Today I am grateful for character.  I’m proud of myself for allowing people to be who they are and for allowing them to be who they are in different circumstances, to be with them through different phases of their lives.  I’m also glad to know their character and to understand their patterns.  Some people are who they are no matter what we do.  They say a leopard never changes its spots and in some cases this is true.  We can’t be upset at the scorpion for stinging.  People aren’t all bad, but we do need to realize that no mater what we do, sometimes it’s just their nature to sting.  Once we fully grasp that, it makes it easier to be who we need to be—who we are. I never considered it a bad thing to allow people the benefit of the doubt, to give them chances.  But there came a point when I realized that my nature to give people a chance to be who I thought they were wasn’t serving.  There comes a time for all of those with a soft heart to understand it’s ok for them to walk away and it will be necessary at some point to put up that wall.  That doesn’t mean we have to harden our hearts—we are simply recognizing when someone will sting again.  It took a long time to realize that keeping people at bay so to speak wasn’t about being hard and it didn’t make me a bad person. It means we accept those people for who they are and we stay true to ourselves.

Today I am grateful for new beginnings.  For both the beginnings we plan and the beginnings we don’t.  I’ve had an unsettled feeling for years now, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on but it was basically like I didn’t fit anywhere I went.  In certain situations it felt like I was a rock being tumbled around, forced to blunt my edges, other times I needed to sharpen them, but the overall sensation was that no matter where I was, I didn’t quite fit in.  Constantly a square peg in a round hole.  For so long I felt like I had to immerse myself in some specific identity, some version of me that was true but not complete.  A constant battle between too much and not enough, the common factor being me looking for something to tell me what I was and where I belonged.  Needing someone to tell me my value, that I was welcome.  There comes a point where we no longer need to be invited to the room because we own the room.  We take control of our lives and we no longer seek approval or invitation—we simply move through life. When something doesn’t fit, we need to remove it or remove ourselves from the situation. Sometimes we have to say fuck it and just start over.  We get the feeling that something isn’t working—we need to trust that.

Today I am grateful for my son.  I call this out specifically because I’ve had the opportunity to sit and work with my son on some emotional healing and development over the last few days.  My son is a sensitive soul like me.  For as fiery as I am, I am indeed sensitive and I react quickly.  He feels just as heavily as I do and I witnessed the true weight this beautiful boy carries and I understood to the full extent where my role is to ease that burden for him and to teach him how to carry what IS his.  I’ve talked about how quickly time moves in general and I’ve even brought that up about the time I have with my son and I know now how determined I am to make sure that I get the most out of this brief window I have with him before he decides he’s too cool for me and wants to play video games for longer, or he goes out with his friends more, or that inevitable moment when he decides he wants to leave for college and all the millions of moments in between that tell me he’s growing up.  The moments I witness every day.  So when he wants to snuggle with me, I’m going to take those few extra minutes to let him.  I’m going to soak it all up and love him as much as I can and I’m going to make sure he knows he is loved and capable and important and strong.  When we have the opportunity to experience life, I’m going to take it, not push it off because I have some checklist of things I need to do.  All of that can wait because I have right now.

Today I am grateful for breaking patterns.  I’ve struggled with patterns at times because there is a fine line between routine and a rut—we need routines but we can’t let them become ruts.  We form habits based on our actions and the actions are borne of our goals but what happens when we see the tide shifting? Or when we have to learn new ways to achieve the goals we were looking for?  We have to be able to let go of what we knew and welcome the new.  Patterns serve to build the foundation but they quickly become walls/barriers to something new if we keep building the same layers over and over again.  Shaking things up is good for the brain.  It can be a bit disorienting at first but it’s ultimately exactly what we need.  Break the patterns, break the mold, be ready to say no and do what works for ourselves—be ready to say yes to what works as well.  And be willing to admit when we have to know the difference. 

