“Don’t fear death.  We are constantly dying.  Dying every day.  Life is a one way street.  Time marches in one direction.  Things are always ending, always coming to a close, or getting closer to one.  We have to accept change, embrace it. None of us maintain anything or any form forever.  We are transitioning always.  Everything is tinged with a kind of dying.  Everything is a phase,” Marcus Aurelius/author unknown.  Cat’s out of the bag: I hate death.  I would avoid death at all costs for nearly anything.  I told stories of how, as a child, I wanted to be a vampire so I could live forever.  I hated the idea of losing someone or something dear to me because I lost people very close to me at a young age.  Perhaps more psychologically draining were the people I nearly lost.  It felt like I was constantly on the lookout for someone to get hurt or die or go away.  I never wanted them to.  People moving away?  I couldn’t stand it.  I think I was forced into change too quickly and too young too often where I became averse to change.  There are many facets of change that I love and embrace in their entirety.  You need to switch that wardrobe?  Go for it.  You want a new job?  If that works for you, do it.  You want to add in a healthier recipe for the week?  Awesome.  But this last hurdle, this last frontier of change is one that I can’t seem to reconcile with.  I have borne witness to a significant amount of loss and know it happens to us all.  I have been part of something that simply didn’t work and it was time to end it so I know that things don’t last forever.  My question has always been why?  We can argue evolution and improvement but that doesn’t ease the ache from losing what was. 

The thing with death is that it speaks of the ultimate finality which is scary in itself.  It even speaks of the unknown which there’s no way to prepare for.  It speaks to the fact that we have no control which kind of sucks.  But the part that no one really talks about, the part that bothers me the most is the emptiness.  That moment when you walk back into the house and you know that person will never be there again. The moment you realize you’ll never hear their laugh again, feel their hug, eat that special dish only they could make. I struggle to understand how there’s this before where this person or this thing is in your life and then it’s just gone.  How something is here one second and then not in the next breath.  Just typing that out leaves a hollow pit in my stomach, my heart dropping down.  I’m not naïve enough to think we can evade death and there is some comfort in the idea that perhaps it really is just a transition to another form and there is something beyond what we can see.  I looked at death as the ultimate enemy for taking the people and things I loved—I never looked at it as necessary.  Sure, even I can admit there is beauty in the cycle: we spring forth, we live and enjoy life full of vitality and luster, we may begin to slow down, still seeing the beauty of our lives and still living as much as we can, and then we embrace the cold and put our shells to rest, nourishing for the next one.  The idea that energy is never destroyed is pretty cool.  And we won’t get this answer today—perhaps never—as to why we need to transmute and change.  I mean, if we are given such a short time here, you’d think there would be manuals or cheat codes or something to tell us how to get it right on our path the first time around.    

I understand evolution and the need for change but I don’t see the point in putting us on such a short quest to find the meaning of it all.  I feel like time is a sort of sick game—we only get one shot to get it right and we never know if we are right until it’s over.  We watch ourselves decay in a hideous dichotomy of living while dying.  I mean, at what point to those cells that sustain us go from giving us life to no longer being able to function?  And even worse than that is we sometimes see the young ones go.  I don’t see the purpose in illness and discord and fighting and ego—yet we all experience that those things.  Humans are complicated.  We try to avoid death (a lot of us do) and it’s like running a race we can never win.  It will ALWAYS catch us. It makes sense to befriend the fate we all share.  It makes sense to try and understand what comes next.  But that part of the journey we will all take alone, we don’t share the answer.  In some logical part of my brain, I know death isn’t evil, it probably isn’t even bad.  It just IS.  Yet the part of me grasping to keep things as they were, to have the same level of conversation with my father I did 10 years ago, to have my loved ones still alive, to have not lost so many key support systems in my life very much thinks death is an evil bastard.  We can do nothing about it, so perhaps the lesson is that we must embrace the phase we are in.  Embrace the now.  It’s said that we will never be this old or this young again, all we have is now.  All we can do is our best and somehow, some way make peace with what our lives are and the cycle that has and will perpetuate for millennia.  Make peace with the unknown that comes for us all and appreciate the grand adventure we are on while we are on it.  Don’t take anything for granted.  The greatest greeting for death is a life well lived.  So live.         

