Today I am grateful for witnessing art.  There was a display of jack-o-lantern carvings not terribly far from us that we visited the other night.  There is something awe inspiring seeing the things that people can create from what we would never consider creating from.  Seeing their work and being able to watch a few of them in action was amazing.  Talent abounds in this world and floats in abundance all around us, waiting for us to claim it.  If we see something in a way others do not, I firmly believe that is our sign to listen and take action on it.  If people can turn pumpkins, garbage, ice, and whatever raw materials we have into something they only saw in their minds, we can turn anything into anything.  We are magical creatures designed to alchemize the energy we feel in the universe.  No matter our medium, if we have a creative urge, we are meant to use it.  Seeing people harness that power and turn seemingly nothing into something is a gift.

Today I am grateful for support.  I’ve been feeling not myself for the last few weeks, kind of lost in the ether so to speak.  I’ve also been a bit physically off and I’m in a bit of a chicken or egg situation where I’m not sure the physical is related to me not following my normal routine or if I can’t follow my normal routine because of what’s going on mentally.  I know I’m at a limit right now and I know I can’t push any further.  In this moment I am facing a wall and I need to listen because no amount of fighting or hitting or screaming or pleading or begging is going to take the wall down.  I need to sit with this to understand what’s really going on.  I have some inklings but it’s still a bit tender to address it.  Regardless, my husband has stepped up and offered suggestions in a way he hasn’t before.  He’s been attentive and trying his hardest to understand what’s going on even though he doesn’t fully understand and it has meant the world to have him try and ease some of the burden through figuring out what is happening.  I thought I’d be able to shake this feeling sooner and that hasn’t been the case so I’m also grateful for his patience as I peel back these layers—it’s helping me not get pulled under. 

Today I am grateful for that wall.  Ok, full truth is that I despise the wall.  I feel the need to constantly move in the direction of a goal and to be productive—I don’t mind taking rests but I absolutely hate being stopped.  I’m stubborn and impulsive and sometimes I start myself down tracks I’m not fully aware of what I’m getting into.  I mean, that latter part is human nature, but I will start things with absolutely no end vision in sight based off of a feeling, an idea that I might like where I end up.  I’m doing things with no direction and I end up spinning way too many plates and they always inevitably fall.  I overwhelm myself and then freak out that I haven’t done anything—because I haven’t managed to do anything productive in spite of all that energy.  So I have to stop for a while longer here and really examine what’s happening with this wall.  I’m being told to stop and not take another step until I know what I want to do—until I can see the vision of what’s next and be clear on the direction I’m going.  I have been here before, at this place where nothing seems to work and I’ve been forced to sit like a toddler in time out.  I always equated that to a rat in a cage or being in a crowded room screaming the answers and no one listening—but now I’m seeing my part in creating that cage and that, perhaps, I’ve been in the wrong room the whole time.  So as much as I despise this wall and being forced to do nothing (and I know it’s a mental block), I know that if I really pay attention to the lesson, the answers will come. 

Today I am grateful for a joint journey.  My family has been blessed, I do not deny that.  Like anyone else, it hasn’t always been easy (and it’s not exactly easy now) but I do not shy away from understanding that a higher source is involved with helping us through some of those harder times.  I do not pretend that all of this was done on our own.  Believe me, we are by no means rolling in luxury, but we are incredibly fortunate and we have all of our needs met and plenty of things to make our lives more comfortable.     I’m also not ignorant of the part we’ve played in our own troubles.  So we’ve been looking for a way to recenter and come back to what matters as a family—a way to establish a firm ground FOR our family.  My husband has started sharing things with me and initiating conversations that we’ve never had before and it feels good.  It is disorienting because we’ve been together for 24 years and these are things we never talked about because it wasn’t an area we wanted to explore together—and that was a mutual decision based on how we felt about a specific circumstance (not relevant, just that we agreed on it based on where we were at the time).  Now we’re older and we’re both looking for the same thing so we’ve had to revisit that arena.  This time we’re entering it together with open eyes and an open mind that, perhaps, we needed this part of the journey.  We can’t change that we didn’t start it sooner, but we can decide where we are going to walk together moving forward—together.

