“Transformations are painful.  You dissolve your old self and rebuild your new one.  Your eyes reform with a new ability of seeing.  Your brain is connected to new pathways that you don’t quite understand.  You step into the light, unfurl your wings and fly for the first time,” Richard Miller.  Life changes whether we are ready for it or not and we often fear that change when we aren’t sure what’s going to happen.  We have an innate fear of the unknown, so knowing who we are is key.  One day we wake up and we are no longer children, we are the drivers of our lives.  We will lose everyone at some point so it’s even more important to value the time we have while we are here, to love those we have while we are here, to love ourselves enough to show our authenticity and form connections.  That way when we dissolve in the goo of our lives and we aren’t sure we are able to do it, we will remember that it’s safe to let go.  We will release that fear and we will allow those changes to take place and we will emerge with our wings. 

Transformations take many forms.  We are going through the transition of loss right now, witnessing the death of one of my aunts.  Naturally at the end we all think of the lifetime that went before it.  We remember the smile, we remember the laugh.  The fights, the drama, the pettiness no longer seem important.  Life doesn’t always go how we think it will and it runs on its own agenda.  It will not wait until you are ready to reconcile before taking someone.  It moves and it will take what it needs at any time.  Life runs according to its own plan on its own timeline.  Make sure to take the time to appreciate what we have now.  Truly, no matter how long we have here, it will feel short in the end.  There is never enough time to do what we want to do until we learn to make time for it.  There are events that happen no matter how hard we try to stop them—time moving, losing people, evolving into new versions of ourselves are some of these things.

Transformations can be painful but they are beautiful things.  They are necessary things.  Part of transition is accepting and integrating new information about how we viewed things before.  It’s like removing a veil and seeing the truth.  It’s putting aside the fear and doing what is right for ourselves without fear of repercussion.  It’s allowing ourselves to see the fragility of those we thought were always strong and seeing the strength in someone we thought was weak.  Strength comes when we embrace who we are and we learn to fly on our own—that is the point of transformation.  Time moves forward regardless of what we do—we need to spend it in what is important to us, in what brings us joy and love.  Strength comes from walking away from what we thought we needed/what we thought we knew and trusting ourselves to become what we are meant to become.  Embrace it and allow the old to dissolve and rise into the new.  

Why do you keep going?  This is the question we need to ask ourselves.  Life isn’t designed to be easy, even in its simplicity as we discussed yesterday.  When those moments get hard, we need to know the reason we keep going.  We need to know what it is that keeps us on track and why we keep moving toward the finish line when there seems to be every reason to stop.  The truth is no matter what we do, the world doesn’t stop, time doesn’t stop.  It all keeps moving, and if time moves regardless of what we do, then it seems pretty important to have enough understanding of self to figure out why we do what we do, to give ourselves purpose.  There are many times in our lives where it seems the sensible thing to stop what we are doing.  Maybe it feels like we need to give up.  But in those moments, if we have that voice inside telling us not to give up, then we must keep going. 

This is a difficult question for me to answer because I still operate with many irons in the fire.  Keeping all of that going at once is a challenge.  There are days it feels so overwhelming that the truth is I know it would be easier to simply stop.  If I had to put my why down, it’s like this: life is a beautiful gift and I spent too much time wasting what resources I had.  I move forward now, I keep going now because I have a lot to give, a lot to be grateful for, and a lot more to return.  I love my family and I know there is a better way to do things that is both fulfilling personally and allows me to share my gifts.  I keep going because I don’t want to believe that I’m here to be miserable and I would choose to find the bright side in everything anyway.  I keep going because I want to show my son what it looks like to go for our dreams and how amazing it feels when we achieve them.  I want to be able to provide for my family while doing what I love and create freedom in my life. I keep going because the healthy me is the productive me, the me that can handle the world and keep going.  The me that knows my work can make an impact.

I keep going because I want to encourage other people to keep going as well.  We all have so many things we can contribute to this world, so many things that can fix what is broken, that can make the world better for everyone, so many things that can bring joy and inspire joy.  The more we inspire each other, the closer we are to who we are meant to be.  We light each other’s candles and suddenly the world is lit anew.  We are meant to shift the world, to change the world, to make the world better simply by being ourselves, not by fitting in.  We need to encourage each other because we aren’t meant to simply repeat patterns until we die.  We aren’t meant to be fuel for a system that doesn’t care for us but benefits from us.  The why is the reason we use to break those patterns and habits.  The why is what builds something new.  We keep going because we know there is more on the other side. 

