, the trees are budding and it’s a new beginning.  This is an opportunity for all of us to appreciate where we are at in the journey and to appreciate it.  The more present we are and the more we can accept and understand what we need to improve upon (heck, even what we need to do next) the easier it is to adapt, learn and integrate so we can improve.  Will Wonka said “Invention my dear friends is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butter scotch ripple.” (thank you Gene Wilder 😊).  The reason this stands out is because it’s about the effort, the learning, the adaptation of what we are creating that matters.  It isn’t the end product that comes first, it’s the creation of it.  And the truth is that we can’t get to the end without learning what we need to first.  If the goal is to get to the end, we will miss all the living in between—and that means we miss the opportunities to learn and potentially make something even better.  So take time to be where we are, take time to learn.  Life is a big experiment anyway—we all end up in the same place, so we might as well make it an adventure while we are here.  Have fun.