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.

“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.