“Biggest lie we are told is that it’s not that simple.  Do the thing and get it done and you will see it is that simple,” from the movie “Bleed for This” (2016).  I talk a lot about the need to follow our path and to keep a positive mindset, to not be afraid.  I’m not sure what part it is about the human experience that ever decided to believe we have to make things difficult for them to be meaningful or important.  I’m not sure what made us think that we are meant to struggle in the day to day.  I do know that there certainly were many people who benefitted from others believing this—if others thought they would be rewarded for hard work, they would work even harder.  If they thought it was complicated to be equals, they would delay being equal.  It was about power rather than the actual difficulty of it.  They systems we put in place perpetuated that and people believed it. 

The truth is life is simple—it may not be easy, but it is simple (I wrote a piece on that as well 😊).There are certainly things that require patience, and patience isn’t always easy.  There are things that require skill and that takes time to develop.  Even in those circumstances, there isn’t anything difficult about it—it just takes time, focus, and doing the thing.  We are in such a rush to move things forward that we forget what we have right in front of us.  We are so power hungry that we lose sight of what our actions mean to others (or do to others).  Life is simple, we complicate it with the details and the emotion we put in the way.  Part of it is the primal instinct for survival—we perceive competition in everything we do.  But we have the capacity and the ability to shift that.  While we may survive if we fight on our own, think of the expansiveness that happens when we work together.  The difficulty in life comes when we think we have to do it all on our own or that we need to achieve a certain status to have/produce anything meaningful.

Ask ourselves who benefits if we think life isn’t simple.  It certainly isn’t us.  We can simplify life to our purpose and we can follow it.  We can learn anything with time, we just need the patience and the persistence to keep going.  When we start following and trusting our instincts, we see that doors open we never even saw there in the first place.  While making the decision to follow those instincts can be scary and it may not be easy to take on that level of change, it doesn’t mean it’s hard.  Make a choice and follow through.  It gets hard when we stop part way through and have a million open-ended projects waiting for us to make a choice.  When we start and don’t finish, we leave doorways partially open and never really focus on the task. Pick a direction, do the thing and get it done, one step at a time, and you see that we have the power to make it simple.  We tell ourselves stories about how difficult it is, we can tell ourselves stories about how easy it is as well.  Shift the perspective and watch what happens.     

Life is a desire, not a meaning.  I heard this in a clip on social media the other day and I really got to thinking about it because, at first, it sounded like a delicious spin on how we look at life.  The more I pulled it apart, I considered the second part stating that life is not a meaning.  While I agree that there isn’t a definition of what life is supposed to look like because life encompasses many things and looks different for many people, I do believe there is meaning to life.  I think when we try things and they don’t turn out how we want them to, or when we pick ourselves up only to fall again, we become disheartened and it’s easy to feel like there is no point to it.  There are times when we need to understand that we are meant to learn and other times we are meant to put that into action. So I would amend the original quote to say that the meaning of life is desire.  We have the impulse to create in so many ways, we are meant to create so we act on that impulse of desire to create. I believe that we cannot create without desire.  If we don’t have that passion for something, what can come of it?  We cannot approach creation with luke-warm feelings.

The beauty in life, all of the greatest works we see and appreciate came from passion.  The need to express these things inside, the need to give life to something only we can see/feel/understand, the joy of joining groups in song, theater, discussion all come from passion and desire to learn or create.  The act of life itself is creation.  Creation and desire are hard-wired into our being.  Looking at it now, it amazes me how good of a job we do suppressing that creativity in our lives.  We train our children to do things a certain way, to follow a certain pattern.  When they comply enough and become part of this homogenous group, we suddenly tell them it’s time to grow up and go make something of themselves when all this time we’ve punished or taken away any chance at creativity and they no longer know how to use it.  They need to get familiar with that side of themselves again, to learn it.  Now, I know this isn’t true for all people-some are just self-aware enough that they stand on their own two feet no matter what goes on around them.  The point is, we lose trust in our instincts and we lose our familiarity with passion/purpose/desire if we follow that path and we have to find it again.

