Today I am grateful for spirituality.  I have been through the wringer over the last several months (some of it self-inflicted, some of it a result of outside circumstances that didn’t go as planned…or even as I was blatantly told it would).  So during this time I have learned to direct myself toward a different type of self-development and growth.  I’ve learned to look at my relationship with trust and I have been working on cultivating a deeper understanding of my resonance with the world, of my responsibility to create what I want and what I feel called to do.  It’s a truly difficult thing to accept that we have created everything around us but it’s true.  The good and the bad are all a result of what we have done and even the definition of good and bad are our own decisions.  It was intimidating for me to take on that kind of burden because I’ve spent years cleaning up after others.  Now I see it was the easiest thing to fix.  All I had to do was breathe and look at how I wanted to see the world and how I defined things around me.  I couldn’t have done that without a connection to the universe, the Earth, my heart, my soul, and the environment around me.  Doing so makes the reality of where we are and how we get where we want to be crystal clear.  I am grateful.

Today I am grateful for stepping up.  There are times in our lives when we realize the roles have changed.  One day we are a child and we run to our parents for everything and we are taken care of or we learn to be a bit more independent. Suddenly we are the ones who have to step in and offer them care.  Suddenly we are the parents and we are between our children and our own parents.  My dad has been dealing with some health issues lately and I was recently at a doctor’s visit with him so I could keep as informed as possible with what’s going on and what to expect.  He had a medical emergency while we were in the office and I didn’t hesitate for a second.  I stepped up and help administer support until the ambulance arrived.  So often we are afraid that we won’t know what to do when the time comes but it is the most natural thing in the moment.  There truly is no fear—just clarity.  There aren’t any questions, it’s just action.  It was flattering to hear the APN talk about how I should have gotten into medicine (I’ve been in the medical field for 20 years, just not clinical) but I know that was never my specific calling.  I’m good at it because I don’t want to see people get hurt.  But what I love doing is help people take care of themselves as well.  I struggle with fear and anxiety every day over the tiniest of things—but I am grateful in a true crisis there is no question of what I need to do.  I am grateful I can trust myself.  If I can do it in those situations, I can learn to apply it to all areas of my life.

Today I am grateful for knowing what to do.  The actions I took in the doctor’s office really got me thinking about knowing what to do in general. In my usual ADD way, I have taken on so many projects because I was still waiting for that lightening moment when I would know what to do next, where everything would become so clear that all the extraneous crap would fall away and I’d be living my dream.  Instead I’ve created a mountain for myself under the guise of not knowing what to do next.  I tell myself that I don’t understand what I have to do to make the things I want to do thrive.  The truth is I DO know what to do.  I just haven’t let myself believe that I know the right thing or that I am capable of doing it.  The truth is I know exactly what I am called to do and how to make it happen.  I’ve started and stopped a million times on a million projects and said something was in my way each time.  It was me.  Now I work on changing my vocabulary and my belief that I am able to succeed in whatever I decide on and that deciding on one thing now doesn’t mean I’ve cut off opportunities for other things in the future.  I do know what to do.  I simply have to do it and commit to it. 

Today I am grateful for releasing fears.  It’s always the way of it that when we are committed to letting go of the things that hold us back, the fears in particular, that the universe likes to expose us to that fear in the realest of ways.  My husband spending money.  My father having the emergency while in the office.  My cat being sick.  Bills coming due.  Markets coming up.  A lot of research to do and a lot of steps to take.  No answer on a job (still).  Having to make a decision to move forward and being uncertain about how (or what) choice to make.  We face all of these things because we tell the universe that we are ready to move to the next level.  But we can’t get past where we are at if we don’t let it go.  We need to let it all go.  The things we believed when we first started.  We are not that person anymore.  Those beliefs belonged to someone else entirely.  And if we are going to be a new version of ourselves, why would we carry the fears that belonged to someone else?  How did they serve us?  So.  While I am dealing with very real fears, I know that my previous reactions haven’t done a damn thing to fix them.  I know that I need to face them so I am able to become this next version of me.  And putting those bags down does feel good.  No matter what choice I am about to make, I know the first thing I have to do is let go of all of this.  Once those are down, I know that the rest will be clear and even if I can’t continue with all the things I am doing right now, I know what I am meant to do will take precedence.  Let go of the fear and let the answers become clear.

