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

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

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

“Make sure you’re not giving more than you’re receiving,” Kelcie (Divine Kelcie).  I’ve talked about receiving before, how I had never really looked at the concept of it as an active verb.  Receiving gets a bad reputation at times, making us believe that we aren’t worthy of whatever it may be somehow or that it is somehow too much, greedy to receive.  Receiving in the concept of an active verb takes work.  It means taking what we have and applying it, using it for what it is meant for.  We have all heard about pouring from an empty cup and I think this is exactly what we are talking about.  I am all about giving, truly.  There is an energy about it, a power that comes with giving that energizes us.  But giving is tricky at times: 1. If we give when we have nothing, we are depleting ourselves too much.  We always need to be sure we are refilling our own cup.  2. Giving can’t come with conditions.  When we tie an expectation of something in return for what we do, that not only kind of nullifies what we are giving, but it takes energy to demand whatever it may be in return.  3.  Giving does, however, need a level of balance/reciprocity…which can be hard to reconcile if we are giving without condition. 

The key is to understand that sometimes giving isn’t a 1:1 match as far as “value” but it needs to be a match on an energetic level.  Just because I spend X amount on a gift for you doesn’t mean you need to spend the same on me to prove something or vice versa.  We also need to make sure we are using (receiving) the gift to the best of our ability, that we aren’t manipulating others into giving us more for poor use of resources, or that we aren’t giving more than we have. We used to trade service for service, goods for goods until we put in a monetary system that claimed a particular value of things.  I’m not saying money is bad, not by any means, but there is more to giving than a dollar amount.  When it comes to gifts, how often have we heard it’s the thought that counts?  There is truth behind that because I can spend hundreds of dollars on something that could quite literally mean nothing to you and people would say that is generous/kind.  But I could also find that book you’ve been waiting for, for ages and that is also generous/kind but it is also touching.  This is the matter of thought and effort that matters.  As long as we have that balance we will not feel drained.  That energy multiplies, fills us up, and we can give more.   

“Don’t trust any thought that makes you doubt yourself,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  Any thought that takes us away from who we are is dangerous.  NEVER trust the thoughts that come up when we deny who we are.  That is when we start to feel lost because we start to believe things that at their very core aren’t true.  If we can’t discern the truth any longer then we need to stop and gather ourselves until we remember it again.  Over the last few weeks I’ve felt like I’ve been having a bit of an existential crisis—like I couldn’t remember what it was to even exist in a way.  I literally felt out of my mind then out of my body.  I couldn’t connect the two.  I didn’t know where my thoughts came from or how I remembered words, or what words are, like how am I typing this now? How do I know how to spell and work this machine?  How do I know how to throw a dart?  How do I know what I feel?  What is existence, really?  I couldn’t explain what was happening in my mind and body…at all.  And so much of this stems from things going on at work, the extreme stress I am under from an ongoing incident regarding my character involving my higher ups and an employee of mine After 20 years, I don’t understand how these things can even be in question and I never thought I would have to have that kind of fight.  It literally made me question who I am.

It’s one thing when we have outside influence pushing on us to be a certain way or trying to make us believe we are something we are not, but it is quite another when the outside questions enough that it makes us question who we are.  The second we have thoughts that make us doubt who we are, or that we don’t know what we are doing on any level, the foundation cracks.  This isn’t an ego thing like fighting to prove a point—this is about not letting people (including ourselves) derail us from what we know is true.  It gets scary when you can no longer connect mind to body and we lose sight of what we are doing here.  There were moments I wasn’t even sure what I was doing while grocery shopping.  How could I let people get to me that much?  Why does their opinion still matter to me?  And why is it painful enough, causing enough fear in me, that I’m losing the ability to function?  I realize this is what happens when you rely on the outside to tell us who we are rather than trusting our core knowledge.  It is also indicative of a society that demands people perform for them when they feel a certain way about someone—like we call them on their crap and suddenly they are the victim and every hears THEM, not you.  It’s unreal.

Knowing who we are is important for so many reasons.  It keeps us grounded because it is the foundation.  It guides us because our identity gives us values and beliefs. I’ve said it a million times—when we know who we are, we are less easily influenced by the outside and that includes doubt from other people.  In the beginning of this incident I wasn’t really phased that much—but it continued to escalate to include increasingly inflammatory things about my character and the fact that I even had to defend that sent me into a spiral.  That’s when the problem of existence came in—my whole world became about defending myself…again.  We can’t question who we are just because other people are having a bad day or a misunderstanding.  We can’t doubt ourselves because someone thinks a certain way about us.  We have no control over it.  I’ve long said the fact that we live in a society that allows us to accuse people of anything at any time (ie we can sue for anything) and we must prove our innocence is dangerous.  We believe stories over truth when the truth is painful or inconvenient.  We all make mistakes but that is no reason to believe we can’t try again or fix it—it is certainly no reason to doubt who we are.  I had to remind myself frequently that I know who I am.  If these people want to believe they can tell me who I am because they have before, that I will jump through hoops to prove something, they can believe that.  We never have to perform for people.  Once we remember who we are and stop letting people tell us, or let them derail us, we regain that foundation and begin again.    