Today I am grateful for camaraderie.  This is different than friendship.  My son has started a team sport and it’s a whole new world for us.  I’ve always loved athletics and playing games—even if I couldn’t play them very well 😊—but I never understood what it really meant to be part of team.  My entire life I’d either been too competitive or the team I was part of was too competitive (internally) and we didn’t know how to work as a unit.  Watching these kids function together and move as a unit, each one playing their role and even shifting roles as necessary is a beautiful thing.  Watching them celebrate their wins and even learning from their losses is really special to witness.  They learn new things about themselves and when they accomplish what they set out to do, seeing the satisfaction on their faces is like nothing else.  The pride they feel when they set a goal and achieve it is a nice reminder that sometimes we need a group to support us to hit those last few feet—someone to set us up so we can carry it home.  And other times we need to be the support and that is just as important.  Camaraderie isn’t about who wins, it’s about how we function together and when I see the teams I’m part of not functioning, it shows me that there is value in finding the team that does.  There’s no point in chipping away at the pieces of ourselves to make things work—we need to help each other shine. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

“She’s a lot; You’re right.  I am a lot.  With a lot of layers, a lot of personality, a lot of dreams, a lot of ideas, a lot of strategies, a lot of emotions, a lot of love.  So. Yeah.  I’m a lot.” Unknown.  The world needs this reminder right now.  I feel like it’s trite and belabors the point to say anyone who says you’re too much can go away/isn’t for you/doesn’t matter etc.  I’ve never been shy on my stance in regards to self-worth and I have always found it funny that people tend to encourage us to be all we can be until we get to the point of too much—well their definition of too much.  But it is in the farthest reaches of to much, the biggest expansion we can manage that we find who we are.  So how is that we want people to grow and still tell them it’s too much?  Or we tell them they’re doing it wrong?  I struggled (and still struggle) with the idea that we are somehow responsible for meeting other people’s definitions of our lives.  I struggle with it because I fell right into it, I let them drive and I had no idea where the hell they took me for a long time.  I had no idea how to get back.

Humans were never designed to be single dimensional creatures.  If we were, we wouldn’t have the capacity for all the wonders this universe can afford us that we are capable of taking in and making sense of, of creating.  So with that being said, mathematically speaking it doesn’t even begin to make sense that we all need to be the same.   And by that logic, it makes no sense that any human on this planet would be the one to determine what too much/too little/too anything is.  The fact of the matter is we have a lot of emotion in a little container, a powerhouse of energy brimming with potential.  We are like siphons, channeling that energy into something productive.  So why would we want to produce the same things? And why would we presume to listen to someone be critical over us when it’s likely they don’t have the ability to do what we do?  I work with some people who get angry when you help them with something and then angry when you don’t, they want explicit instruction on something but when you give it to them it’s micromanaging—and that is the way of humans in this world.  We have the capacity for infinite … anything…and here we are trying to lord that power over each other. 

I want to be a lot—there’s a lot to do here.  There’s a lot to experience.  There’s a lot to feel.  There’s a lot of places to go.  In order to do those things, I need to be a lot.  I need to know who I am and I need to be clear in those expectations and the path I’m following.  Believe me I learned that first hand from years of NOT doing it. It took me a long time to realize the audience will change its view of you depending on who is in it.  We make each other think we have to somehow perform for each other, that we need to be what the other person wants.  The reality is there is no stage.  If we were honest, I’m not entirely sure the world could handle that, but if we are at least honest with ourselves, we can get closer to the truth.  We can learn to embrace the too much.  We can embrace the entire thing.  I don’t want to reach the end of my life and say I lived small.  Because shrinking takes away not only from the experience of who we are but the experience of what the world can really get from you.  We are meant to taste this life.  To feel it.  We need to be big enough to take a bite out of it.  So let them say you’re a lot.  Chances are they want to be a lot too and they haven’t figured it out yet.  And when someone says you’re a lot, simply say, “Thank you” smile and move on.

“I found my rhythm when I realized that even the steps backward were part of the dance,” unknown.  We all feel like we take steps back every now and then.  Like no matter what we do we can’t catch up. That is the nature of life, it ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes just like the moon.  The natural rhythm of life is a filling and emptying that happens all on its own.  Everyone gets on the back step every now and then.  Some of us are just better at turning it around than others.  We learn to make the move into a step rather than a fall, and suddenly we understand what life is telling us.  Our balance relies entirely on our ability to pivot and in order to dance well, we have to learn to understand the rhythm.  We have to FEEL it.  Our hearts beat on their own every day, carrying out their cadence and keeping us alive.  It’s a series of impulses that keep moving, that keep going no matter what we do.  We have to do the same.