Today I am grateful for friendship.  I started a mom’s group several months back and I wanted it to be an all inclusive thing for all of the important women and mothers in my life.  Somewhere we could all connect and understand that we are all fighting the same things and we are all dealing with the same concerns.  We have the same challenges and the same successes and the things that make us unique only help us in the long run.  The group was a moderate success in that people really enjoyed themselves, but I noticed that there were simply some personalities that didn’t work well together.  I took the time to start working one on one with some of the women and then it became a group of 3 of us.  Within that group we have found a really nice dynamic and it is so nice to feel genuine support.  No competition, no fear of loss.  Just support and understanding and literally hearing and witnessing that we are going through the same things.  I couldn’t have moved forward in some regards without them.  Some of my closest friends have recently informed me of some things that make our relationship near non-viable and without this other group of women I would not have gotten through.  I am grateful to see how we can rally each other and to feel that we got this.  Because we do.  Imperfect and faltering, but we got this—because we have each other. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

“All worries and conceptions from others are bullshit and that’s what holds use back,” Richard Miller.  We’ve spoken often about not worrying about what others think of us and how to work on being completely ourselves—and that who we are is enough.  But what of the anxiety behind it?  I’m not sure I realized it was an anxiety about what others thought.  I thought it was just anxiety about what would happen.  The more we try to elicit a reaction out of someone the more we are tied to that person.  The more we allow that person to determine what we do with our lives.  I’ve really taken a look at that over the last few days because I saw how much I let this impact me.  My husband and I were are a graduation party over the last weekend and I really struggled.  I felt so awkward, lost, just not myself. It has been a long time since I’ve been with a large group of people.  I’ve been working on healing a lot of things since the fight with my husband several months ago and I was simply not ready to deal with the outside.  So at this party I found myself overwhelmed because there were people there that were partially the cause of my mini-break down.  I understood in an instant that I had been basing my decisions on how they would react, what they would think of me.  I wasn’t doing the things I wanted to do in spite of being in the situation.

Let me clarify.  So I honestly wasn’t feeling well (digestion) and I was uncomfortable because these people have continually excluded me while accepting my husband and my husband has consistently chosen to be with them.  I admire my husband because I see how giving he is of himself and how generous he can be with people.  I see how easily he communicates and relates and simply is himself.  I don’t begrudge him friends, I begrudge the consistent choosing of friends over the needs of his family.  Regardless, I found myself really uncomfortable because I physically wasn’t feeling well and there were people there who had treated me like crap and I haven’t spoken to them in some time.  I felt like I was expected to put all that aside.  And truthfully that party wouldn’t have been the place to address any of it anyway so I had no plans to address it there.  But as I watched the evening unfold, as drinks were flowing (something I no longer partake in) I noticed that I really wasn’t enjoying it anymore.  It wasn’t fun to watch them devolve and laugh and not be able to function under the guise of “letting go.”  I don’t feel like I was judging them because it was a legitimate observation, but my reaction to it was different.  It hit me that if I didn’t even like the activities, then why was I trying to relate to them?  Why was I ever worried about what they thought of me, thought of my need to heal, my need for respect if they don’t even respect themselves?

Then the cycle of control and ego hit me with my son.  He was having the time of his life and I found myself getting angry because he was hanging out with a kid that I truly have an issue with—him and his parents.  It’s like when we are angry and someone tells us to calm down we get even more pissed; I don’t want people stepping on my toes and determining how I raise my kid, allowing things that I don’t allow while I am expected to respect their boundaries.  I see my son loving on these people and having fun and it stings because I feel he respects them more than me, he has a better time with them than me.  And I don’t know if I have the energy to give him what he wants, to allow him to do the things that terrify me.  I know I can’t be with him all the time and at the end of the day my goal isn’t to make him be a certain way.  I just want him to be safe and not do the things I know he is so brazen about that can hurt him.  I also want the opportunity to raise my own kid without interference from the group. 

