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We sat out with our neighbors this weekend and met some new neighborhood kids.  They didn’t hesitate to play with our boys and teach them some new tricks on their bicycle and to play some football with them.  I feel so privileged to witness the absolute openness of kids.  They never hesitate with new people and experiences.  They talk to each other and they always do rather than overthink a situation.  They don’t qualify who is worthy of engaging and associating with them—they just go for it.

The world is small as we also found out during this play date that these kids were coached by a friend of our neighbor.  Sometimes we are taken right where we need to be even if we can’t see it at the time.  There is something to be said for being open to experience.  Being able to witness this in children is amazing because it is an example to keep that quality alive in ourselves as well.  To keep practicing that acceptance as we go through life.

According to our current way of life, we are so conditioned to compete and qualify and struggle to do it all on our own.  Kids still know how to work together and how to help without expectation.  They know how to accept each other without expectation as well.  They never question whether or not they can do something and if they can’t, they just keep trying.  And they know how to encourage each other too.  Yes, they have frustration and yes they want to give up, but they are resilient—far more resilient than a lot of adults.

The lesson in this brief interaction is simply that we are always taken where we are meant to be.  So we can trust.  It’s our own perceptions and emotions that twist the story and skew our purpose.  We have to learn to take our own stories out of the equation and listen to the voice of intuition in spite of being told to ignore it.

I have always believed in synchronicity but, like all of us, I tend to forget it or I don’t notice it as often as I should.  When the blatant reminders of synchronicity occur, I am in awe each and every time—and I am grateful.  We have a purpose and things truly happen for a reason.  Knowing that and experiencing those reminders truly is a gift.  Remembering that childlike openness to the world, the feeling we all had before the need to control set it, is also a gift.  That feeling is never too far and we need to connect with that more often.  I am trying my best to remember this.  And I see it’s little steps every day to stay in touch with that part of ourselves and they are necessary.  Each step is a chance to find what we’ve known all along and to share it with the world–just like our children.

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I went to the bookstore on my lunch break today, really excited to find a particular book.  I arrived at the all-too-familiar location and saw the store was closed.  Like, empty store, sign taken down type of closed.  I wanted to cry because this is the second time I’ve gone to one of my favorite bookstores to find it inexplicably closed–tears were involved the first time but that’s a story for another day.  I gathered my composure and did a quick search to find that the store had been moved down the street.

I drove over to the new spot and found it was a totally new store.  The store was not just a new location, but an entirely new layout and design from any that I had been familiar with.  One of the employees let me know that this new style that the chain is looking to implement.

It got me thinking about how people bore so easily that we have to keep coming up with new ways to entice people.  We have to constantly keep things fresh by changing what we know—often as we are just getting accustomed to how things are.  We want sleek and sharp and new—and we want it instantly.  We move on as quickly as the idea passes into our mind, never happy with the way things are.  Life does warrant that we should evolve as needed but we tend to change things just for the sake of change, to be the newest, biggest, and boldest.  The most innovative, the most eye catching, the most sales.

We need to slow down and reprioritize.  New isn’t always better but old isn’t always defunct.  Adaptation is meant as a means of survival, not as a gimmick to get sales.  In short, it’s about purpose.  Understanding the point and the goal of what we want to accomplish.  I am all for recognizing the need to change but I also want to advocate for the intention behind it.  If your intention isn’t to serve the greater good or to bring yourself to your highest purpose, then what is the change for?  Power? Accolades? Or is it about finding your purpose and helping to move everyone collectively forward to their highest good?

Whether we find ourselves searching for our familiar bookstore or we are searching for our highest good, there are times when change happens.  There are times when change is necessary.  Sometimes we can plan for it, sometimes it comes out of nowhere.  The point is that we do need a certain level of adaptability but we also need a certain level of reason behind the movement.  Activity without purpose is just busy work.  Purpose is what gives us direction and drive.  So take the changes as they come, look for the new location of the store, and do your best to go with it.

When taking the dog out this morning he almost stepped on a moth right outside our front door.  It was large and I could tell it was hurt immediately.  It looked like its wings had been ripped as the rusty red color was missing from a lot of it.  I picked it up and brought it inside to see what I could do for it.  I got a box, prepped some sugar water on a cotton ball and went back outside for some grass and twigs.  He rested in my son’s room away from the cats.