Today I am grateful for reminders of opportunity.  Following on being blessed and the wall situation, I can’t cry victim to what I’ve been feeling the last few weeks.  I don’t deny that it absolutely sucks and I can’t stand the things I’m feeling—or that it feels a bit helpless at times—but I also don’t deny that I have options on how to fix this and that I am capable of fixing it.  I have to get out of my own head and get out of my own way.  I also need to stop being stubborn and actually understand the purpose of what is happening.  I am NOT a victim.  I need to make decisions and moves and I need to recognize where I’m being stubborn and simply don’t want to do what I’m being told and I need to recognize where I’m being given an opportunity I don’t recognize.  When we are so stuck in our heads it’s easy to miss the opportunities in front of us and I can appreciate that some of that is happening right now because of the overwhelm.  This is all fixable and time hasn’t run out—I still have a choice and the opportunity to act on it.  I just need to recognize what it is and then follow through on it. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Normalize leaving people in whatever weird reality they have chosen.  I love this.  As a people pleaser, it always felt like I needed to make room for whatever anyone else wanted to do even if I didn’t want to do it.  I’d listen as idea after idea of mine would be shut down and I’d bend over backwards to make someone else’s vision come to life.  I’d be told an idea was crazy or not possible only to wind up helping someone else achieve exactly what I had been talking about.  We can’t make people see things our way.  We can have the exact same experience and walk away with two entirely different stories.  It isn’t our job to convince them that our version is correct.  People will insist on seeing things as they believe them.  We are allowed to walk away from what people have created and the stories they have told.  We do not need to buy in to someone’s telling of history when we know otherwise. 

We don’t need to stay stuck in a reality that doesn’t match our own.  It’s ok to walk away from what doesn’t work.  In fact, the quicker we can recognize what doesn’t work and alter the path, the better.  We will be able to correct the route easier than if we allow ourselves to get stuck in a routine.  There is always conflict when it comes to the right thing to do pertaining to friends and family and choices.  Yes, those relationships are important and have a heavy influence on our path, but we can’t control them, and they can’t decide for us.  Even in those scenarios, we don’t need to stick with something that doesn’t fit.  Practice walking away.  Get comfortable with the idea that “No” is a complete sentence.  We need to normalize trusting our instincts again and following our own path.   

“We are not here long enough to be living unhappy,” Daniel Chidiac.  It amazes me how many people live unhappily and we consider it normal.  We consider joy a strange state to be, a strange vibration to live in.  We all aspire to be happy and we claim we’re all looking for it yet we consistently do things that make us decidedly unhappy.  Why?  No other animal fights their instincts quite like that.  If they know something is wrong, they do their best to avoid or mitigate it.  If they don’t want to do something, they don’t do it.  If you’ve ever tried training a cat you get the idea.  Why do we live as if we have all the time in the world to make ourselves happy when we spend a lifetime doing the exact opposite?  There is no guarantee for tomorrow so there is no reason to not live fully today. 

There comes a point where you blink and suddenly a decade has gone by.  It doesn’t feel like it but the evidence is all around us.  Panic may set in as we wonder what happened to that time and seek to do something to make up for it. Time goes incredibly fast and we can waste a boatload of it repeating the same life day after day thinking we are living or doing what we have to do.  I don’t pretend that life is supposed to be all sunshine and happiness—we need the rain every now and then.  So we too need our moments to pause and consider, to heal, and to allow for growth.  But THAT is not the state we are meant to live in.  We are meant to grow and to face the light.  We are meant to show the world what we are made of.

Stop putting life on hold and postponing today’s joy for the possibility of a really good tomorrow.  That shit doesn’t come with a raincheck.  We each get one go around and it will slip away if you don’t seize the opportunity while you have it.  Consider what your life is like and consider what you wanted. Look at the gap in between.  Ask yourself how often do you wish you were doing something else?  How often are you talking about doing something different down the line when the time is right?  How often are you making the secure and safe choice instead of going after what you want?  I’m guilty of each of those things and I wasted a lot of years with my life on pause thinking I could pick it up again when I was ready.  That isn’t how it works.  We are here now and we are meant to live here now.  Don’t waste your time doing anything that doesn’t give a sense of joy and satisfaction.  And if you must, don’t dwell there.  Find the joy and you will live happily every day.

