Pull your head out of stress and look at the beauty of life—Chase freedom.  I think we all just needed a little reminder about focus in life.  We have chosen stress as a badge of honor and it becomes addictive.  Like any addiction, we don’t truly enjoy being in that state but we are familiar with it and we feel we know how to function when we are under stress.  That way of functioning is a distraction like so many other things around us.  When we are distracted we miss the beauty of things around us, the beauty of life.  There is this amazing natural flow, this ebb and flow of life that brings us exactly where we need to be if we learn to let go of the reins and start working with life as it is.  It takes a lot to release fear, especially fear of the unknown because we are used to what we know—and what we know is fear of what can happen.  The truth is there are certain events that are going to happen no matter what we do.  Knowing that, we need to understand that what we can control is both limited and infinite.

We can choose our vantage point for every circumstance.  We can choose our reaction.  We can choose our emotion.  We can choose the words we say.  We can’t always choose what happens, but we are able to choose our part in it.  We can choose what we engage with and what we walk away from.  We can set our boundaries and follow our path.  We choose who we surround ourselves with and how we expend our energy.  We choose to follow creative outlets.  We have no say in what the people around us do.  We have no say in how they react to us or how they treat us.  We have no say in their decisions.  We are able to decide to not to take it personally and simply move on.  We also have the ability to understand that 90% of our stress is self-created.  When we look at it that way, we need to ask why we would waste our creative energy on causing pain for ourselves.  There are far better ways to use our energy.

When we open up to the beauty of life and see the possibilities, when we choose to follow our path, when we choose to see the good, suddenly we are free.  It’s like taking off the blinders and seeing all the good that exists in the world and understanding it was always there.  We have to ask ourselves why we live in a society that wants to keep us from such an existence.  What benefit do they have keeping us in a state of fear and stress?  It keeps us repeating the pattern, the cycle, and it keeps the system going that benefits the few.  When we decide to see the beauty and live in that state, we cast aside all the fears and old programming of what it meant to be to live.  We see that there are all of these other ways that we have options for.  When we rise above the fear and stress, we are free.  There is very little that can disrupt us in the way of peace when we understand our purpose and we take control of our decisions.  Choose how we want to feel and go with that.  Don’t chase the same thing others have told us provide value—chase freedom and living how we want to live so we can connect with the ultimate purpose and goal: freedom for ourselves and others to live how we are meant to live.  Change the focus.      

Life is fragile and we are guaranteed nothing.  Aside from being grateful for the lives we have and honoring our gifts, we need to ask what we want from life.  The answer to that question determines how we spend our time and sets the stage for the course we take.  Life moves quickly and things change so it’s important to have a constant, a sort of North star.  We have to ask ourselves some key questions to help us navigate.  The biggest question is do we need status and accolades or are we looking for freedom and impact?  Those are very different things, very different courses in life.  I can’t say one has more merit than the other because that is a personal choice, but what I can say is that the answer to that question gets us different results in life.  I do know that as I’m getting older, I understand our greatest gifts are to be loved and remembered.  The way we feel about ourselves and the way others feel around us is far more impactful than asking what we can get from people.

We look for immediate gratification and we look to see our names in neon lights because we are told that is the ultimate goal.  There is a saying that people will forget what you said and what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel.  So having the attention for a brief time is fleeting.  Our legacy is the feeling we left in people, the courage we gave people to pursue their dreams, the light we leave behind that we ignite in others.  Legacy is nothing without meaning—it all becomes moot if we simply take the action without intention behind it.  When we consider how we use our gifts and how we spend our time, the intention makes a difference. With all the distraction today, it’s easy to misinterpret our intention.  We think that attention is what we need or that we have to have the big house.  The reality is most of us are actually looking for the freedom to call our own shots and spend our time how we want to.  The ability to create something lasting is more impactful than our five minutes in the spotlight. 

It’s important to note that things like status and accolades can be taken away.  Money, houses, cars, pretty much any possession we have can be taken away.  The love we have, the love we leave, the lessons we share, the advice we lend, the conversations we have, the beliefs we impart, the hope we instill, the trust we build, the time we spend, the more we see others and hear them—all of that is lasting.  I’ve mentioned before that we don’t necessarily have to change the whole world in order to have an impact—we may change the world for one person.  We create ripples in this life that we may never see the end of, we are in a web so intricately woven that we are all connected and we may never see all of the intersections.  Our choices matter, our lives matter, our actions matter.  It’s the small things that are the big things—our values and character are far more lasting than anything we can buy.  Choose the type of impact we are looking to have and no matter the events of our lives, we can say we gave our best and our actions mattered. 

