I’ve been on an insane creative roll since last night.  Ideas literally pouring out of me so much so that I wasn’t sure I could keep up with them.  I found myself thinking of how cool it was that these ideas flowed like this through me and that all I wanted was a way to put them into practice, to make them real, to create the life and follow through on the life I envision.  It’s the fear that holds us back, but there is no reason to fear.  We just have to do what we are called to do and what feels right—always.  We KNOW what’s right, we are given that gift and when we trust that gift, amazing things happen.  Within the last 10 hours, I have had a surge of ideas for posts, for businesses, for dreams, for ways of life, and it all feels amazing.  I had a truly cathartic meeting with my boss and the conversation was a lot about feeling.  Granted it was work related, but it helped to put things in perspective and I feel like getting some of those things on the table and hearing her share where she is at unlocked something.  It moved me in a different way this time around because it was a real example of the fact that people can seem to have it all and have it all together and they are still going through something.  Our job is to be there for each other, to connect.  Sure we work and complete tasks but there will always be another task.  That list is never complete.  So when we learn to connect on a human level and we see the real intent/person beneath, it’s easier to shift that focus to connection rather than dynamics/power/ego.

So I share this because the mind is a wild place and it will take us anywhere and everywhere which is awesome and terrifying.  Everything we see, everything that exists in this world is a result of something from the mind and a choice.  There are times I feel like the mind isn’t meant to be tamed because when I am able to ride the wave of creativity and joy and trust, amazing things happen and I’m often feeling unleashed in that point—like I am fully aware that this rush of energy, this surge of creation is energy on a different level—people would think this is nuts to witness.  But I see that there is a balance.  The emotion behind our thoughts is what needs to be tamed.  We can’t let the emotion stop us—I often say that emotion is a guidepost, it isn’t the driver.  The creativity needs to be channeled and then unleashed, we need to do the work.  The WORK is the discharge of that energy and the focal point for what we are meant to do.  It’s hard to wallow in emotion or thoughts when we actively produce something.  I am guilty of spending a HUGE chunk of my time in self-pity and sorrow waiting for someone to come fix the situation and tell me I’m worth it instead of simply acting on what I KNEW was right for me.  I do not diminish the things I went through because there were some truly rough moments—but I understand now that I can’t allow those feelings and thoughts to control my actions—certainly not after this much time has passed.  I can choose (we can choose) to be a victim or we can take action toward what we want.  Other people’s opinions don’t matter—it is our process and our drive that matter.  It is how we react and what we choose that matters.  So we don’t let the emotions call the shots, we let the creativity guide us where it wants to take us because that is the divine connection.  Creation is divine and if we are ever unsure of that, try and define where that spark came from.  It is magic.

It’s been a while since I really talked about a book in general and I wanted to share something a bit different today…I gave in and bought the first in a fantasy series that I’d been hesitant to buy in spite of curiosity.  Reading it, I can’t say I fell in love or anything, but it certainly captivated my curiosity enough and it was well written enough that I decided to move forward and buy the whole series.  I’m done with book one and in that story, I had questions about the concept of love between the two main characters.  Like, how do we fall in love without really knowing each other?  How can we say it’s love?  But it seemed romantic and I understood the actions of both characters as presented in the story.  It was typically fantasy-ish in the story arc and it was fun to read.  Now I’m on book two and there has been a major shift in this dynamic and it has me FLOORED.  I don’t know why this is having such an emotional impact on me.  Perhaps it’s because I would have always rooted for the initial protagonist before, believing that there were reasons for the behavior and that they would get past it and find understanding—that there was real love between them and they would find their way back to each other.  But in this case (at least where I’m at in the story now) the female lead has decided to burn down her existence in that world and take another path because she needs the freedom to be who she is.  Will this arc continue?  I have no idea, but this concept of utter acceptance and understanding of what we REALLY need and having someone understand what we need is intoxicating to a degree. 

