“To change, to truly change is to be greater than your environment, to be greater than the circumstances in your life, to be greater than the conditions in your world. Every great person in history already knew this.  They were defined by something in the future. They were so obsessed with that vision that they began to live as if that future reality was happening in that present moment.  Couldn’t see it, smell it, taste it couldn’t feel it or hear it, but to them it was alive. So a fundamental question is can you believe in a  future that you can’t see or experience with the senses yet?  But you’ve thought about it enough times in your mind that our brain is literally changed to look like the experience has already occurred.. the latest research in neuroscience says it’s absolutely possible you can change your brain just by thinking,” Joe Dispenza.  Change looks different when you think about what must be done to change.  People wait lifetimes for circumstances around them to shift in order to feel differently or they wait for their environment to change to be somewhere different.  Change doesn’t just occur when the outside moves us.  Frankly, even if outside circumstances do change, that doesn’t mean that we are truly changed.  Change happens when we shift our mindset.  The world follows the direction of the mind.

While this isn’t a perfect formula, it speaks to the motivation and direction we need to instill real, lasting change in our lives.  We can’t wait for the outside to become what we want it to in order to become what we want.  We are moved by external circumstances but how we react is always up to us and those decisions come from engrained behavior.  The decisions we make that feel so automatic and out of our control are very much learned.  I don’t discount the role of instinct or even a genetic component to response behavior, but most of what we do and how we feel and how we react is based on what we learn.  We are taught how to feel about the world around us and how to respond to it.  If we aren’t happy with the results we get then we must learn how to change the pattern.  We are gifted with a vision that becomes real, that is solely ours if we are strong enough to see it through. The goal should never be about domination or proving anything—the goal is really about finding ourselves and honoring who we are and stepping up into that version of ourselves that only we can see, that we know is real because we feel it.

Change, who we are, what we feel, our goals, all of those things are unique to us and are uniquely handled based on our views and beliefs.  People spend a lifetime knowing something greater is waiting for them and they never act on it because they are either afraid or they don’t know how to make something real that isn’t in their current line of vision.  For those brave enough to take a chance on a feeling, a knowing they can’t quite explain, the world opens up in a new way.  The world literally shifts and the things felt now make their way into things we can see.  Those thoughts and things we feel long enough become engrained patterns that will eventually make themselves manifest in reality so we might as well learn to hone our thoughts to create the things we want to see.  So many of us are adept at creating what we don’t want that we fear our ability to create what we do want—or perhaps we are afraid we won’t be able to create something that lives up to what we envisioned.  But that part is irrelevant as long as we create the feeling that gives us joy and support and purpose.  We are fulfilled by answering our own challenges, by creating our own happiness, and by stepping up to answer our purpose.  Change is inspired when there is more possibility that we can feel than we can see.  Change is inspired when we know there is something more, when we feel the possibility of it.  When we act on it, the magic makes it so regardless of what we see in reality.  The reality is in our minds.   

Today I am grateful for following what feels right.  I’ve trained myself to ignore what feels right for me for so long.  Call it fear of missing out or fear of rejection or people pleasing—maybe some form of all of it—but I never believed what I felt.  I knew when I was hurting or upset about something and I would dive into that.  But I never took the time to dive as deeply into joy.  I see now that we need to spend as much time exploring joy as we do any other emotion.  We can’t let that emotion run wild or make our decisions, but we need to spend time with all emotion so we know how to navigate them.  When the body gives us signals, we are meant to listen to it.  I’ve learned to step away more frequently, to back away when I feel those thoughts of people pleasing and FOMO, and just sit with what I really feel.  I’ve also learned that if a particular feeling sits with me for a while, something I can’t shake, then I need to explore that in more detail because there is likely something else buried underneath that.  It isn’t just a passing feeling that I’m trying to suppress, that is something that’s trying to tell me something and to guide me.  We need to know the difference between guidance and a passing whim and how to trust what we are being told.