Your struggles end when your gratitude begins. Being grateful shifts the energy of the world—it shifts the energy in our individual world first.  Sometimes I feel ashamed at how many years I wasted feeling/playing the victim.  We all have moments when we are victimized, some of us just stay in them longer.  The truth is there is so much beauty in this world and we waste a lot of time looking at what isn’t over what is, and we see what is missing instead of the gifts that are here.  As soon as we shift that outlook and take the time to sit in the appreciation of what is, we see how much abundance exists in our lives.  There are things we have materially that others don’t, there are gifts we have to express that others don’t.  Outside the realm of have/have not is the idea that we are given opportunities to be who we are and share that light with others.  It is a gift to have the ideas we do and the fact that we can take ownership of them and create something with our lives is a gift.      

One thing we struggle to wrap our heads around is the idea that we are owed anything.  This isn’t a contradictory statement about our worth, it’s a reminder that this life is a gift.  The fact that we wake up every day and have another chance to take action toward our dreams is a gift because we could easily not wake up.  The fact we have a safe place to sleep, eat, have clothes, have means to read this piece, all of that is a gift.  Not everyone has the means or the will to see their gifts through, not everyone has the idea or the drive to make things happen.  Some people aren’t able to take the ingredients of their lives and make something of it—like if we can’t make heads or tails of an experience so instead wallow in figuring out why something happened instead of taking action based on the event.  We are given all of the ingredients to make a life we love, sometimes we just have to learn how to put it all together. 

The most important aspect of gratitude are the possibilities.  The more grateful we are, the more possibilities we see in everything.  There is less likelihood to put a negative interpretation on events because we see them simply as things that happen, new data to make a new decision.  Gratitude opens the doors because we have shifted the framework of our minds and in some cases, even opened the doors.  So many of the problems we have are in our own head.  There are certainly external events, but how we cope with them is completely up to us.  The choices we make surrounding the event are up to us.  We can choose to play victim or even play perfectionist thinking that we have control over the situation.  Or we can choose to relax and allow and let go of the struggle through reframing our perception.  We hold the key in our perception.  Let go of the struggle.     

Motivation gets you started, discipline keeps you going, irritation helps you plow through.  This is just a little reminder about perspective.  I have a tendency to stop and start things over and over again and then get really annoyed or even disheartened with myself.  Like we spoke about yesterday, I will realize that I’m repeating patterns that keep me stuck instead of working toward the goal, and then I get annoyed with myself and struggle to get back on track.  There is an additional purpose to irritation that we didn’t discuss yesterday: that is the fortitude to push.  The truth is there are times we simply need the brute force and the demand to pull ourselves back on track.  I have a ton of motivation to start projects.  The creative energy flows and I want to do everything all at once.  I had/have a bad habit of actually starting a ton of things at once and not being able to make heads or tails of what needs to be done next.  That is where discipline comes in.  We need to be able to determine the actions that will move the needle and follow through on them. Now back to irritation.

Sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves for falling off track again doesn’t help anything.  We need to give ourselves a reality check and cut the crap.  Sometimes it’s hardest to be honest with ourselves and look at what we are doing and the impact it has on our goals.  The only thing stopping us from living the life we want to live and doing the things we want to do is ourselves.  It’s human nature to get off track every now and then.  We need to learn that doesn’t make us a victim, it makes us a creature of habit, perhaps a bit of an addict to the way things are/a certain feeling.  That is something we can take control of.  We can learn to set up our environment for success (I wrote a piece on that a few weeks ago) so that way we are making decisions in line with the goal.  Eliminate the distraction, keep the determination, and have the humility to see when we need to direct some irritation at ourselves.  It’s great to start things, it’s fantastic to have creative energy, but it’s even more rewarding to follow through and see the results of our dreams.  Keep going, keep directing, and keep correcting.  Eventually we will get there.

“Get irritated, take up space, go after your dreams.  You can’t sit there and hope that things will change because we will be waiting forever.  Do the things you need to do in order to make your dreams happen,” Danielle S.  Even though this is a reminder we all need, I feel this was timely for myself.  There are times we move through our days thinking we are making moves or that we are heading toward our goals only to wake up and realize we are on repeat, stuck in the cycle again.  It’s so easy to convince ourselves that the things we do are necessary and to trust what we’ve known, to believe what we know keeps us safe.  We’ve spoken about safety here many times and I think we understand that just because we are familiar with something that doesn’t mean it’s safe.  We repeat some of the most unhealthy habits daily because we are comfortable.  I heard this quote about getting irritated and, well, I got irritated.  I was irritated because I realized I had become comfortable again under the guise of things I “had” to do. 

