“It’s time you grew your own shadow instead of living in someone else’s,” Yellowstone. I promise I’ll get over this kick with Yellowstone soon, there’s just some gems even in the twisted parts of the story. It’s also appropriate that this fell after my discussion on name. We behave how we think we are supposed to from learning behaviors from all those people around us and we often go against what we know of ourselves to make things easier for the sake of those around us. We work on fitting into someone else’s definition of who we are before we realize what we knew all along—that we know what we need and who we are. When we live under the shadow of someone else, sure we can still grow and thrive. But we will never reach the heights of all we can be if we live under someone else’s definition and thought of who we are. It’s the conversation about the flea again and limiting that jump for ourselves and future generations. We don’t need to cast our own shadow for the sake of towering over someone, we cast a shadow that embraces all of who we are. We cast a shadow over an empire we build for ourselves. It doesn’t need to be a thing of dominance. It’s a thing of certainty in who we are and when we have built what we were called to we are able to help others build their calling as well.
It is some of the most random moments that bring about realizations sometimes. Life works like that, lessons in unexpected places. It makes them no less profound, sometimes just a little more surprising. I had a conversation with some newer acquaintances the other night and I heard them pronounce their last name for the first time. I’ve known these people for some time now but I hadn’t really taken the time to get to know them, mainly due to time and the timing of events—so I’d never really been introduced properly and only heard their names said from other people. When they said it in front of me, I took the time to ask them if that was how it was supposed to be said because I’d only ever heard it what was apparently the wrong way. They responded with saying it doesn’t matter, just say it how you want to. To that I told them, no, if that’s how you say your name that’s how it needs to be said. Our names are more than just what we are called, they are how we identify ourselves and how we interact with the world. Our names are ours and that is the representation of our identity to the world—it should matter how it is said.
Language is a funny thing because it is both irrelevant and important on so many levels. The words we use, the way we use them, when we use them all impact our understanding yet, at the end of the day, they are just words. The understanding comes from us. It matters what we allow people to call us. Shakespeare said, “That which we would call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet?” Sure, Juliet is a love struck hormonal kid, but the truth is still there—we know a rose as a rose and all that comes with it. The same is for our name. The words we use to label ourselves come with equally important connotations. Blind Melon’s No Rain touched this as well—the video depicting a girl looking for where she fits in. She’s rejected from every place she goes for being herself until she finds the field full of people dressed as bees. Now, there was no real insinuation that the girl thought she was a bee, it was the freedom of finding people who understood her passion. Sometimes we just need to find the right place to find ourselves and that means finding ourselves and where we know we belong. We are born with the knowledge of who we are, it is only our habits and training that try to tell us we should be something or someone else. I had previously been taught to not hurt someone’s feelings by correcting them on how they say things, even names. It never felt right hearing my name wrong.
Now that I’m older, I know every time I hear someone pronounce my name wrong, I correct them. When they call me some version of my first name that I don’t like, or if they use a more familiar name/nickname and we don’t have that relationship, even if we do know each other and we are in a different setting where anything other than my real name is used, I make sure to correct them. I have a friend who refuses to use their first name—they only use part of it. The connotation of their full name hurts them and makes them feel different about who they are and triggers painful memories. A name is different than how we feel about ourselves and who we think we are—a name is literally who we are. Details matter. Mispronouncing a word can change the entire meaning of the word. So too can the name we call ourselves change who we are. When we are beyond the process of trying to figure out who we are, we know our name. So don’t be afraid to tell someone when they said your name wrong. People who get offended at being corrected are working through a different issue so let them be upset. That doesn’t change anything about who we are. Tell them how to say your name.
“It’s good to be good and kind and real and sometimes it’s for your own good to say how you really feel,” Stacie Martin. The key is knowing the difference and when each is necessary. I once heard a rule of thumb that if something still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48. It’s about being honest with ourselves and allowing the feeling we have in the moment—but not letting it control anything–and accountability to ourselves about communication. We allow ourselves enough time to decide how we really feel and we communicate about it. People pleasing aside, I never saw the point in approaching any conversation with demands, anger, or malice–my goal is to have honest communication. Sure, I’ve had to have tough conversations with demands that likely could have been more pleasant, but the intent was never anger. And while I spent the majority of my life allowing myself to be shoved to the background, I have spent a lot of my time in the spotlight advocating for others. I know what it feels like to be the underdog and to need backup—and while I haven’t always defended myself, I have always defended those who needed it. Kindness had nothing to do with it—it was the right thing.