“Repeat after me: we do not beg to sit at tables we were not invited to.  We do not chase people who exclude or ignore us.  We do not seek healing from those who hurt us.  We do not sell ourselves out to get into someone’s circle.  We do not set ourselves on fire to keep others war.  We create our own circle.  We surround ourselves with only those who truly love, understand, and respect us.  We learn where to express our energy.  We remember our self-worth,” Daniel Chidiac.

“You won’t ever see a person with good character and integrity trying to prove to anyone they are a good person.  They are authentic in the way they move and have nothing to prove,” Daniel Chidiac.  Good people don’t need to explain that they are good people.  I spent a lot of time justifying crappy behavior in others because I witnessed a few human moments in people.  But those moments became their hallmark while they continued to behave in other questionable and outright awful ways.  We know those people.  Their energy gives them away and we know when they aren’t being authentic.  Sometimes the sun is out when it rains just the same as even the darkest cloud of a person can occasionally let the light shine through.  That doesn’t mean their character is good.  The nicest people have moments where they break down and snap as well.  That doesn’t mean their character is bad.

We carry both the light and dark in us, we are human.  It’s fine to make mistakes, but it isn’t ok to create chaos for others or cause harm to others for our own sake.  When we hear the justification of bad behavior over and over again, and the person knows they did something wrong yet they continue with the behavior in spite of the consequences, that makes them suspect.  Authentic people stand behind what they say and they keep their word and they stick to their values.  That isn’t anything that needs to be proven.  The meat is in the action and you will often be able to tell a person’s character long before you get to know them because you will see them doing the things that align with their beliefs.  They aren’t out to show the world what they are doing, they aren’t doing it for the accolades—they are doing it because it’s who they are.  Remember that and remember to move that way ourselves.  Like attracts like so our authenticity will call to the authenticity in others.  Be a good person, be true to your word, and you can’t go wrong.

“The older I get the more I realize how important it is for you to have someone who truly sees your magic.  No jealousy, no competition, just love, support, and good vibes, like, I’ve got you, I see you, I’m rooting for you always,” Daniel Chidiac.  For a long time I thought I needed accolades and recognition for things well done.  I thought I had to achieve it all, that I had to be number one, the best, that I had to do it all.  Life seemed to be all about competition and I was the uber competitive over-achiever. See, it was partially competition that is true.  It’s also a little true that I wanted to be the best.  But the deep seeded truth was that I needed to know someone else saw my worth.  I was trying to find ways to prove my value because I felt like I had to earn my existence.  I had to prove I was worth my salt so to speak.  I thought I had to be liked and accepted by everyone because it seemed those were the ones people listened to, the ones people adored and looked up to.  I never considered how I was playing a role and that wasn’t the real me.  I also never considered it disingenuous because there was always truth in the personas I adopted—I genuinely knew part of what I was saying was from me.  I like to see both sides.  The problem came when I started to origami myself into positions to prove I understood people while others didn’t understand me.

When we are constantly chameleon-ing for others, it might give us a temporary high of acceptance and understanding.  We feel seen but it’s only in that moment.  Eventually we become the other person’s source of validation because they know we will agree with them.  And after a while if people start to see you agreeing with everyone, some credibility starts to go away.  When we start to appease everyone, we start to lose sight of what it is WE really like and what parts are actually us.  Instead of becoming someone else, if we were to accept ourselves the pieces that align with others would link us and the relationship would naturally flow rather than us becoming a source of energy to that person.  Successful relationships are built on mutual trust and understanding and the similarities that bring us together.  That isn’t to say we agree on everything—and that’s also key to maintaining our identity.  It also strengthens who we are to discuss differing sides of things.  But in that is another key: the people who appreciate us will be there even if we aren’t in agreement on everything.  They will support us through the hard times, fully accepting us as we are.  There’s no need for a mask with these people.