In the course of following our dreams, the goal is ultimately to get a little bit better each day.  To get a little bit closer to the goal each day.  If we stay the course, we eventually hit the target even if it takes some time.  But when we continually fall into the habit of doing what is known, what we consider safe, we end up further away from our dreams because that known path is a circle—and not even a spiral where we are able to get some movement, it’s literally the same path over and over again.  Life is supposed to be expansive and creative and doing the known thing isn’t really going to create the growth we are looking for.  Repeating the same steps will make us familiar—and even really good at taking those steps—but it won’t get us closer to where we need to go.  Going up and down the same steps a million times is certainly a lot of work but it doesn’t move us anywhere. 

My irritation is fully directed at myself.  I have goals and dreams (perhaps that need to be more clearly defined) and instead of doing things that move me toward those goals and dreams consistently, I find myself repeating the same day.  That’s not something I care to repeat any longer.  This is the moment we’ve spoken about before: the fear of stepping into the unknown.  There are still things that I’m not able to fully let go of because I have a family to care for, that is true—I need something to create the same stability I have in that regard.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not able to make different choices or at least one different choice every day.  Instead of spending an hour at lunch, I can take 30 minutes of that to write or produce content.  Instead of coming home and immediately focusing on work or my son’s homework, we can move our bodies a bit more.  I made the mistake most people do which is believing we have to be all in with all the changes all at once.  That’s when we get overwhelmed and seek out the familiar again.  Instead, keep that irritation with the familiar fresh, and find ways to change one small habit every day.  Or work on one habit until it changes everyday and then work toward the next goal.  Soon, instead of going after our dreams, we will be living them.

See it when I believe it—allow the physical to catch up energetically.  I think I’ve spoken about this before and I think I’ve even mentioned my struggles with it.  I’ve always been pretty scientifically based even though I love magic and spirituality.  But it took me a long time to get there because I was always searching for a sign that my spirituality was validated.  Regardless, I needed proof that something existed.  I didn’t know how to ease my way into trust, grace, and faith.  While I was taught the basics of religion, I was never taught the concept of trusting our faith which is a vastly different task.  Faith is about the energy and the mindset while religion is about the rules—and rules can follow natural law or man’s law.  I understood law-it was tangible and visible and something we were all expected to operate from.  That was a universal understanding.  Thus the appeal of science: it was universal and a language for all of us to understand.  It wasn’t an interpretation, it was a principle.

I understand now that faith and spirituality are principles based in science as well.  Our faith and trust can be measured by our responses and actions and we can see the results in what we receive.  It’s a matter of energy.  I heard this discussion the other day and it flipped my thinking on the matter of seeing things before we believe them and it was simply this: we sometimes have to allow things time to manifest.  We are allowing things we put out energetically to catch up physically.  This is something I can get behind.  There is a delay in the sound wave reaching our ear, it doesn’t mean there is silence just because we don’t hear it immediately—someone else is hearing it, the sound exists.  Even more of a mind twist is that the interpretation of that sound is different so someone experiencing the same thing will have a different result.  This is how we end up with different stories from the same events in our lives. 

Applying such a belief to something less tangible can be challenging but the truth is our entire lives were once intangible and we brought it into existence.  The jobs, the homes, the clothes we wear, the food we eat.  All of these day to day activities are a result of decisions we make.  Nothing happened until we decided it was so and we acted on it.  The same is true for our energy.  We decide where to focus it and then we allow the physical to catch up.  My entire issue was about proof and the universe isn’t here to prove anything to us.  It is here to work with us and we are here to understand the energy and get in rhythm with it—the universe isn’t here to owe us anything—we are cocreators.  It’s ok to have faith, it’s ok to learn how to get into alignment, and it’s ok to be scared along the way. We need to practice trust both in our abilities and in the universe.  We need to practice adaptability and faith.  Trust the dance and know the path we are on will eventually yield the results.    

Today I am grateful to witness love.  I stood up in my best friend’s wedding recently.  It reminded me of the love and excitement I felt on my own wedding day 15 years ago.  It was a reminder of love, period.  There is something incredibly powerful witnessing two people commit to each other and share their lives with one another.  Granted my friend has been with her partner for years so they were already deeply committed, but that doesn’t change the beauty of seeing them together and declaring it.  Marriage in the traditional sense was more about a contract and an agreement than it was about love, but the ability to change that meaning and make it about a personal commitment and a promise is a beautiful thing.  It’s even more beautiful to see people who are on the same page make the leap forward together. 