“The reason self-love matters so much is because it sets the standard for what you will allow into your life,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  The main theme of most of my work is that taking care of ourselves allows us to take care of others.  Knowing who we are and finding a way to thrive allows us to be and do more.  Finding a way to purpose allows us to create more than we can imagine because we step into the expansiveness we spoke of yesterday.  We can’t expand when we spend all our time telling people they’re doing it (life) wrong or showing people that we are the best/know better than they do.  Knowing everything works well as a novelty, a party trick for trivia night, but when it comes to practical application and making a life, it turns into a giant pain in the ass.  The opinion of others gets us nowhere. Calm down those of you thinking about the whole “people you know” game because I will acknowledge it often isn’t the things you make it’s the hands you shake.  What matters is the arena of the opinion.  If we tell the fish to fly it will fail miserably but if we have that fish swim, it will be first every day.  So the truth is audience matters.  We will never win over everyone, so we need to find the arena we need to be in and have the right intention. 

When we love ourselves, we nurture the gifts that show us the standard we need to live by so we not only benefit ourselves but others as well—so we can fulfill our purpose.  We know what works for us, we know what doesn’t.  We know what we need to learn and what we can let go of.  In short, when we practice self-love, we understand what matters in our lives and where we need to focus our energy, effort, and talent. We know the room we are entering and the value we bring.  Now, as far as the arena of the opinion and our intent on entering this game, if we enter the arena with the goal of showing everyone we know everything, we will have a whole lot of opponents and not a lot of support/opportunity to learn.  But if we enter that arena prepared to do the work, to back what we say, what we feel, and match the same of others, we end up with a system that benefits many.  We learn the arena isn’t a battlefield where we have to earn our place—it’s a place of creation.  So, networking and shaking hands is great—but we need the right context around it.  We need to know what matters to us and we only do that through caring enough to take care of ourselves.       

We need to set standards of behavior in our own lives, set the tone for what our life looks and feels like.  These are things we can only learn in the process of loving ourselves because of the implicit honesty of who we are. We aren’t designed to be a one size fits all experience for the world.  We are designed to be unique, to create, to blaze trails, to light the world up.  We do that through the power of being ourselves, through nurturing ourselves, for stoking the fire in our lives and allowing it to turn into something amazing.  Something that took me a really long time to believe and understand is that self-love isn’t selfish.  It is the standard by which we operate and it is the fuel that allows us to do what we need to do; it is what we must do so we don’t become selfish and bitter in this world.  It is the joy we learn to create when we allow life in.  It is what we must do so we align with the creative side of this universe and allows us to assume our position as creators, alchemists who shape the architecture of life.  Self-love isn’t about finding ways to spoil ourselves every day—it is about finding ways to honor who we are and allow that authenticity to shine in the world without shame or fear.  Self-love is the reflection of who we are, the mirror of our deepest beliefs—don’t let the world see you as dingy.  Let the world see your light—show the world how to embrace it.      

“I don’t force, I flow; I don’t control, I create; I don’t chase, I attract; I don’t hustle, I take aligned action; I don’t play small, I choose to expand,”  Dr. Claudia Thompson.  This world will run you ragged if you let it so having the appropriate mindset is key.  We have to know and honor our power, believe in who we are, believe in ourselves enough to go after the things that call to us.  Asserting power is not the same as forcing or control.  The intent behind each action is different—and the key to knowing the difference is to feel it..  We use this mantra to let go.  It is in the letting go that we can expand.  I think we are afraid to let go because we are afraid we will expand so much we won’t be able to contain it all, that we will somehow drift away—that we can’t manage/control it.  But we are meant to be expansive, we are meant to play big and show all facets of who we are.  So when we feel trapped or unsure of the next move to make, remember this mantra and take aligned action.  Allow ourselves to take up the space we need.  Let everything we need come to us.  Say it over and over again, remember it, live it.

Keeping it short and sweet today. Happy Sunday!

Today I am grateful for moving forward.  Sometimes you just have to keep pushing through no matter how much you feel stuck in the mud.  You just have to keep going.

Today I am grateful for change.  Sometimes you need to move things around you to move things in you.

Today I am grateful for movement.  The body is designed to move and we should never take for granted that we can. 

