Today I am grateful for truth.  I understand that speaking truth is a scary thing when we’re younger because we’re worried about fitting in, we’re worried about being accepted, we’re worried about being likeable.  The funny thing is, the more we accept and learn about ourselves, the more we realize that other people’s opinions literally mean jack shit.  If we are just honest from the jump, we will find those who understand us and we understand that it isn’t about being liked by everyone, it’s about being with the right ones.  This weekend has shown me the value in speaking up.  I’ve realized that I only speak out to the people I feel safe with—like when we’re in a store and someone gets too close, instead of me standing my ground, I’ll bitch about it to my husband.  This has lent a somewhat child-like quality to me where people think they can push me around because I’m smaller—but I am 41 years old and I am more than entitled to my space regardless of what you think of me or your initial perception.  I deserve respect and I don’t need to back down.  That isn’t to say I need to be aggressive either, just that I can take my space.  Speaking truth is what creates that space for us and our truth will naturally attract those who understand it-our tribe. 

Today I am grateful for good conversation.  Over the course of the last several weeks, my best friend and I have taken a much more concentrated effort on connecting with each other.  We live in different states now but this is a friend who has understood me from the beginning—like since I was 6 years old.  We’ve both advanced into very busy lives and it was hard with the distance between us to keep up regularly.  Not that it ever caused an issue—we’d ALWAYS pick right back up where we were without a problem.  But as we’ve gotten older, we’ve realized that, while that’s ok and we’ve maintained the relationship, when someone means that much to you, you need to take the time to emphasize and learn what’s going on.  I’ve learned more about her over the last few weeks than I had for a long time.  I mean, believe me, we know each other, we care about each other, but with all the time and space between us, life continues and there are details missed.  Add that we are both hyper-independent and self-sufficient women who don’t like to “burden” people with troubles and we were missing things.  Like I said, when someone means something to you, you make sure to prioritize the relationship and I am so glad that I have.  This past week I’ve met with people on three separate occasions for lunch and someone said that when we see each other outside the office, there is an important window into ourselves.  And it’s true.  Conversation is an art that we are all too quick to dismiss.  Conversation is what brings us back to the moment and shows us what matters, the differences we have become doorways to compromise and learning, and the connection is deeper.  Conversation is the foundation of relationships.  I encourage everyone to open up and see what you can share and what you learn.  It changes everything.

Today I am grateful for reminders of peace and purpose.  Full transparency, as I write this I don’t have an ounce of peace about me.  I’m irritated.  I’m annoyed.  I’m angry.  I’m frustrated.  And there’s not one thing I can do about it.  I’m resentful because I can’t do anything about it and people still somehow expect me to take action.  Somehow still expect me to live on their timeline.  I’m pissed because my boundaries are being crossed by a person who literally doesn’t even have the capacity to understand that they are crossing boundaries.  So all I can do in this moment is remember that this too shall pass and there will be a calm at some point that will make me wish for the chaos again.  I have a purpose and if someone doesn’t understand that, it isn’t my job to make them understand, it’s my job to keep fulfilling my purpose.  So stay the course.  As annoying and aggravating and obnoxious as it is to have people try to push, we have to accept it and accept the fact that all we can do is our best and keep going.

Today I am grateful for life.  Life isn’t all pretty—there’s a lot of ugly right now in so many aspects and facets of the world.  There’s a whole lot of pain and anger and rage and I feel my own degree of that as well.  But it doesn’t have to be like that.  Life is beautiful in its own way no matter what’s happening and we just need to bear witness to it and be present.  It’s hard when we are in the midst of balancing our own battles and we have to navigate the challenges other people face as well.  There’s a lot of life out there and it comes in all shapes and sizes and all we can do is buckle in and enjoy the ride.  Not to suggest we are helpless by any means, in fact, quite the contrary.  When life shows us the ugly side it’s up to us to keep looking for the good.  It’s up to us to keep being an example of the good.  So no matter how rough it gets, I am grateful I have the opportunity to be here and make a mark.