Saying how we really feel doesn’t have to be mean, it just has to be honest. As long as we are direct and not intentionally cruel, we have no say (or responsibility) in how our message is received. People will perceive a message in their own context based on experience anyway. We can say how we really feel and still be kind, and sometimes we just have to pull the band-aid off. I’ve spent a significant amount of time worried about what others think of me and how I behave with them, all the while they never gave a damn about how I interpreted or felt about their actions. Each time I worried about that perception, the message was watered down, not quite what I was trying to say and then I’d get frustrated that I was misunderstood. There are always times to choose words carefully, words matter, but there are also times we need to let go of the reins and simply say what we need to. As scary as that can be, I will say that every time I’ve allowed the truth out, amazing things have happened. Not that it was easy, but there was no denying the clarity that came out of it.
I wrote a while back about victims and villains and I stand by it: we will all be the victim in some story and we will be the villain in someone else’s. The world is a complicated place and we are different people to different people. I know I’ve been different people to myself when it came down to it. There were moments I felt like an entirely different person when at work, while in creative mode, while helping my parents, while being a daughter, while being a mother, a lover, a wife, a friend. Sure, those are all different titles but I’m physically the same person in each scenario. So how can the same person be different? Because we need to be. We aren’t one thing—ever. And being those different things isn’t a bad thing so we can take the pressure off of ourselves to be a certain way. Take the pressure off by simply saying what needs to be said. The truth is always easier to remember regardless and instead of watering down a message that’s important to us, or the truth of how we feel, it’s easier to let it out. Now, if it’s something that someone can’t change in 30 seconds, that doesn’t need to be said—I wrote about that too. The goal is never to be cruel, just honest. Painful honesty can be resolved—cruelty cannot. So let down the shield and let the truth out. The goal isn’t to placate anyone at our expense. It’s to get the truth out.
Time is such an illusion. Moments that test us feel like an eternity while moments spent in joy pass in a blink. We pass the days doing the same things over and over again, repeating the same routines, begging and searching for things to change only to wake up one day and find years have passed, wishing we could have done something different, wondering how everything stayed the same yet is so different. How we begin and when things happen often isn’t up to us. Following my Yellowstone kick, Luke Grimes is 41 and didn’t get married until he was 34 and had his first kid at 40—and he has been acting for over 20 years and is now enjoying the spoils of it. He didn’t stay in Hollywood, he moved to Montana. Taylor Sheridan is 55-ish and he says he got kicked out of multiple schools until he saw Lonesome Dove and didn’t hit success with Yellowstone and spinoffs until just a few years ago. Demi Moore is 60 and has been acting for 40 yeas and just won her first award. Vera Wang didn’t start designing dresses until 40. Tabitha Brown found her groove with food, children’s shows, and writing at 43. JK Rowling was on welfare and didn’t hit success with Harry Poter until her 30s. Harrison Ford was a carpenter, Ken Jeong was a doctor, Samuel L. Jackson didn’t start acting until his 40s. There are infinite more examples of this in the world. So as I’m starting over again at 41, tackling my health, sanity, career, goals, priorities, and confidence, I find myself in good company.
None of the people listed above were an overnight success at 20something. There was a significant portion of life spent trying to figure it out, waiting for things to happen, waiting for them to unfold. I’m sure there were many nights begging for things to happen, hoping against hope that things would turn out. From my side, this journey has been a little bit more convoluted to get here than I thought it would, but it has been amazing and knowing that some of the most brilliant minds in the world took the long way as well, that there is amazing work done by people who have started the greatest part of their journey at what some would consider a later part of their lives. It means there is hope for all of us. We aren’t all meant to peak at 20 and life isn’t over at 25. There is a whole lot of life and love to have well beyond those years. For the portion of our lives that we spend after those early years, we sure do put a lot of emphasis and pressure on finding ourselves young and making a name young. Sure, it’s nice to secure our identities early and know exactly who we are and what we want to do. But there is real value in discovering and starting again with intent no matter when it is or how many attempts it takes. There is value in learning and exploring. We don’t need to be a certain thing by any point in our lives. We just need to be who we are and allow. We need to allow the life we want to unfold as it is meant to happen. Say yes and the right things will find us.