Today I am grateful for honest conversation. I was at a friends house the other night and her teenage son and his friend joined us at the table while we sat and talked and ate.  These young men truly impressed me-I feel like my grandparents when I say that…but it’s true.  They expressed themselves beautifully—clear, concise, non-emotional.  They accepted facts they didn’t like without any emotion either—they accept the reality of their circumstances without trying to change it.  And most importantly, they actually expressed how they felt about their relationships—all of their relationships including friendships and that type of bond. I’ve never seen kids so balanced in all they need to do, making time for advanced classes, sports, jobs, and each other.  I understand that level of stress, and I’ve never seen someone at that age so mature about it.  I’ve seen a lot of kids doing really stupid stuff (we all did stupid stuff when we were younger) and I’ve been afraid of some of the simultaneous swing between apathy for what’s important and the intense dive into life type of attitudes these kids have.  They have a certain degree of maturity and self-awareness that allows for very thoughtful conversation, sometimes making decisions I wouldn’t have been able to make as a kid—I’ve seen very logical choices made in circumstances I would have had an intense swing one way or the other.  I’ve also seen a degree of non-attachment to things that is impressive.  I understand they have the same pressures we did as kids as far as popularity and how they look—but the standards are different now.  There is a degree of inclusion I’ve seen with the kids in this neighborhood that gives me hope.  It makes me worry a bit less about the things that were important to me.   

Today I am grateful for the ability to worry less and reprioritization.  Expanding on the last point above with worrying less…I didn’t realize how much I focused on the future and how little I did the productive work toward the future I wanted.  That’s where the reprioritization comes in.  Throughout the conversation with my friend’s kids, I saw their ability to peel away the things that weren’t important to them and simply focus on what they enjoyed.  Time was of no concern to them and neither was trying to do all things at once.  It was a reminder to make the changes I need in my life rather than continue trying to balance all of the things at once.  It’s ok to put down what isn’t working.  To get where I’m going, I need to spend more time doing the work that will bring me there.  That sail needs to be dusted off and allow me to switch directions.  The more I talk with people involved in their passions, I see no shame in them whatsoever.  That is where I see progress. Knowing themselves and focusing on what brings them joy.  I have to be willing to cut out the things I don’t want to be focusing on and simply do what makes sense for me.  Do what feels right for me. That conversation made me realize that things are going to turn out just fine, just how they are meant to be—and no matter what they are fine because I can’t control the outcome anyway.  Just live.    

Today I am grateful for being on the same page.  There is nothing greater than being in alignment.  Whether with family, friends, work (any relationship), or personal goals, there is nothing like the feeling of everything coming together.  We’ve been navigating some challenges with a group of people and this is something I used to feel great opposition on.  I was seeing behavior that others weren’t seeing or they weren’t experiencing first hand.  And when I’d talk about it, it was often dismissed.  But recent events have shown that we needed to look at things another way.  As we did, certain things became clear.  We needed to make different decisions and it was time to reprioritize our focus to our family.  Things I had been long suspicious of weren’t just in my head as a few people close to us saw it as well.  These were things that changed the way we operated.  In some regards, was I being paranoid and overly sensitive?  Of course.  My instincts weren’t 100%–but they were right.  And all that had to be done was to look at it from a different perspective for both of us.  We found a different priority as we started to focus on US rather than THEM.  We had long discussions about what was actually happening with all of these people and we beautifully came to the conclusion that we made the right choice to invest in our lives together rather than spend our time making things better for everyone else.  Not to sound selfish, but we weren’t getting the same return, and in some regards we were outright taken advantage of, and too many boundaries were crossed.  It’s a beautiful thing to be able to move forward with a shared focus.      