Today I am grateful for completion.  This is another full transparency moment: Not one thing in my life is complete.  There are about 100 half-started projects around the house that need to get done that are driving me crazy and I’m getting pressure to finish things that have no impact on anyone other than to be their source of relief.  But this is an opportunity to focus on the good and there is always good in the struggles.  I am not ignorant to the fact that the issues I’m dealing with pale in comparison to some of what’s happening in the world, but I’ve also learned that we can’t play the comparison game to someone else’s struggle.  We ALWAYS need to keep perspective on our struggles yes, we need to know we aren’t the only ones dealing with issues, but the problems aren’t a competition.  No one has to be at a certain level of “issue” to qualify for help.  If we are overwhelmed, we are overwhelmed—we don’t need someone to validate that’s what we’re feeling.  So for now I want to focus on when all of this is done and try my best to deal with the things in front of me one at a time. I am one person and I am under no obligation to do more than is within my capacity.  It makes me uncomfortable to be hounded and pushed but even in those moments of discomfort, I am under no obligation to be more than what I can be in that moment.  If I’m functioning at 60% and I bring every ounce of that 60% to the game, I’ve given my all for that day.  And that’s ok.  I’m human.  It will all work out in the end. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The longest time in the world is between thought and action,” Loren Ridinger.  This is another one that hit me.  I looked back over my old journal entries as I’m working on a project and I’m seeing a pattern.  There’s a cycle of feeling a specific way, hyping myself up to make the change, then letting it fizzle out.  Years and years and years of the same story.  Truthfully it’s embarrassing.  Sure, I can say it’s all meant to be and it’s part of my journey—if it wasn’t, I would have made different decisions with a different outcome.  But the truth is, I feel a level of regret over wasted time.  I knew all the actions to take years ago—why didn’t I just DO it?  All the delay I’ve faced, all the fear and strain, the wasted breath of proving—if I had just done something different and acted on my thoughts, this would have been an entirely different story. 

This could take an entirely depressive tone, I know that.  Trust me when I say I’m not mired in depression or sadness in this moment.  Yes, I will say I feel the regret but this isn’t a pity party.  This is an awakening and I am proud to see that every day is an opportunity to change what we have done.  We can choose a different path at any time and the only thing causing the delay is ourselves.  I see the years I spent writing the same sentences, telling the same story, and I know that I could have changed that narrative at any time.  So sure, it’s frustrating to know that, but it’s also liberating to tell a different story.  All it takes is one new action to change the path we are on. 

We don’t know what we don’t know until we experience it.  All I knew at the time was to let things fizzle away.  This is a great reminder to make the change and when that excitement hits, pounce on it.  Grab it like a lifeline because there is power in action.  Sure thought drives us, it gives us the inspiration.  But it doesn’t get anything done.  That’s on us.  If we are the source of our delay, imagine how things will change when we fully embody that we are the source of success as well.  Instead of telling the same story, encourage a new thought and if we are brave enough to have a new vision, then just maybe we will be brave enough to follow through.  The world doesn’t change until we do. So don’t let the magic fade out because we are thinking too much.  It’s far easier than we think: just get started.

“You can’t manufacture greatness with one swing of the bat, you’ll have to take many swings,” Loren Ridinger.  This goes back to the idea of eating the whale in one bite.  So often we are led to believe that greatness happens because we think it will, that it happens overnight.  The key to becoming great is to become what we think is great.  Adapting takes time.  Learning to trust ourselves takes time.  Learning to become an expert with consistent results or to be someone who can handle the curveballs takes time.  It’s all part of the process.  We need to learn to wear the hats (or whatever article you prefer) with a degree of confidence before we can state that we know everything.  To that end, there is also a necessary degree of humility needed because we must always remember to learn.  We don’t know what we don’t know and unless we are willing to be a perpetual student, even of those things we think we know to the core, we will cut ourselves off from the opportunity to experience that greatness.