With all of that being said, I understood how this was ego and fear related to me, my perception, my control, and my relationship.  I understood how all of my anxiety was caused by my own brain and expecting things to go a certain way and to be treated a certain way.  And simultaneously realizing that I’m allowed to expect to be treated with respect.  I have to get over this idea that because I’m short I need to defer to other people.  I am allowed to voice what my expectations are in regard to my boundaries and I am allowed to hold those boundaries.  I don’t need to choke back those feelings because if people are only friends with me because of what I give into for them, then they aren’t my friends.  If they can’t respect me then I don’t need to be around them.  But I do need to expect my husband to back that up.  We are partners and it isn’t unrealistic to expect my partner to demand that respect for me as well.  He needs the party still, I do not.  But I need the respect and I need to believe that what I contribute is enough.  I need to believe that I am able to share and be enough as I am, that my dreams are enough, and that I am allowed to focus on those things instead of demanding basic decency from others.  I deserve to be around people who appreciate and want me around and who I can reciprocate energy with.  My perception of their energy is irrelevant to my decisions—I need to do what is right for me, to be secure in my decisions for me, just as they are allowed to be.  Anything else is holding back forward momentum.  I choose to release that burden, that pattern, and move forward.       

“The challenge is not to be perfect, it’s to be whole,” Jane Fonda.  While I still believe the little pieces of us can add up to have a big impact, putting them all together makes a far bigger impact.  We have to release the fears of what people think, stop pleasing everyone, and learn to trust our instinct and all of that inner work will bring us to a clearer picture of who we are.  It doesn’t matter if we look perfect or if people think we are perfect—we become perfect when we embrace the entirety of who we are.  Life isn’t meant to be what others consider perfect.  In finding what works for us we learn that the definition of perfect varies from person to person anyway.  Finding wholeness within ourselves is key.  Trusting that what makes us feel whole is enough is key.  We don’t need to be more than what we are, we don’t need to push ourselves to create more than we are capable of, we don’t need the accolades of the entire world to be worthy.  We simply need to embrace the entirety of who we are.  When we choose to show the curated parts of who we are, we hold back from the greatness of what we can be.

I’m not saying to not strive for greater—I believe we settle for mediocrity far too often (myself included).  I am saying that we need to strive to be the greatest version of ourselves rather than being perfect.  When we are secure in our identities and we know the goal, we should constantly seek ways to improve, to develop, and to learn.  But that motivation needs to come from the innate desires we feel, the things that drive us.  It isn’t about looking to be the greatest/most/ best or to attain the greatest/most/best.  It’s about allowing the greatest expression of who we are be enough, understanding that all of those little pieces, all of those splinters, those sparks we carry are perfect as they are.  It’s understanding that each of those little pieces contribute to who we are.  The sum of our parts is greater than anything we can imagine.  Holding that back out of fear of rejection (or any fear) is one of the saddest things we can do—and we all do it.

So see the perfection in who we are and allow all of that to show to the world.  Embrace it, love it, share it.  I understand there are those who think that all of these avenues of acceptance are detrimental because we are working on accepting things that aren’t always healthy.  But the concept of acceptance in itself is one of the greatest steps in our evolution that I can think of.  We really are all perfect and we don’t need someone else to tell us we are in order to express that worth.  It isn’t our job to live up to billions of other’s definitions of perfection or answer to how they think we should live our lives.  It’s our job to become who we are meant to be, fully, and to embrace that, and share that with the world.  It really comes down to being whole in ourselves so that we don’t have to break off the pieces to feel worthy.  We don’t have to break off pieces so others feel whole in themselves.  Stand completely in who we are, help others find themselves so they can stand on their own, and see the perfection in simply being complete just as we are.     