The part that has me drawn in is the fact that the new character she is working with was portrayed as the evil/untrustworthy antagonist who liked to stir shit up.  In the first book we discover that he has his reasons for it and that he has been playing a game of his own—and in the second book we understand more in depth the extent of his actions and what it really meant to protect his people.  The way he protects his people, while it looked different than the original lead, was JUST as extensive and rooted in love.  We discover that he, perhaps, has sacrificed more than the other and he got a bad name that he was willing to bear for the sake of other people. But the magic of this new lead is that he has an inherent understanding of the needs of our female lead on a soul level, really.  He understands how her soul feels trapped in her new existence after she has become what she was to become, he understands that she needs to break free of that—and he sees the danger of the original lead stifling that in her.  Not just any danger, but the danger to her mentally—and to her spirit.  While he could very well still be using her as a tool (I have a lot more book to read to confirm this), he still acknowledges the human that remains and the need to learn to wield her power and to live in a way that suits her.  She has to live her life.

Ok, so that was a longer synopsis than I intended.  But I share this for a reason: there is an attraction to the life we are meant to have, to the freedom that comes from being who we are and being entirely accepted for who we are. Not only that, but to have those innate skills honed because they are seen as valuable, not as a liability.  There is nothing more encouraging in the world than to be told who we are isn’t a bad thing.  Not just that we aren’t doing anything wrong, but that what we have is needed—it is given purpose.  No one is proud of every action they’ve taken in their lives but there is a difference between hiding from them to the point of making ourselves sick, and learning to turn that poison into water again, knowing that what we did can’t be undone but that we can do something different moving forward.  We can use who we are and what we have become for good.  There is no longer the game of trying to fit into someone else’s vision of us to make others happy—we simply embrace what we are.  When someone is able to do that with us, when they are able to embrace us in that fashion, we feel whole.  And so many of us are broken.  A typical fantasy arc like this would involve another individual filling in the gaps for this character but I am in love with the idea that this character is making her feel like she is whole on her own—she doesn’t need fixing, she needs support and guidance.

There is a line in the story where this character calls the female lead his savior.  It could be seen as saccharine or over the top—but it is perfectly fitting in there.  We see throughout the story that even though he is portrayed as a villain or a master manipulator, he is just as much a savior as the initial lead was to our heroine.  But the beautiful part is this: he sees that SHE, too, is a savior.  The initial lead kept insisting on protecting her when she didn’t need it—she needed to partner with him and work through the demons they must learn to carry.  In life it is the same.  We can’t always be the savior for someone else and we can’t always be looking for someone to save us. I had a Cinderella complex for a long time, hoping that someone would come along and rescue me—from what I don’t know, the idea seems ridiculous to me now when I look back at my life.  So it is refreshing and encouraging to read a series where the female isn’t glorified—she is very much recognized as having flaws—and she isn’t coddled—we know that she is strong enough to handle it on her own.  So are we.  I talked about using the shit to fertilize growth the other day.  And this is a prime example of it: we don’t hide from the crap in our lives, we learn from it. We honor who we are instead of hiding in shame or caging it.  We learn to use our gifts and unleash our own magic on the world.  We are our own savior—and we learn the broken never mattered anyway.  We are still whole in our own right and the right person, the right people will see that, and never ask us to be anything different.  So even though this story is fantasy, THAT is a realty we can live in. 

“Sometimes the shit in our life is just fertilizer for new growth,” Wildwomansisterhoodofficial.  How absolutely delicious is this?  Oh, my reason-hunters, those who need to know the ins and outs of everything and have to dig endlessly until they feel satisfied that they have some sort of answer, the logic hunters.  Look, I am one of you.  I believe there has to be a reason for everything and I despise not knowing what it is.  I want choices to be made and I want results to be clear before I even begin.  Like every other human on this planet, I’ve also been through enough shit that I didn’t know how to wash it off of myself and I stood there, stinking and in pain, hoping for something.  But standing there never once removed that shit from my skin and it certainly didn’t stop it from seeping into my soul on some days.  There comes a point where we realize that we can’t stop the crap from coming, and no matter how sad or frustrating that is, the pain of waiting for an explanation that makes sense is worse than simply accepting we stepped in it and we need to go clean up.  In the most literal sense, when we step in dog poo on a walk in the park, it would be like waiting to identify whose dog it was before cleaning off the shoe and moving on with our day. 

