“If you’ve hit rock bottom, go sideways,” Wynonna Judd.  Full transparency, I haven’t heard this song but someone shared this quote with me and the phrasing resonated.  Life has its ups and downs as a natural part of the course.  But there are times we know we feel lower than we have before.  We may even feel so dark we can’t find a way out.  I want to use this as a reminder that shifting perspective is key and understanding that rock bottom is a gift.  When we are at the bottom we limit the choices we see—but we still have a choice.  We can choose to wallow and complain about where we are or we can look around us and determine what comes next.  We can tap into the creativity and ingenuity that we feel in us.  Sometimes rock bottom isn’t a matter of having something taken from us, it’s a matter of showing us what’s really important.  It’s a stripping away of the distraction and the external stimuli to find who we are.

The beauty of being at a low is that we see our path isn’t always linear, or that if it is, that isn’t always in the direction we thought.  Sometimes there is another way around.  We’ve been trained to believe that these are shortcuts and that things need to be difficult in order to be worthy.  The truth is, our path is easy because it is exactly right for us.  Sometimes being at the bottom is simply eliminating any other way we can follow but our own—and it might not look how we thought or how we were trained to think it should look.  Creativity is a powerful thing and we all have it.  if we can look past what we were trained to fear and what we were trained to be and simply connect with who we are, the rest falls away regardless.  On the outside that may look like a failure, and without ample belief it may feel that way.  But the truth is that is simply the beginning of the path meant for us, the awakening of who we are.

I also want to add that I’m not sure who decided that bottom is a bad thing.  I think we need to recognize that in our lives there will be ups and downs, times we reach the clouds and times we come back down to earth to see what’s really going on.  The truth is the ground can be nice.  It holds us, it can energize us, it literally grounds us.  There is purpose in finding the bottom if we look for the reason.  There are also times when we need a hand up and times we become the hand for others.  We can’t do that if we are too far above others.  We need to find the balance, the answers, and sometimes we need to simply sit where we are and feel something solid beneath us.  We don’t need to fear the bottom.  We can embrace the gifts it gives us and continue to move from there.     

The encouragement you’ve offered to others has helped them succeed.  It’s time to offer the same encouragement to yourself.  This thought jumped at me this morning when I looked in the mirror.  I’ve put great effort, focus, time, and care into myself the last few weeks because I’ve diligently been working toward a new life.  I realized that I looked different and for the first time in my life I offered myself a sincere compliment.  I’ve had wild insecurities most of my life and it hit me: I’ve helped so many people succeed.  I have mentored and counseled hundreds of people, and while I haven’t been perfect, I have witnessed a majority of positive results.  I have helped people through everything from addiction to suicidal ideation to career planning.  I never realized how much I questioned my own advice.  Why wasn’t I listening to myself?  I often had the same insight and intuition about myself but I would ignore it. 

When I saw myself in the mirror, I finally understood that I was no different than anyone else I had mentored.  I know the steps to succeed, I know what works for me, and I know what I want to be doing so there is no reason to not move forward.  Aside from a bit of refining and clarifying, there is no reason to not execute.  There comes a point when we realize that we have to spread our wings and we need to be our own cheerleader.  We are more often our greatest enemy but we have the amazing capacity to be our best friend as well.  To honor what we are thinking and feeling and go treat ourselves with the same love and respect we’d give to anyone.  When we get in our own corner, it doesn’t matter what was said before because now we know who we are.  Get excited about what we do.  Get excited about who we are.

The more love and gratitude we express in our lives, the more love and gratitude we receive.  That includes love and gratitude for ourselves.  There comes a point when we realize that our inner talk is so self-destructive that we can’t go on as we are.  If we feel like crap after going through our inner dialogue, then clearly our inner talk is effective.  Why not change the tone?  Change the message?  We are all beautiful and worthy simply because we are here and have a gift to share.  That is the only purpose we need to worry about.  If we can offer support to others, then we are surely capable of offering that support to ourselves. As I mentioned yesterday, we don’t have to be great to start but we have to start to be great.  Start recognizing the good in who we are and celebrate that person.  Treat yourself as a friend and see how life turns around.     

I want to share a simple reminder: You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start to be great.  I love this.  As I work through transitioning fields and projects, I realize how much I held back out of perfectionism and the desire to be liked—and the desire to “take off” immediately.  Having the time off from work that I did a few weeks ago changed a lot for me in regards to this.  It has nothing to do with being liked, it has to do with being relatable.  We have all had moments of starting.  We need humility in order to learn and to grow.  We need courage to be novices.  We all have a jumping off point.  No one starts off knowing all the answers or how to do anything 100%.   