Today I am grateful for family—and the friends who become family.  Perhaps I’m just getting emotional and wistful at today’s events, but it is truly a blessed thing to have people together, people we choose to embrace us and who we embrace as well become people we can’t live without.  We are social creatures and the bond is so important.  We need to be seen and heard and embraced for who we are. Not that our identity or our esteem needs to come from other people, but we do need that support and encouragement.  It’s an amazing thing to think about the relationships we form at different stages in our lives and what people mean to us.  Those that stick with us are the most important people we can have around.

Today I am grateful for relationships.  Yes, I know I’ve talked about love and family already, but I want to talk about connection and the importance of relationships.  I’ve often spoke of connection and I think this is a timely reminder to evaluate the connection we have with ourselves, with spirit, and with each other.  Each type of connection serves a purpose.  The connection to self keeps us in touch with our purpose and our spirit and serves as a north star while the connection with each other shows us that we are not alone and that together we can do amazing things.  The purpose of connection is to share our gifts—we aren’t meant to do all things, we are meant to build things together with skills, talent, and interests that complement each other.  Forming relationships is so important for mind and spirit, it’s not about power and control over each other (which we often mistake relationships for), it’s about unity. 

Today I am grateful for the ability to travel.  Even though we were only a few hours away from home, I am grateful to have the means to travel.  Travel is something so impactful on our lives in the way seeing new things and new people and new ways of doing things can change us.  I am grateful to be able to see other parts of this country and to share them with my son.  Because this was only a few hours away, we drove and I love getting to show my kid different things.  It reminds me of traveling with my family when I was young and all the fun we had together sharing new experiences.  Like I said seeing new things and new ways of doing things is hugely important and it has always been important to me to be able to show my son different things.  There is never one right way and we only get comfortable with that through the experience.

Today I am grateful for flow and change.  I recently spoke with my husband that I felt stuck again, that we were just repeating the same patterns of 20 years ago.  We’re listening to the same music, making some of the same decisions (not always the greatest ones), having some of the same arguments.  The purpose of life is to progress and I know that everyone gets to a point where they feel like they don’t know what the hell they’re doing—we are definitely there.  Actually we go between total confidence and moving forward to having no clue.  It frustrated and angered me but I see now how common that is for people.  Sometimes I see that we end up in similar situations to our past so we can either handle the result of the decision differently or so we can make a different decision.  Sometimes how we feel about the situation determines the outcome, it isn’t always the action.  We don’t have to fear flow and change, and we have to understand that sometimes flow and change looks a bit like what we’ve been through before.  It’s ok to let go of the fear.  It’s ok to allow the present to happen as it is.  We are here for the ride, so take it as it is.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

As with any long term relationship, sometimes things get a little rocky.  Work was rough the other day and I’ve been stressed about some decisions I need to make with my business and I know I wasn’t communicating well with my husband.  Simultaneously I know he is going through some stuff as wellI had an epiphany—I want the cookies and the compromise.  I want the pieces of you that make you who you are and I want the pieces of you that can be better.  I want you, and I want the plan, the compromise, the pieces of us that we put together to create something new. Part of a relationship, including a healthy relationship with ourselves is understanding who we are, taking the good with the bad and learning when we need to make choices to improve.  But it isn’t about a constant look for improvement because that leads to searching for “what’s wrong” all the time.  We aren’t a constant work in progress that needs to be perfected or changed.  But we are beings that need to recognize when we need to change, when things are stagnating and when we need to do something else—or when we can be better.

This then spills over into our relationships as well.  I want your given talents but I also want the things that we work on together.  I’m not talking about improving my partner as a project, I’m talking about working together to make something mutually better for the both of us.  For a long time I couldn’t articulate this—I kept hammering home the point that I wanted things to be better, for us to do better.  I see how that could come across as wanting my partner to be something other than what he is.  But that was never the intent.  The intent is to figure out what we want and to work on something together.  It’s about keeping ourselves fresh, not complacent, and looking to level up for the things we say we want.  It’s about follow through together and helping each other achieve our individual and mutual goals.  