This mindset is a beautiful switch in the game.  Sometimes what happens is simply meant to foster growth, foster movement that we wouldn’t have taken if something didn’t push us in a new direction.  We must always go toward the light in life and in order to do that we have to step out of the crap, no matter where it comes from, especially if we create it ourselves, and we need to accept the lessons we learn as the opportunity to become something greater.  If we continue to stand there waiting for the logic, we will get buried in shit.  I look around me now, seeing my life differently after the last year, and I can tell you I have never had a more tumultuous year on so many levels.  But I’m here now and I have to fully admit that, while there are still parts that make no sense to me, I wouldn’t be where I’m at without what happened.  I genuinely developed an entirely new appreciation for where I’m at, for knowing who I am on a new level, for understanding the people around me better, for seeing that my life is on track exactly as it should be.  Is it where I thought I’d be?  Hell no.  But is it clarifying what I actually want to do now?  Hell yes.  Many of the experiences of last year would absolutely qualify as shit—they left me hollow and scared and confused and unsure of what would happen, how it even happened. But without those moments, I wouldn’t appreciate where I’m at now, I wouldn’t understand the beauty of where I’m at now.

I understood/understand fully that I demanded perfection in many cases for most of my life and I was guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in more than once circumstance.  Just because it wasn’t perfect didn’t mean I needed to throw out the entire thing. That’s not how life works.  We don’t get to throw tantrums for things not being perfectly how we expect them to be and think it’s going to turn out ok.  We are meant to say yes to what is and learn to adapt to it.  We learn to create our own magic by appreciating the power of what we have.  Crappy things happen all the time but that doesn’t mean it’s a crappy life or existence.  9 times out of 10 in retrospect we can look at those experiences and see that there was a reason for it.  And for that one time we don’t find it, we can at least accept that there is good all around regardless.  One smudge doesn’t ruin the entire landscape of our existence.  And the truth is we aren’t meant to arrive at the end in a perfectly preserved package anyway.  We have evidence we live and sometimes that means getting dirty.  That dirt teaches us how to get clean again and it teaches us the beauty in the power of perspective in growth.  There is so much joy and freedom in this world and we so often forget that we are truly bound by no one—all of the constraints we put on ourselves to adhere to some sort of societal norm are in place as some form of control.  I don’t propose anarchy, rules are necessary—but there are different means and reasons to operate within different scopes of the rules.  We aren’t a one size fits all society/life.  So don’t panic when we step in shit every now and then.  Wash it off or use it as material to grow from. 

“If you don’t have a mindset that understands the impact of the dynamic of emotions, you will never understand your responsibility,” Zebthe3rd.  Let’s tie these last few day’s pieces together.  My overarching message, as always, is about our mindset.  The greatest thing we have control over is our thoughts and we become our thoughts because they manifest into our reality.  The things we do, where we focus our energy is what grows.  Energy flows where intention goes.  The universe responds to energy—and that includes the energy of our emotions and developing our capacity.  We have to break this down to the most basic of lessons: emotions determine our mentality and that can always change.  We can’t make emotional decisions because we will get long term consequences from a temporary mindset.  We need to know who we are and how we handle adversity and success, we need to know the markers of what success is to us, we need to know the goal.  Our responsibility is to our purpose and we don’t know our purpose and we certainly can’t fulfill our purpose (we can’t honor what we aren’t aware or) if we allow emotion to dictate our actions.  The point and purpose become skewed by how we feel.

Mindset creates the laser focus to bring us closer to our goal and we don’t want to confuse the universe with constantly making decisions, second-guessing decisions because we feel different things at different points throughout the day.  We need to be better stewards of our emotional state.  If we can’t garner control over our emotional state we will have to face the consequences of emotional decisions—and from there we create a spiral.  I can attest to living a life ruled by emotions.  I thought it was just who I was and that I was meant to feel things deeply.  I thought everyone made choices based off of how they felt.  I didn’t realize for decades that we have a say in how we use those emotions.  They don’t run us.  Sure, experience will tell us what we “should” feel based on what we have felt before.  That doesn’t mean we need to continue feeling that way.  It doesn’t mean we can’t make a different decision.  We are meant to learn that our actions created a specific result and if we want a different result, we have to try something else.  We can’t get hung up on things needing to be a certain way in order for us to feel a certain way.  The truth is, there are things we do that would make us feel entirely uncomfortable but that is exactly what we need to do to get what we want.  We have to get out of our comfort zone, we have to manage what we think and what we decide—we manage how we feel.  That will tell us the options we have available to us. 