There may have been a ton of things we wanted to do in this world.  How many of them have we pursued?  How many have been put to the back burner?  How many have been forgotten because we took a safer path?  I know that I don’t want to live a life questioning what it would have been like had I gone after something.  At the end of the day, it isn’t about being great, it’s about what we’ve done on the journey that feels great.  Did we make great use of our time?  Did we share and create great love?  Did we share great ideas?  Did we create great opportunities in our lives?  None of this has to do with what others define as great.  It has to do with what feels right for us and going after what makes greatness in our own lives based on our own definitions.  Don’t ever let fear tell you what you can and cannot do.  Screw the definition of greatness and perfection: live messy and wild and to the greatest capacity we have.  That is greatness.  Start today.

Today I am grateful for reclamation.  It amazes me how quickly we fall back into habits without even realizing it.  Sometimes the feelings we experience lead us to familiar coping mechanisms before we even realize what we are doing.  We aren’t always aware of how to interrupt that thought process because we are in the middle of feeling it so we subconsciously revert to what gave us comfort or to behaviors we used during a different time.  I had been feeling pretty rough about work this past week for a variety of reasons and I’d been super crabby (for lack of a better word) without being able to put my finger on why.  It took nearly the entire week to process it, but I was feeling like crap because I’d been repeating patterns from over a month ago that set up the day poorly.  As soon as I realized that, I was able to turn things around and step back toward who I want to be and make different choices.   It was an absolute reclamation of power. 

Today I am grateful for acceptance.  We logically know that life doesn’t always go our way.  That doesn’t mean it feels any better when things take a turn or when someone does something other than what we expect them to (or when they fall into old habits).  If we really pay attention, there comes a moment when we understand that some people are simply who they are.  Their reactions have nothing to do with us, they are a reflection of who they are.  The sooner we understand a tiger doesn’t change its stripes, the easier it is to move forward.  That isn’t to say it’s without sadness or even disappointment, but it is to say that we have a clear view of what’s happening (or what won’t happen).  There are certain places in our lives that others can’t join us and we have to understand that we will be held back if we continue to wait for them to be something they are not.  Acceptance brings us closer to where we are meant to be.

Today I am grateful for focus.  I never realized how many external things impacted my ability to focus on what I wanted.  I also never realized how much ego, the thought that I could handle it all held me back.  Adult ADHD is no joke.  I often flitted from thing to thing, leaving stuff undone because I’d change projects on a whim always thinking I’d go back and finish whatever I had started.  The more I said yes to doing stuff, the less stuff got done and then the overwhelm and self-soothing would kick in.  The ego was more about proving to myself that I could do it all and then allowing myself to fall into victim mode, claiming people didn’t understand how busy I was as I continued to say yest to things I had no business saying yes to.  As soon as I started addressing my habits and allowed things that didn’t matter to fall away, the rest began to clear.  I still have trouble differentiating what is mine to handle at times, but letting the unnecessary fall away has made all the difference in eliminating pressures and following through.  Knowing my limits hasn’t confined me, it has set me free because I’m moving forward in a positive way.  Focus makes the magic happen because I can focus on the magic.  Energy flows where attention goes.

Today I am grateful for connection.  Becoming who we are meant to be can be a lonely exercise because the people we usually surrounded ourselves with may no longer be the ones who are capable of supporting or understanding us in our new reality.  So when we are in that new space, the space that honors who we are, when we find people who work with us there, it’s a gift.  Connection to the spiritual has changed things as well.  I have worked at my 9-5 for nearly 18 years and I never knew there was a labyrinth on the property next door—and it was built in 2012.  I’ve taken my lunch hour or my time away and spent it visiting the labyrinth.  I love the feeling of getting to the center and taking my shoes off to feel the grass beneath my feet, feeling the sun and the breeze.  It’s a beautiful place and I love the energy exchange while I’m there.  I’d sit and sulk in frustration most days, but connecting with nature and spirit have proven infinitely better.  Connection is key. 