Another secret to greatness is that greatness is in the nuance.  It is in the detail.  We don’t want to get ourselves so caught up in the detail that we never take action, that is true, but it is also true that when we take the time to notice the details and all the things that create something (or an experience), that is where we shine.  It’s the little details that show we have gone the extra mile without taking another step.  That’s key because when we take that extra step, we show we understand.  We’ve lost the art of understanding in this world through the very desire to be understood.  We are so eager to be seen and heard that we have forgotten we are looking for connection which only comes from understanding.  And understanding only comes from connection.  We are on the same team and we all have the capacity to be great.  We’ve fostered an environment of competition rather than collaboration because we fear there isn’t enough for all of us to be successful.  Consumerism thrives on competition-life thrives on love.  We are not a commodity, we need love because when we feel safe in being loved, that is when we have the courage to take as many swings as we need to to become great.

The world needs greatness.  It demands greatness from every one of us.  We just mistook the idea of being great for the idea that we all had to be great in the same way—or that being great meant one thing.  We need greatness to develop and evolve.  We need greatness to feel joy.  But to get to greatness, we need to practice and we need to be safe enough to learn, we need to be loved enough to be encouraged, we need to be humble enough to be willing to be a novice, we need to be strong enough to keep going.  Learning doesn’t really happen by osmosis—it happens through action and application of what we know.  What inspires greatness in us?  What makes us feel great?  What makes us come alive where we forget where we are at because we are so engrossed in what we are doing that time doesn’t exist?  The world needs people who have come alive into their sense of self.  It’s our job to notice each other and to elicit the greatness out of each other.  Practice might hurt, a perceived failure might hurt, but nothing hurts more than holding our greatness inside of us.  Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable in greatness, either for fear of success or failure. Just allow and understand that it all teaches us.  Both sides, good and bad, show us what we need to do.  Learn to be great by learning to be entirely who we are. It’s up to us to welcome that version of ourselves.

“Life is the culmination of all the little decisions we make.  When you break everything down to its smallest components you’ll see minutes are just seconds, mountains are just rocks,” Loren Ridinger.  When we look back on our lives including (or perhaps especially) including those moments we never thought we’d survive, we’ve made it through all of them. I’m not talking about the specific outcome because I am one of the first to admit that not everything has turned out how I thought it would.  I am talking about the statistical truth that we have survived and thrived in the face of anything we thought we couldn’t.  The mind is an amazing thing and it can talk us into anything.  From how small we feel to the boldest leaps we can take, that all starts in our mind.  When we look at where we are at in this moment, we have to accept this is the result of every decision we have ever made.  All we have done has brought us right where we are.  We didn’t eat the entire whale, it was one bite at a time. So when we get overwhelmed and feel like there is so much on our plate, more than we can handle, just remember that, at its core, any problem is solvable.  Nothing is as big a deal as we make it so when we see the rocks, kick them aside before we create the mountain. Anything is achievable when broken down to its smallest components just like we can get anywhere we want to go one step at a time.  If we feel lost and aren’t certain about what to do next, just remember, if we got here with uncertainty, imagine what can happen when we listen to what we KNOW to be true, and know we can’t go wrong.  So just take one step and then the next.  It will all make sense.

“Stop settling, make peace with greatness, and war with mediocrity,” Loren Ridinger.  If we convince ourselves to play small, it’s all too easy to believe a version of ourselves that isn’t real and it’s all too easy to settle. It’s all too easy to get stuck right where we are.  Extricating ourselves from the box we’ve buried ourselves in takes a lot of work and it is painful.  We never realize how insidious the act of burying our true identity is, how easily it infiltrates our beings and tells us that we aren’t good enough to have what we want.  There are times the idea of being bigger than who we are is scary even if we feel like something bigger is calling to us. The weight of doing something else feels heavy at times because we put the pressure on ourselves to do it 100% perfectly, as if becoming someone different is as simple as changing our clothes.  Being great is work and it takes effort—specifically effort different than what we’ve done before.  We convince ourselves that effort is too much and we learn to settle not realizing it’s often the fear of being great that makes us settle in the first place.  The fear of outright failure and not coming closer or even the fear that we can do it and we will eventually fail.  We are also afraid that it can be a fluke and that we won’t maintain what we’ve achieved. 