I know I am happiest and most aligned when I step into creative flow and the ideas seem to pour out of me.  It doesn’t matter if I’m following a recipe, writing, coloring, painting, singing, cleaning/reorganizing, sharing information, telling stories, planning, teaching, coaching, exercising—any of those activities puts me in an amazing mood and it feels like life flows more smoothly.  That is the feeling, the desire. That is the meaning of life—to find that passion, to create, and to connect.  The more we tell ourselves to follow those instincts, the more we hear the voice telling us to do something else and to have fun with it, the more we listen and take action on those feelings, the closer we get to that aligned feeling.  It isn’t something to fear, it’s something to celebrate.  We just have to trust ourselves enough to follow through, to not be afraid of the feeling and to allow that desire to stoke up into something so big we have to bring it out.  Trust that instinct and stop hiding.  Become passionate about creation, follow your path, and bring forth everything that you are meant to share with the world.  It’s a gift.            

“You don’t even realize that some people look at your madness and see nothing but brilliance and grace,” Stephanie Bennett-Henry.  This is a reminder that our actions have impact and people are always watching.  What we do may feel clumsy and rocky and imperfect, but for someone witnessing those moves, it may be exactly what they need to find encouragement to make their moves.  Life is hardly about perfection—life is perfect as is and all we need to do is exist and allow who we are to shine.  Yes, I’ve said that a million times and I completely get that it can still feel a little cliché.  But that doesn’t make it false.  We are social creatures and we are meant to cooperate and communicate with each other, we are meant to build community and function in a way that complements our natural talents.  We are meant to see the beauty in everyone and we are meant to find our purpose and our soul group.  These are facts and it has been proven the value and power of authenticity thereby allowing authentic connection. 

What looks like a mess to us may be demonstrating the courage for someone else to take their first steps.  What frustrates us demonstrates the power of persistence to someone who feels stuck.  The steps we take with ease and the things we face may terrify others—but witnessing us do that takes away a bit of that fear and armor and gives them belief in themselves.  None of what we do is meant to be on display as THE way to do it-we have to learn to take in what serves and what makes sense to us and discard the rest.  We have to learn to be ok with differing opinions and other ways to do things and know that what makes sense for us will come—and what makes sense for others doesn’t have to be for us.  The human mind is a creative force and the more we can ignite that creativity in others, the more ideas we have to expand with. 

We can also be that sort of inspiration to ourselves.  When was the last time you thought about something you’d done or have been working on and felt proud about it?  When was the last time you faced a struggle with something you really wanted and gave yourself credit for how far you’ve come instead of being upset about where you are?  When we learn to stop and take stock of where we are and what we have done to get where we are, we will tend to see a trend of all the things we have either overcome or the things we have planned and executed, we can se the work we have done and where it has led us, and we learn some degree of appreciation for ourselves and the work we do.  Never give up on that effort.  Always remind ourselves that what we do always gets us closer to where we want to be.  And when we evaluate our current position, if we aren’t where we want to be then we are graced with the opportunity to choose again. Start a new cycle—because when we encourage ourselves to keep going, someone else will find the will to keep going as well.

Today I am grateful for pain.  We had an unexpected loss in my family this week with the death of my aunt, and it brought about a lot of old emotion, some realizations, and opened some wounds while healing others.  I am devastated by the loss for different reasons.  Yes, it’s heartbreaking that we lost my aunt and I hate that her physical presence is gone, but her death was a bigger implication of what we lost beyond her alone.  We lost time with her (something that I can’t get into yet), we lost time with the family, she was evidence of the choices certain family members made, we lost a lot of “what could have been”, we lost a giant heart and a very open and gentle soul, we lost love, we lost one of the last links to the family.  But all of this loss has still made me grateful.  For all of my obsession with time and fear of loss, I never really did anything about it like reprioritize what I want to be doing.  I still try to find pockets of time for the life I want—and I know how quickly life moves.  It’s time to prioritize what matters.  There doesn’t need to be anymore loss to awaken that.  This pain can be used for good.  We can learn and reawaken the love, put aside any bullshit, and just love.  This loss doesn’t need to be meaningless. 