It’s amazing what happens when we get the appropriate support in life.  Our cups fill up and we feel complete.  We are able to support others.  We are able to sustain our energy and not feel depleted just from having a conversation with someone about things completely irrelevant to us.  The growth we can achieve as individuals and as a collective through appropriate support and encouragement is limitless.  There doesn’t need to be competition.  We look at this life as something to win and the truth is we all end up in the same place at the end.  No matter how much we win in life, we will not get out of here alive.  It’s a much better use of time and energy to align with those who care, and finding a universal “good” and means for the collective.  We can spend the time we have here making this world a beautiful place.  We can create a beautiful life filled with joy and happiness and when we are all operating at that level, we elevate the vibration of the entire planet.  It starts with one.  One person to see us for who we are and to embrace it.  We see ourselves and love who we are then we know who is for us.  We expand that energy and that is a bond like no other.         

“The real luxuries in life: Time, Health, good people who feel like home, peace of mind, travel, good sleep great food, time for fun, and great music,” Daniel Chidiac.  As we ended last week discussing that it truly is the simple things in life, the things we are all afforded but take for granted, we continue that conversation.  We substitute a false life and call it living.  We think riches come from man when they come from life.  We are all addicts to a degree and we get sucked into some version of believing what we have isn’t enough.  But try living without any of the items listed above and tell me how it feels. 

Tell me what it’s like when we have no connection, no view of the world, when we can’t stop our minds from racing, when we feel disassociated from who we are because we aren’t living as we are meant to.  It’s miserable and when we find ourselves in those circumstances, we will do anything to get them back.  Do not take the simple things for granted.  Do not mistake material things for life.  Every single one of us will come and go on this Earth and so will the things we leave behind.  I’d rather leave a mark on the soul than on what I acquired. What did it take to get those things?

The real luxuries in life are all the things it takes to actually live and enjoy life.  The real luxuries are the things that allow us to have fun, the things that feel good.  The real luxuries in life are the support system we create and foster and the family we have, whether by blood or not, that are there to pick us up.  The real luxuries in life are the ability to love and appreciate what we have.  The real luxuries in life include giving back so others can experience the joys in life as well.  The real luxuries in life are witnessing life and the joy and creativity other people bring to the table.  Remember we are blessed in so many ways and don’t take any of it for granted.  Remember what matters, always, and let those things be a constant reminder of the direction we are meant to travel and what we are meant to do, then do whatever it takes to experience those luxuries and you will discover how rich you really are.

Today I am grateful for a reality check.  It never fails that I overwhelm myself with some series of projects or things to do.  I truly don’t even mean to do it and I almost always never feel the overwhelm while I’m agreeing to these things. Most of the time I even have a really good handle on it.  But there inevitably comes a point where I start to fray and crack a little realizing that I have too much on my plate.  Then I start berating myself for feeling overwhelmed and believe that I should be on top of whatever it is I created and that I should take care of my own mess.  I’ve realized I need to reframe all that thinking.  I always start projects with the best intentions but I tend to overestimate my energy for some of the work I commit to.  The mind isn’t designed to be in a constant state of “to-do” 24/7/365.  The brain can’t handle it.  We need rest, we need reprieve, we need to recharge.  So all of those noble projects can get done (and they will) it’s just a matter of a little bit of a different timeline.  Sometimes I have to learn to admit defeat and ask/allow help.  I have to let go of the reins and acknowledge that I can’t do it on my own.  Straining to do it all taxes us mentally and physically and we know the long-term repercussions of that—it’s all deterioration of some degree.  I can’t keep saying yes, I need better organization, and I have to let my pride go and ask for help when needed.  I also need to recognize when I’m being lazy and can put in the extra effort for those days when I’m not quite up to speed.  Acknowledge the rhythm and follow through with the actions to support the words. 