Don’t do it later.  Do it now. That’s the one thing all fools do, Seneca said.  They put it off.  They let their fear or their laziness win.  We have to be brave enough to push past our fears.  We have to be strong enough to will ourselves to do what needs to be done.  Find our purpose, our truth and do the work for it.  Believe we can do it and follow the path before us when the task appears.  Fear is a showstopper for so many of us and it’s a liar.  Our minds hold the key to everything—what we do now and what we don’t and those actions determine the events that unfold.  Don’t let our minds talk us out of what we know we need to do We think life is short when in reality we just waste it.  The present moment is the most valuable thing you own. Humans were given creative outlets to do precisely that: create.  We aren’t meant to sit on something begging to be brought out of us. 

I’m guilty of procrastinating and not using my time well.  I allow myself to become overwhelmed with what needs to be done.  I have all of these thoughts and things I want to address at once and my brain kind of just stutters and I end up paralyzed.  Next thing I know, time has passed and I’ve fallen back into the routine of getting to my next meeting or needing my schedule again and then I get angry and talk about how I want to operate on my own schedule.  If that’s true, then I need to operate on my own schedule with my time managed well.  Look,  we don’t need every single second of the day accounted for, we need balance in what we do ranging from leisure to various work.  But no matter what we are doing, if it calls to us now, then we need to respond otherwise the moment vanishes.  I can’t tell you how many times I thought I would remember a thought only to have it completely disappear. 

The truth is we are bad judges of time. We delay starting something we think is going to take too long or we jump on something we think will disappear when we should have just gotten started or trusted our instinct to start at a more opportune time.  If we were to truly time the day to day things we do, do they really take that long?  Instead of letting the dishes pile up to where it takes an hour to clean, do them right away and we see it really only takes 10 minutes.   And sometimes the things we think will take a few minutes end up taking way longer—I’m talking to all those people who will be ready in 5 minutes.  Or those who decide to put together that bookshelf at 9PM.  Balance is key.  Proactive planning is key and we have to learn how to navigate and respond appropriately to the curveballs that life will inevitably throw at us.  Don’t be afraid to do what needs to be done. don’t be afraid of the momentum that comes once we get started.  And don’t leave things half-finished.  We can surprise ourselves with a little focus and determination—anything can get done.

“Don’t be all about business.  Overwork, a lack of balance, it ends in ruin.  It’s a false dichotomy to think you can just squeeze more and more out of yourself.  You are no good to yourself and to the people around you if you put your professional obligations and advancements above everything else.  Step back.  Don’t overcommit.  Learn your limits,” Marcus Aurelius and author unknown.  Learning limits goes hand in hand with understanding what we can control and avoidance.  The world has so much to offer and we all want to get as much as we can our of our time here but that isn’t possible.  We can’t do it all—we can do all that we were meant to do and there is a big difference.  Constantly saying yes for the sake of saying yes, prioritizing the to-do list over time spent with the creative outlets life has to offer, not responding to the call of what we are supposed to do leaves us with a hole that will never be complete by adding more work to our day.  That’s just how it is.  It can be frustrating and possibly even create a sense of missing out, however, it can also give a real sense of purpose.  The fact that we can’t do everything shows us what we CAN do and there is real joy in what we can do.  Purposeful work brings us a sense of belonging and value and that’s wonderful—but so does purposeful time spent doing other things like spending time in nature, sitting with our family and having a good laugh, drawing, singing, speaking, learning. 

We are given this time and we truly do have the gift of being able to do whatever we want with it.  I spent a lot of time in overwhelm just considering the possibilities life has to offer.  It felt so final to make a choice to do one thing and I avoided commitment all the time.  I realized that feeling came about because I was trying to do it all.  Things I didn’t care about, not really.  It was an effort to prove I held my weight and that I was worthy.  It was an effort to mark things off an endless to-do list that included things that weren’t even mine.  I mean this in the least selfish way possible: why would we do that?  Why would we fill our time with other people’s obligations?  I don’t understand what it is in people where we fall into these categories where we do it all on our own, we take on everyone else’s stuff, or we seem to be lazy.  With all the distraction today, we find ourselves torn between overwork and laziness—neither of which are productive.  Balance really is the key.  Balance looks different for all of us, that’s true so we will have varying degrees of busy and time spent recovering.  That is up to us to decide and when we find it, we hold onto it.