Today I am grateful for support and clarity.  The universe works in some pretty amazing ways.  It doesn’t always seem straight forward, but it always works out.  Sometimes there are things we need to do that we hesitate or fear to do, but once we do it, we see it wasn’t what we had built up in our minds.  Rather it was simply the next step.  The human mind is a wonderful thing but it creates exactly what it sees so if we see fear, we feel fear, we produce fear.  If we learn to channel that with clarity and intention, we are able to see what the next steps are toward our goals.  All the universe needs is our decision and conclusive action.  The rest will come together.  We simply need to decide and do.  I’ve been witness to things coming together quickly.  Even if it took time to get to that point, it suddenly seems to align and there we are, ready to take the next step.  It’s like a lock opening the door. 

Today I am grateful for trusting my intuition.  I spent so much of my life doubting what I thought and felt, never trusting that I’d be able to follow through or achieve anything because I wasn’t taught to believe in myself.  I felt that I could do it, but more often than not, the people around me would find ways to diminish that confidence.  Like, I’d know something I’d produced was good and someone would still find a way to tear it down.  Or they’d encourage someone else around me rather than recognize my talent.  Or they would focus on a negative about my appearance implying that how I looked somehow diminished what I did.  But my intuition has always told me that there is something more for me, something that I can produce that will spill over into the world.  It starts with love—love for self and a steadfast, firm belief that the opinions of others don’t matter.  Love greater than fear pushing forward to achieve goals in spite of what anyone else says.  Intuition is there to guide us and to help us find our way—it isn’t in us to make other people believe what is meant for our path alone.  I’m learning to let go of what others think is enough for me and to use the precious time I have to create the life I want, following my heart.  It has never guided me wrong. 

Today I am grateful for endings.  The endings I’m grateful for are the endings that take away the things that no longer serve.  So many of us spend our lives hoping for things to go another way, living in fear and uncertainty, waiting for the world to tell us what we are capable or worthy of.  If we are attentive to the signs and willing to look past the fear of things changing, the universe also shows us exactly where we need to go.  It will take away the things that hurt us.  While it may be a loss or initially feel scary, the truth is not everything is meant for us and if we don’t have the strength to walk away from what hurts us, sometimes the universe will step in and take it away for us.  Not all endings are bad things.  We feel the most relief from the endings we feel coming but are too scared to complete on our own.  Sometimes the universe just needs to give us that final push to walk away.  It’s ok to recognize when something isn’t working and to make a decision to walk away.  Not all endings are bad.

Today I am grateful for presence.  This has been a packed weekend with multiple events each day, multiple things to do.  With the loss of my aunt and the emotion behind that, I was afraid that I’d be too emotional or lost in it to really focus on all of the other stuff we had going.  Keeping myself going proved to be key in some healing.  We need to honor what we lost but we also need to pay attention to the time we have right now.  My son had an event at school and it was amazing—we even participated in the trunk or treat event and decorated the car and got dressed up and played with animals and played some games.  The whole time we were with friends and simply having fun.  Connection is really the most important thing, it is the best way we can possibly spend time together.  There is nothing like the presence of people who care to help remind us of what we have in front of us—it’s nothing to take for granted. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead!

Just a little something to think about: “Creators are not reactionary, they are visionary,” Richard Miller.  There are certain people who can’t walk through this world in the ordinary way.  They know something else, they see something else, more importantly they know and see in a different way.  It isn’t just knowing more, it’s knowing differently.  We all have gifts, intensely personal, unique gifts that we are meant to develop and share with the world.  We are not meant to be copies of each other, each running around living the same lives.  We are meant to create.  Creation can be (and is) inspired by something happening but it is rarely generated from that state.  When we react, it’s a response to stimuli.  We can get to a place where our responses are automatic.  Most of what we do every day is automatic—we have our routines, we think the same thoughts.  Creation doesn’t come from automated patterns we picked up to survive, it comes from breaking those patterns. The creation comes from the vision of what can be.  In this way, they are the thermostat not the thermometer like we talked about a few weeks ago.  It isn’t that things don’t happen to them, they just react differently—seeing opportunity in everything.