Today I am grateful for fun.  If we can move forward in a fun way that promotes change, that makes any transition easier. 

Today I am grateful for help.  We all need a hand sometimes no matter how much we think we “got it.”  Sometimes we don’t realize we need a hand until someone lifts us up.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

The universe seems to love delivering lessons in the most in-your-face, take that, oh-yeah ways sometimes.  But the lesson sticks I will say that.  Last week was tough due to some issues I’m having with an employee.  At first it didn’t bother me but as more information came out, she started throwing some inflammatory words around that cut me.  The things she was saying were beyond false, and I didn’t want to have to go through the exercise of explaining myself all over again.  I didn’t want to take the time to prove again and again that I wasn’t the things she said I was.  I felt emotionally drained and abused, confused, and unsure of what to do next—this was all on the word of another person so it essentially was a game of he sad-she said (She-said she-said?).  I got home and my husband wanted to play darts.  I legitimately was not in the mood given the circumstances at work and he pushed a bit.  I finally told him I didn’t want to play and have this turn into something that isn’t fun anymore.  He understood but I could tell he was upset—he (and I) love playing darts together—it is a bonding thing for us—so I didn’t want to ruin it but I also didn’t want to disappoint him in that moment so I changed my mind and said I would play a round with him.

He annihilated me—I mean, the game wasn’t even fair.  Playing 901, he had nearly a 300 point lead—I knew I hadn’t been in the mindset to play because if this happened I would freak out—and I did.  I took everything personally, feeling like I just couldn’t get it together.  I don’t begrudge him his games, his on night, but when I struggle THAT badly, the games quickly loses its luster.  On top of the fact I was already emotionally tapped, this was quickly becoming a recipe for disaster.  Next thing I know, I’m incredibly frustrated with just how poorly I’m playing and telling him I didn’t want to play in the first place, and freaking out a bit…it was a total woe-is-me moment and totally unnecessary.  Literally out of nowhere, I start to catch up—after yelling at him for doing well, asking him how come he couldn’t do that when he plays the tournaments—I was vicious for no reason other than I felt shitty.  I got embarrassed, then I won.  Again after yelling at him for having a really good game, I just couldn’t keep up, I couldn’t get my mind on it.  I started to cry, feeling exhausted. It was never about fucking winning the game—I want him to do well.  It was never about him—it was about me missing my target and thinking it was indicative of something else going on in my life—like I would always fall short or miss my mark.   

I had been feeling so unsupported by the universe, unsure of how to move forward with work, concerned for my reputation because of the things this woman said about me, I lost track of what I was doing and completely took it out on my husband.  And now, after making a scene and putting on a show filled with dramatics and darts thrown through insulation, I won the damn game.  I felt like it was a cosmic sign to calm the fuck down, the universe has everything in order.  There was no reason to get that upset while playing darts, specifically not get mad at my husband—and I knew that prior to starting the game and even in the middle of my meltdown. For something that was ultimately my husband trying to calm me down (doing something that would calm him, not me), I still wanted to do this together, I wanted to bond with him and have fun.  So…I guess it was also saying when I think something is going to go a certain way or it can look like it’s going a certain way, there are always surprises.  There is always something else and we can end up coming from behind in some Cinderella story and win the whole damn thing.  The universe has its own plans, we are literally just here for the ride. We know very little of the universe and the way it works—sometimes we learn through trial and error, sometimes we learn through darts.   

I’ve struggled with relationships lately, not understanding how people can be so quick to exclude others when it was one central person who brought them together in the first place.  Not understanding how everyone can be so casual about like being together and then feeling close enough that we’re saying, “I love you,” and then turn around and not invite you out to something.  Or how we think there may be a casual introduction amongst friends when suddenly the group is now getting together without you. But as the universe has shown me time and time again, there was a lesson there.  I fully admit I get protective and possessive over my relationships—I value people close to me in my life and I am sensitive to their feelings toward me.  If we seem close, I treat people a certain way.  I have an expectation that my presence would be valued as much as I value theirs.  But I learned that looks different for some people.

One of my friends, and I do consider this person a friend, is extremely powerful with her energy.  She is a force, magnetic, and she knows how to make things happen in her life.  I value being around her because she has this amazing energy and we have a lot in common as far as drive—she has just shown me that putting that drive into action and achieving those goals is possible, a reminder on taking action in my life.  So after a summer/fall/winter of dealing with being left out from some of my other friends during some of the hardest times of my life, I struggled with thoughts of what relationships meant and understanding how people function together.  No, we’re not in high school so the petty drama I felt about being left out didn’t feel appropriate, but at the same time, the feeling left out didn’t feel appropriate either.  That familiar sense of propriety over the group kicked in as I felt a certain ownership/entitlement to being included in the group.  And it hurt when I wasn’t included. 