“Don’t judge others.  Strict with yourself, understanding to others.  Be open to the idea that people are going to be fools or jerks or unreliable or anything else.  Let them be.  That’s their business.  That’s not inside your control.  Be disciplined with yourself, your reactions.  If someone acts ridiculous, let them.  If you’re acting ridiculous catch the problem, stop it, and work on preventing it from happening in the future.  What you do is in your control.  That is your business. Be strict about it.  Leave other people to themselves.  You have enough to worry about,” Marcus Aurelius/additional author unknown.  This is a simple lesson: let people do what they want to do, let them be who they are.  There are many annoyances in this world, I don’t pretend that they don’t exist or that I don’t wish people would behave a certain way but I know that it isn’t my choice.  I wouldn’t want someone to tell me what to do so it isn’t my place to tell people how to be either. And it isn’t my place to judge who people are or how they behave.  People will be who they want to be, all we can control is ourselves. 

The more disciplined we are with ourselves the easier things become.  As we spoke about yesterday, avoidance will do nothing except cause regret and frustration in the long run.  So will seeking the quick and easy path now.  Do the hard work now and allow for the ease of aligning run the rest of the way.  When we see we are the problem, correct ourselves.  When someone else seems to be the issue, let them and work on our response.  The truth is what we see in others a reflection of the things we need to work on in ourselves so the things that inspire anger and frustration are the things we are angry or frustrated with in ourselves.  The question becomes what can we do to correct our perspective or the actions we take?  Are we behaving how we want to behave?  Is this what we want to do with our lives?  Our words are powerful yet they mean very little in the end because we are not the ones who determine the course or quality of someone else’s life: we can only do that for our own.  Focus on what we can control and take it one step at a time.   

“Don’t avoid difficulty.  To avoid difficulty would mean complete retreat from life. It would mean hiding in ignorance.  Worse, this would make you dreadfully vulnerable to crisis if it did ever find you.  Instead, we must welcome hazard.  Rejoice in the unexpected and turn failure into strength by deciding to own it,” Marcus Aurelius.  We can’t avoid hard things.  It took me a long time to accept that.  I wasn’t looking for ease solely for myself.  I was always confused how there wasn’t a level playing field for all of us.  Like, no matter the track we are on, there needed to be an answer so why didn’t it always play out that way?  Why wasn’t there a simple answer for everything? If the entire world is a possibility and we are meant to dance in that, then why do we not have the opportunity for it to be easy?  I’m not an advocate for eliminating free will, but if there IS a right way, a way that works for all, then why don’t we eliminate all the other unnecessary crap? Why is there this hands off approach to life?  If there are no random events, then why isn’t there some kind of manual to get through?  What I’ve come to understand is that there may be a best course, but sometimes the lessons we need to learn aren’t on the best course.  Sometimes the lessons we need to learn involve humility and understanding rather than proving we are right or that we can get whatever we want.  Achieving those goals doesn’t come free—but it doesn’t have to come at a hefty price either.  We have to find the middle.

The middle sometimes looks like we are walking a fine line where we may fall to either side at any time.  That may be true.  What I’ve learned is that the middle sometimes means that the answer is something we have to work for, there are lessons we didn’t anticipate, understanding we don’t understand it all, and it means doing the work—even the work we don’t think we want to.  I have my frustrations with the difficulty we impart on our own lives, not by the work we have to do, but by the rules we create to prove our worth to some inconsequential standard that we also created.  The truth is that there is hard work to do and the path isn’t always clear.  But it is also true that we cause a great deal of our own issues with overthinking, ego, and avoidance.  Life isn’t about enduring OR avoiding—it’s about living and that includes the spectrum of experience just AS IT IS.  Not how we see it or what we think about it—but what it ACTUALLY IS.  If things don’t go how they were meant to, use it as a stone to bring us closer to how we want it to be.  Closer to what we need to learn, and then we take that experience and create an entirely new way of being aligned with who we are and what our purpose is.  We just have to be willing to embrace it. 