Sure, there are hiccups along the way, we all stumble.  But how quickly we rise and move allows us to keep moving.  Some people stop dancing even when they still hear the rhythm.  That is a life wasted, that is a life where we miss the beautiful sounds and feels of living.  Sitting out is always our choice, always an option—but that option leaves out the core of the experience.  Life gets messy, life isn’t meant to stand still.  The essence of life is in movement.  We can look at steps back as mistakes or we can look at them as simply the next step in the dance regardless of which direction.  Sure, we WANT to move forward, that truly is the goal, but we must often pivot and that involves coming at things from new angles. We can only see new directions if we move—even if that means moving backward.

Quite simply, we must remember that moving backwards isn’t a bad thing. The only negative connotation we have with it is how we define it.  And sure, stepping backwards can feel crappy at times, but moving forward and taking the leap is an even better feeling, especially when we can bounce back from where we are.  As hard as it is to accept, those steps backward often aren’t personal.  We must learn the lesson involved and in order to move forward we have to learn how to handle the steps back, what our weight feels like as we shift our feet and our balance.  The only way we can learn that is to actually take the step back.  Again, I don’t pretend that is easy or comfortable.  But if we look at it from a different angle, we can at least see how it is useful.  When we stop carrying the stigma of a backstep as a bad thing, it all comes together into the exquisite performance of our lives, one in which there are no missteps—because there never were any.   

“Just because you were born in the desert doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the ocean,” unknown. Sometimes we are born a bit out of our element.  Sometimes we have to find where we are meant to go.  There are places where the sun is always shining yet some people stay rooted in the dark.  Some people live in the dark places but they know the light and they choose to be the light for other people.  The natural state of who we are calls to us from the time we are born.  For those who believe we choose our mission before/when we come here, that is exactly what I’m talking about.  We KNOW.  Some people are fortunate enough to have been born in the exact right circumstance for what they want.  Others need to find their way to it.  We must always remember that even if there is a struggle to become who we are, we must follow that knowing because it is a beacon. 

People can be multiple things—people ARE multiple things.  Some of those things are just more clearly defined than others.  It can be tricky to put together the puzzle pieces because it may not make sense where they fit at first—but if we turn them over and we start seeing the big picture, it all comes into focus.  Sometimes the things we are looking for aren’t right around the corner—we need to venture out and learn by answer the calling of our souls by responding to what feels right.  And we have to remember that no matter what current circumstances never dictate the destination.  Where we are at today is no indicator of where we will be tomorrow—but what we DO today is a good gauge.  Where we are today is not an indicator of worth by any means—it’s a reference point to show us what we need to do to get where we want to go.  The choice is always ours, whether we stay or go, whether we follow through on what we know we have to do or not.  But where we start is not where we end up—so keep going.       

A few years back, right after we moved into this house, one of our neighbors was in a horrific accident involving a horse that escaped.  It was late at night and the animal, under the influence of some medical issue, had escaped from his pen and ran straight toward the road where it ran headlong into this guy’s truck.  The driver had to be airlifted to get help and he died 13 times over the course of his recovery.  It was a long journey for him—but he survived.  My friend hadn’t heard the full extent of this story and through the course of her business, she met his wife (again, not knowing who he was) so this gentleman came to my friend’s house to pick up his dog.  I didn’t get detail on how the conversation started or how the subject was broached, but he ended up saying he was sort of famous around here because of his accident…and that the biggest lesson he has learned is to just keep going.  He said he didn’t know why God kept him alive, but he knows he has to keep going.  And that is the truth.  In so many circumstances, what else can we do but keep going?  There are always issues in this world, always problems we have to surpass—but there are certain circumstances in life that are beyond explanation and can only be felt to understand…to be brought back to life from death is a powerful message of purpose.  And his purpose in that moment with my friend was to tell her to keep going.  She needed the reminder in the midst of the stress she was feeling, and it needed to be him to give it to her.  And the really interesting part is that she was the one to give it to me.