Today I am grateful to make decisions.  It isn’t about making others see me in a certain way, it’s about seeing myself as I want to be seen and honoring who I am.  The greatest power we have is to decide who we are and to take the steps to be that person.  No one gets to take that away unless we allow it.  I’ve given away that power for far too long and it is an amazing gift to be able to decide who I am and take the steps toward supporting that.  It is complete liberation to let go of what wasn’t working and pick up or change course toward what feels right.  We’ve been caged for too long and deluded into believing a certain path in life works for everyone when we each have our own path.  We need to take the road that leads to ourselves and never look back.  Always choose who we are.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.   

I’m going to work through people questioning me.  One of the hardest things with reconciling our growth and ego is creating boundaries.  Learning to let go of pleasing others for the sake of our own sanity and peace causes an internal struggle at times because we are so used to doing what others need and being what others need that it can seem selfish or even egotistical if we set a boundary that doesn’t put others first.  When it comes to defending ourselves, our work, and our point of view, there’s also a difficult line between boundary and ego.  We have to be firm and clear with our beliefs.  We have to learn that people can question us and it may have nothing to do with us.  Their questioning us can be about simple curiosity or it can be about their ego—and defending ourselves may have little to do with defending our own ego.

With all that being said, there comes a point where we have to come to grips with the fact that not everyone will agree with what we say.  While we know this is common sense, it can be hard to grapple with in those moments when something is truly meaningful.  We have to work through knowing when to trust ourselves, when to stand our ground, and when to simply let people believe what they want to believe.  It all comes to the context and content of the relationships.  It also comes down to the passion and purpose we feel on the subject as well as the goal of the other person.  As mentioned above, sometimes people are simply curious.  Other times we are faced with people who try to get our goat so to speak. 

If we can master our emotions in order to convey our message with clarity and conviction, that is more than enough.  It doesn’t matter what others think and it doesn’t matter what they ask: if we know what matters and we express ourselves clearly, the right people will find us.  Set the goal not to be liked by everyone.  Make peace with that.  Once we understand what we are capable of attracting and creating, their opinions mean little anyway.  Let go of the ego that says we have to defend ourselves and our opinions at every turn and welcome the conversation that comes from people wanting to know more.  If people are trying to push you, then learn when it’s time to walk away.  Practice these boundaries with ourselves.  Set the goal of knowing that questioning ideas is a good thing and that if someone asks things it opens a dialogue that can make things better.  If it doesn’t, then walk away.

“Allow the grief of the passing of who I was to go through me,” Ashmi Pathela.  We spoke last week about letting go of the people we were when we needed to get through something. There is an honoring of the past and a welcoming of the future.  There is a need for safety and we learn that we provide safety by remembering that we made it through everything so far.  We learned and we became the people we are because of what we went through.  It’s ok to feel the comfort in who we were—that version has been through all of this and knows how to react.  But to move forward, we need to adapt and learn new things.  Like I said earlier, the person we were can’t come with us into the future.  That adaptation was and is wonderful and holds a plethora of information so there is going to be a transition with the loss of the familiar.

Growth is painful on several fronts.  The first that we are expanding beyond what we know.  There is bound to be a certain level of discomfort in the unknow and the learning curve can be steep for certain things.  The second is that we enter this new territory alone.  Our respective journeys are for us alone so the people and things that brought us comfort will not come with us.  The third is a loss of identity.  We knew who we were prior to the moment we decide to move forward—without familiarity to what we know or the people we had around us, we question who we are.  That is a loss, and a painful one at that.  Once we acknowledge that we are grieving what we knew it becomes easier to process and become what we are meant to be.

Growth and grieving can be a simultaneous action—and sometimes one is required of the other.  Sometimes in order to grow we have to pass through grief.  We have to mourn what we won’t be and who we thought we were.  We have to honor the pieces of us that we know are no longer necessary but that often carried us through the hardest times of our lives.  Grief is natural in many stages of life.  We are no longer children, then no longer teens, then no longer young adults, and then we find ourselves the adults, then we lose our parents, and suddenly we are facing the natural end of our time.  This isn’t about morbidity, it is about the common ground we all share in our humanity.  Love who we were and welcome who we are meant to be.