Life doesn’t happen to us.  It happens as we see it from the foundation of our beliefs and the lessons we’re learning to incorporate from those experiences.  How well do we pivot?  How well do we adapt?  How well do we learn to shed what doesn’t work and move forward?  How long to we hold onto what has tried to hurt us in hopes the edges will dull?  It’s all a choice and so too is deciding what is too hard and what we are willing to do—and what we aren’t.   A willingness to face what comes our way and a chance to undertake to do the work joyfully makes all the difference in the world.  What we plant we reap so if we put out seeds of anger, fear, and discord, that is what we will receive.  If we do the work with hope and intention and gratitude, we will more easily navigate through any challenge that may come our way. Life throws us curve balls for sure but the key is how we rally.  We can spend a whole lot of time finding ways to avoid what the world throws at us only to find out that it wasn’t as painful as we thought and then wishing we had done the work sooner.  We can’t avoid life otherwise it will be a life half-lived.  It’s better to learn to face the task head on rather than in hind site.  Be open and willing to trust that we are more than capable to handle whatever comes our way—it’s our journey, every part of it, good bad or otherwise.

Today I am grateful for making dreams come true.  Every since my kid was born, I had envisioned being a part of his life in so many ways.  Attending school functions, being the room mom, being able to drop him off and pick him up from school.  This past Friday I was able to make that a reality and be part of his Halloween party.  In the years up to now, I’d been able to at least leave work early to see him during his parade which was always fun and we were always thrilled to see each other, but all the special events during the day I would miss.  So being able to take part of his party, to share my energy toward something he loved, to ensure these kids had a great time felt amazing. It was all I wanted.  I am so grateful to be able to do that and more.  I have the opportunity with my new role to be able to do this again for other events and I am so excited to do it. It was worth it, and while I wish I could have done it sooner, I am so happy to have been able to do this for him now and to do it again in the future.

Today I am grateful for new connections.  Relationships change, sometimes when we least expect it.  In those moments we have a choice to lament, fight for it, or change it.  We can always mourn what was (or what we thought it was), that’s a necessary part of that dynamic.  But when a relationship is stagnant and changes/ends, it opens opportunities to learn new parts of ourselves and to find other relationships that we didn’t know we needed.  I met some amazing, strong women this past weekend and I see the value of strength in numbers with focused action rather than emotional draws.  A focused target and goal makes all the difference.  There are a lot of people in this world and we are not all each other’s cup of tea so it can be bitter to realize that we simply don’t mesh with people we thought we did.  It can be distasteful to find that someone isn’t the person you thought they were.  But it is a relief to know that there are those who DO understand us, who reciprocate, who work toward the same goal, who aren’t there to undermine you.  There’s a whole new world waiting in those scenarios and they exist.  The world and our experience of it can be whatever we want it to be.  We just have to make the choice.  Who we connect with and surround ourselves with is well within our control.  I’ve learned to choose wisely.

Today I am grateful for being a bigger person.  We had an unfortunate incident this weekend where one of the kids who was out with the group was lost for a brief period of time.  He’s young, got confused, and walked off with another group of kids.  The short version is that this is a happy ending and we found him.  The long version is that this was the child of a woman who has been a source of pain, anger, and frustration over the last few months.  When we realized the child was missing, there were no questions asked—every single one of us dropped what we were doing and we put our energy toward finding this child.  None of the bullshit mattered and every single one of us saw that and joined in to find this child.  We even managed to end the event with a hug.  The discussion on the status of our relationship will happen another day, but in that moment we rose above and did what we had to do. 

Today I am grateful for honesty.  It’s not that I’m not an honest person, but I will admit that there are times I try to stick keenly to the middle.  It isn’t a matter of me trying to make people happy, it’s a matter of trying to keep the peace and make sure that I do understand all sides of the situation.  Given the scenario of what has happened over the last few months, I could no longer do that.  At the same get-together mentioned above, I had the chance to confront the people who’d been responsible for a lot of the issues we had this summer.  I explained my side and what happened even though I was told, “I don’t need to see receipts.”  I could have acquiesced and tried to choke down ownership for the entire thing.  Instead, I said, “Clearly you do because this isn’t what happened.  I tried to contact each person 3 times—that’s 9 points of outreach and no one responded to me so I don’t want to hear that I didn’t contact people.”  And I showed the proof of it on the phone.  Proof that it wasn’t me who ignored the request to talk.  I also firmly said that there were wrongs on all sides of this and that I will not take responsibility for the entire thing when I’ve put in this kind of effort to explain, make amends, was ignored, and the behavior continued.  It was clear that with this group, the view is that we are the enemy so to speak (or at least the problem) but clearing the air with a few people has changed where I’m at–It’s taken months but I finally got it all out.  And it felt good.