I wrote about forgetting blessings in the middle of stressing and it’s a difficult emotion to explain—it’s not like I forget that I’m blessed, truly.  I don’t ever mean to come across as an entitled brat because I am well aware of the issues in the world and the opportunities I’ve been afforded.  My losses, stresses, and traumas are no different than others.  In some cases they are insignificant and in others they would make people feel glad it wasn’t theirs.  But we do get caught up in where we are, no matter what it is—we are human and that happens.  It’s easy to look at what is causing stress for us in the moment and lose sight of the bigger picture because that is what is in our reality right now. For as open minded as we are, we can have a limited view when we need to deal with what is in our reality.  And the universe will send us the reminders we need to bring things back into perspective for us.  When we let emotion overwhelm us we forget where we are.  I’ve been lost in emotion many times—and that usually seems to be the place the universe offers the most humbling of lessons.  Like…you can be freaking out and feeling absolutely inundated with emotion and all of a sudden it will all click into place and everything is fine…or something will happen (like hearing this guy’s story) to remind us that what we are going through isn’t so bad. 

“You can’t change the past no matter how hard you try or how much you want to, you just can’t go back and change what has been done.  But what you can do, is you can choose to move forward, make different decisions, more in tune more in line with the truth of who you are and also authentic to where you want to go.  You can create new from where you are right now,” Travis Holp.  I needed to hear this one.  Sometimes we need the reminder that there are things beyond our control, things we can’t change.  The only thing we have power of altering in the past is our view of it.  The only thing we can control is how we handle life moving forward.  The events of our past show us who we were and shape us into who we are.  Without them we wouldn’t be who we are.  We wouldn’t have our unique identity.  The past can be painful, yes, but even those parts are necessary.  Sometimes events happen simply to show us that we can handle things we didn’t think we could before and sometimes it’s to show us that what we thought would b0e devastating wasn’t so bad after all.  We endure what we have to in order to understand our strength and sometimes we have to remind ourselves of who we are so we don’t get buried under the weight of it.  As shitty as it sounds, sometimes our crappy stories are also to remind others of what they can survive as well.  We are here to help each other keep things in perspective.

I used to fight the ugly, fight the pain.  I feared both of those things—I didn’t want to feel those things. I didn’t think I could handle something if it went wrong. I didn’t trust my ability to problem solve so to speak.  I wanted everything to be planned to the T and to come off without a hitch simply for the sake of my sanity, so I would be safe, because I knew what was happening.  I needed to be in control, aware at all times of what happens.  With that level of hyper-vigilance, we turn on sensors in our body that aren’t designed to run all the time and we become sensitive to EVERYTHING.  I didn’t want pain so I was aware of everything that could possibly cause pain and my body/mind never learned how to shut off—and then it started interpreting everything as pain.  And in avoiding pain, I created more pain for myself because it all seemed designed to hurt me. I avoided the things that could have helped make me who I was supposed to be and I interpreted every slight as a targeted hurt against me.  But I guess by this logic, I would acknowledge that getting over avoidance was the lesson and trusting that all is right on time—exactly how and when it is supposed to happen.  Nothing will change the past.  The sooner we reconcile that, make peace with it, the easier it is to move forward.  I wanted to go back and fix things, I wanted to live forever to make sure I got it all right by having an endless supply of time to get it right—but I never learned to simply sit in the moment and find what I needed right now.

Truthfully this is about more than presence.  This is about the awakening to who we are and accepting the past is part of that.  Humans have the capacity and capability to bring their visions to reality and we don’t always get it right.  We fear missed opportunity and mistakes but sometimes the mistake is the opportunity.  That opportunity is the new. That is the chance to get it “right” again.  This time with a little more conviction and knowledge behind it.  Choose to take the path of creating new because we can’t undo what has been done.  Allow the experiences we’ve had teach us and shape us.  And be grateful to be where we are right now because it is exactly where we are meant to be.  I’d be lying if I said I practiced this all the time, that I believed it all the time.  I still struggle like a motherf’er with keeping my emotions/brain in check and the smallest things can set me off.  And I know that’s where I’m out of line because when everything sets you off, you aren’t seeing the reality of what’s going on—you’re too locked in your mind and other people aren’t there.  People don’t know how to respond if you don’t know how to handle yourself and we can’t live in fear that the truth, the mistakes, the times we have to do what we have to do will offend people when it has nothing to do with them.  We can’t expect them to handle us with kid gloves either.  The reality is this is a lesson in reconciling the past and accepting it, integrating it.  We can’t change it–so we can learn from it and adapt to where we are now.