Today I am grateful for rationale/tricks of the universe. Yesterday my husband asked if I wanted to go for a ride and I know when he’s restless like that he wants to go out and spend money, discharge some energy through impulsive decision making.  It can be fun—stressful at times and hard if we’re fighting the urge to fall into old habits—but it can be fun to spend time together.  When he asked, I was in the middle of doing dishes and we somehow ended up talking about flooring and tearing up our carpeting and the general discussion about continuing to make this house ours.  We had some brief back and forth about cost and wanting multiple areas of the house torn up at the same time and agreed we’d do something at a later time.  So we drove out to a liquidation store that always has some really cool finds and they had some things we’d been simply throwing back and forth about the house—a shed for the yard, a different TV to swap a few things out for our son in his room, an electric fireplace for the basement, plungers, some hair care.  It was a field day.  Well, low and behold they have a pallet of flooring (which they never have—this is a seasonal store etc. etc.) that was pretty damn close to what we had been talking about wanting for just over $2k.  That’s an awesome deal.  No, I hadn’t been prepared to spend money but this isn’t the first temptation of the universe—I’d been talking about wanting to make the house ours and, while this wasn’t exactly what I wanted, it truly was very close.  We spent a lot of time discussing it—we’d left the floor plan at home so we couldn’t quite be certain there was enough flooring, It wasn’t quite the color we’d been discussing, if it wasn’t enough we weren’t sure how we’d finish it, because it was at a discount place, finding trim and transitions could be rough, and it came down to whether or not we wanted multiple areas of the house torn up.  I know this was a test.  Breaking the habit of being afraid to let go of that money at once and diving into emotion, or for once really determining what I want and not just jumping in and settling for something that’s almost-not-quite what we wanted just because it’s there.  Logic prevailed and I didn’t buy it.  Yes, I want to make all of my home my own, but I don’t want it to be almost what I want—I want it to be what I want.   

Today I am grateful for intention.  The dynamic has shifted in my home over the last several months, specifically with more focus toward our family and my relationship with my husband.  I will say that it has made more difference in the last few months than it has for much of the span of our relationship.  I feel loved and cared for and heard in a new way.  I’ve learned to spend time doing what I need to do and allowing him to be himself without worrying about what’s going on inside his head.  I spent too many years trying to decipher what he really wanted and thinking I was always a step ahead, predicting any movement he would make.  But I’ve learned a lot about us over the last several months and the focus needed to be about each other.  Finding ourselves as individuals, yes—but to spend time as a couple learning what we like again, having fun instead of constant worrying about what needs to be done, and remembering to appreciate everything about each other.  Looking at he relationship as something to work on together.  We have the intention of doing better by each other, for each other, with each other and having that shared focus has changed the dynamic to a more equitable and peaceful arrangement that allows us both to get what we need.

Today I am grateful for promises.  I haven’t always kept the promises to myself.  Even now when I’ve made a promise to keep my focus on the life I’m trying to create and to shift toward more time doing what I love, I find myself drawn back into old habit and routine, allowing the old frustrating feelings devour me.  Perhaps it’s comfort and familiarity, but I feel it’s more about habit—and the fear isn’t so much about doing something different, it’s about believing I can sustain myself.  Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one way to find out if something is going to work and that is to try it.  it’s to give up all fear and just do the damn thing to see if it fits.  I made a promise to give up fear and try to commit to that and that means I’m going to have to let go of the fear of the unknown and do what I say I’m going to do.  Not everything will go exactly as I planned, this is new territory after all, but until I release all the old fear patterns, that life I’ve envisioned will never have the chance to manifest.  I need to keep that promise to myself in order to see what I can make of it.    

Today I am grateful for the opportunity to slow down.  My mind never stops. I know in the most literal sense our minds never stop, the creative instinct, autonomic functions, interaction with others, and basic thought patterns ALWAYS happen. When I say I’m operating on different tracks at all the same time I mean that as soon as I sit down to work on my writing, I feel like I have to pay bills.  A story will set me off and I’ll have to search a particular celebrity or fun fact before I forget—even if it’s not relevant to what I’m doing.  I can be on a creative roll and suddenly an impulse will come through and my other screen on the computer turns into google or I’m remembering I need to pay a bill, some thought about my family’s safety pops in, I realize I need to start the garden I was planning, but to do that I need to clear out space in the basement, the basement is all torn up, I need to finish the plan of the basement… For me, it’s a very real reality that any one of those thoughts crashes into the other and short circuits the whole thing and instead of doing something, especially what I had already been working on, all focus goes out the window and suddenly the process, the feeling of the process is gone. So, I consider myself blessed that in this day and age I am able to focus on hobbies if I want, I am able to begin my other ventures outside of my 9-5, I can make my house my own, I can start my own business(es).  But I can’t do it all at once and I recognize it is also a privilege to choose to slow down, take my bearings, and make a plan.  I have been gifted with  intent and purpose and focus and slowing down allows me to hear that and heal the fears I have and to follow a single train of thought at a time—or at least get one train moving at a time rather than fight for it.  Slowing down brings attention to my breathing and my connection to where I’m at, with spirit, with emotion and I do not take that for granted.