Today I am grateful for encouraging myself.  I’ve felt like I’ve dropped the ball over the last couple of weeks.  While motivation isn’t entirely gone, I have had a hard time keeping to everything I said I would be doing.  It’s not like I don’t want to be doing those things, it’s just hard to keep on that path for whatever reason—distraction, doubt, etc.  It also comes down to a matter of confidence: belief that I can sustain the changes I want to make, that I can be that person, that I continue to surround myself with people on the same page and that I keep my boundaries up.  To be honest about who I am and to trust those instincts.  I made it so far in so many regards, a few weeks of slipping isn’t going to derail the whole thing—but I can’t let myself fall any further.  I am allowing what needs to happen to happen.  I’m going to remember my power and own it and stop allowing the insignificant derail me.  Focus on what’s important and what I CAN do rather than punishing myself for what I wasn’t able to do, for being human.  Keep going and enjoy the results of  hard work and dedication. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

Add to your reality more elements of what you love.  Last week I shared about how I can’t focus on curating how people receive a message, I need to focus on the message itself.  We will become a master of nothing if we constantly flit from one thing to another with no real focus.  We need to focus on the topic, the area of interest instead of making it appear a certain way.  See, I had a vision of being a specific type of influencer for lack of a better word…  I wanted to appear as a centered, together, guru of sorts who could live as an example of what she shared to help people make their lives better.  I didn’t expect to appeal to ALL, but I wanted lessons applicable to all.  I was looking for some sort of universal acceptance in the truth I delivered because it was supposed to be a universal truth.  When you try to appeal to all, however, you won’t appeal to any because there is a degree of untruth to it.  Falsehood is unintentional, but it is a watered down truth which can appear that we are hiding or missing something. Plus no one has it all together and that image I thought was so noble and easy to portray, frankly, is complete bullshit. It was a façade, an image, literally a job to make people believe something that only half existed.

When we find ways to add more of what we love to our present, however, we suddenly realize that we don’t need to appeal to many—we need to appeal to those who need us.  This isn’t about adapting a message to make it palatable—this is about sharing the message we are meant to share.  Living life in complete authenticity and joy and presence in who we are, not who we want people to think we are.  As soon as we feel we need to appear a certain way, we lose the impact and the point of what we are doing.  There is something profound in sharing our truth and learning new things about our passion areas.  I found facets of things that engage me for long periods of time but I have yet to find those things that keep me engaged 24/7.  I still save my time to do other things for people—like if we want to focus on a house project, that tends to take precedence over my passion projects.  Work projects still come before my personal goals.  If we put our focus on other things, the universe doesn’t understand what we really want.  It can only give us what we focus on and what we put our energy toward—so make sure we are adding more of what we love in to each day. 

Dan Martell says, “If you’re a human, and you have a heartbeat, and know you are meant for more, you know you are here to do something way bigger than what you’re doing right now.  Making that decision is scary because it’s probably going to mean some really tough conversations with people you love in your life, and who you are today is not who you’re going to have to become to achieve that thing. All that is scary, change is scary, I get that.  But if today was your last day, I guarantee most people, 99.7% of the population, would have massive regrets for not starting, creating or doing that thing.”  We have a calling and sometimes that means making hard decisions but nothing is harder than the regret of not doing something we love, knowing we could have.  This is living with eyes wide open, sticking our heads out the window, finding that joy from childhood that we discussed the other day.  We are human and flawed and we have an infinite amount to learn about existence—but we are also born perfectly as we are meant to be, all knowing in our passion and purpose.  The contrast can be confusing—and that is ok.  The more we learn to trust ourselves, the more we remember what we know and we connect with the real purpose of life: to live with joy and purpose—specifically our joy and purpose.

“What if you assumed [the best in all situations]? Life in all its mess and chaos, is worth living? And you giving up now would mean missing those beautiful parts you were meant to experience?” Megs.tea.room.  Clearly this question of “What if” is prevalent for us at this time…or at least for me.  It does come at a time of intense and significant change in my life, personally and professionally.  The answer to this question will determine a lot. It will determine where I am taking the helm and the priorities I’m changing.  It’s easy to throw up our hands and let things fall apart when they seem that way.  It’s easy to believe that there is no meaning. It takes strength to trust that there is a reason we can’t see.  It takes strength to work off of faith and what feels right.  There are some beautiful things that come out of crappy situations.  There is the saying “No mud, no lotus,” from Tich Nhat Hahn.  He says this in reference to suffering, meaning we have to go through it to get the result we are looking for.  I also look at this in the regard of what if—we can catastrophize all we want and believe the chaos is irrelevant but we can also ask ourselves what if we get through this and it’s even better than we imagine.  Suffering is in the mind and, frankly, it’s a relative thing. Everyone’s suffering is different—what causes pain for one is joy for another. The things we define as suffering now can create some of the most beautiful circumstances.  It’s up to us to find the beauty.