I want to add a little follow up to Saturday’s post that will lead us into tomorrow’s post as well.  When we are in that mess and can’t make sense of things, we can’t see that the mess is perfectly planned out.  No matter how chaotic, we need to consider that he mess itself is perfect.  The universe is organized in patterns, fractals, shapes, things that look and sound pretty crazy when seen close up.  But when we zoom out, we see the big picture and suddenly that mess doesn’t seem so messy.  Sometimes we need some distance and sometimes we just need some time to find out what that picture looks like.  I won’t deny that sometimes chaos is just chaos—there is always entropy involved somewhere.  But more often than not, we find that it happened for a reason.  It’s easy to get caught up in whatever issue we have, and sometimes there are very real issues.  But they don’t stop the clock—the world keeps turning.

So in a way, remember that we must keep going.  There is no stopping regardless of not seeing the next step, regardless of not knowing where we end up, regardless of not knowing the reason—there is only on because it won’t stop no matter what, not until we do.  The fact that this will all end should remind us to find that blessing in the mess, to remember that there is a bigger picture—we can’t let the little shit, the nonsense we cause ourselves derail us from the reality of what we are.  We can’t forget the absolute miracle that is this world.  The odds, the timing, the mixture, the elements that formed to create the entirety of existence, the absolute magic that all of these things had to come together exactly as they did in order to create this experience.  The fact that we get to be here, is a miracle and there is an entire universe of this and it all works to perfection.  We don’t have to do anything.  I mean, we’ve done some cool stuff as humans, but we don’t need to do anything—we just ARE.

Today I am grateful for opportunity.  Sometimes things fall in our laps when we least expect them.  And it can be that when we least expect them is exactly when we need them. The universe responds to what we need and, as angry as I have been, as frustrated as I have been with my seeming lack of progress on what I want to do in this world, I see that the universe still responds to me.  I’ve spent weeks under a level of stress that, for the first time in my life, has legitimately frightened me.  I don’t like the way my body feels in response to things at work, even getting to work.  And I know that level of stress called something in for me.  This was a time when I said I couldn’t handle it and the universe knew I meant it.  Now, that isn’t to say I don’t have a choice to make—I will most definitely have to decide what happens next so that means that I get to decide if I stay where I’m at or if I’m moving on to the next thing in my life.  It’s saying goodbye to what I’ve been doing and entering an entirely new realm.  They are two entirely different paths.  But the universe is presenting this opportunity and I think it is time to take it. This will be a life changing opportunity and this is a moment to recognize that.  It requires honesty.    

Today I am grateful for honesty.  I’ve been on an uphill battle for years trying to make things fit.  I’ve been on a battle to transition into the life I want—the life I said I wanted.  I took steps toward creating that vision but I never fully jumped in.  I thought I was making progress forward, and I was, I was certainly widening the circle.  But the productive steps to producing the results I was looking for were far from consistent.  Honesty isn’t easy for me. That isn’t to say I’m an innate liar, it’s just that I’ve learned to hide things my entire life.  Mainly the truth about how I feel and what I think or what I want (what I want is more accurate).  But in hiding the truth of those things I lost who I was because I denied myself on all levels.  I’ve said a million times I’ve needed to be more honest about it, to live in that honesty and I had to stop worrying what people thought of me.  Well, feeling the anger and frustration over the last couple of weeks made me realize that I truly couldn’t go on like that.  This was more than discomfort, this was outright unhealthy.  Time to stop making other people happy and reacquaint myself with who I am.  That honesty brought about the opportunity that has come my way.  Focus and drive will get me where I need to be, but honesty aligns us on the path we are meant to follow.