“You decide you’re not worthy the moment you try to become worthy,” Sam Rossi.  Rossi mentioned this in conjunction with, “We don’t get what we ask for, we get what we believe.”  I heard these quotes and I understood the act of manifesting differently than I’ve ever understood it before.  The focus needs to be on the act itself, not merely the result.  We are a results oriented society and we tend to forget that the action is what produces those results.  Sam talked about making money because she loves to sell things so she focuses on selling because she enjoys the notifications of someone buying, not because the goal is to make money.  I’ve studied manifestation for a long time and this is the first time I’ve understood the process like this.  Shortly after I heard Sam’s words, I came across a video that explained manifesting isn’t about letting things fall in our laps, or that what we “get” determines our worth or what we are meant to have.  Manifestation and receiving are decisions.  More specifically, manifesting is an active receiving which means actively using the gifts we are given help others.  We have to do something in order to receive, we have to act on the gift in order to develop it and receive more.  Receive really is an action.  We need to demonstrate the assertiveness to take hold of the gift and use it.  It’s through that willingness to apply our gift we show our faith in ourselves and the universe—our worth.

The act of trying to become anything suggests we are currently NOT whatever we are trying to become.  The act of seeking suggests we do not currently have something, that we are lacking it.  We often put our focus on the end result rather than the process.  The process is work and we feel vulnerable when we are in the middle of anything with no results to show, so we feel weak and unsure.  Constantly extending the goal and ignoring what we’ve accomplished implies there is always more to do, that we are never fully worthy as we are, where we are.  Any suggestion we are not currently what we want to be means we are not that.  In this context we are showing the universe we believe we aren’t whatever it is we seek to be.  This is why we need to align our energies and actions toward what we want.  We need to believe that our action means we know we will get what we are meant to have.  That we have decided we are worth it and we believe we can accomplish anything, that we can handle whatever comes our way.  Change the way we think and what we believe and all will fall into place.        

“You have to trust in what you think.  If you splinter yourself, try to please everyone, you can’t,” Annie Liebovitz.  As I finished that last piece and read it to myself, as I sit here thinking about my scattered energies, I understand this quote at a deep level.  I’m ambitious and driven and also highly susceptible to distractions and not committing to finishing what I start (thank you ADD).  Throw in the proclivity to people please and it’s a recipe for disaster as far as trying to get anything done of value.  It’s on two levels: one is that I literally struggle to even get the thing done because I’m trying to do all the things at once (or I don’t even start because of analysis paralysis) or I’m caught up in what other people will think and make my decisions based on how they will feel or react.  We aren’t supposed to be everything to everyone all at once.  I can attest to it driving us crazy on a deep level.  We run circles all day exhausting ourselves but we are getting nowhere in spite of the movement.  The fear of making a mistake is still present.

Learning to trust what we think is challenging when we’ve based all of our decisions on impulse or on what others will think/how we think they will react.  Trusting ourselves is foreign and we have no gauge for what that trust looks like.  Living with blurred boundaries for the sake of being accepted on top of no focus leaves us building a house out of sand that we put together one grain at a time.  We have to zoom out and connect with who WE are instead of what we think others think—or what we think others think we are if that makes sense.  Trusting ourselves is a scary thing when all we’ve done is trust what others show us, trust their approval, and based our decisions on their reactions to us (and potential reactions).  We have to trust that we are capable of finding our way based on what we feel, that we are guided to what we feel for a reason.  That this path is our own and we don’t have to do anything based on what others think of us.  Like I said yesterday, sometimes a mistake is exactly what we need to get us on the right path.

Speaking as someone who has a 9-5, runs a business, is working on a book deal, who writes this bog for fun, who pulls cards for the public every morning, is a wife/mother/daughter/friend, I can 100% validate that splintering the mind never works.  Things get done but not how I would like them.  Some things don’t get done at all.  We can’t have that many obligations (self-created or not) and expect that we can keep all of those plates spinning.  Something has to give, and it’s never an easy choice as to what doesn’t get the attention it needs—sometimes it isn’t our choice what falls.  I have little faith in myself because I never see the results that I want.  I give into distraction in spite of doing all these things I want to do because my brain is trying to take a break.  If I simply trusted my instincts I know I would find the way.  I actually believe that with all of my heart—I feel it in my being.  But that instinct is calling for me to do something so radical that I have NEVER been able to force myself to take the steps necessary to do it.  Not the big one at least.  I still don’t feel fully supported, it feels selfish, and it feels like I would be giving up too much—or forcing those around me to give up too much.  But I see the potential to offer so much more by taking that risk is becoming greater than sitting here stewing over what I should do next, or fearing what others will say.  There are billions of people in this world and only one of me.  Not everyone will relate with this anyway—so why try?  Share who I am and let those who resonate with it, find it.  That is enough.  We are all enough.  So go for it—make those mistakes and stop splintering who we are.  One whole person is better than a billion fractions of a person.  All we need is that one little, precious spark and we can ignite the flame of our entire existence to light the path for everyone.  Stay whole.     