So this is a reminder, perhaps just as much for myself, that Just because it isn’t happening right this second doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I tried to go for a new 9-5 dozens of times, tried with a particular department upwards of a dozen times itself. I made it far a few times thinking those were the moments of change, only to not have it pan out. And now that I am on the precipice of something bigger in my life, the timing has proven right to allow for that change to happen. It looks entirely different than I thought it would and I feel different than I thought I would, but I’m ready. Sure, I could be upset about things not happening sooner or not in the way I wanted them to. Or I can accept where I’m at and be grateful that these dreams are finally revealing themselves and coming into fruition. Having that dream realized now is no less sweet than it would have been if I had gotten it 10 years ago. 10 years ago I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted and I certainly didn’t believe in what I was capable of. I had a vague idea of it, but I never did anything about it. I think the most important lesson in all that is learning to get out of our own way. Had I not been so stubborn and demanding of the timing and place and the how of things happening, I may have learned these things sooner—but the truth is it doesn’t matter. It’s here now and the fruit is still as delicious as it would have been. It always bothered me when things didn’t happen sooner because I wanted to relish in the joy of something longer. I wanted the good to last longer. But no matter how much time we have doing specifically what we want, it doesn’t take away from the joy we can have doing other things while we are on the journey.
Today I am grateful for understanding what it means when one door closes and another opens. I am also grateful for understanding that doors open and close in all facets of our lives whether it is in career, friendships, relationships, ideas, ventures, hopes, dreams, fears, anything really. We have to come to terms with the fact that there are certain things in life that just ARE. It can be challenging to discern the meaning behind things when at times, frankly, there isn’t any. At other times, we have to accept that when things aren’t working, they aren’t working for a reason. Things we believed in entirely, relationships we thought were solid, understanding we thought we agreed on. Sometimes they fall apart not because of what we did or didn’t do, but because they weren’t quite what they were supposed to be in the grand scheme of things regardless. If someone was willing to close a door in our faces, then we can be grateful for understanding their true colors when they showed us. It isn’t up to us to make people feel any way about us. We have these relationships and each relationship serves a purpose. Allow it to be, allow the events to pass, allow everything to be as it is. Sure, it stings when something goes to the wayside, but it hurts more staying where it isn’t working in the first place.
Today I am grateful for faith in myself. Life threw a few curveballs at me these past few weeks. Truthfully, nothing I couldn’t handle, not even really anything that wasn’t expected or known, either—things that I hoped weren’t how I thought? Yes. We always hope something can swing the other way and even if we are aware of all possibilities, it can still catch us a bit off guard if it goes off course. So. The real lesson was about finding my own wings and remembering that even if things fell apart I could still fly. In the midst of big change, things always seem overwhelming. When we are dealing with multiple big changes at once, it can feel completely disorienting. Truth be told it is disorienting because we lose all the familiar ground we had when we venture into something new. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing because we will eventually gain our footing no matter where we land. But the real point in it is that even if we don’t have our footing, we certainly have the ability to carry ourselves to the next stable ground where we will find our footing. I didn’t think I would be able to initiate all of these changes at once—all the wonderful things I’ve been working on building in my life all coming to a head at nearly the same time. But this is a gift. I am here on the precipice of all the amazing things I want to accomplish and experience and shedding the last bit of weight from things that no longer fit or serve may be a bit painful, but I will rise above that too.
Today I am grateful for completion. I have about 150 open projects in my life right now between work, home, my son’s commitments/sports, my personal ventures, gatherings, etc. There’s a lot going on like any other person. Nothing is ever really completed because there is always something else next on the list or something else we find in the process. I’ve vacillated between acceptance that change means destruction and chaos and then the absolute need to have it done, to understanding that certain things take longer than we thought, and then getting angry and then finding mild acceptance again for the last several months. The last year taught me repeatedly about waiting—and those lessons in learning patience failed miserably to be totally honest. But I did learn that there are things that sit in limbo and they will sit there as long as they need to. Sometimes life just moves on its own schedule. So all of the things we have going on now feel overwhelming because it is a huge multitude of things that need to be addressed at once. But we are so fortunate that we have the means and the ability to do it all as we need to. We are still able to be comfortable even as the checklist of things we find to do grows. And all we can do is continue to complete one thing at a time and as it goes on, everything will get done. The list never ends—we will always have something to do. When we don’t we are at the end, and I can tell you, I’m not at the end yet.