The truth is we will never achieve anything if we continue to settle for the scraps around us.  I want to be clear that settling is very different than working with what we have.  The person who settles is the one who decides what they have is good enough when they know the slightest bit of effort and energy could get them something that fits even better.  Working with what we have is using the resources around us to create something aligned with who we are.  We trust our instincts and if something doesn’t make sense we call it out or we walk away.  I spent enough time trying to be a version of myself that wasn’t real.  It was a bunch of bits and pieces of things I liked from others around me that I tried to fit in one package so I would be palatable to the masses.  I felt the truth of who I was and I knew what I wanted to do—I simply had to do it.  I had to put aside the fear that I couldn’t do something I knew I could.  I had to be ok with the fact that it might not be perfect but getting it done was better than doing nothing.  Having something done 100% that is imperfectly but totally me is better than a half completed copy of what someone else did. 

We can have the life we want.  We just have to believe it.  We have to accept that we are worth the greatness of what we want and we need to understand that the definition of greatness is different for everyone.  The things I enjoy may not be what you enjoy and what I feel makes me happy or what I am called to do is different than what does it for you.  For so long we convince ourselves the war is with everyone outside of us.  We think we need to spend our time either proving we are right or proving we are worth what we want.  The reality is we are fighting that battle in our minds.  We need to fight the voice inside that tells us we can’t have more or that we need to earn it.  Sure, we will have to put in the effort to make what we want and we have to be flexible on the how sometimes, but that doesn’t mean stopping when it gets tough, it doesn’t mean taking what is thrown our way as all we can get.  If we have a vision of something else then we need to stick with that because that’s what shows the universe that we can do it.  It is what we do that brings about the result-so if we are looking to achieve more, we must do more.  If we want greatness, we must do great things.  If we settle, we will get what we get.  There is no judgement in any of that, this is just a reminder that we get what we put into it so don’t buy into the idea that we can only get what is tossed at us.  We can make it magical.      

“You need to unsee the vision of yourself as not good enough and learn to walk away, not because you’re lost, but because you’re found,” Loren Ridinger.  This one almost made me cry because I had to consider not only had I made myself play small, but the fact that I was playing small because that is the version of myself I was most comfortable with—and I had done it to myself.  I saw myself as incapable because I believed all the crap people said about me even when my soul knew differently.  This past summer I was given the opportunity to walk away from what I knew and start over entirely.  I’d been struggling with various stressors in my role and had been considering doing something new for work for a while but nothing seemed to make sense.  Nothing really clicked.  Every chance I took was met with a no and I really internalized that I could never be anything other than what I was.  I settled even when settling felt wrong.  No matter how big the vision I had for what I wanted to do, I couldn’t seem to follow through.  Every no felt like a chip in the armor until I had no clue who I was and I internalized that as well.  If no one is willing to give me the chance then clearly something is wrong with ME.  I never considered that each “no” was because I was going for things that weren’t meant for me anyway.  That small shift in mindset is what it took.

Once I understood and believed that the opportunities that are for us will always find us, I had to consider that it may be the case that I was going for things that weren’t for me, not that I wasn’t capable.  Ability had nothing to do with it—it just wasn’t what was right for me.  I’d spent years doing things I didn’t want to do all for the sake of proving I could do them and I was miserable.  People were treating me like crap, taking advantage of the fact that I had no issue working hard to get the job done even if it was doing things that had nothing to do with my role.  I woke up once I saw that even if I did what everyone wanted me to, I still wasn’t getting credit and soon it became expectation that I would do what they told me. Once my reputation started being questioned, I knew I would never be defended or promoted or even advocated for on my side.  It was that degree of being buried that made me realize I couldn’t continue on that path if I ever wanted to breathe as myself let alone be happy.  I’d always had inklings of where I belonged, I had an idea of what I wanted to do so I could shift my path.  And the timing was finally right to take the opportunity to do something entirely different than what I was used to.  I couldn’t play small anymore because the things I wanted wouldn’t come from doing what I’d been doing already.