No matter what happens in this world, it is always a result based on our interaction with the situation, whatever it may be.  Our perspective and experience determine how we interpret and react.  Even doing nothing, the nothing is a result of our inaction.  That inaction was a choice.  We can choose to see the dark, the mud, or we can choose to see the light, the lotus.  When we stop half-way through, we get nothing, we get stuck.  So, my familiar refrain comes again: this is about mindset.  This is about how we choose, what we see, how we feel, and what we act on.  Reality doesn’t just occur—it may seem like an ever-present thing that we just respond to like it’s a series of random events we have to get through. In actuality, the world responds to us.  We decide.  We create the chaos in our minds but we also find the way to clean it up and make sense of it.  And sometimes we have to create the chaos so we can filter through and find what really matters.  But it is always a result of how we respond to what if, how we respond to what needs to be done, and what we choose to pick up to answer in the first place.  The questions and scenarios we answer determine where we focus.  If we give up halfway through and get stuck in the mud, we will never fully bloom.  Yes, some days we have to push harder.  Some days we get rained on.  But there comes the day when we breathe.  We stretch.  We feel the warmth of the sun and we remember why we went through it: To experience the creative force of being.   

Don’t let what if’s determine what is.  I honestly don’t even remember where I saw this but I love it because it took one of my favorite questions into a new context.  This was used in the context of not allowing fear of the future to hold us back.  We talk about the power of the mind and creating reality and this is exactly what we need to think about.  I found it interesting because I saw the need for what if—I saw how “What if” started a different kind of chain reaction.  What if is the doorway to creativity and possibility—so many of the greatest ventures we see, hear about, and experience every day, the greatest advancements in technology and the things that make us comfortable, all of that started with a “What if?”.  If someone didn’t ask the question, we never would have the result.  We all know that What if is a broad question so we have to maintain awareness that there is a point where “what if” turns from possibility to prison if we put it in the wrong context.  So it is up to us to make sure we keep a positive what if.  If we answer “what if” with fear, then we create a reality filled with fear and we make decisions based on fear.  When we answer “what if” with excitement we introduce a reality that is open to possibility, not negativity.  So we need to ask ourselves the “What if,” we just need to make sure we answer the what if with the true desire/possibility we want to see rather than what we don’t. 

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about the “What If Game.”  I find thinking of all the possibilities and reminding myself of the opportunities available a relief and a place to channel some creative energy.  Depending on what answers I come up with, there are some real possibilities there.  The truth is the possibilities are endless but it is up to us what we choose to respond with.  We spend so much time in our lives trying to get the right answer that we’ve lost sight that sometimes we just need to answer.  It isn’t about right or wrong—it’s about the reply and learning how to shift, how to respond to the new questions that form. It’s also about understanding that people will respond differently to the same question—and that’s ok.  We all have the “what if” that inspires us and we have the “What if” that terrifies us.  It’s part of human nature.  So if we are going to make a statement like “Don’t let what if determine what is” I think we need to be more specific in the context that we can’t let the fear of what if determine what is.  What if is our friend.  How we answer it is reflective of the result we get.  I want to let “what if” determine what is because when I stop asking that question, there is nothing more to find—and I know I certainly don’t have all the answers.  I want to know the possibilities in my life.  My answer to what if is the reality I see and receive.  If the result isn’t what I wanted, I know I need to find another answer. And there is always another answer.  What if I can come up with the greatest possibility I can imagine?  Make that the reality.