Today I am grateful for rest.  This past week I have felt off in a way I can’t really describe.  It’s not like I was necessarily sick or anything, but I felt incredibly lethargic, unmotivated, even a bit weak and SO easily overwhelmed.  It felt like I was minutes away from total breakdown for NO reason almost the entire week.  I couldn’t get enough sleep no matter what I did.  I guess it could have been described as a general malaise.  Regardless.  I didn’t get much done in the way of what I normally do around the house.  I didn’t even work out.  I felt a little guilty because that isn’t like me.  I’ve pushed through way worse, only stopping when truly physically ill.  But there are times the body has other plans and it’s best to listen—or our minds are telling us we need to reset and stop fixating on all we have to do—that to-do list will always have something added to it, it will NEVER be done so stop stressing.  I still have a bit of fogginess and “bleh” feelings, but I am taking it as a sign that I needed to relax for a bit.  I’m integrating new information at work and it’s taken a lot out of me so I feel, in part, it was time for me to break my normal routine for a bit and accept that I couldn’t do it all. Now was not the time to push anything.  So I am grateful for a little rest even if it wasn’t planned.    

Today I am grateful for trying again.  As exhausted as I’ve been with the constant running and mind spinning, I am proud that I’ve kept going.  I have felt like throwing in the towel no less than 100 times this week alone and I’ve come close.  But I never gave up.  I’ve had to slow down, I’ve had to reset, I’ve had to push, and I’ve had to rest.  But I woke up every day and I kept going.  I feel like my family is trying to cling to the past, trying to revive something that is long dead because we see now so clearly what it could have been and what we wanted it to be and this is so far from that.  That in itself is tiring—we can’t turn back the clock and the pieces and players we are looking for were lost long ago and they proved they weren’t what we thought in the first place.  We’re living between what was, what we wanted it to be, and what is and it’s exhausting feeling so torn apart and we don’t know how to operate like that.  And still we keep going.  At some point we will give in and the white flag raises for all of us but until then, we gather our strength and keep going.  The screams in us will eventually quiet and we will relent and we will all go to the next version of living again.  Until then, we wake and we do the best we can with where we are now.  We will keep going even if it means slowing down.  Don’t rush it.  Just heal, breathe, and keep going.    

Today I am grateful for strength.  We can live our lives in the in between mentioned above, on the borders of some imaginary idea of what is/what should be or we can dive into what is.  It takes strength to live this life, never really certain what we do is right.  All we co do is our best and keep moving forward and that too takes strength.   We just need to show up and try—and if it doesn’t work perhaps we take some solace in that we will somehow, somewhere, someday, some way get another chance to do it right.  We leave our mark and that legacy carries on.  We love what we have, enjoy the journey.  Be strong enough to know that we can choose to do it differently while we are here.  Know that if we don’t choose to do it differently, that’s ok too.  We’ve complicated life enough and that has made it difficult to connect with what we know of ourselves and of our truth, but we can also uncomplicate it and accept that we can make a change.  We just have to decide to do it differently.

Today I am grateful for slowing the firehose.  I’ve been approaching life like drinking out of a firehose, like I have to somehow take all of that information and all life has to offer in at once.  We aren’t designed to take in anything like that—it’s too powerful and the force of it all, especially all at once can rip us apart.  This world has a lot to offer us and it can be hard to accept that we may not get to see all of it.  That’s where knowing what we want and what we are meant to do is key because we can sort through all the other nonsense and be on the lookout for what is for us.  We don’t need to approach the world like we have to master all of it.  We can slow it down to what we need to know and what feels right for us.  It gets overwhelming feeling like we are responsible for knowing and handling every single thing on this planet—that’s part of where anxiety comes in.  We may feel like we have to take it all and do it all but we aren’t built like that.  Some of our impact starts with a small ripple, with knowing what we want to do and going for it.  That ripple is enough to expand out to the world even if it isn’t our hands directly.  We are all on a clock of sorts and we never know when it runs out—yes, that is horribly depressing and sad—but what we can do with that time is nothing short of a miracle and exciting.  What we CAN do is more impressive and FAR more important than trying to do it all.  Be the best we can and do our part—that is the goal.  Slow down the firehose, drink from the garden hose instead and join the pace of life meant for us on our own path. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Not everyone wants material things.  Some just want a weirdo to go on adventures with, someone to laugh with, drive the backroads, watch sunsets, enjoy actual dates, and appreciate the simple things in life,” Daniel Chidiac.  Life is all about appreciation and joy.  We’ve all heard sayings like, ‘We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time,’ and there is a certain truth to that.  It isn’t about what we acquire and at times it isn’t even about what we accomplish—it’s about the experience of life.  Today happened to be a “Monday Mental Reset Day” for me and from all the decks I work with the common theme was Joy.  The world becomes a reflection of how we think and feel and if we focus on the key things that bring us joy, most of us find that it isn’t the things that bring joy, it’s the connection.  All the things described above can be boiled down to connection and how we find joy in connecting with the things we like to do as well as the people we like to have around us. 