I had to let that vision of myself come to fruition.  Even if it was still fuzzy at first, I had to take more steps toward what felt right in my soul versus toward what my mind was telling me I SHOULD do.  Like we talked about yesterday, I had to reconnect with that 8 year old version of myself and take some of that confidence back.  It wasn’t just about walking away and settling for the next thing—it was about the timing being right for the door to open to what I knew I wanted.  I had been asking for an entirely different lifestyle and I had to trust that what I wanted would find me, that what I wanted, wanted me as well because it was what was meant for me.  And find me it did.  I had a moment where I almost said no because it meant turning my life upside down, it meant putting away the work I was used to, the title I had striven for, and walking away.  I had wanted to get rid of some of my stress and I finally understood that to do that, I needed to walk away from what was causing the stress.  I could have kept going on that path but it was taking me nowhere near the person I wanted to be.  So I had to walk away and believe it was because I knew myself well enough to take the chance that was right for me.  That’s how it starts sometimes—with taking a chance to stop doing what we know makes us miserable and opening up to what feels better.  We can only find our path if we start walking it and in order to do that, we must stop walking on the one we’ve rutted into our brains and beings.  Let me tell you, while that first step out of the rut is scary and comes with its own trials, it is the single most exhilarating step toward authenticity we can ever take. THAT is where we are found.

“Playing small doesn’t protect you, it steals from you,” Loren Ridinger.  When we’re kids we are fearless.  I shared the story when I was 8 years old and I wanted to walk home on my own and how mad my mom was that I wouldn’t let it go.  Or how my friends and I would go into town on our own.  Spend the day at the library or even hanging out in the creek.  It wasn’t uncommon for us to be wild like that, exploring, creating.  My own son wants to walk home on his own and we are in the process of teaching him how to do so safely.  I don’t remember at what point I started losing trust in my ability to do things on my own, when I started listening to the bullshit I was being told about my “weak” points and what people thought of me.  I don’t remember at what point I felt like I had to fight to prove myself and started wasting my time showing people they were wrong about me.  And I don’t remember at what point I started to believe the things they thought about me.  As soon as that happened, all that confidence seemed to evaporate.  Being nice and accepted became more important than being seen as me.  Regardless of when it happened, I can tell you I remember how awful losing that sense of self felt.  I didn’t trust myself to do anything I said I could and soon, I lost the ability to do what I wanted to because all I could hear was that I couldn’t do it.

 Society likes us to think in extremes—we have to either be larger than life or we make ourselves so small that we can slip between the cracks, unnoticed.  If we aren’t careful we will convince ourselves that it’s true, that our worth is determined by the number of people who see us and tell us we are valuable—and that is exactly the trap I fell into. It became easier to slide through the day unnoticed and quiet because I wouldn’t face as much ridicule or harassment from people.  I’d share the answers, speak up and talk about things I knew but I’d always leave space for being wrong.  When the overwhelm for being “right” hit me, I started keeping quiet even in those realms as well.  I do remember as I got older that the feeling of losing sense of self took over and I started compromising on what I said I wanted including going away to school.  It was those early choices (or not making those choices) that led me to extreme confusion and settling.  I stand by my choices in the regard of not taking a huge leap when I literally knew nothing about what I wanted to do, but if I could have taken the confidence of my 8 year old self and just said screw it and made ANY choice, I would have reinforced playing a bit bigger than I did. That 8 year old version of me would have never looked back for a second because that 8 year old version of me knew what was right for me more than I allowed the adult version of myself to.

Seeing the confidence kids have today amaze me.  The boldness in what they try out for whether it’s a sport or an instrument, something on computers or singing. I see their dedication to who they are and to me, that is admirable.  I’m working really hard to not instill the same doubt I felt into my kid because I know If we start feeling any sort of doubt in what we can do, we will doubt what we can do and question our confidence—and I don’t want him to doubt himself like I started to.  As soon as I had an inkling of doubt, it spread like a cancer and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  If we think our dreams aren’t achievable, we won’t act on them and then we struggle with confidence, we struggle with knowing who we are until we find ourselves in that box where we think it’s easier to play small and not draw attention to ourselves.  If we allow ourselves to stay in that box we may as well be buried underground and do nothing because we have just stolen our opportunity to live from ourselves.  We need to consider the idea that we have to dream so big it’s scary—and I will tell you putting ourselves out there after any period of playing small IS scary.  But we will get nowhere if we stay in that box.  If we can find that confidence we had as kids, the knowing that we could do anything, all that goes away and small isn’t even an option.  We need to remind ourselves that it isn’t for anyone else to understand what we do no matter what the consequences we can imagine—we need to understand our path because we are the ones walking it.  If we aren’t brave enough to go for what we want, that’s on us.  So don’t let our own thoughts talk us out of living the life we want.  Invite that childhood version of ourselves to come play for a bit today until we get some of that confidence back.    