“A more compelling case for lying,” Alok Menon.  These words are an incredibly short snippet from a gorgeous piece Menon performed regarding the death of his grandfather who passed related to Alzheimer’s.  These words struck me from personal experience.  Thinking, is there ever really a reason to lie?  Is there ever a reason for us to create a false sense of reality in order to appease the actual reality?  It doesn’t change what’s happening.  But there is a point in life that I’ve witnessed multiple times now where the reality that is no longer matches the reality that plays in a persons mind.  I’m not talking about delusion or fear.  This is a circumstance where the brain can no longer support what is.  In the cases I’ve witnessed it has been the result of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  There is nothing more cruel to me than watching the mind deteriorate.  The person you know and love is physically there, present, but they aren’t.  So we find a way to meet them where they are and sometimes that means creating a different reality for a while—or at least meeting them in their reality.  The mind is an incredible machine and this is demonstrative of how we can control it 

We can go into all the medical reasons and physical changes that happen with diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s but there comes a point where, frankly, all of that is irrelevant.  No amount of understanding the physiological changes or the projected mental decline will ever truly prepare a person for experiencing the loss of someone who is still physically there.  What I found interesting in my experience with this is that there seems to be no pain in the person—the cases I witnessed were non-aggressive or fear based—just a near regression quality.  I wished I could go back with them at times.  I wished I could go back to the place they were and feel safe again.  For just as disorienting as it must be for them, it is for us too.  And I didn’t adapt well.  I fought the person they were becoming because it didn’t match my reality.  I didn’t want it to.  I wanted what I knew, never thinking that was what they wanted too.  The resistance I felt at meeting them where they were, constantly telling them we talked about this, served nothing.  It was me fighting the reality.  I was used to the quick loss, the unexpected loss—I never understood this lingering loss where they were still so very much alive and here but they were impossibly gone at the same time.

So when Menon shared his experience with his grandfather, it triggered something in me.  We all have to take up the mantle of our lives, of our family at some point.  We steer the course.  We direct our lives and while it is jarring to see those who were at the helm for so long fall away, we would all have to take that place at some point. My discomfort was a resistance to the changes I would have to go through as well as dealing with the loss of the person as I knew them.  Menon’s statement is indicative of a person ready to take the helm, to take over.  While not entirely sure of what comes next, they are still ready to accept their role and put aside their fears of the change for the comfort of someone they love.  The person they knew isn’t entirely there but they are willing to take up the same role that person served for them: helping transition.  We were lied to all the time and we got through.  Now we do the same.  We lie to live, to help them and ourselves get through.  Life is nothing but change and sometimes that means telling a story that doesn’t quite align for a time.  Because someday someone will tell us a story that doesn’t align as well.    

So now I wanted to get into what really spurred me to look into the Good Will Hunting quote last week.  I had some questions on my mind about a lot of things…Why do we settle for a picture, an image, an idea, when we can get to work and make those things a reality?  We can watch baking shows on TV all day long but we will never taste that cake.  We can see how long it takes to redo a home but we will never understand the level of work and pride that comes from building something on our own until we build it ourselves. I realized it’s cool to watch things happen and to appreciate talent, but it’s even better to actually experience life—whatever it may be.  So, here’s what happened:

I turned on the computer today and saw a picture of the northern lights in Iceland and immediately thought, “I want to go there someday.”  Immediately after that I thought, “I probably won’t go there but at least we have pictures of it so I can still see it.”  Shock hit me because I’ve rarely been that negative out of nowhere.  I mean, I have a strong negativity bias, but I honestly had just woken up and that was a bit early, even for me, to go down that kind of negative track.  That stopped me for a minute and I thought, I can go there if I want to.  I could go now if I wanted to.  The truth is this: no mater what, there is a way to see it and I am blessed to know it’s real and to have something like that to want to go see. Other people before wouldn’t have even been able to see it, ever.  They’d have been stuck where they are with no way to get there, possibly not even knowing a place like Iceland existed, and possibly heard tell of the magic of the lights and maybe they wouldn’t have even believed something like that could exist—or if they did believe, they could have thought that it was evil—angels and devils sometimes are a fine line.  Even as time went on and we started to get sketches and pictures, people still may not believe it.  Perhaps we’d get an inkling of desire to go see it, to see if it was real.  But the reality is this: We can’t assume we know what it’s like to see the Northern Lights in Iceland because we’ve seen a picture.  Nothing we ever do will let us know what it feels like to stand on that ground, feeling the breeze around our faces, breathing in that air, the feeling of immense yet comfortable smallness seeing the expanse of sky lit up in a way that makes you know something bigger is there, knowing that humanity is so much more fragile than we think and all the crap we do seems pretty insignificant at the end of the day.  There is something bigger. 