Whenever an animal literally lands in my life like that, I always take it as a sign.  I started looking up the spiritual meaning of moths and found a ton of different things.  Everything from blindly following our desires like a moth to flame to what we are hiding from ourselves.  But one interpretation that stuck out to me was that we must focus on the correct direction and that we must not allow others to transform us (auntyflo.com/superstition-dictionary/moth-symbolism). Life changes quickly and it is easy to be shaped by the will of the world rather than by our intuition.

Sometimes the application of the message isn’t immediately clear and I’m still trying to get some clarity on where exactly it fits for me.  I’ve been erratic lately, unclear, unable to focus so maybe this creature was more a symbol to bring attention to my flightiness, a message to pay attention to the direction I’m really going.  We found out today that we could possibly lose the house we’ve been working on getting since May so I have a lot of emotion around it.  Our current home has been in utter chaos for the last month as we are trying to move into the next phase and now it seems it may have been all for nothing.

This is the clearest example that our plans mean nothing.  We can do exactly what we are meant to and if the universe has a different plan in place, there is nothing that will stop it.  It’s also a clear lesson in non-attachment.  Getting attached to an outcome is what causes the pain.  It isn’t up to us to determine how things happen, it is only up to us to go with what is meant for us.

So, this synchronicity of finding this beautiful moth led me to see that there are some things I still need to work on as far as control.  The only thing I can control is myself.  There will always be unknowns and multiple variables in this world—we could never account for them all.  It is only our job to learn to go with it.  The only thing I can assume is that there is a greater reason for all of this confusion happening.  Perhaps something is wrong with this new house that we don’t know about.  It could be anything, but I can trust that when the time is right, we will get where we need to be.

I feel so grateful to have found this moth.  I honestly thought it was hours away from death and I only wanted to give it some comfort.  I kept checking on it and this beautiful, resilient little creature was still able to fly and to eat—so I released it.  Just as I am releasing any expectation about what is coming next in my life.  There may be unexpected detours and pain, but I can give myself the time to heal, just like I did for that moth, and learn to fly again.

Today I am grateful for release.  Or perhaps, acceptance is the word.  I have been holding so tight to the idea of the type of house I need and the things I want to build in my life that I didn’t take into account what I was building them for.  I was focused on the end result and not on the greater good in the circumstance.  Now I feel a sense of contentment in letting go of the attachment.  The pressure feels off.

Today I am grateful for some familiarity.  We haven’t gone out much in the last few months other than to grocery shop so today we took a little time to wander in a book store.  It felt so good to wander amongst the familiar friends of new titles in the aisles.  I picked up a few things to go on some new adventures at home.

Today I am grateful to take steps toward peace.  As a person with anxiety I tend to fall back into patterns really easily because it’s a form of comfort.  The repetition, the known makes me feel better.  Even though I was seeking comfort today and the known did make me feel better, I was looking for different elements, the next step to get me past my discomfort.  With all the personal chaos lately it would have been easy to repeat the patterns, but I made conscious choices to look for answers in new places.  Progress.

Today I am grateful to have some fun trying new things.  My son and I baked some cloud bread this morning.  So much fun!  His excitement was palpable in the anticipation he showed as he waited for the bread to bake.  We had it for breakfast as a fun family treat and it was so good.  See the picture above 😊

Today I am grateful for love.  My husband and I spent a lot of time talking today, discussing the future and what our options are with the house, our businesses, and our family.  We spoke with each other and took our time walking through all the details trying to figure out what we want to do.  It felt peaceful and genuinely caring to have that kind of talk.  While we didn’t arrive at all the answers, we settled ourselves by working together, and taking care of each other.

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The last few weeks have proven draining—or at least, I have allowed myself to be taken by the overwhelm of what is happening.  We’ve had some high points to celebrate but the lows and frustrations have interspersed those moments nearly as quickly.  So today, I am simply giving up.  There is truly nothing else in my power that I can do to change the current state of events—so I am not going to push.  My will and no amount of me forcing is going to change what is happening.  It is just one of those things.

Initially I felt helpless and frustrated because I am always looking for something to be doing.  I am always looking for some action that can be taken, so when I feel I am out of options, it feels more like being up against a wall than an accomplished, “I’ve done all I can.”  And that is something that hurts me.  Perhaps it is ego seeking control and lashing out at not being fulfilled, but this time, instead of anger, I feel tired.