Today I am grateful for resources.  I used to be afraid to spend money because of previous traumas surrounding family habits and loss.  I always thought I was being practical in saying I couldn’t afford things, that I couldn’t spend a certain amount of money, or that I didn’t have money to do certain things and I never considered that was demonstrating lack.  I needed to understand that, in all truth, money had very little to do with anything I wanted to do.  I had to learn that the resources we need to make things available to us and to make things happen are always around us.  By saying we couldn’t afford something, we were telling the universe we couldn’t do it and we inevitably never did.  But I’ve learned to reconsider my relationship with the resources available to me including money.  It comes down to understanding the energy we put behind our actions.  I’ve had to invest in my business several times to keep things going and I’ve seen people come and go from the business it was terrifying each time I had to make a large purchase while seeing people leave.  But every time something came through, I felt better.  Every time I invested in myself and something worked, it felt amazing.  It had nothing to do with what I was spending, it had to do with how I felt about what I was doing because THAT energy is where the real return came from.  Every time we need something, there is a way to get it, the universe always comes through.   

Today I am grateful for standing my ground and accepting who I am.  From a social aspect, most of this summer has been spent dealing with some people who have proven to NOT be who we thought they were.  We had to set some tough boundaries and accept some choices other people made in regards to our character and that meant the dynamic of the relationship changed for good.  When people show you who they are, believe them.  I’d put in a lot of effort to making the relationships with several of these people work because I am the type of person who will fight for what I care about.  I cared and I thought they did as well but it was proven again and again that they do not.  I have a rule of 3 where I will forgive a first mistake, I can even forgive a second mistake but I may not trust you, but I will not forgive a third mistake, especially after we’ve had the conversation multiple times.  I reached out to 3 of these ladies 3 times each basically to be told to deal with how I was feeling.  I ended up having a conversation with one of them and I believed it was truly productive but when I walked away I said to myself that I would believe it when I saw it.  Something was telling me to keep my guard up.  Sure enough, a few short weeks later, the EXACT thing I had said multiple times hurt me happened again.  You can’t say you care about someone and then continue to do exactly what they said hurts them.  It doesn’t work like that.  They are telling themselves a story about me that I know isn’t true.  Before I would have cared and cried, trying to make them see the truth so they would accept me.  I’m too old for that shit and the truth is, I knew what they were doing from the beginning.  So instead of playing small, I am standing firmly in who I am and I am FINE with it because I am fine with who I am.  

Today I am grateful for how I was raised.  I was raised to understand what it takes to be a good person up to and including admitting our faults.  Granted I may have taken the extreme on that one and saw fault with all I did, but I have never shied way from admitting when I was wrong.  It took one time in teen-dom of me NOT admitting what I did and seeing how badly it hurt the other person for me to know I would never do it again and my parents were right.  I carried that guilt with me for decades until I was able to apologize directly to that person.  Regardless.  We are human and none of us do things perfectly but it amazes me every time I’m around those who so blatantly hurt others yet still see nothing wrong with what they do—some of them even play victim.  So I was invited to a party hosted by someone who was essentially ostracized from our friend group and had other similar experiences to what I’m going through now and she has been the bigger person and opened her door to us and all the other people involved.  So I thanked her and her husband and told her I was sorry for what she went through at the time.  I remember in the heat of it, I had told the other people involved that they needed to speak to each other and communicate what was actually going on and no one listened and I was given the opportunity to tell her that.  The other people involved in this story who were also invited to this most recent event treated us like crap and I knew that even after the conversations I’ve had with them about how I feel and how I want us to move forward, nothing was going to change.  I can hold my head high because I know I’ve done my part to admit wrong doing and to repair it—they have not and that is on them.