Today I am grateful for truly learning to flex.  Flex my time, flex my ability flex my understanding.  We have 24 hours in a day and I am a control freak about sticking with a routine and doing things at the time they’re meant to be completed.  I wanted to break that habit and it’s been a pattern I too often fall back into.  But I’ve realized that live doesn’t always go how we want it to and sometimes we have to give up our idea of how it is to see how it is.  Nothing is perfect.  It doesn’t have to be—yet, somehow, it is perfect as it is.  How it happens is fine—it turns out fine.  That is the reestablishment of trust in my life—that’s an entirely additional battle so to speak, but it’s a gift.  So when it comes to flex, I realized that being in the moment is where we need to be.  I wasn’t feeling well at all yesterday and spent most of the day down and out physically.  I still had work to do so I managed to get done what I needed to and then relaxed.  I didn’t rush, I didn’t panic, I didn’t stress.  I just did what I could and then listened to my body.  And here I am, on Sunday, still working, looking at the gaps in my schedule for next week knowing that I have all the time in the world to do what I need to do. It’s my choice.  Time moves no matter what we do—it’s up to us what we do with it.  Use it well.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Like we spoke about yesterday, we seek validation for so many reasons.  Human nature related to the desire to belong or the desire to be heard, the desire to be right.  We want to know our existence matters and there are times we feel we’d do anything to KNOW we matter.  While I was working my 9-5 the other day, listening to music, I was brought into the moment with a line from a song by SpillTab-Velcro.  I’ve heard it a million times and I’ve always loved it but something in that moment caught me and I realized how important and significant it really is.  The line says, “Every other chance I get to go without you, I go out to see if I’ve lost my stride or if I still run; Betting on a plan with no variables I’m easily thrown by every little influence under the sun.”   It speaks to needing to know who we are, to not get so wrapped up in other people, overly attached to what they do, their thoughts and opinions.  We need our own identity no matter what.  We are ourselves first and always will be regardless of who comes into our lives. 

We bring our whole selves to our work and relationships and we create something new—we don’t immerse ourselves so deeply in something that we BECOME that thing or that we lose who we are to that effort.  We express who we are through these pursuits rather than use a pursuit to give us meaning.  It’s because we are connected with our work that we find purpose.  We guide ourselves and we keep our awareness of our direction, mission, vision, goals outside of what we do with other people.  We need to believe in our own strength and identity because at the end of the day, we stand with ourselves and we have to look at our actions and determine if they were right—we only know that if we know our own values.  If we are influenced by everyone else, then our best laid plans will never pan out.  We can have a goal, a singular focus, but if we take other’s input to heart too often, then we will never cross the finish line of our own goals because we will spend more time trying to incorporate and bend to what other people think is right than doing what we KNOW is right for ourselves.

We’ve previously spoken at length about what it means to seek validation outside of ourselves In terms of relationships and work and anything we do hoping to get some sort of approval from others.  We tie our worth to what we receive from the outside, what people think of us, and soon we become the chameleon, adapting and shifting and changing with each situation.  That’s the fastest way to lose ground on our personal identity.  Every now and then, even in the HEALTHIEST of situations, we need to take time to recenter and make sure our actions are aligned with our values and beliefs and that we aren’t doing something simply for the sake of getting a specific reaction out of people.  We always need to remain separate because the truth is we are not halves made whole by any other person—we are whole beings on our own with specific talents that require our mastery and knowledge so we can bring those skills to use in whatever we create.  No one will fill the gaps we may feel related to finding purpose—we must recognize those gaps and create the means to fully express what is needed.  No one can do that for us.  So go out and remember how to run to our own rhythm and don’t allow the outside to throw us off. 