“And now go and make interesting mistakes.  Make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes,” Neil Gaiman.  We tend to take life too seriously.  There is a balance, we know that some decisions are heavier than others but we need to be able to find the balance to move forward.  Let go of what other people think of us and just do the damn things.  Stop being so self-centered and take the risk.  Ironically the way to stop thinking about ourselves is to simply be ourselves—follow our instincts, give up ego, and just do what calls to us.  When we get out of our heads and connect with the feelings we understand what feels right for us.  Mistakes don’t matter.  We don’t need to take life seriously.  We don’t get hung up on what we “should” do and we allow ourselves to learn what we “must” do, the path we need to follow.  We learn what makes sense to ourselves and we can do that without fear of repercussion.  We understand that the greatest repercussion is missing out on our own lives because we try to please others.  We say no to the things we really want to be doing in favor of what we think we should be doing and then resentment builds.  A cycle begins that we feel we can’t stop and we wake up having lived the same life every day rather than living the live we were meant to have.

How we stop that is by doing what Gaiman says.  This life is an experiment and we were all given different tools, different understanding, different callings, different drives, and different talents.  We are meant to test those tools and see what we can make with who we are, not how we can conform those tools to be who everyone else is.  How dry and boring is that?  We were given these expressions (and chose this life and these trials if we believe that) for a reason and we are meant to use it.  Nothing is more suffocating that stifling our own voices because we fear what people will say or how they will react.  It’s shutting down the very essence of our beings for the potential reaction of someone else.  The very thing that sets us free is our ability to follow our instincts and trust what we know—and trust that we can learn from what we do to apply it and do better when the time comes.  The things that others may label as a mistake (and we may initially think it a mistake as well) can be the very thing that we need to set us forward toward the very answers we need.  Sometimes we find those mistakes weren’t mistakes at all.

Life is simply too short to waste it tailoring our actions based on how we THINK people will react.  If we think about it the very notion of that is ridiculous: we stop ourselves from even trying because we think we know what someone will potentially say.  We aren’t mind readers.  The human animal still operates with the survival brain, we haven’t evolved enough to understand that the ego has nothing to do with survival—or that we can’t actually predict every thought that goes through someone else’s mind.  How often do we hold ourselves back or miss out for the possibility that someone will say something negative to us?   Why don’t we start asking ourselves, “Who cares if they react this way?  Even if it’s something I perceive as a negative reaction, who cares?”  I’d rather find out what I am capable of and learn what I am meant to do by following the call of my heart than waste my life trying to predict every other person’s reaction before I’ve even tried to make it happen (whatever it is).  So make those mistakes, take those chances, and find the beauty in a life you may not have ever been able to imagine. 