Life is pretty simple at the end of the day.  We are here to follow our paths and to fulfill our purpose.  Along the way we have become distracted with things and conflicting/contradicting goals.  When we look at the things that matter (upcoming post on Monday) we find that not one of those things relates to anything man made beyond the people and talents involved.  The world is magical and we’ve become more concerned with an image that we present to the world that we’ve forgotten who we are at our core: a communal animal with capacity for great creativity and expansion.  The world convinced us there was no room for that and we needed to fight for our place at the table.  Society wanted us to believe there was only room for one when the reality is we were each given our own table with its own menu tailored to our needs and purpose. We have everything we need available to us through the grace of this world—why we ever believed it wasn’t enough is beyond me.

If something calls to you, I encourage you to listen.  Hear what it is and hear the need behind it.  Hear what you are meant to do with that.  If people never heeded their call, we’d never see the variety of life we have out there.  Everyone knows it’s possible, just not everyone is able to dive in and embrace their path.  We were taught to seek comfort when we really needed to see comfort with our gifts. Trying to attain the same thing as all those before us is pointless because it gives us no personal satisfaction.  Living in our light, our authenticity, our creativity, expanding and sharing our purpose—THAT is what gives meaning to life.  It’s one thing to repeat the same day year after year and call it living.  It’s another thing to repeat the pattern someone else gave you.  And it is far another to break that pattern and live according to their calling.  The right people will always support us on our adventures, hear our ideas, and encourage development of self.  For those who relegate our creativity to crazy and who choose to go after the things that all fade away, authenticity is scary.  For the others it’s freedom.  You get to choose.

“Nothing is coincidence.  Every soul you meet is written in your destiny to teach you, heal you, or love you,” Daniel Chidiac.  This is an old concept.  Humans tend to look for reasoning behind everything so we can make sense of our place in the universe and how and why things happen.  It’s unsettling to think that everything happens randomly, especially when we consider the nature of human events throughout history.  Order makes it easier to get it, we understand cause and effect.  The human mind simultaneously struggles with the idea that some of the awful things that happen in this world may have a reason—what would be worse in the worst case scenario?  The fact that there might be a reason behind that moment or that there WASN’T a reason? 

I can’t speak to all the reasons for things happening in my life but I can say that I have learned that more often than not, things are most definitely not coincidence. My path has crossed with certain people at specific times in ways that I can’t attribute to anything other than some sort of divine reason/manifestation.  Even the timing of specific themes in my life.  Nearly a decade ago when I sought to recapture my strength/faith, I attended church and the sermon on that very day was about the strength of women and recapturing their power.  I met my husband through a series of what can only be described as the universe pushing us together.  Even if I think of the losses in my life, and when I’m hard pressed to look at the big picture surrounding those losses, there seems to be a cadence to it suggesting a reason. 

Knowing there’s a reason doesn’t always make things easier, it doesn’t always settle the situation, but it can provide perspective and perhaps some guidance.  When those we love hurt us, they are teaching us how not to be.  When those we love leave us, there is a piece of them that remains, a piece that connects us to them and teaches us to love while we are here, to not wait.  And for those that come into our lives for a season that seems harder than others, they are teaching us a strength that we can only find on our own, they are showing us the way to ourselves. Take heart and understand that even if we don’t understand, the people in our lives are there for a reason.  They are there to support and guide us or to help us stand on our own.  So look at them with gratitude and allow them to be who they are while you continue to be who you are.  Stay the course.