Today I am grateful for witnessing who people are.  I want to add an additional piece to being grateful for how I was raised because, along with knowing what it takes to be a good person, I also learned to be really observant and understand who people are when they show us.  I can’t say I always believed it when they showed me because I was hopeful they’d live up to who I thought they could be so there were many incidents when I stuck around when I shouldn’t have.  That is part of why I became so selective and protective as an adult—I cut people out as quickly as they came into my life as soon as I saw that things weren’t going to change.  If I took the time to tell people I cared about what I felt and they dismissed it, it became easier to just let them go.  So I know the effort I put into my relationships and if you still want to show me that I’m on the other side somehow, that I don’t matter to you, so be it.  I’ve seen you, I’ve given you the chance, you decided to continue on.  I want to share that I understand this might sound like I’m expecting others to live up to my expectations and this is far from it.  This is me understanding that relationships take two and if that relationship matters, we don’t do things that hurt the other party.  When one person says they are hurt, we do what it takes to repair and avoid hurting them again. If they continue, trust that is their character.  I am grateful for witnessing it firsthand because there are people who have the chance to do things behind our backs and I would much rather know the truth—always.  It makes me feel safer knowing the reality even if it’s painful.  So I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to see for myself and to make the choices on what to do next. 

Today I am grateful for health and healing.  Staying the course on doing what is right for ourselves is often more challenging than we think.  If we aren’t raised with health and wellness as a priority, it’s challenging to make that a priority.  Every step I’ve taken on this path to healing has felt like truth for lack of a better way to describe it.  There are layers to healing, there are cycles to it where we repeat behaviors we know are wrong, which became frustrating for me because I felt like once I had made it through something I was working on it was done.  We are never done but that isn’t a bad thing.  Evolution seeks the best outcome and we are evolved to a point where we can decide what we want our story to look like, how we want to feel, what we do, what we want to change.  We are evolved to steer our own course and that means everything from our mindset to what we eat.  Health and healing are the singular most important things we can do because until we are healed, we will continue to hurt.  Once we realize that the hurting is a choice, we can choose differently.  No, I don’t believe people consciously choose the pain, they choose what they know because it is familiar and comfortable, not understanding it causes pain.  When we know who we are and we know what’s right for us, the choice isn’t even a question.  I am grateful to be me and to have my mind and body and to be the person I am.  I am grateful to know I am not perfect and that there is work to do because when I can say I’ve done the right thing to the best of my ability, I can also say I’ve done my part.   

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

“The demons in your head whispering doubt are just part of the process, you need to go to the process to become.  You can’t just arrive,” Loren Ridinger.  This is another one that’s a bit sensitive for me—or at least it brings out the sentiment.  To this day I never realized just how mean my mind can be.  I never saw how mean I was to myself.  There are things that go through my head that I would NEVER say to someone else because I know it would hurt them.  Along with that, I never realized how little I actually believed in myself.  I always knew I wanted approval from other people and I was dependent on their direction and validation to ensure I was doing the right thing.  That lack of belief is because I was never taught to trust myself.  I had very few people around me that I could trust implicitly.  The people I was supposed to trust made it difficult to truly do that.  When we have that level of doubt, it can feel impossible to begin something new.  It can feel like we will never succeed.  If it doesn’t happen right away then it feels even more like something is wrong with us.  But when I heard this quote, I looked at things a bit differently. If doubt is part of the process, what part is it?

I don’t have the full answer to that but I can say that I’m pretty sure the whole purpose of doubt (outside of survival instincts) is to conquer it.  When we are kids we aren’t afraid to try anything.  We believe we can do whatever we want.  I know I’m not the only one who tried to fly….  As we get older that doubt creeps in because we listen to the voices telling us that we’re doing it wrong because we aren’t doing it the way everyone else is.  We listen to the ones who made us believe we were less than or the ones who had no idea of what we were capable of.  So we are self-taught this self-doubt.  Because it is taught, we can teach ourselves to unlearn it.  I have to believe that the process is really about learning to eliminate false senses of danger.  I think it’s also about finding who we are and learning the full scope of whatever it is we’re taking on so we don’t get complacent in learning.  We need to have a sense that we don’t know what we don’t know but that we can learn whatever we need to. 