Recognizing potential and taking a blank canvas and turning it into something else is the mark of a visionary.  I used to fear changing something from its original state.  What if I messed it up?  What if I can’t get it back to how it was “supposed” to be?  See yesterday’s piece for reference to what happens when we want to leave things in perfection and they go unused: they lose all of their functionality and can still wither away, maybe they look pretty in their package but they have failed to do what they were meant to do and the end up discarded, unused, all of that potential lost.  A blank canvas isn’t something to be preserved as it is.  A blank canvas is something to be treasured for what it will become, for what can be seen only by us until we bring it to life.  Life is all about creation and expansion.  It is about taking the unknown, the unseen and making it seen to the world.  It’s taking the magic inside of us and sharing it, letting it create a light that can shine on and ignite the way for others.     

I want to follow up on the cost of inaction with a personal story today.  I grew up in a house with a lot of fear of loss. We always planned on things months out, always had plenty of things to take care of us long term if something happened or to accommodate a change in plans.  Believe me, we were very fortunate in that regard.  However, a pattern developed where we would have all of these things and not be able to use them before they went bad….we would overstuff and overconsume in the name of being prepared, only to not have what we needed when the time came or we would have to throw things out that had potentially been really good or helpful but we never used them.  My mom even had a newer car that she hardly ever drove because she would take my dad’s car, and this poor vehicle had wear from disuse.  It literally struggled because it hadn’t been used.  

So my story is this: I continued that pattern, always being prepared whether it was a surplus of pens or over the counter medicines or makeup, or toys or clothes etc. etc.  The other day I was looking for a hair tool and I saw that I had a whole stash of unopened vitamins and remedies that I never used—and had forgotten about.  As I started going through them, I realized that about half were expired.  The same day, I was at my desk working on a project and I wanted a new color pen.  I had a set of old pens in my desk for YEARS that I had been waiting to use because I hadn’t ever been able to find the color after my initial purchase.  Well, I decided that it was the day to use these pens and as soon as I started writing with them, I knew they were dead.  They had never been used, they were full of ink, and no matter what I did, the ink just would not flow—it had dried up before I could even use it.  So all of this preparation over the years, the accumulation of stuff, the anticipation of the “right time” to use these things led to their death.  It was wasted. 

The point of this story is exactly what I discussed about Loren’s quote yesterday.  When we refuse to move or take actions we know we need to, we let it go to waste.  Don’t let our creative talent, our lives go to waste because we are waiting for the proper moment.  Don’t sit on our laurels thinking that we have done what we can and that our past success is enough.  No, we need to adapt and take account of what we are working with now and we need to never take for granted the time we have and the fact that we can do it NOW.  There isn’t anything else but now, and now moves quickly.  Before we know it, the time passes and we can’t get that back—and that is the greatest cost of inaction: the waste of our greatest resource.  Life can be challenging enough without looking back and wishing we’d done something differently when we had the chance.  Take the chance now.  Live now before we take all the perfectly pretty, unused, unopened packages to the grave simply because they were never used.  It’s said the most expensive place in the world is the graveyard because of the ideas that people died with.  Don’t let our lives become that version of the story.  Live.  Enjoy now.    

“Stop worrying about the ROI and worry about the COI—the cost of your inaction,” Loren Ridinger.  This quote floored me—I will share some personal experiences related to this tomorrow but today I want to discuss the content of it at a high level.  Our society tends to focus on things that have little in the way of producing desired results—or producing any results at all.  Times have changed and we know the quality of products, foods, and other goods has gone down so we have become hyper focused on what we get from our money.  I completely understand and I’m in that boat as well.  But instead of getting mad about it, we can make better decisions.  What if instead of focusing on what we get out of something, we look at what we can DO about it. There comes a point where we may not get a return and we will find ourselves wanting of reason for what happened and why we didn’t get anything out of it.  We have the ability to shift that focus and break the habit by looking at what we intend to get out of it and what our purpose is BEFORE taking action.  If the action won’t drive the result we are looking for or get us closer, then that is a loss.  But sitting there constantly planning and not acting takes away any hope of finding out what the result could be.