Humans are blessed in this day and age to have access to so much information.  It can be overwhelming and even challenging to discern what is real, but we have access to it and we have ways to verify it.  But there is no teacher like experience.  We are problem solvers at our core, we are inventors, developers, creators, collaborators, alchemists, magicians—and we now know how to make things happen.  We have a much larger scope to know what is possible.  If we have a calling to go see the Northern Lights, the Sistine Chapel, or any other of the amazing/unreal phenomenon of this world, we are able to do it.  There is always a way.  When I was younger, I was a bit reckless with my money (not unusual for early 20 somethings with a credit card).  I had a desire to travel, and in one year I’d gone to Las Vegas twice.  One of those trips was going to Hawaii and Vegas.  I can tell you it took me a really long time to pay off that trip, but I didn’t regret doing it.  There is nothing like experience.  I will always remember the feel of the water rushing up over my legs, the feel of the sand, sitting on Waikiki Beach, the feel of the sun on my back.  I’ll always remember the wild feeling of laying next to my then boyfriend in the hotel room bed after we had just made love.  Those are experiences that will always go beyond imagination.  That is life.  

In order to live life, we must live it.  There is no substitute for taking action on what we want and creating the life we have imagined in our minds from what we’ve seen on paper/TV/Social Media/online, and from what we’ve managed to put in our heads from desire.  We are infinitely more powerful than we could imagine.  The world is just waiting for us to harness that energy and make something of it.  We wouldn’t have these desires if we weren’t meant to do something with them.  It would be like capping the volcano, trying to hold in all of that power while it’s bubbling and brewing and building pressure.  But we don’t need to wait to explode to get the life we want.  And there is this: Just as we can’t build the life we want without actually living it, we can’t assume we understand anything on the level of another person who has gone through it—no matter what that is.  So if anything, remember how very lucky we are and how very fragile this life is.  Even with all of this power, we are still just a speck, a dot in space—perhaps so small we don’t even register as a dot.  But there are infinite depths in us just like there are to the universe, the seen and the unseen.  All of that insignificance doesn’t matter—it’s a reminder to take what we have and go live the life on the grandest scale we can.

Today I am grateful for confusion.  Ok, stick with me on this one.  Clarity is always the goal but we can’t always know all the answers.  Sometimes we have to take a shot and wing it.  Sometimes we go on gut instinct and we don’t always get it right.  I don’t truthfully like being confused, but I have finally discovered/admitted that there is a purpose for it.  So when we are confused it’s usually because we are trying to decide between multiple options/alternatives.  I want to express gratitude for the confusion because that means there ARE multiple options/alternatives.  Having options is a powerful thing.  And that means the universe is allowing us to make the choice.  Sure, it means that some things may not be available to us, but we have the ability to make that choice—and both options are fine.  There is no right and wrong.  See, that is what causes the confusion—the assignment of right and wrong to something.  I say again—there is no right and wrong, not when it comes to a life path.  I am also grateful for confusion because it helps me develop my skills in narrowing down possibilities and focusing in on what’s really important.  I mean, I used to love the idea of being a marine biologist, I was obsessed with it for years.  And then I realized something: I’m not really the strongest swimmer, most of what is in the ocean can eat me, and frankly I don’t like the smell of fish.  I just wanted to find a way to play with dolphins for a while.  Sure, switching paths was confusing at first because I’d attached so much of what I wanted to do to this marine biology idea—but that confusion helped me narrow down a bit more of what I liked and didn’t like and I understood that it wasn’t the career for me.  Similar events are happening now and I am confused about which way to go—but I can peel back the layers and see what is really important.