If we are teaching ourselves the skills we need to get to where we want to go through listening and fighting self-doubt, then we are also teaching ourselves what to believe in. The use of the word demons is powerful to me with the implication of the true darkness that can take us over if we let it.  There are influences outside of us and it is our brain that filters that information so when we are down on ourselves, it is that little demon of self-doubt that we are feeding—and demons need to be exorcised.  We speak of battles in our head and we speak of the importance of words because words have power.  I just told you how cruel I can be to myself—I know all of you can be just as cruel to yourselves too.  If we speak to ourselves like that then how can we win anything?  How can we win against ourselves if we set ourselves up to be beaten every time?  We can’t.  And we can’t get where we want to go without learning the terrain and walking through it.  We need to fight a few things along the way to know that we have a real handle on the situation.  The goal isn’t just to arrive, it’s to arrive transformed and transformation is a process.  Removing those demons is part of the transformation as well.  If we want to move forward, we need to be really honest about this: are we being honest with ourselves or are we being cruel/critical?  Be patient with the process of learning ourselves over again and challenge those demons over and over again until they have nothing to say and then go away completely.  Let it happen.  One day we will all speak kindly to ourselves because we will remember how important that talk is.  That in itself will keep the demons at bay.  So start talking.

“Blaming the past will become a distraction from the future. You’re not broken, you’re in the middle of becoming,” Loren Ridinger.  This is where I get a little sentimental.  I know yesterday I talked about letting go of the habit of blaming others for where we are in life.  I meant what I said: there are very real circumstances where people have left an irrevocable impact on us.  I also meant the second part that we have to eventually take responsibility and decide to move forward.  This is where the sentiment comes in: I know how hard it is to do that.  I know how much time it takes to heal. Hell, I know how much time it takes to even find the source of the wound. I know the layers we find and that just when we think we’re done, we find something else that tips us over the edge again. I know what broken feels like. I know what that place is where you want to move on but you still feel the same as you did all those years, the reactions are the same.  And I know how long we can stay in that place, stuck, paralyzed from moving forward.  I want to caveat the first part of the quote with looking back on the past will become a distraction. It isn’t just about blame, it’s about getting stuck where we are no longer living.    

We need to remember that there is no life in the past, no matter how real it feels, no matter how many times we play it over in our heads—it isn’t real.  The past are merely echoes of what happened or what existed.  Something that gave me comfort in that is the idea that there is finite information about the past: it happened and can’t be changed.  There may be new stories added but those too are history and do not alter where we are now.  I know some of us want to run screaming to be anywhere but where we are now, but we can’t change what we did then—we can only change what we do now.  The future is determined in this moment because we can make a new choice at any time.  We aren’t broken because we feel things about what happened.  We aren’t broken because we aren’t sure where we’re going.  No one knows what the hell they’re doing, some are just better at navigating.  The process of becoming new means the old won’t work—and that can make it feel pretty broken too.  So in those times we may find ourselves repeating hold habits, be grateful they don’t work out, be grateful it seems broken because that is a sure sign we are on the right path to something new.

Becoming feels vulnerable for all of us.  We have this grand idea of being settled and looking better than we did, feeling better than we did.  The truth is when we are in the middle of transformation we are incredibly vulnerable.  We haven’t lived in that skin long enough to know what feels right.  There isn’t one person who hasn’t struggled with their identity on some level, even if it’s as simple as trying to figure out what we want to do for a living, so we all know what this feels like.  We can leave a job we’ve had for a decade and start over in a new industry and it feels completely off.  We can either fall back to old habits, fighting the broken pieces that no longer work, or we can stick with it and keep moving forward until we find our rhythm in something new.  Because we will find that rhythm.  The more we trust ourselves and understand that this is all part of the process, the more we will learn to move to that beat—the beat we were always meant to follow.  The past is a teacher, yes.  But repeating the lessons over and over again never got us anywhere.  There’s a reason for the saying “History repeats itself” and that’s because when we tell or teach the same story over and over again, that’s all we know.  Don’t be afraid to step out and try something different.  Don’t be afraid to start becoming what we were always meant to be.  Let it break.