We have a limited time on this beautiful Earth and when we start looking at how we spend it honestly, most people feel a little disheartened.  I know I was devastated to start looking at the consequences of repeating the same story for so many years.  I went through a deep depression fearing and regretting all the time I had lost, unsure of how to move forward to do something new, something that would get me where I wanted to go.  We have to reconcile where our actions will take us and sometimes we have to admit what we aren’t doing or when we can do more.  I’m not saying that we need to push ourselves to the brink to validate our existence, but I am saying that we need to be selective in what we choose to partake in.  We need to be particular in how we spend our time.  When we let time slip away, that is a non-refundable transaction.  Time is the only resource when spent, is gone forever.  Instead of worrying about how we spend time, look at how we can create time.  We do that my making choices in what we do.  We say no to things that are unfulfilling and say yes to the things that call to us—even if they scare us.  Don’t allow our lives to become a series of “when it happens” or “I can’t do that now” when it comes to our dreams.  Make it a question of “How do we do this?”  and “what actions can I take that will get me closer to where I want to be?”  What actions move us forward. 

The good news in this is we are able to shift focus at any time.  We can move from worrying about what we get from something and shift it to what happens when we do nothing.  Instead of thinking about the perfect action to take and becoming paralyzed with indecision, we can simply begin moving.  I know brilliant people who have wasted their lives hoping someone would see them and give them an opportunity.  I know people who struggled in other areas but they believed so fiercely in themselves they took shots that changed their lives.  We’ve talked about it many times here: once we start moving, we start seeing other options.  All it takes is choosing to start and then starting.  The implications of doing nothing are far scarier than taking action and maybe not making it.  At least if we take the shot, we have a chance of achieving what we set out to, and even if we don’t get there, we will be closer to where we want to be.  There is no downside to going for it because we learn and we find other opportunity.  When we sit there, nothing happens.  I don’t want to make the mistake of waiting for the moment to fall in my lap, I want to create moments.  I want to create joy and success and I want to make that possible for others as well. So, quite simply, MAKE THE MOVE. 

“All of your life will be judged, none of that matters.  What matters is the condition of your soul,” source unknown.  I’m not a particularly religious person but I have strong belief and faith in the soul and our purpose here as well as the connection to something bigger.  Well, at least I believe it exists, I haven’t been very good about always staying connected myself.  Regardless, I interpreted this quote as something bigger as well.  I know our actions aren’t always a good indicator of our condition, our thoughts, and beliefs.  People are reactive creatures and we will respond based on what we know from previous experience about how to respond to any type of stimuli.  Actions do matter in the regard that our actions have consequences and impact that expands beyond our daily functions.  With that being said, we can’t always judge actions at face value.  We need to understand the intent behind them.  We also need to be able to understand our own intentions when we choose to take actions.

Intention can be examined without looking at the soul because intention speaks to everything from survival, to relationships, to finding joy, to addressing toxic situations in our lives.  There is a reason behind everything we do, even the subconscious actions and routines we settle into—those are often the most telling of our intention.  If we allow them to remain subconscious, we function like a robot and there seems to be no purpose.  If we look at the behaviors we developed to cope or even just as what we were taught, we can see patterns.  It takes a lot to look at this, but once we do, we know it’s worth it because we can understand if there is a reason for it or a behavior we can change.  Looking deeper and seeing that we eat a certain way out of fear can help us eliminate the fear and change the response we developed. That’s when progress happens.

There comes a point when we realize that we only have so much time on this Earth and we have to address whether or not we are going to waste it because one person (or even a group of people) had an opinion about it.  It doesn’t matter.  In one hundred years from now, chances are they may not even know our names.  I know I can’t speak to the character of my great-grandfather or my great-great grandfather—I never knew them.  I know parts of the story and how they got here, but I don’t know who they were or what they were like on a daily basis.  We too will become strangers to this world at some point, so we can let go of the pressure of thinking someone else’s opinion can determine our abilities.  Follow our desire, follow our passion, find our purpose and do that.  We are trained to judge and make determinations about people, we are not exempt from others judging us as well.  Some will say what we do is good, others will not, and what works for one may not work for the other.  So follow what we know is right for us.  We have one go around on this Earth, make it matter to ourselves.