“Be a creator, will things into existence,” Jonathan Baker.  Creation is an active step.   We see what we want and we take some action to make it happen.  We are meant to be the designer, the architect of our lives and in order to do that, we need to act on those ideas.  Creativity isn’t always about making things and having more stuff.  It’s more subtle than that at times where we create the feelings we want to have.  We want to be a certain way or feel a certain way.  These things don’t simply fall on our laps and suddenly we are that person, that version of ourselves that we saw.  We have to be that person in order to become that person.  I made the mistake of believing manifestation was about willing things into existence.  The truth is it isn’t about things appearing out of nowhere—it’s about actively creating them from nowhere. We have all the ingredients, we need to put them together and then we need to bake it.  There is a time of preparing, gathering, combining, baking, setting, and then obtaining when it comes to producing these things.  It isn’t magic in the literal sense-it’s the magic of alchemy and action.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t willing things into existence—we are, in fact, taking nothing and making it something through sheer determination and perseverance.  That is what the human species does.  We are driven to create.  This is why it is so key to spend our time in pursuit of the things we love and the things that we are passionate about.  If we waste our time and energy on things that aren’t important to us, we quickly develop a sense of irrelevance, or that the tasks we do are irrelevant.  When we feel no purpose, we give up.  It’s also disheartening when we don’t see the results we want in the time we thought we would.  None of that means things aren’t happening, those are indicators that we need to shift our focus.  If we ever find ourselves in that situation, we need to stop and evaluate the cause—is it lack of clarity?  Is it incorrect expectations?  Is it misaligned action?  Those are all things we can fix.  With some focus and effort, we can easily get back on track toward our pursuits.  We are meant to be the creators of our lives, not the bystanders.  Take an active role and watch how things start appearing.  Energy is pretty magical and we all have the capacity and drive to make it what we want.  Do what we are called to do.

Today I am grateful for new understanding.  Later this week I will discuss a realization, an understanding developed about manifesting and our role in developing ourselves and how we receive in this world.  It also helped with understanding more about what I’ve talked about with BEING what we want to be in order to attract what we want.  I never understood why it was so difficult to attract for me.  Until this week when I saw myself upset about not hearing on a position at work that I’m only luke warm about.  The position will be helpful monetarily and will solve some concerns I have for the summer with finances—and there are legitimately things about it that excite me from the aspect of doing something new, something focused, something creative, and being at a new level with leadership, literally.  But I realized that there are things I am passionate about and that make sense the more I talk about them, things that have never gone away as far as how I feel about them.  I have no clue what that will bring financially or if it’s even an option for me, but I know I enjoy that more—it’s more fun and it will also teach me about leadership and creativity, just in a different way.  I couldn’t decide between them because I need facets of both.  But I understand now that nothing can happen until I make a choice and that sometimes it isn’t about the immediate gain—it’s about what feels right and aligning with who we are.

Today I am grateful for application.  The main way to get what we want is to do something.  We need to be active in our pursuits and active in receiving.  I never considered receiving a verb even though the word itself is a verb.  I considered the action of receiving passive.  Whatever was meant for me would come to me and all I had to do was wait for it.  I was raised that if I did the right thing and what I was told, that what I wanted would come.  If I didn’t get it then I must be doing something wrong.  I was never told that my actions needed to be more involved than holding my hands out, essentially begging for what I wanted.  With a new lesson in active participation, I understand that this was basically telling the universe that I needed someone to tell me my worth.  If we are given a gift from the universe it isn’t up to us to determine if we are ready or worthy—it’s our job to take it and apply it the best we can to share it with as many people as we can.  The more we say yes to what we really feel and enjoy, to the things that light us up, the more opportunities will come our way to share.  If we want to receive what we are asking for, it isn’t a matter of worth, it’s a matter of willingness to be a steward of the gift. 

Today I am grateful for perspective/a reality check.  I’m human and it’s easy to let ego get in the way.  When we pursue our dreams and have a specific goal in mind we tend to be narrowly focused and have certain expectations.  We can have expectations even without a goal in mind.  The issue with expectations is they are contingent on other people and their participation in our narrative of what we want to happen.  Our dream can fall apart if they don’t do what we thought they would.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that being in a relationship isn’t about one person blindly filling the other person’s desires.  There comes a point where we realize that life is a give and take and that different people have different limitations and a different capacity for certain things.  My day is divided so I have a lot of mental strain when it comes to focus and expending energy.  When I come home, I get frustrated if the things my husband and I discussed and agreed on aren’t done.  We both work but we agreed I would keep pursuing our business in order to secure a different future for us.  When he doesn’t hold up his end, anger kind of takes hold of me.  But recently I’ve seen how willing he is to help others—and at first that pissed me off too.  He has time to do all this extra stuff for other people but not in his own home?  But I see what a good heart he has and I have to acknowledge he does do a lot.  There might be things we need to tweak together in order to make it work, but I can’t deny he is an active participant even if it looks different than I wanted.      