Today I am grateful for blessings.  I have so many blessings in my life, I am grateful to be able to give back.  Sometimes when we are at our lowest, we forget what we have and that is exactly what I was talking about yesterday.  When we let the chaos reign, when we look at the dark, when we let ourselves be overwhelmed by the massive amount of shit we pile on ourselves, it’s easy to look past the good stuff.  It’s easy to forget what we have and what we can do with it.   Sometimes it takes work, but when we get ourselves in a mess, that often didn’t happen overnight.  We pile on slowly until we are heavy with the burden.  And there are times we make the blessing the burden.  We act as if it is some great weight to carry rather than something that we can share.  The burdens become light when we share with others.  And even if we do have a genuine mess of a situation, we are still blessed because we have ways to connect and solve the problem.  I am grateful that I am able to take on burdens and messes that will make life better for others.  We have to remember that there are times we will have to dig in the dirt to find what we need.  Sometimes we plant a seed—and then we have to wait for it to grow.  Sometimes we are merely turning it over in preparation for that seed.  And sometimes we have to let that piece of Earth, a piece of ourselves rest there in the ground.  And that too is a blessing, for it served its purpose and we are able to grow something else and move forward. We keep going.

Today I am grateful for healing.  Last week I addressed the people I’d been hiding from. There were various reasons I’d been avoiding them—fear, frustration, anger, an inability to cope with whatever they were going through on top of my own crap, the fact that they weren’t supporting me when I needed them.  In doing so, I felt a presence of mind come over me.  It was an awareness of needing to meet people where they are at while continuing from where I am at. It’s an acceptance that we are in different spots and that is ok.  For me it was an admission of where I went wrong in the circumstances but it was also an acknowledgement that I was fine on my own—that I didn’t need to fit into their mold to be whole.  That the pieces of myself that spilled over weren’t too much and they weren’t a mess.  That I wasn’t a mess.  I was just in a different spot.  And to move forward both in the relationship and the next steps of my life, learning to make decisions on my own and for myself meant being away from these people for a while. When we got back together, it was an entirely different experience.  I didn’t react to them in the same way and I found I didn’t feel the same way as they left with their friends and we went with ours.  We still respect one another and we will still be there for each other, but we are each on a different stage of healing and accountability.  I’m ok with that.

Today I am grateful for action.  All of these things, the opportunities, the healing, the honesty, the active acceptance of blessings and our roles—all of that comes from taking action and deciding to do something different—deciding to be something different.  It doesn’t matter if the action is as small as deciding—that decision can be the turning point for a lot of things in our lives.  We begin when we take action and action begins with choice.  So I’ve chosen to heal, to be honest, to take the chances/opportunities, and to receive them.  I have chosen to be worthy of what I’ve received by using it as it was intended and appreciating the gift in my life.  I’ve asked for blessings and things to be present in my life—and the truth is they are there all the time.  I just had to strip away all the nonsense of the other crap I let take over on a daily basis.  I had to take action toward what I want, not what I don’t.  If the opportunity is right, then it will align.  We don’t have to force.  We don’t always have to win—it isn’t about getting the most or doing the most—it is BEING the most aligned with who we are.  BEING is a verb and that means the actions we take determine who we are and what we get.  Decide. 

Today is Easter Sunday if you practice, and I want to add one last piece: Easter is about rebirth and redemption.  All of the things I am grateful for this week have initiated a sort of rebirth in my life.  This isn’t necessarily a religious metaphor, this is an awakening into a new day and a new life.  I feel energized enough to step forward into a new day, grateful for what I have learned and ready to live a new way.  I hope everyone finds that inspiration as well

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

Sometimes in the middle of your mess, it’s easy to forget that you are blessed.  The mess can be ugly and blind us to the reality of what’s around us and keep us from seeing the silver lining.  It can overwhelm us, putting our senses on overload and we don’t even know how we got there.  This past week I’ve had a lot of sensory overload in the form of anger, fear, confusion, regret, and frustration.  It got too heavy and I broke.  I did something I haven’t done in a long time and I said and did things I swore I would never do again.  I felt selfish after because I instantly knew how wrong I was.  I instantly knew that I forgot something about my life.  All I could see was the dark and I had let it win.  I let myself be blinded to all the good around me because of an idea I had stuck in my mind, a story I was telling myself about my worth.  I was also letting people tell a story about me, and worse, I was believing it.  When we let the voices outside get that loud and we are already confused with the mess of whatever is happening, there is no logic there.  The truth does not exist in a way.