“Don’t seek validation. Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.  Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.  Real success, real mastery, real sanity that comes only by tying it to your own actions,” Marcus Aurelius.  The real measure of success is knowing that we are doing better than we did yesterday.  As we’ve been talking about, competition and comparison serve no real purpose beyond creating an imagined hierarchy.  Let’s be clear: at the end of our lives, we all end up in the same position—a body that will decay and fade away.  No matter what we have done in life, we all turn to dust and that is the great equalizer of this Earth.  Logically, that means there is no truth to the separation we create between us, there is no better or worse, there is no real power play.  We all need guidance from each other every now and then but that doesn’t make anyone different than us—we are all human and we all have something to bring to the table.  When we need someone to affirm our worth, we’ve lost sight of our role.  I think it’s fine to be ambitious and it’s fine to know our contribution to this world but playing the game of finding worth from outside sources and showing the world is a slippery slope to losing sight of our purpose.

Life is meaningful on its own.  We are here through an alchemical mixture of timing, genetics, creativity, destruction, hope, emptiness, wholeness, purpose, and endless potential.  There is pure magic in that and the fact that we are here is indication that we don’t need to achieve some arbitrary mark to prove our worth.  We don’t need to acquire a certain amount of things to show our value.  Expressing and contributing our gifts IS our value and we find worth in ourselves through learning to master those skills well.  Our safety and well-being can never be granted from someone else because we tie ourselves to their values and ideas rather than our own and our path becomes determined by someone else.  Do what feels right and learn to navigate the world through that feeling, an ever present connectedness that guides us to the next step. 

“Don’t be overheard complaining.  Not even to yourself.  Look inward, not outward.  Don’t complain.  Don’t meddle in the affairs of others.  When you see someone acting objectionably, remember when you have acted that way,” Marcus Aurelius.  The theme of looking inward and taking responsibility for ourselves continues.  I don’t deny that sometimes the world delivers what feels like unfair blows, bestows gifts to those we don’t necessarily feel deserve it (or we have an opinion on it—we’re human, we have ideas of who deserves what 😊).  But when we complain, we are stuck in a state of comparison, essentially saying that what we have isn’t right, it isn’t good enough, it isn’t worthy or something similar.  We’re essentially saying that we don’t belong where we are or the circumstances we are in aren’t correct.  The truth is we will never know that.  All we know for sure is that we only have control over our actions in the moment.  We don’t have foresight to how every circumstance will turn out—we aren’t meant to know every answer to everything.  That’s a lot of weight to carry.  All we can do and all we are responsible for is walking our path—and every step along the way is part of that path, the good and the bad.  We are human, we all make mistakes, we all have faults and flaws—and that is by design.  So why would we complain about things we can’t change? 

Another theme from this week is the concept of time.  Our time here is so incredibly brief, why would we waste any of it being upset about what we can’t change?  Why would we focus on what went wrong versus what we can make right?  Sure, we need to understand what went wrong to avoid similar mistakes again, but if we stay stuck in the wrong, we will never move on to what’s right.  We only have control over our reactions and our decisions and we never know the full story of what someone is experiencing.  Sure, it may look like the grass is greener elsewhere but we don’t know what that person endured to get there.  We don’t always consider that just because certain facets of other people’s lives look good that there are other areas where they struggle.  Often those with impressive gain have equally impressive losses either through taking chances or through some sort of lesson of fate that taught them to move forward.  It isn’t up to us to judge that person.  We never know where they are on their journey.  So yet again, the question remains, why would we waste time complaining about that which we have no control over nor do we fully understand?  We aren’t meant to understand it.

Our time is much better spent on activities that produce the results we ARE looking for.  We may not hit a home run our first time at bat, but the more we swing, we get closer and closer to it until we get our timing and power right to knock it out of the park.  We develop skills and resilience and strength and we learn to appreciate that other people have skills and resilience and strengths in different arenas than ours.  They aren’t competition.  There really is no competition in this world.  Man created it as a means to create a hierarchy and separation over people in an effort to control them.  We need to look at what we have in a different context.  What we have are the tools we’ve been given in our lives.  We’ve spent a lifetime building a kit to help us walk our paths and there will be a time our paths intersect with someone else, perhaps learning the same lesson, perhaps using our lessons as a stepping stone, and we will use those skills to learn something else.  So don’t worry about where we are on the journey—understand that we are on OUR journey and that looks different than everyone else’s.  There is no comparison for that, there is no one who has lived our journey before.  So keep going.