Today I am grateful for transition. The waiting, the in between is enough to drive anyone nuts. But I am grateful for the transition period because this is the precipice of all that I wanted. It’s uncomfortable with all the loose ends but those loose ends mean that I am able to discern between what needs to be done and what we can let go. Loose ends mean that there are/were possibilities and we were given the opportunity to choose what works for us. Transition means we have choice and that is a gift. I will take the ability to choose any day. I will take the ability to go through the chaos to make things better for myself, my family, and others any time. Sometimes we have to trust that we will find out what we need to know when we need to know it. There’s no real way to prepare for everything anyway—we aren’t omniscient. Sometimes we just have to trust that we will figure it out on the way. So let the change happen.
Today I am grateful for support. I’d be remiss if I denied that there was a level of support in everything I’ve done, even in the stuff that went to shit. I have lived with a sort of naiveite for a good portion of my life in that people wouldn’t outright try to hurt each other or that if we at least did the right thing by others they would do the right thing by us. That 100% delayed my progression personally and professionally and that led to a lot of seeking permission and waiting. It led me to waiting for people to tell me I could do things, waiting for their belief that I could do things. And I allowed that to steer me wrong in many regards. In the cases where I took the leap without waiting, when I took it based on my own volition and desire, things worked out for the best. It’s often that way that we need to remind ourselves that we know what we are doing and that we can trust our instincts when we see how well things can go. Even if it isn’t perfect, even if parts of it still fall apart, I’m seeing that it keeps me on the right track as long as I follow what I am being told to do. There are people who have helped me and I’ve always made sure to tell them how grateful I am—and I am. But I am finding I’m grateful even to those who tried to hold me back, to those who made me doubt myself. Sure, I faced a lot of delay because of that, but I also learned to surpass my own expectations and do what I needed to do. I learned to find my way in spite of that. So in its own way, that too was support. And here I am about to begin the next great adventure of my life.
“Killers don’t seek their victim’s approval,” Unknown. This was a response to someone in the context of someone struggling with their identity after having to take a drastic action to protect themselves and their family. I’m not sure who actually wrote it but it struck a chord. While this particular example is more than slightly graphic, there is still truth to it. Why do we worry about the opinions of others? Nature doesn’t seek approval. I’m certainly not advocating for those who hurt other people by any means—I AM, however, advocating for the idea that we have virtually 0 need to worry about the approval of others. If I’m a shark then I need to be a shark—there’s no shame in that. Never let anyone make us feel bad for who we are. Never. We don’t need their approval to be as we are made—if we are made in that way it can’t be bad. Sometimes we have to do things outside of our nature, and it makes us question who we are, if we are still the same person. I’ve also read somewhere that there are times when good men have to do real bad things, doesn’t change who you are. So don’t let anyone make us feel bad for taking the only option that made sense no matter how rough. There are instances we will have terrible options for choices to make and we will still have to make a choice.
It’s for us to honor and recognize our nature. We were given the instincts we have for a reason. We were designed as we are for a reason. Sometimes we don’t know how we will react or what we are made of until we are in the situation. In those split second decision moments we don’t have the opportunity to slow down or think about anything let alone question our character as a result of what we do next. There is a time for approval but it isn’t as common as we are trained to think. If we are the ones dealing with the consequences of our actions, it isn’t for anyone to judge what we do. In fact, we operate a whole lot more smoothly when we aren’t caught up in the what-if game, worrying about others’ reactions and thoughts/opinions of us. We will all face moments in life that make us question our integrity or test our resolve. We even face moments that test us to see if we will move or how committed we are. When faced with a tough decision that results in an outlier action, that isn’t necessarily a mark on our character depending on the cause. If I hurt someone in an act of self-defense or defense of others, is that really a terrible thing? If I break someone’s ribs performing the Heimlich or CPR, does that make me wrong? Sometimes we have to make a choice between bad and worse and that doesn’t change a thing about who we are at the core.