So the bottom line is I will take you for what you are—but we can’t stay there because I won’t allow myself to stay where I’m at.  We are meant to be the best versions of who we are and we are meant to remind each other of our purpose and our goals, the accountability to what we agreed on.  It’s time to pick a direction and go that way—together.  I take the pieces that are you and I take the pieces that we need to build.  We have a picture to put together and that requires us working on creating it.  My vision doesn’t need to be yours, but we should be steering the same course.  There are days we will wander, there are days we will stay the course, there are times we will realize we need to take a few steps back and rechart what we are doing—and days we may need to simply stop and take stock of where we are.  None of that means I don’t care for my partner—not in the slightest.  None of that insinuates I need my partner to change.  No, this is about bringing out the best in each of us. 

I’m learning more and more about surrender.  About letting go of the things that hurt us, or we perceive as hurt.  I’m learning to try and see the lessons in it all.  It’s confusing because it simultaneously feels like losing pieces of myself while releasing a weight that needed to be dropped a long time ago.  I know we’ve talked a lot about surrender here and I’ve never hidden my feelings that I physically, mentally, in every way hated that word—and yes, I do mean hate.  I looked at it as one of the most defeatist words in the dictionary and I believed it was a complete stripping of power.  My brain still grapples with it, but I understand now the other challenge deals with our interpretation of the word and our expectations.  How can we be powerful and take ownership of our lives if we are giving in to anything?  I don’t know if it’s because surrender implies there’s a winner and it seems like a fight.  To some degree there is: there is a right and a wrong in many situations.  But not everything needs to be a fight.    

In dealing with surrender, it helped to look at the idea of acceptance because that was more of an implication of taking stock of things as they are and operating from there. That’s helpful because we’re simply looking at what is and then trying to close the gap to what it needs to be. After time that bothered me too because in my mind it suggested complacency.  I realized that I had this constant urge to fix things, to make them be a certain way.  But we can’t make things a certain way and there are times we need to reconcile what is with what we feel and we need to understand that what we feel isn’t always correct.  Those emotions can become skewed so we need a way to reconcile what is real versus our interpretation.  Our interpretation isn’t always correct and we need to be able to discern what is best for us and there are times simply letting go is exactly what we need to do. 

I’ve learned something else about surrender: it isn’t so much about giving up or in or anything else, it’s really about allowing.  The truth is there are things in this world that none of us can control and we will never be able to control.  That means we need to be able to make decisions about where we expend our energy.  Do we want to spend our time fighting against things that will never change?  Fighting against things we aren’t meant to fight?  We can’t do that—it’s exhausting and will rarely get us anywhere.  But what we can do is come to terms (accept) what is and make the decision to engage with that or not.  Surrender is about what we choose to allow in our lives and what we choose to engage with.  And while it can feel like giving up at times, it’s really about accepting what we are able to do. That is an powerful place to operate from because it is real, solid ground.  Surrender is a tool for progressing and releasing the weight of the things we carry but can do nothing about.  Surrender is about letting go, not giving in.  It’s easier to move without the things we hold onto.

JR Ridinger said we will only ever become as big as our dreams, so dream big. Even if we don’t achieve the ultimate goal, if we are constantly striving in the direction of our dreams and taking action, we will certainly end up closer than we would have been if we sat with the belief that we weren’t capable.  Eleanor Roosevelt had the same sentiment when she said, “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”  In the discussions we’ve had about limitation and perceptions and reconciliation, I think we need to remember the main issue with limitation is that our goals become limited if we operate from those limited perceptions and beliefs.  Some people are gifted with seeing the expansiveness of the universe from the start.  They treat the world as a playground, a creative outlet that can become whatever they want it to.  There are others who are taught they have to live within the box and that stepping outside the box is dangerous. That takes some work to change.

As I’ve been shifting to some works of fiction to give my mind a break, I think I’ve realized how important it is to keep the imagination going.  When we stick ourselves to one routine, we cut out every other possibility there is.  Some routines are necessary, but if we aren’t careful, soon that routine becomes a rut.  The mind is meant to create, it tells us stories all the time including stories about what we can and cannot accomplish.  We have every opportunity to turn any story into a reality so we have to watch what we tell ourselves.  JR had an enormous vision for people in this world and he whole-heartedly believed in it.  He believed everyone could be expansive, that they could take control of their own destiny and they could make their lives be anything they wanted.  His goal was to set people free by showing them how to better use their mind and see their possibilities—and most importantly to take action on them.  We are capable of achieving amazing heights and it’s important to keep our eyes open toward them.  The purpose of reality is only to show us the gap we need to close, not to show us where we have to stop.