The truth is, this scenario is completely out of my hands so I am trying to see the lesson here—and to accept that what I thought was the initial lesson may not have been the message meant for me.  Perhaps there is something greater I was meant to learn.

For today I am going to rest.  I have felt the weight and pressing need to rest a lot lately so that is all I can do.  I turned to my cards and I drew, “You don’t have to fear your fear.  It can redirect you to love.” Gabby Bernstein, Super Attractor.  One of the pages I follow also discussed priorities and focus so maybe the areas I was working on aren’t what needed attention right now.  The bottom line in all of what I am feeling is that it will pass and I can still make the best of this.  I am so blessed and there are still many other things I can do with my time to move forward in other arenas.  That is where I can focus my attention.

For me accepting lessons like this is challenging.  It’s one of those moments when you know you’ve done everything right, everything within your power, and sometimes you just watch it slip away.  So I need to redirect and focusing on what I have to be grateful for is key right now.  And it’s a chance to practice getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.  I’m not saying I like it, but I know it has some value.  Taking it all in, resting, and integrating the lesson all have their time and place—and this is one of those moments.  It doesn’t always have to be movement and force, and resting doesn’t mean “doing nothing”.  I am recuperating, I am healing, and I am learning.

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Billing regulations in healthcare change all the time.  Most organizations have been working on a project that would impact billing requirements effective January of 2021.  It’s nothing new for organizations to be a little behind the ball in catching up with those requirements (and we were no exception) so we had been collectively stressing out over the last few months as we’ve been trying to implement and test this so we didn’t see a financial hit next year.  It was announced today that they wouldn’t be putting it into effect until 2022.  The enormous relief could be felt as the weight fell off of the building’s shoulders.

Good Lord, the unnecessary pressure we put on ourselves.  We create these arbitrary deadlines for even more arbitrary reasons and essentially make ourselves sick to complete a task at an imaginary point in time.  For what?  We don’t only do this with business either—we do it in our own lives.  “I have to lose 20 pounds by next month so I’ll look good enough for xyz,” or “I have to know what I want to do with the rest of my life by the time I’m 18 so I can study in college and pretend I know what I’m doing by 22.” Sound familiar?

Perhaps it’s the natural push of time that drives us to fit as much as we can in while we can but I find it more likely that we are pretty masochistic creatures.  We TORTURE ourselves constantly for no other reason than we create standards that no one can really meet and we didn’t meet them.  I mean, kudos to us for having imagination and high hopes, but damn.  We know how to make ourselves miserable.  It’s almost laughable.  Every scenario we have been in where we felt absolutely distraught was at least, in some part, our own doing.  I’m not talking deaths of loved ones or any type of grave illness, of course not, but the drama.  Whew do we love the drama.

Maybe life was too simple and too plain and maybe we got bored and decided that the commercial way of living was more fun.  And it is too a degree.  There’s a thrill in the chase of something we want.  However, we let the distraction get to us and then the game became a way of life as we took it more and more seriously.  Then it began to take over life.  Now life is precious second to our businesses and we are the commodities.  All of this derived from choices we made.

If I’ve learned anything from the work I’ve done for nearly 20 years, it’s that choice is everything.  It’s as simple and as difficult as making a different choice.  We all want the power and the perks but we don’t want the accountability of what comes with the unknown—and the natural world just doesn’t work that way.  But the risk is worth it.  We can sit here and create a false sense of pressure on ourselves (which will feel all too real to our brains) or we can begin to re-evaluate.  And I feel the rumblings now as the voices of those unheard for too long are finally and blessedly growing loud enough to be heard by all.  The revolution is in redefining the way we roll—and the role we choose play.  Enough people stop playing the game and we can create some new rules, or at least make room for new players to spice up the field.

Let’s start by being a little gentler on ourselves.  Be kinder to our hearts and minds.  Let’s cultivate some peace in our own worlds and start to spread that to others.  When the mind slows down enough more solutions become clear.  We all get clear enough we can start creating more questions to tackle together.  And with more questions, we look at things differently and maybe change some perspectives.  How revolutionary.

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During the course of working to sell our home (which is still in process) the weird idiosyncrasies of human nature continue to show through.  We still live here—it’s my husband, myself, and our 3 year old plus our cats and dogs.  We had to remove nearly everything from our home.  It’s a shell of what it was.  And I mean, I get it to a degree.  You’re not showing people how you live, you’re showing how they could fit themselves in the space.  But I can’t help but feel like it’s so unrealistic.  It’s a show.  There are 3 people and assorted animals living in this house and we are expected to erase ourselves from the space.