Today I am grateful for seeing patterns and mistakes.  We just had time change (Spring ahead) and it’s now super dark again in the morning.  I enjoy having the illusion of a longer day, but it has always wrecked me for a day or so.  I understand what that is now: I want to be in line with my natural rhythm and doing my own thing and when that is changed on a national level (with global impact because people have to adjust when we speak now by an hour) it feels wrong.  Instead of being nearly 6AM, it’s now nearly 7AM and it’s disorienting and frustrating; frankly there may have been a time and purpose for that but I feel like it’s still some last ditch attempt at holding onto things past.  So as I’m presented with the same patterns and mistakes I’ve made, I realize that it’s me holding on to things past.  I’m doing what I’ve always done because it’s what I’ve known, and I often fall into it before I even realize I’m doing it.   But the more awareness I bring to those things I want to change, the easier it becomes to see where I need to change, or at least shift, to get to where I want to be.  Talk is cheap—only action moves us forward.  That is a pattern I need to break: stopping the transition while it’s happening. Allow myself to simply breathe and do something new.  We can always go back to how it “used to be” but we can never erase the regret of not at least going for what we want when the opportunity presents itself.  Welcome the gifts of the universe even if it feels like the wrong time.  Enjoy.     

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Emotional intelligence and maturity determine capacity,” Zebth3rd.  This goes beyond mindset—this is reflective of what our mindset is, what we are born with, what we are able to shape it into, our understanding of our purpose/place in the world, what we want our world to look like, and how we interact with people and our environment.  That’s a lot to pack in and garner from a little quote.  I’ve spoken often about how our experiences determine what options are available to us.  That is a law of nature, we are only aware of what we are aware of and if we don’t know something exists, then we don’t know that it is a possibility.  It is also a law of nature that how we feel about something will lead to what we are aware of.  If we shut ourselves off because we feel a way we don’t want to feel, then those options are no longer available o us and we lose the ability that would come with those possibilities.  If we are open and excited about something, we see different options than someone who is closed minded to a concept.  It can be said that our understanding is limited by how we feel about something.  I may not enjoy working within a specific time frame, the fact that my mornings are limited which means my creativity is limited—well, the creativity I want to use on things I want to do is limited-but I still choose to honor the obligation I have picked up to my 9-5.  I don’t have to do that.  Granted there would be repercussions I don’t want (cause and effect as well as responsibility to other people) but the choice is always there that I can address the other things I want to do.

I often think what that would feel like, letting go of what I don’t want to fully embrace the life I do want, the life I envision.  Right now I struggle with following through on that because I have a young son and a household that relies on the income I get.  Yes, I can change that source of income, but it would alter how we live in for the time being.  My emotional intelligence tells me that there is something more in line with what I want to do but my maturity is telling me that I have responsibilities that my emotions won’t cover at this time.  At some point this life will tip in the other direction and I will be able to spend the time I want on these creative pursuits as a full time gig and that will support my family in the way I really want it to, the way in envision it.  I’m emotionally intelligent enough to be aware of what I really want and the need to start making shifts in that direction, but I am mature enough to know that those things aren’t enough to cover what is needed right now.  The transition isn’t as easy as acting on a whim.  Now, let’s examine the other implication in maturity, capacity, and emotional intelligence: when we are fully aware of the consequences and the required responsibility to live the life we want, we become more aware of the skills that need to be developed.  If we fall apart at the slightest inconvenience, we will never have the capacity to create what we desire.  I lived that life, thoroughly diving into the victim role/mentality.  I never thought I was playing a part, I thought everything happened TO me.  I had to learn to make other choices and establish different boundaries, behaviors, and responses.  My choices weren’t forced upon me by someone else: I could always choose which feelings determined my course of action, and it didn’t have to be victimhood. 