“The thing about life is when you stop moving it’s over,” John Dutton, Yellowstone. Ok, full transparency, we’ve been on a kick with watching Yellowstone and it always amazes (worries) me that I find these tidbits of wisdom in these shows that demonstrate people of questionable character using terrible means to get what they want. I’ll just chalk that up to recognizing the light in the dark and move on, it’s easier that way 😊 . Regardless, this applies. Motion is key to life. When we stop moving the body stiffens, we lose range of motion, and we slowly deteriorate until we are frozen. We have to move. When we stay in the same place, rooted to our routines and habits, we miss out on all the other opportunities that could be available. We have to move. When we stop moving, we stop hearing the music in the world, worse, we stop hearing our own rhythm in it. We have to move.
The past is behind us for a reason and when we get stuck there, we waste time and energy on something we can’t change. Time is one resource we can’t ever get back. We can move with purpose, we can move with care, we can move with abandon, we can move cautiously, we can move with curiosity…frankly, I hope we move through life with all of those things at some point. The rhythm changes all the time and we can either keep up or sit it out and wait for it to come back again, hoping we find it. The context of this quote was about trying to maintain the traditions of over 100 years of family experience, protecting what they thought was theirs. Repeatedly trying the same things when they are past their prime won’t change the fact that they don’t work any longer.
We are meant to move through life, to experience life. We aren’t supposed to sit on the sidelines watching life pass us by. Sure, there are some interesting moments that we can spectate through, but for the most part, we are meant to act in that story. It’s easy to see how we can live a life without really living it—but still think we’re living it. There is a difference between being alive and living—and it takes some of us longer to remember that than others. Feel all the things. Breathe in the air. Feel our feet on the ground. Enjoy the sound of people laughing. Those sounds infiltrate our lives like a symphony, telling us what to do and how to respond to each other. Find something that keeps us moving all the time, the thing we want to keep moving for. Then we keep dancing until we reach our end and it won’t be because we stopped moving, it will be because we have learned to dance our last dance.
As we settle into a sort of trust in the universe, we find ourselves. What is ours will always find us. We are never lost, so maybe to reference finding ourselves isn’t quite right, but sometimes we do have to remember. We have to unveil the layers we hide inside. We do have to let our edges soften, cut them down a little bit. When we have those moments of being softened we feel like we are losing ourselves—I know I did. The reality is I found that I was giving up the pieces I had been wearing in order to protect myself and to be something that wasn’t fully me—it was something I wanted the world to see. I had to let go of what I prepared for the world to see—just as I’ve talked about before, but what I had to integrate at this point was that I needed to let it go. Like, not bring it back at all, hack it all off and let it lie. Get it out of my life and move on. If it was never meant for us in the first place then we don’t need to waste the energy trying to make it happen.
Sometimes the exposed limb feels raw and ragged—and sometimes it is, the cuts aren’t always clean. But we learn to let them heal and with enough care they start to grow again, and grow into what they were always meant to be. It’s like the elephant chained to the plastic chair or the cat raised with dogs—they mimic their environment and begin to think that’s who they are. Once we remember who we are, that power is unleashed. It can be scary to let it out at first because we aren’t used to wielding it. But it’s amazing how easy it feels to just be. We have to trust enough that what we hear, what we feel is divinely guided and we are meant to receive it and use it. Allow the authenticity to wash over us and let the world become what we see it as. An infinite possibility.
There is something refreshing in not giving a fuck what anyone thinks. The freedom in letting ourselves let go of anything and everything that holds us back. That only comes when we let go of all fear. There is so much insanity in this world, people are lost and some days I feel lost too. The speed the world moves is nuts and we are constantly going just as fast, unable to hear our real thoughts, to find our real purpose, to connect to anything stable that matters. I feel most lost not in movement itself, not in the humbling of ego to help others, but in the fear and trying to make everyone happy. We can all BE happy but we can’t rely on others to MAKE us happy. If we operate under the belief we have to make others happy we need to understand that’s our choice and no one is obligated to return that favor. We can’t find happiness outside of ourselves. Owning things, power over people, none of that matters. There is no real propriety in this world—we don’t really own anything. We are only borrowing it until we move on.