So I started thinking bigger picture and realized that we have a tendency to train each other to erase ourselves to make other people happy.  We’ve made it so that disagreeing is disagreeable and argumentative.  We’ve made the “right” thing to be quiet, to go along, and to agree.  And we’ve lost ourselves along the way.

I started thinking about families and how we all break down to some level of dysfunction eventually.  Competition breaks out with those you are supposed to be safest with and with those you are supposed to trust. Where we are meant to find peace and safety we find a messed up blend of love and hostility.  It’s messed up because we start in this world by learning we can’t trust who we are supposed to innately trust.  Those meant to protect us.  I know this isn’t the case for all but it is more common than not.  And we are trained to compete because that is how we feel we have to survive.

If we stopped long enough to question this madness, we’d realize that we have far more in common with everyone than not.  We are all just trying to survive in a broken system.  We learn to fight each other and compete with each other rather than realizing the game is rigged.  So the game starts with mistrust of those around us, and very quickly we learn to mistrust ourselves as well.  We are trained to project an image to make people see us a certain way.  This current generation especially is growing up in the fake it til you make it/perception is reality culture of life in 140 characters or less and the perfect photoshopped image.

I question what would happen if we all said fuck it and retrained ourselves to have real conversations, not manipulative attempts to be perceived a certain way.  Because the reality is Toto can pull the curtain back at any time and there you are, exposed with your hands on the lever.  And then you lose our credibility and all trust because we’re so shocked that you lied.  We learned early on that “control”  got us what we wanted; show just enough to get your hook in and never show them the rest.  We believe the point is to get likes, get clicks, get sales, get things, get rich.  So show them the persona.

I feel like it would be so much easier to be real.  Not in the sense that vulnerability is easy but in the sense that the weight is lifted.  Imagine the weight you would lose revealing the real you.  It’s like losing a whole person.  Because it really is losing a person: the person you created for other people to see.

Let’s teach growth, honesty, and authenticity over greed, manipulation, and control.  We’re so hungry for power and attention and energy but we never execute the immense power we have over ourselves.  Because we are taught to give our power away—play nice, be quiet, let others solve our conflicts, avoid conflict at all cost while expecting others to give us their power.  We need to learn to get comfortable with the uncomfortable reality over the image that doesn’t exist.

We can learn to reclaim it all.  Teach each other to communicate rather than stifle.  Learn to get comfortable with humanity in all its messiness.  Accept over and over again what is.  Normalize it and embrace it.  Stop teaching each other that having opinions is offensive and educate people that treating others like garbage is offensive so we can work together.  And I refuse to continue the ludicrous notion that my existence is offensive. Nor is anyone else’s. We need to restore our humanity. My own little revolution: the toothpaste stays in the bathroom.

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I am so grateful for time with my son.  We haven’t been feeling well the last few days so I have gotten an entire weekend of downtime with him—and it felt wonderful.  I have been incredibly worked up and anxious for the last few weeks to the point of not knowing how to slow my mind down so my body did it for me.  Sometimes the body knows how to take care of what the mind is asking for.

I am grateful for my body.  This illness came out of nowhere but I feel remarkably good after being down for one day.  Granted I was down hard…I don’t think I moved from the couch more than three or four times and I napped and I also fell asleep by 8pm.  My body knew what to do—simply stop.

I am grateful for perspective.  There is a lot going on…and there is a lot that I am trying to control.  There is a lot that I am learning that I have no choice but to let go of.  I need to just let go.  I am working on it every day.  A little bit more, every day.  And sometimes the perspective is that when you think you have let go, you might need to let go some more.

I am grateful for creativity.  I’m working on getting back in touch with myself.  I tend to fixate on things I’m “supposed” to be doing or if I’m in the middle of something that’s all I focus on.  I struggle to go with it.  But I’m being reminded that I have to practice mindfulness and be present.  The best way to do that is to get creative and have fun again.

I am grateful to constantly be learning.  I’m seeing how much pressure I put on my life—and on those around me.  And I’m learning that I need to relax that as well.  I put an incredible amount of pressure for things to be perfect and it seems like I need to care a little less.  Done is better than perfect and most of the time that is enough.  Unrealistic expectations of things causes more issues.