Creation takes commitment and a thick skin.  We can’t take full responsibility for a life we don’t fully understand or commit to.  I stand by what I have said many times before that our emotions are a guidepost—that is true.  The way we feel can help guide us toward how we want to feel.  if we know something is wrong or off, we make a different decision more in line with what feels right.  But those emotions can’t be the thing that makes our choice.  Emotions can be fleeting and impulsive, not based on truth.  How we handle emotions and what we decide determines what is available to us and what we can handle.  The more we handle our emotional state, the more tools we have to make better decisions and the easier it is to carry the load of the choices we make.  We understand what is and isn’t ours, what we are responsible for, and what our options are.  Creation takes awareness of the bigger picture and when we operate in the bubble of emotion, we are only looking at the impact to ourselves.  We need a greater capacity to take on the bigger goals in our lives and that means handling our emotions intelligently.  Sure, we need to feel what we feel, I actually agree with that because if we repress those feelings, we end up making decisions we wouldn’t normally make.  But we need to understand the emotions aren’t permanent.  They are tools to help us develop.  Commit to learning how to use those tools and understand them so we aren’t run by them.  Those skills develop an arsenal of sorts and we become exponentially more capable of what we want to do, making better choices, and taking responsibility for them.

“Cause and effect is real—for every action there is an equal or greater reaction,” Zebthe3rd.  Continuing on the theme of responsibility and choice.  I continue saying that we are not responsible for anyone but we do have responsibilities to one another.  We do not operate in a bubble.  My history is a testament to the fact that other people and the way they treat each other has a great impact on mental health and the choices we make.  But the truth is other people and their actions don’t change the decisions we have available to us (or at least it is a rare circumstance when someone else’s choice changes our decisions).  Do I believe that it can alter the choice I make?  Yes, it’s possible.  I know it has happened to me where I made a choice based on someone else, but if I look back at every time I’ve done that, I can say without a doubt that my choices, the options available, were not different.  We tend to overthink ourselves…or at least I do…did?  I’m not sure.  But part of healing is learning to be honest about our role in our choices and accepting that the choice is always ours.  We won’t always get what we want and things won’t always turn out exactly as we thought they would (or how we want them to) but how we respond is always up to us. 

The law of cause and effect has been noted as a universal constant in the physical realm since humans came into existence and we started waxing poetically probably even before Aristotle.  With definitions like: A universal law which states all action in the universe produces reactions and will return to you, the source no matter what; or The same cause always produces the same effect and the same effect never arises but from the same cause, it should give us pause.  Humans are crafty creatures and we have learned how to manipulate our environments to get specific results.  We have followed patterns of the universe/nature to yield specific results and we have even learned to rig circumstances in our favor with other people.  This is the reason why we often feel like life happens to us.  We fail to see the correlation of cause and effect of our own decisions.  I don’t mean to imply that we operate blindly thinking we are entitled to whatever we want and if we don’t get it we are somehow victims.  But I do mean to imply that it’s easier to point fingers than it is to accept responsibility for our actions.  As I stated yesterday, we are not responsible for other people but we are responsible to them if we have that type of agreement and understanding.  If we are aware of the specific result of a specific action and we continue to do it expecting different results, that is entirely our own doing.

In order to change the results, we must change the circumstances, the decisions, or the goal.  Any one of those things will alter the yield.  We do not operate in a bubble and the greatest impact of our actions is naturally on ourselves and those closest to us.  If we want to create change, we must start with ourselves.  We have no say in what other people choose.  They may ultimately decide to choose an entirely different path, and it may feel like that was because of our choices—perhaps there was a role in it, because again, we don’t operate in a bubble—but it doesn’t change that the choice to stay on whatever path was an option.  No one else gets to make that decision.  We make the decisions about what choices are available and we all have reasons for choosing what we do—but we need to be ready to accept the result of those choices no matter what.  The simple fact is that we will always get a result and sometimes to get a specific result we have to do a specific action.  We can’t always know the results of every action, but we will always be responsible for them.  So make choices based on who we are, the values we have, and the specific results we are looking for.  If life isn’t reflecting what we want, then ask how we can shift and what cause can we use to create the desired effect…the universe will always respond.