There is always a point where we snap out of it and we pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and we remember what we have around us.  We can’t wallow in the fact that we went to a dark place for a bit.  But we can certainly shine the light on the blessings we have and remember gratitude in everything we do. I needed to practice some forgiveness for blinding myself, for forgetting the good, for letting the bad overwhelm me to the point of a low I never thought I would see again.  I needed to forgive some people who had done some crappy things and honestly, I had to be ok with not forgiving some.  It was ok to set the boundary with them—the lesson of I want you to eat, just not at my table. It’s ok to let go of those who cause the mess because they WANT you to forget you’re blessed.  We just have to keep going.  No matter what, it’s important to keep going. You never know what can be right around the corner, the light so bright you will never forget your blessings again.

“Stop asking everybody what they think.  When I have a really big decision to make, I don’t tally people.  In fact, the bigger it its, the bigger the consequences, bigger the pain/consequences/trauma, whatever it is, I go in.  Because they’re gonna confuse me.  That’s what you do, you stop asking people.  And if you’re gonna ask somebody, go to someone who has specific knowledge about the decision you’re trying to make.  You’re not gonna go to mom, to dad, to your brother, to people who don’t have that, who that although they love you, their opinions are going to send you like a ping pong ball.  That’s how you become unsteady.  Start small.  Start making decisions without running them by anybody.  What to eat, where to go, where to vacation…allow yourself to be the decision maker, to be in the driver seat.  Get in the driver seat b/c what we do is let people drive our car, get in the passenger seat or get kicked to the back seat then get pissed off asking why are you driving like that? Why are you going that way that’s not where I really want to go. Then drive the car and stop inviting everyone in to drive it for you and get pissed off when they don’t take you in the direction you want to go.  If you’re gonna be pissed off, be pissed at yourself.  Because I chose, I chose wrong, but I chose.  That is how you build confidence.” Evy Pompourous

We all have reasons for asking people their opinion of things.  We all have a little doubt at times—even though we should never listen to the voice that causes doubt like I said earlier this week.  But when we rely on others to constantly make our decisions, we make life infinitely more difficult.  We may have thought it would be easier asking for someone to make the choice for us but when we know it’s wrong and we still go with it, then that choice became more about us giving over our power than it did about that person choosing wrong or taking advantage.  We let them take the wheel and then got pissed they didn’t take us where we wanted to go.  It doesn’t work like that.  As Pompourous says, even if we choose “wrong” we are still the ones choosing.  Sure it may be easier to play victim if we say that someone else took us there—but if we LET them take us there that is less about their fault and more about our decision to step back from the reins of our lives.  And the other side is this: the more we ask people and get more opinions, the more data there is to comb through and it gets overwhelming.  If you ask 50 people what they want for lunch, you’re going to get different answers—and that still doesn’t tell you what YOU want.  The same is said for any other decision we make.

There is a time and place for the opinions of others.  There is a time and place for collaborative decision making that requires a different train of thought.  But when it comes to the choices of what we want to do with our lives, we can’t rely on someone to tell us what we feel, what we are supposed to know about ourselves, or what sounds right to us.  We know the next move and we need to trust that we will make the right move as long as we listen to ourselves.  That isn’t to say rush into anything.  Take our time, figure out the information we need, take stock of our surroundings.  But at the end of the day we need to choose for ourselves and we need to take responsibility for those choices.  Not everything is going to be a life or death situation or even a life altering situation, that is true—so we don’t need to approach everything like it’s def-con one or something.  At the same time we need to remember that every time we let someone else call the shots we are weakening our ability to trust and choose and if we let go of that ability, we will miss the opportunity to choose when it really counts.  So just don’t do it.  Decide, learn, decide again, keep trying until it’s right.  That is what life is all about—learning and doing and creating through the choices we make.  Rely on our own abilities and we will never doubt again.