Today I am grateful for drive.  Life is chaotic in general with all of the expectations we have for ourselves, all the things we want, all the time wasters we have made obligatory.  It really is easy to get swept up in the bustle of it all and miss the opportunities we have right here.  If we couple that with expectation then we are even more apt to let time go because we won’t take action until we see things align how we expect them to.  I’ve been stuck in a pattern, waiting for things to become easier, to be a certain way, for me to really follow through and do what I want.  I’ve faced setback after setback, not from some universal conspiracy to prevent me from moving forward, but from my own lack of clarity or commitment.  There is a silver lining.  No matter what has happened, I’ve been tenacious enough to continue on a path toward something greater.  That vision wasn’t always clear, but I always kept going.  I’ve had to stop many times to recalibrate and evaluate where I’m at and what I need to do, but I haven’t stopped.  I’m at a point now where I’m looking at forward momentum versus walking in circles and it’s caused me to slow down quite a bit.  And that’s ok.  I can still appreciate the need to move.  I know that when I refocus, that movement will be purposeful and productive.  Probably easier too.  So I love that I have drive and I am grateful that I can direct it. 

Today I am grateful for connection.  I isolate when I get scared, overwhelmed, frustrated, uncertain, uneasy, and when I have a gut instinct about people.  Being hyper sensitive and aware, that means I isolate a lot.  I lost some skills along the way, because I was so often triggered by others and didn’t know how to cope.  I felt so let down by people and I didn’t trust many.  The ones closest to me were exhausted because I relied on them to be my source of sanity.  I am always grateful to them and I understand looking back how dealing with me was overwhelming for them.  I always did my best to take care of them, but me making someone else responsible for my emotional state wasn’t fair.  That isn’t connection.  That’s making someone obligated to my well being and how I behave during the day when I should have been the one controlling that. Ironically I’d always get pissed if someone tried to tell me what to do yet I’d hand over the reins to my emotional state to them without even seeing it.  But as I learn these new definitions of connection, leadership, accountability, drive, purpose, and power, I am humbled and embarrassed.  Humbled because I see the truth of where these things lie—within.  Embarrassed because I was so petulant and whiny for so long.  Of course I was miserable and clingy—I thought I needed people to give me permission or outright gift me what I wanted in life.  What I needed was a deeper connection to myself and to set boundaries protecting my energy so I could focus and apply my gifts.  Application is connection and when we connect with ourselves we are better able to connect with others. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The definition of happiness is the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence,” John F. Kennedy.  Happiness is nothing we can receive from the outside as we have discussed numerous times.  When we rely on the external to define our happiness, we will never achieve it because the external is ephemeral, temporary, and always changing.  Not evolving or growing, but changing.  The outside shifts and suddenly we are left wanting and lost, waiting for the next thing.  When we stop seeking happiness and instead seek to utilize our gifts to the best of our ability, and to share those gifts, we learn that we weren’t necessarily seeking happiness all that time, but rather fulfillment.  Within fulfillment there is happiness.  There is no happiness in the chase because we can never slow down.  When we have a purpose and when we are able to align that purpose with who we are and able to develop it and then share it, there is no greater sense of being in this world.  We can live an entire lifetime and not experience anything because we allow others to define what we want, what we are supposed to be, and how we are supposed to feel/interact.  We need to seek the experiences—and it is often missing those experiences that leads to regret.

If we can look back at our lives and say that we did all we could with all we have and that we did the best we could, then there is no shame and nothing to regret.  Wasted time and space, time spent trying to fill our lives collecting things instead of collecting memories, trying to prove ourselves without developing who we are for the sake of our ego.  None of that will ever bring us satisfaction.  And the truth is even settling for being satisfied will still leave us wanting.  I also want to be clear that there is a difference between excellence and perfection.  Excellence is a standard where we put forth our focused energy to the best of our ability and we strive to improve for ourselves and others—we learn.  Excellence is layered and expansive.  Perfection is unattainable, and the definition can change at will without warning.  But we can shift the goal from perfection to excellence with a simple shift in mindset with one question: how many people am I able to benefit through being perfect versus striving for excellence?  How approachable is perfect?  The perfect things in this world are put on a pedestal and left unchanging whereas going for excellence allows us to see the best of ourselves for what we are and not for what we aren’t.  That isn’t to say we don’t need to grow, but we teach ourselves to grow where we thrive best.  We don’t blame the fish for not flying. 