“When we don’t pay attention to our responsibility we are responsible for their immaturity,” Zebthe3rd.  This was an interesting one for me because I’ve looked at responsibility in different ways over the years, and frankly, this can be a circular argument in many ways.  I’ve often said that we are not responsible for people but we are responsible to people.  I can not make someone behave a certain way or do anything that I demand.  At the same time they can’t make me do or say anything.  Yet we are still responsible to each other, always on some level, because what we do impacts each other.  My decisions, the smallest choices make a difference on other people.  I discussed the butterfly effect with a friend the other day where we talked about how our interactions can change the course of someone’s day, and how it can change ours as well.  How we respond to people determines how they respond to us in turn.  Now, the context of this quote came from a therapy session Zeb had with some clients where they lost their respect and appreciation for each other and she ended up cheating.  I would never blame another person for “causing” cheating but there was an interesting point: when we neglect the purpose/need of the relationship there are consequences.  I wouldn’t say the other person is our responsibility but maintaining the relationship certainly is.  When we neglect our responsibility to anything, the consequences become our responsibility.

There was another portion to this quote talking about how parents were responsible for their 13 year old stealing a car (he cited a real example).  There is a difference: we are responsible for the actions of our children because we are their teachers and we need to be an example of what to do and what not to do.  They have less means to discern right and wrong and act more on impulse.  When we are adults and still act on impulse with no thought for consequence, we become responsible for an entirely different set of circumstances.  But here is the thing: I am not responsible for anyone.  I’m in a leadership position at my 9-5 and I struggle at times with a team who has been established for some time who consistently forgets what their role is and how to prioritize their work—sometimes even how to do their work.  As a leader, I am responsible for the results of the team and for managing their workflow/workload.  But I am not responsible for maintaining their ability to do work that they have done for over a decade—nothing has changed in that regard.  Some may argue a leader is responsible for motivation and I agree that’s true, but a leader should not have to micromanage to achieve what the standard expectation is. 

We make choices every day and those choices have consequences/results.  I am not responsible for the choices you make nor are you responsible for the choices I make, but we are responsible for the impact they have on each other.  If we don’t manage our responsibilities (the actual things we are responsible for) then they will take over and we become overwhelmed and direction is unclear.  Our role is to set clear and distinct boundaries about what we are supposed to do and what goals we are working toward.  We are responsible for knowing our role in a specific outcome and how to adapt to achieve the goal or how to modify the goal as appropriate.  But I am not responsible FOR your choices.  Do my actions contribute to what choices are available? Perhaps. Do my actions contribute to what choices you may make? Perhaps.  But am I actively the one making you choose and act on something that may not be the best decision?  No.  We are responsible for our own discernment and the consequences of what we choose.  I don’t pretend that my choices are done in isolation and don’t radiate out to the world, but I am confident that I am only responsible for what I choose. 

“When we have no emotional control, chaos ensues,” Zebthe3rd.  All my life I’ve been told that the outside reflects the inside meaning that if our homes or our spaces look disorganized our minds are typically in that state as well.  I can attest this is true….  I never really took this to the next level to understand that this has to do with emotions and our ability to cope with whatever is happening.  If things are chaotic or anxiety ridden in our minds, that is why our outer space reflects anxiety and chaos as well.  Things half-started or half-finished, clutter.  All of it is a way to hide the reality of what’s happening and what we are afraid of.  It doesn’t matter if we fear failure or success or responsibility, if we aren’t managing that fear, the outside will never be a place we can trust as a foundation.  If we don’t regulate our emotions and understand what they are really telling us, we will never get an actual read on what we feel because we allow the moment to dictate our response rather than taking the moment to determine what we feel.

When we make emotional decisions rather than connected, thoughtful decisions, we lose sight of what’s actually happening.  Emotion is a strange thing because we need it—we need to know how we feel and what we feel for certain things because that is a guidepost.  But we must always be clear that it isn’t the determining factor—or at least it shouldn’t be.  Emotions tell us when something is off or when we are heading in the right direction.  It isn’t meant to tell us WHAT to do, it is just meant to guide us where we need to go.  We need to find a balance between what we feel and what we know.  We have to understand that we may not always be able to control the triggers, but we are ALWAYS in control of our responses.  That isn’t to say there aren’t people and events out there who simply push our buttons to get a rise out of us-but those are the times we have to ask ourselves if this is the environment we want to be in. 