Today I am grateful for knowing the difference.  What difference you ask?  The fact that there is a difference between what feels right for us and what doesn’t.  For knowing when things that worked, no longer are. For knowing when things click and we are on the right path.  For knowing genuine interest and care versus an excuse waiting for their turn to talk.  For knowing when my real value is seen and when it isn’t—and for no longer tolerating when it isn’t.  For knowing when to keep quiet and when to speak up.  For knowing real love/care versus something fleeting….or mistaken for love.  For knowing when things just click and when they are forced.  For knowing my limits and when I’m trying too hard or pushing too hard.  For accepting where I am, not settling—there are things to enjoy (lots of them) that I appreciate about being here and with what I am doing with my life and there is more to do.  Now being on the right track, things fall into place easier.     

Today I am grateful for inclusion.  What I thought was inclusion before has revealed itself to be tolerance as long as I was giving in and doing that they other person wanted.  That is not only conditional, it’s manipulative.  It feels entirely different when your presence is wanted versus tolerated or only as needed.  There are parts of ourselves that we will only find if we say yes—yes to new people and experiences.  Similarly there are parts of ourselves that we will only find if we say no.  Sometimes we have to say no to the patterns we had, the responses we had to people, the emotional reaction toward behavior and we simply need to shift our behavior.  We need to not repeat patterns in order to establish better boundaries and a clear direction for ourselves. Frankly, the boundaries are to demonstrate respect for ourselves as well.  I will talk about the idea of adding more of what we love to our reality later in the week and I am understanding how important it is to say yes to what we love.  If we reject what we love and what feels right for us, we are telling the universe to give us something else….so why would we say no to what we want? And why would we say yes to what we don’t want?  So when it comes to inclusion we need to remember to make space and create inclusion for the things we love…and we need to go where we are included and we need to include what we love. 

Today I am grateful for ease.  I’m not talking about things being easy. I’m talking about approaching things with ease.  Like I said above, if it’s something we want in our lives, there is no need to be coy or say no or believe we have to earn it.  If we have tasks to do, it’s far easier to simply begin than it is to sulk about it and delay what can be done in a few short minutes—get rid of the emotion behind it and simply complete the task.  It’s easier to allow than it is to attempt to control every outcome every time.  I am grateful for ease because it has allowed me to appreciate and honor the work I’ve done.  There is no need to earn what my mind and body needs in the moment nor is there any need to earn the feeling of contentment and satisfaction from doing something we are (I am) proud of—no need to constantly prove that we are worthy of what we want.  Ease and allowing, not so much about temptation, but rather simultaneously accepting what we want in our lives with what IS in our lives.  Allow, accept, create, have fun.  Let whatever it is, be, let it come, and if the feeling is that we want it, simply say Yes. That’s all we have to do. The world will show us what we give it and I’m tired of requesting an uphill battle because I don’t feel worthy on some subconscious level.  It’s far easier to accept that we are inherently worthy than it is to unnecessarily create a challenge for ourselves. I’m thoroughly enjoying ease. 