So when this friend started using a friend of mine for a different service (through this mutual friend’s business) I was put a little on edge. When I found out the kids were invited to an event for one of my friends, I felt that familiar jealousy grip me.  But the same insecurity didn’t pop up—it made me think differently as far as the intent behind the relationship .  Shortly after that, I was with my friend and she explained something going on in her business and it turned into a mutual thing we enjoy so we planned to go out.  That’s when it hit me: relationships serve different purposes.  We can all mutually be connected (and many of us are connected in ways we don’t realize yet) but that doesn’t mean we serve the same purpose to each other.  I started thinking about the people in my life and how I have different relationships with them, even in my family.  So why should I feel that sense of propriety?  What really hit me is that why should I feel so disappointed or left out or fearful when I have different relationships with those around me anyway?

We all serve different purposes to different people at different times in our lives.  We all have a reason or a season with people and it isn’t for us to interfere with that in any way.  Our relationships are supposed to look different.  A real relationship doesn’t involve that kind of power dynamic.  It also doesn’t involve intentionally hurting others in order to assert a power dynamic or hurt someone else.  But it is often going to look different depending on the purpose.  We don’t have the right to interfere on the purpose of a relationship because it looks different than ours.  People can create a mazing things and we don’t want to get in the way of that-I don’t want to get in the way of that.  We need to let it be.  Let it be what it is and see what amazing things come of it.  

“What if you experience a miracle and it all just works out? Stay open to that energy,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  We can’t make our delusions a reality if we aren’t open to the possibility of them working out.  For a delusion to become reality, we have to be open to some pretty crazy/interesting alternatives.  Doing anything new requires us to do something different, possibly things we haven’t done before.  It may feel awkward or even a bit scary, but as long as we are open to the idea that those steps, no matter how scary, will work out, then we are on the right path to things happening that will take us where we want to be.  Things get dark sometimes, that’s just the way life is in certain moments.  But it is often in those moments that life has a way of working out.  When we try to control everything, to make sure every little detail is how we think it should be, we restrict the flow of life.  I’ve talked about that many times before.  Sometimes we just have to take the leap and go for it, even if it doesn’t seem to make logical sense. 

I will be the first to admit that sometimes life hits us upside the head with a 2×4—it isn’t always pleasant and it takes us by surprise.  The thing we never want to experience happens, we lose what we thought we never would.  But we always come through on the other side.  Just because we look different than we imagined doesn’t mean that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It still worked out.  Miracles look like many things.  For every time we get caught in traffic, that email doesn’t send, we don’t get the job, that person breaks up with us, a friendship turns sour, or we lose someone or something we love, we also manage to be right where we are meant to be with the exact people we need, doing whenever we need to.  I have a story that I will share in a few days about this—and when it happened, it hit me like a ton of bricks: sometimes the universe gives us NO CHOICE but to let go.  There is nothing to hold onto. And that’s what is supposed to happen.

I guess in some ways what I’m saying (even as a reminder to myself) is that everything ALWAYS works out.  No matter what has happened, we are still here, we have made it through.  No matter what it looks like now, we have made it through.  No matter what we lost, we made it through—and chances are we gained something in that loss as well.  No one ever said change was easy or painless or pretty.  No one said getting what we wanted was what “things working out” means.  We need to tweak our definition of miracle a little bit so we always keep perspective on what a miracle really is.  In its simplest definition, a miracle is a sudden or unexpected outcome turning in our favor.  Doesn’t mean it was pretty or how we thought it would be—it just means it turned out.  If that doesn’t work for you or you’re struggling to believe it, then try and get comfortable with the idea that whatever happened is exactly what was meant to happen.  The fact that all of these things aligned to bring us to this exact moment, to the moment when it all comes together is itself a miracle.  The fact we exist is a miracle.  The fact we exist means that it’s all working out and coming together as it was meant to anyway.  Be open to it all.

“May all of your delulu come trululu,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  I wanted to share something short and sweet so we never forget that everything/anything we think can become true.  A little wish or hope for the world that we need to remember our magic and that we can make our magic a reality.  Our entire world exists in our heads, so what we think and how we feel matters.  And when we can align our dreams with our actions and if it feels right, then we can make anything happen.  It isn’t delusional just because we can’t see it yet—and if we never take the time to see if those “delusions” can become real, that is the only certain way that they never will be.  I want the world to have delusional faith and hope that what they want can become real.  I want their dreams, the things we think are an impossibility, to be brought into this reality.  I want everyone to remember their magic because those things are meant to be brought into this world.  Wishing you all a delusional, delightful reality.