In order to be happy, we need to accept and become the greatest version of ourselves, not the version we’d put behind a glass case.  Happiness implies doing, not looking a certain way.  Happiness also implies being with people who bring out the best in us, because happiness is also about feeling our best so we can do our best.  Don’t hold back when it comes to our lives, especially our dreams.  And if we are lucky enough to be given a specific passion or goal, then we need to pursue that at all costs.  The magic really comes when we approach a goal like that with complete focus and abandon.  When we do that we learn to tap into something that is uniquely ours, something that no one can take from us or change.  That happiness develops and emanates from the inside, from the core of our being.  No one can stop that, in fact, it’s contagious.  We can’t be afraid of failing at who we are.  We can’t hold ourselves back from who we are meant to be because we stifle the fire inside of us.  So let it out and allow the happiness to overflow.           

“We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments,” Maslow.  The self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.  I’ve dealt with a subconscious fear of attaining a goal and then losing it my entire life.  Afraid that I was a fraud, that I’d somehow be “found out” and discovered that I couldn’t deliver on what I promised, that I couldn’t be who I said I wanted to be.  So I procrastinated and delayed even deciding who I wanted to be and I blamed others for making that choice for me.  I let ego get in the way for fear of what people may do and say about me and focused on controlling those opinions instead of on developing myself.  As soon as we shift that focus on the outside and our motivation becomes external, we are at the mercy of other’s whims.  We will never be able to fulfill someone else’s ever changing idea of who and what we are supposed to be.  We will never find our own ideal of who we are supposed to be, and we will certainly never be in touch with that authentic version if we are listening to every else’s voice but our own.

Being honest and going for a goal exposes us and makes us vulnerable to outside opinion and interpretation—but we can choose to not internalize that.  We can choose to not self-sabotage and allow the actualization of our greatest dreams.  We fear that actualization because we are afraid of losing what we know.  And, as we talked about yesterday, that comfort zone becomes suffocating if we allow it.  When we try new things, we expand that comfort zone and soon we become more familiar with the things that bring us closer to the greatest version of ourselves.  That isn’t to say that the greatest versions of ourselves don’t come with responsibility, but as we try new things and develop new perspectives, we learn that the definition of perfection changes over time—and we learn that perfection is irrelevant anyway.  When we do our best and we work to fulfill our purpose every day, that is enough.  When we apply our gifts and impact as many people as we can, we see that is a perfect moment.  Ironically our most perfect moments have nothing to do with being perfect—they have to do with being present and complete acceptance.  That automatically brings us to our best.      

The ego is a tricky thing, simultaneously what inspires our growth as well as what hinders us.  Without it we are unable to find our sense of self in the world and discover/unleash the gifts we can share with the world.  But it can go the other way and create the basis for our decisions in that we choose our actions based on what we think others will think—not on what we know or feel.  In that regard, when we feel that fear, that is when we hold ourselves back and tend to stick with what we know rather than expand.  And we are also afraid that we won’t be able to live up to that expectation, the image we have in our minds.  When we learn to relax, to harness that energy, and to be who we are, then we see that perfection isn’t about an image or a specific goal.  It’s about a feeling, a warmness, a welcomeness, a feeling of completeness where we are, as we are.  We don’t need to fear losing those moments either, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  As long as we are honest with ourselves and authentic in all ways, we are already achieving our highest self.  Let’s put aside the fear and allow the space for growth—and that encourages the rest of the world to be their best as well.  So let’s allow the space for us all to actualize and become a different version of who we are and the greatest version of who we are is suddenly here.  That is nothing to fear, and nothing we can ever lose.