Today I am grateful for life.  I’ve been doing a lot of planning lately.  Like really asking what I want in my life and what I want to allow and it has taken some moments of rage, love, exhaustion, excitement, a few cracks along the way and a rebuilding/reframing of a lot of things in my life.  And I am grateful for it.  The truth is we really don’t need a lot to survive in this world—we truly need very little. But when it comes to making a rich life (not a life filled with riches) it’s about the experiences we create.  We can’t life the same day over and over again and call it living.  We need variation, we need to try new things.  We need to remember simplicity and the joy of the occasional last minute yes.  We don’t need to stress over what we can’t control.  We need to embrace and move on because life is always moving.  There is always this long now and suddenly today becomes yesterday and then years have passed.  So we need to be incredibly aware and grateful of every moment that we are gifted whether it’s sitting in a home office with a cat curled on our laps while we type or saying yes to an impromptu dinner and game night with friends.  Sometimes life throws us some unexpected surprises and I’ve gotten caught in the spokes of those wheels quite often, wishing things were different.  But I’ve seen people change and fall apart and I’ve seen people able to walk away from that—and I’ve seen some who tried to make things be the way they were.  The ones who walked away fared much better than those stuck trying to bring back something that was past its time.  As we all know, life doesn’t always work out how we want it—but we need to remember that all of those facets, light and dark, ae all part of our lives and changing any one of them can change us.  Is it worth giving up the good to erase one part of the bad? I think most of us would say no.  I agree, so I am grateful for every second.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

SOME CRUDE LANGUAGE IN THIS ONE

There is an iconic monologue In Good Will Hunting is from the character of Sean (Robin Williams) and he says, “If I asked you about art you’d give me the skinny on every art book ever written.  Michelangelo. You know a lot about him.  Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation the whole works right?  But you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine chapel.  You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.  If I asked you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus of your favorites, maybe you’ve even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy…if I asked you about war you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? Once more in to the breach, dear friends. But you’ve never been near one.  You’ve never held your best friends in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help.  If I ask you about love you’d probably quote me a sonnet.  But you never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable, known someone could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on Earth, [someone] who could rescue you from the depths of hell.  And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever.  Through anything. Through cancer.  You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hands because the doctors could see in your eyes because the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you.  You don’t know about real loss because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.  I doubt you ever dared to love anyone that much….no one can possibly understand the depths of you, but you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting, and ripped my fucking life apart.  You’re an orphan right?  Do you think I would know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist?  Does that encapsulate you?”   

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a more eloquent way to say that people aren’t defined by a single moment or thing in their lives.  We can’t take one facet of someone’s life/personality and use that to define who they are.  We can’t look at a single incident and assume we know how that person is—or WHO that person is—because of their behavior in one second.  We have to look at a sum total of our existence, our dreams, our actions, and we have to offer the same courtesy to others.  We are trained to make rash decisions and we so often go off of first impressions that we don’t take the time to find the story and nuance people have.  Everyone has a story. We each have our unique experiences that make us who we are, that give us enough perspective to see things from different angles.  And here is the other thing: even if we have been through a similar experience, that doesn’t mean we understand the entirety of someone else’s experience.  At the most basic level, this is the difference between understanding something conceptually versus experientially.  I will go into more detail tomorrow about what triggered this for me, but it all started with a picture and the thoughts I had about the picture.  Seeing something whether on TV or any media or in a book is not the same as touching it, being there, tasting the food, hearing the music live.  We can know something and then we KNOW something.   

With information (and misinformation) so readily available and with opinion touted as fact, everyone believes they’re an expert in everything.  We tend to think we understand the entirety of every complexity in the world because we can read about it.  We are even audacious enough to think we have the answers to things we haven’t personally been part of.  We think our opinion is needed for everything.  Watching a video on boating doesn’t make me a sailor.  And seeing a picture of me, seeing one thing I’ve built, seeing the messiness (or cleanliness) in one facet of my life is not the entirety of who I am.  The same is said for all of us here.  And to cover all bases, sometimes we need to accept that our opinion isn’t needed in every situation.  Sometimes we just need to be silent and take in the information.  We need to hold space for the experience of others.  Sure, it’s great to try and learn as much as we can about other people, about the things that interest us.  But we can’t assume that we will ever be on the same level as the people who have lived it or that we can know who people are because of one moment.  I can attest to that and I spoke about that later last year when it came to my first impressions of some people that I was very wrong about.  We must leave space, we must appreciate space, and we must give grace for life as it has shaped people and we must not be so arrogant as to think we know their life story from one single image.  That’s why we tell the whole story—because sometimes a thousand words from the picture aren’t enough.