I am grateful to open my life up to new possibilities.  One thing that has become clear this year is that some plans are pointless.  The niceties we create in this life are pointless.  This year has shown an incredible amount of stripping away of the pretty little lies we layer ourselves in—and it has been amazing.  It feels more authentic.

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In 2009, I was in my mid-twenties and newly married and looking to find myself in every way.  My relationship was nearly a decade old but my marriage was in its infancy, I was at a job for nearly a decade, and I didn’t know what to do.  I had chosen things that defined me early (my marriage and career) because that is what I thought I had to do but I wanted so much more.  I didn’t go away to college after getting my associate’s degree because I had no idea what I wanted to do—so I stuck with what I knew.  After so many years of the same thing at such a young age, I craved more.

I read Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project” shortly after it came out in 2009.  Her work is her journey through a year of trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life.  She discusses the restlessness of having what she was supposed to want but still feeling lack.  While reading this book, i understood that sometimes you can outwardly appear to have it together, you can have what you are supposed to want but it still isn’t enough.  More importantly, that doesn’t make you a bad person.  It’s a wonderful motivation to find your purpose.

The reason I talk about this is because I have found myself repeating this cycle for another decade.  Perhaps that is just my time frame (or I’m incredibly stubborn and it takes me that long to understand anything) but I’m at the point where I feel this push again.  This time around, after another 10 years, I have paid attention to my pattern and taken to looking at what it is in me that needs to shift.  It’s not necessarily a matter of motivation, it’s a matter of follow through.

In Rubin’s work she discusses commitment to the things we want to achieve.  More than that, after all of this time, I have learned that it is taking right action toward the things we are committed to that bring it to fruition.  We have the ability to make this life whatever we want it to be—and that is a magical gift.  To be able to take the world in its raw form and turn it into the life we envision.  We have limitless potential.  We have power in choice.  And it is accountable choice that moves you forward.

How we make ourselves accountable is a personal choice but we can’t expect to see things through if we don’t see them through.  Changing our mindset is difficult and that is something I want to tackle in myself.  Perhaps this time it is simply answering the call.  It isn’t letting it fall to the wayside.  It isn’t letting it take a back burner when other things seem to take precedence.  It is always finding a way to get it done, somehow.  It’s accepting that it may not look how you envisioned it, but you still have to act on it and see it through.

It’s ok to slow down as needed, but don’t allow yourself to stop because you feel like you’ve gotten where you were told to be.  Because you got what you were told was enough.  It’s ok, it’s necessary to find that motivation inside of you.  So if it feels wrong, if it feels like there is something else you need to do, then go do it.  More to come.

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I know I need to do more.  I am happy with the progress I have made but the work that has gone into preparing my house for sale has shown me that I need to reprioritize my time.  I NEED to make more time for the things I love.  I’m not really a dirty person but I let laziness take over far too often.  When you live in a small space, things that usually need to be done monthly need to be done weekly, things that need to be done weekly really have to be done daily, and things that need to be done daily sometimes need to be done multiple times a day.  That is not how I want to spend my time.  So I let a lot slide.

While I work hard, I often allow myself to poop out sooner than is needed.  I let myself believe that my 9-5 is “enough” for the day so I go too easy on myself in the evening.  Yes, I have a toddler, a husband, and animals that also need my attention, but there are things that I love and need to do—for myself.  I let those fall to the wayside because they aren’t providing my income right now.

If I want to progress to where I want to be, I know I need to become more strategic and organized with my time.  I need to take more steps to develop my vision.  It’s simply a matter of focus and commitment.  I am serious and dedicated, but I need to take additional action—more correct action to get where I want to be.  And more planned action to get it all done.  The concept of work harder not smarter definitely applies here.

There is a lot I need to teach myself about where I’m going so I need to stop saying no to the opportunities that are going to teach me about where I want to be.  I’m a stubborn person so I want to do a lot on my own—and I struggle with trusting people so forming relationships and sharing my vision with them makes me feel vulnerable.  Saying yes to things will either connect me with the people I need in my life or it will teach me what I need to know to get it done.

I’ve been planning on revisiting the work I did with B-School because I have a greater understanding of it now.  So  maybe it isn’t that I need to do more but that I need to take the right steps. Again, work smarter not harder.