“Ego sees failure, humility sees feedback.  Ego sees perfection, humility sees progress. Ego blames, humility takes responsibility,” Simon Alexander Ong. Ego is a complex entity.  Ego simultaneously tells us we are the best and never good enough.  Ego sets the expectations that we will be powerful and successful and that we need those things to be happy or worthy.  Ego also sets the expectation that we have the answers.  In learning to hear what really matters, we have to learn to shut out what ego tells us and go with what we know.  We have to be humble enough to learn new ways of doing things.  The goal of this world isn’t to be perfect, it’s to learn as much as we can and do better for the future.  We don’t need to win or prove or have power over others to be worthy.  Moving toward our dreams is a huge learning curve and we have to know that we won’t be perfect on the first step out.  We have to learn.  We also have to know that a learning curve doesn’t change our value in the equation.

If we are going to accept that we need to trust ourselves in order to move forward in a new system, we have to put aside any illusion that we know it all because we only know what is in our current construct.  We are working on putting the pieces of the puzzle together and the total picture isn’t quite clear yet.  We are just being asked to show our pieces, and find their new place.  Things don’t always fit the way we thought they did and we need to adjust.  When something goes wrong, it isn’t an opportunity to lament over it as a failure, we are meant to learn from it because getting answers is a step forward.  Ego tries its hardest to be the reason we do things and to make us believe it is infallible in all of its answers.  Ironically we need enough ego to have courage to step forward and give our ideas a shot.

There is a balance in between, the sweet spot between getting it right and knowing how to make adjustments.  It’s knowing our real purpose and knowing how to take responsibility for getting where we need to go.  The how may not always be evident but the effort and focus is singular—and it isn’t about being right, it’s about following what we know is right for us and sharing that gift.  Take the leap into who we are meant to be even if everyone thinks we are crazy.  Things don’t always have to look how we expect them to in order to be perfect for us.  There is perfection in what is, perfection we have no control over, and it is that inherent perfection that points us where we need to go.  The humility comes from knowing we will have to course correct as we learn in spite of top notch navigation.  Ego gets us started as easily as it stops us—it is when we learn this balance that we create progress, and what a beautiful freedom that is. 

 “What the external structures I relied on before and the controlling mind are gone, what is left to hold onto?”  Ashmi Pathela. This is about addressing the fear of being able to do it, taking the leap.  This is the realization that we put structures in place to give the illusion of control and that those structures ended up controlling us.  It’s also realizing that we can break free of it.  We receive these messages and nudges from the universe that what we are doing isn’t working and yet we continue doing the same thing daily because we are familiar with it.  We don’t take the step forward into the unknown because we don’t trust that we will be safe in uncharted territory.  We aren’t sure that we are able to sustain ourselves in a new found environment, having to do new things.  Here’s the secret: we only learn to fly when we jump off the branch.

Everyone face plants every now and then.  We think we see a way and we take our shot only to end up on the ground.  I know I was one of those people who stopped trying once I hit the ground the first time.  We can’t expect that we get everything right on the first time out.  We must continue and find new ways of doing things and know that we were given the gifts we have because we are meant to do something with it, to make something of it, and share it with the world.  We have to trust that the gifts we have are meant to sustain us, even if it isn’t in the conventional way.  There is always fear in the unknown but we learn to take those leaps because the calling of what we are meant to do is greater than the calling to follow what we’ve been told to do.  There are many ways to survive in this world and we are here to innovate and create, not continue to be copies of what came before us.

No existing structure is going to allow the flexibility and freedom to evolve into something new unless we bring our uniqueness to it.  The existing framework is not built for ideas that come from outside of the constraints we currently experience.  We must go back to basics and learn to build our own foundations.  We aren’t meant to control this world, we are of this world, and that means the structures that served previously are meant to evolve into something that works for us, not something that holds us back.  Times change and we are forging the way.  This is the new frontier so to speak, and we are all working on finding our wings.  Trust our ability to fly over the strength of the branch and we get a new vantage point.  Step past the fear and fly.         

“Trying a million different Things hoping one of those things is going to be the thing that makes you happy and hustle our way into a life lottery ticket…Most of you are buying the life lottery ticket.  You are playing the lottery with your life and you are hoping holding onto that number, hoping my number is going to come up and then boom I’m happy.  I get this money, this job, meet this person, take this trip, this experience.  It doesn’t work like that.  You have to understand who you are and what makes you happy in order to even know where to go.  Most people don’t take the time to understand who they are to then be able to create the strategy for your life that will actually make you happy.  Get that insight to design that strategy and then start the journey where you will eventually win the life lottery because you did it with intent and purpose,” Rob Dyrdek.  How many of us have been here?  I spent a huge amount of time throwing darts, hoping something would stick.  I wanted my purpose to come to me rather than take the time to figure it out.  But life DOESN’T work like that.  We must dig and find who we are and then work in alignment with that, then the rest unfolds.