We will never be able to control the circumstances around us, that isn’t how the world works.  But we can always control our decisions and our actions and we can always respond with grace and presence and thoughtfulness.  I don’t claim this is easy—I spent the entirety of my life living in chaos thinking it was just how things worked.  I thought people who made non-emotional decisions were just stoic or didn’t feel things the same way.  That was true for some of them.  But I had to learn as so many of us do that emotions aren’t the best decision makers.  Emotion will lead to chaos because it isn’t the reality of the situation.  And I stand by what I said, that emotion is a good guidepost.  It is meant to show us when we are on the right path by indicating the good/bad feeling.  When we feel off, when we feel disorganized, when we feel flustered, or when we start to see our physical spaces falling apart, then we have to stop and ask ourselves if we are letting emotion get the best of us.  Don’t allow our lives to become chaos because we have a few moments of feeling bad/sad/fearful.  Take stock and choose again. 

Mel Robbins quoted a study from MIT that said the single most important factor for determining friendships is proximity.  In order for you to connect w/ people you have to spend time with them.  It takes 50 hours of time with another person to become casual friends. 90 hours to consider them a friend. You need 200 hours w/ someone in order for you to consider someone a close friend.  This is why it feels so hard to make friends as an adult. I want to caveat this with the fact that I have spent these amounts of hours with people and I did consider them my closest friends.  But after a time I realized that we were only spending time focusing on their needs and wants.  Sure they would do nice things like buy us dinner and we would hang out and yes, they even helped in some really low places in our lives.  But it was still consistently, completely, and always about them.  Just because someone is near you doesn’t mean they are really your friends.  So the other key to friendship is mutual understanding and reciprocity.  The same effort and focus on a friendship.  Mutual interests, great  But being forced to adapt to someone else’s personality and to be who they are and what they want all the time is exhausting—and we aren’t here to be anyone but who we are.

I also know first hand that there are people close to me who I didn’t really speak with for a long time, I didn’t know who they were because I had a negative/misinformed first perception.  It was the people who “got” to us first that informed us of the negative qualities of everyone else—and I knew immediately that they would say the same things about us when we weren’t around.  When I started accepting and spending time with this other group of people, I found out that this is something more in line with my personality.  I only found that out because I ended up being forced to spend time with them and I really struggled at first because I had no clue how skewed my introduction had been.  And now that things have developed, I can say without a doubt that it was worth breaking out of my comfort zone and ignoring other people’s perceptions.  I was frustrated at first because of the circumstances, but with time and discussion and learning more about people, I learned to find more of myself.  Saying yes to things allows us to experience things first hand and decide what really works for us, what fits. 

Now I want to throw one last piece in here, a sort of middle ground.  There are people who we become friends with (or at least friendly with) based on where we are—we work together, we live next door, we are part of the same club, we like the same food, whatever it may be.  Some of those relationships form some of the strongest bonds.  But my closest relationship, the person I trust the most, now lives over 3 hours away—which is closer than their previous 9 hours away, so progress!—and this is a person I adore, who is truly my best friend.  Do we see each other every day? Do we speak every day?  Not always—but the love is very real and it is always there.  There is space for us to be who we are and we respect that about each other.  We’ve pursued different lives but we are always connected.  So there are some bonds formed of situation and others that are inevitable, a design of the universe.  I guess one could argue all relationships are a design of the universe because we meet everyone for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, right?  But I mean that there are soul people, people who have been with us through lifetimes and iterations who simply FIT.  Who simply need to be in our lives.  So proximity and time may be a determining factor—and that often is the beginning of most relationships (you can’t be with someone you don’t know)—but there are also bonds that quite literally transcend time and location.  So I would argue that the heart is the single most important factor in determining friendships—or at least genuine, lasting friendships. 

I’ve learned first had that you can be physically close and still miles apart mentally.  And you can have great distance in between and still feel 100% seen and understood. Form that perspective I would respectfully disagree from experience that proximity means nothing in terms of finding those who are meant to be with us.  Proximity can often equal convenience but that is the fastest way to get to burn out—at some point those relationships become a power struggle—whose needs or interests are going to be answered first?  And do we have truly similar patterns/values/beliefs?  There comes a point where we simply understand that we are around each other because we are around each other.  We latch onto the first thing that made sense in the moment, the nearest thing.  And we learn after time that people won’t necessarily accept us as we are and it was simply a matter of convenience.  There are relationships that work like that, we all have them.  But I’m looking for more than that—I don’t want what was easy, I want what is real.  There is convenience and there is connection—sometimes it can be both but when it is one over the other, take connection every day.