We are of this world, our existence is our creation. We are not THE world, we don’t make the world, we make our reality—reality is what we make it. The world functions just fine on its own as we know we are far more parasitic than we sometimes care to acknowledge. The world would continue as it is without any of our interference or attempt to control things. We’ve changed course and how things look and operate, but the world can level all that in a moment if it chooses. So we can’t be arrogant enough to think we can alter any of that. We can only change our reality. We define the parameters of what’s good/bad, and what we can/can’t do, what we will/will not do. We are good and bad, light and dark. We have balance in us if we choose to recognize it. We spend so much time DOING to survive in this design of man, doing things we aren’t naturally inclined to do, that it feels suffocating after a while—when we start to wake up to the other options we have in life (living as we are). When we break loose it feels like the whole world makes sense. Like nothing can stop us and we’re out of the dream world we’ve been living in. It clicks.
Breaking loose and finding freedom scares people because they take up a new level of responsibility in their lives. See, just because we find flow and where we are supposed to be doesn’t mean it comes free of obligation—we still have things we will need to do to survive. What we want, even if we are fully aligned doesn’t just appear to us. There is still work to do. The difference is there is ease in the effort. Sure there are challenges. Sure there are days we may still have to fight a bit and make sure we are still on course. But the thoughts and opinions of other people and what they think hold no weight so it’s one less obstacle to navigate in making our own choices. No one has to agree with us in order for us to create the reality that calls to us, that only we can see in our minds. We start truly living when we let go of what we hold in our minds what we think others think of us. See how complicated that sounds? If we can’t even articulate that without getting confused, think about how much that is actually confusing us. Allow the freedom of releasing that unnecessary weight to wash over us and open up to the real wonders of life that we get when we work with who we are, who we are designed to be.
Just because I’m stepping down as a leader doesn’t mean I’m not stepping up to my life. I feel like a broken record lately talking about this role change at work but the truth is this is one of the biggest decisions I’ve had to make in a long time regarding this career. I’ve worked for this organization for nearly half of my life and I’ve spent the last half of my career in leadership. It was never an easy journey in any role I’ve held their over the years, but the leadership component was especially challenging. I will admit my assumptions of leadership were off in some cases, but it was an eye opening experience seeing what leadership is really like on that level. I found myself constantly fighting against it, fighting against the expectations of others, they way they had done it, the way things had been done to me previously that I said I would never do to another person. And then things changed and leadership became something entirely different.
Part of me felt like this move was showing the corporate world that I couldn’t hack it. Even though near the end I didn’t want to have to hack it anymore, it still felt like giving up, proving them right. That the people who thought I couldn’t do it anyway were correct in their initial views of me and would gloat. I didn’t want to do that. But I knew in my heart that the leadership demanded of the role wasn’t the leadership I wanted to show. I wasn’t allowed to lead how I felt. I’ve always balked at authority for the things that never made sense to me—like if I’m working on a switchboard where I have 0 in person interaction then why the fuck do I need to worry about the clothes I’m wearing? There is not a single soul that will see me. If I can sort through over 10,000 pages a shift and get them all catalogued, then why am I spending my time counting other people’s work? So when it came to leading, if I could lead from a heart-centered place and still get results then why is that an issue? And if someone takes advantage of that, why am I not allowed to call them on it? These were unnecessary conflicts.
With some time to process this and what this transition means, I understand now that this would have been a 0 sum game in the end. At least for me it would have been. I would have continued to find myself stressed and angry and frustrated and unable to do anything about it whether with my direct leadership or my direct reports. My days would have continued to be stuck in the middle of people who didn’t give a shit no matter what I did, even if the results were exactly what they wanted. No one listening to me either from leadership or staff. So why continue that fight? If people don’t see the value or understand what is being said then I can’t be the one to make them see reason. So sure, I am stepping down from leadership. But taking that step back is allowing me to step up in other areas of my life—the areas that really matter. Sometimes we have to give up what we thought we wanted in order to find what we really needed. I’m still leading, just in a different way: where it counts.
The Intentional Dreamer 