For a long time I thought it was practical to try as many different things as I could.  Part of me still does.  I struggled to commit to one thing, one definition of who I am because what if I didn’t like doing it later on?  I didn’t want to get locked into doing something I didn’t want to do.  Ironically, following the path that I was told was safe and would get me where I wanted to be locked me in the exact cage I was trying to avoid.  Now I had no choice in how I lived my life.  Now I had to maintain where I’d gotten via means I didn’t enjoy.  And then I started trying new things and ended up spreading myself way too thin.  When we get to that burnout point, we lose sight of what brought us joy in the situation in the first place.  Then we end up doing nothing because we exhaust ourselves.  Most of us know that someone won’t come with the magic ticket, the number that changes our lives forever, we know we aren’t Cinderella waiting for the prince to find us.  We start putting as many irons in the fire as we can, throwing as many darts as we can, hoping something sticks.  It’s in those moments that we have to learn to be still.  In stillness and connection we find the answer.

Life is too short to spend it hoping we find what works for us, hoping we find who we are and that our purpose will miraculously be laid out in front of us.  I’m not saying don’t try new and different things, and I’m also not saying don’t try as many new things as we can.  I am saying to Rob’s point, that we can’t aim at nothing and expect to get the results we want.  We can’t do things that aren’t aligned with who we are and expect they will make us happy.  We need to embrace the pause and do the digging to find what that answer is.  It won’t be something on the surface, it will come from within and it will be clear as day.  As we spend time meandering and hoping we find our way, we waste the precious time we could be spending in active creation and purpose.  So take the pause.  Even if it feels like it takes too long, getting our bearings is the best thing we can do.  Getting in touch with who we are and using that as a north star  is worth the time it takes to find it, because once we have the direction, we can set the course and start making moves.  Try new things if we must, but learn to recognize what is aligned with who we are, and then life unfolds for us. 

We continue today with another powerful example of maintaining perspective and choosing the life we want to live.  I saw a story about a woman who donated a kidney to her boyfriend only to find out that he was cheating on her.  He broke up with her and moved away.  This woman literally saved this man’s life and he still had the audacity to seek something else from someone else without even communicating with her to see if their relationship was reparable.  In my mind this woman had every right to collapse into herself—I mean, how horrific of this person to take advantage in that way.  But the woman chose a different perspective: No one can take your happiness.  I also added that this was the epitome of understanding that no one owes us a damn thing (as much as that hurts to admit).

She astutely realized that she didn’t want to live the rest of her life in anger.  She had gone through a surgical procedure for someone she thought she loved and who she believed loved her and she discovered that he had been unfaithful for some time.  She started thinking back to her emotions surrounding his condition prior to the procedure and she knew seeing him go through dialysis for 9 hours every night wasn’t an option for someone she cared about if she could fix it.  She realized that he fed into this in providing her literature on the transplant process.  In the end, she said she didn’t want him to suffer like that regardless and she could live a normal life with one kidney.  It was as simple as that in the end and she chose to go about her life in ways that made her happy.

The lesson I took away regarding human nature frustrates me but it’s still true.  There are certain actions I’m sure we are all comfortable letting slide.  Like we buy our friend an ice cream one day and they don’t buy one back for us later.  Some of us may even be comfortable always being the sounding board for someone or we help them process something tough and they don’t support us back.  But this is the extreme: a surgical procedure to remove an organ and save someone’s life and they still can’t remain faithful.  Perhaps that’s just my expectation, but what a crappy person.  And how blatant that someone can literally save a life and the other person will still find a way to hurt them and take advantage as if that isn’t enough.  But the truth is, no one owes us anything regardless of what we do for them and nothing we do should be with the expectation of receiving anything back, even if it’s just decency and appreciation. 

We can function with one kidney just as we can function without people meeting our expectations.  Make decisions in life that work for us and that fulfill our purpose rather than doing things for other people and people pleasing with the hope that they will do the same for us.  No one will fulfill our dreams or our purpose and there will be plenty of people who don’t appreciate what we do for them.  Choose to be happy anyway.  Choose to be a good person anyway.  Choose to find things that bring us joy and fulfill us and be content to allow people to do what they do.  Do things aligned with who we are and we will never be disappointed.  Life is beautiful in spite of a few rotten apples out there—let’s focus on that.