“Success is not about believing in yourself.  It’s a comfort with embarrassing yourself,”  In the vein of permission and a slightly different take on success, let’s talk about putting ourselves out there.  There are so many things to learn out there we can’t possibly know them all—and we can’t learn them until we get our hands in there and experience it.  If we want to go for something and we’ve made the decision to do it (see yesterday’s piece about permission) then we need to allow ourselves the experience of learning.  Expecting perfection on the first time out is unrealistic and mistakes don’t mean that we need to give up.  We need to incorporate the lesson and try again.  And fail.  And learn.  And stumble.  And fall.  And pick ourselves up.  And keep going. 

I personally feel like success is measured by an extreme belief in oneself, more specifically a belief that we can figure anything out even if we don’t know all the answer snow and we can’t see all the potential issue of what is to come.  But I thought the quote was still an interesting take on what it means to be successful.  We don’t start out successful, we start out with an idea.  That idea doesn’t even have to be really well founded—it just needs to be tested.  We have to be willing to go through that experimentation to learn how to make it better.  So moving into success isn’t paramount on that initial belief.  We can foster belief as we go no matter how silly we look.  At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how we look on the journey—it’s developing comfort in discovering where we are going and how we feel when we get there. 

“The question isn’t who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me,” Amy/Ayn Rand (found attributed to both).  In the funny way the universe works this quote popped in twice for me and I took that as a sign I needed to follow the insight as well as talk about it here.  I have a coloring book for stress management filled with positive affirmations.  The last time I colored in it was over a year ago and I remember leaving off on the picture stating “Start where you are.”  I felt like picking it up again last night to work on it.  The back of each piece has a quote and I noticed it said what I opened this piece with.  I loved it, I wrote it in my journal and I was thinking about working it in this week.  I woke up this morning and I pulled my cards and they talked about surrendering, trusting the universe, forgiveness, etc.  It got me thinking about where I’m at and what the next steps in my life look like.  What happens next.  I turned my calendar and today’s quote says the exact same thing as in the coloring book last night.  My jaw dropped and I got full body chills.  There is no way that wasn’t meant to be, for me, for me to share, in this exact moment.

So let’s dive into it.  I was definitively raised to do what I was told.  To ask permission.  To listen to the teacher.  To listen to the adults in the room.  Not that I didn’t rebel against it, but I always followed that rule on the major stuff—curfew, homework, going where I said I was going, asking before I did or joined anything.  Recent events at work and home have led me to believe that this may be something I need to work on.  I wrote a few weeks ago about taking a chance and going for something I wanted at work.  I haven’t heard anything about it so I feel like I lost a little steam in that regard.  My husband and I got into it and he brought up confidence in general.  My husband is confident no matter the situation—he believes he will be able to figure it out no matter what it is.  I have confidence to speak my mind and voice my opinion and step up for others but when I face resistance I tend to back down.  I revert to asking permission again.  This has been a point of contention for some time now in both my personal and professional life.  There comes a time when no matter what we need to stick with our gut.  It doesn’t matter if we’re 22 and starting out on our own, 16 trying out for a team or group, or 40 and changing careers.  I have a voice, I just need to use it consistently and believe it.

All of the things that have taken me furthest in life have been borne of taking a chance and stepping out of my comfort zone.  The rest has been formed with practice and dedication to a task.  But the things done with passion and zeal were always from a different place, deep in my gut.  I know in those moments I didn’t question anything—and I certainly didn’t ask for permission.  I figured it out.  No one has power over us—we are the only ones who allow it.  Even if it’s a thought festering in our minds from something someone said, that is our choice to replay it.  Our mind will hold us hostage if we let it.  We need to decide and once that decision is made we need to keep going.  There is no allowing in this world, it is only the perception that we need to be allowed to do something.  Once we find our purpose we need to go for it, it doesn’t matter what other people think and it doesn’t matter who thinks it.  We are responsible for our lives, for our happiness, for where we go.  The only person that can stop us is ourselves.  Even if it seems to be for a good reason, it is only us who says we can’t do something.  Taking that step can be terrifying but I’d rather be scared for a minute than feel regret for a lifetime.   

There’s this misconception that people who stand up for themselves are bold and brash and the loudest in the room.  Sometimes that is true but more often than not, this type of resolve is experienced in the quietness of our minds and the ability to follow through, articulate what we are doing, or in walking away from what doesn’t align or support who we are.  I don’t need to be loud to feel strong in who I am.  I also don’t need to be tested and pushed in my boundaries.  It’s ok to walk away from what doesn’t work.  It’s ok to decide to try something new.  It’s ok to make the right choice for ourselves no matter what.  We have one chance here and it makes sense to make the most of it for what feels right to us, not what someone else says is right for us.  What have we been waiting for?  What are we asking permission for?  Where can we put aside the weight of someone else’s opinion and simply be content to go after what lights us up?  No one can stop any of us from that.

We are not contingent on what others think of us.  Sometimes a chance conversation, a moment we didn’t plan reveals more than we expected, another level.  Sometimes the last person you expect to understand ends up seeing right through to the core of the issue—they see something you’ve seen too.  They speak your language in a way you’ve been looking for.  This person says something just so we understand that we aren’t crazy.  Someone who sees what we haven’t said, what we have been trying to say all along.  They cut to the core, the root of the issue, not to make us bleed but to cut away all the other crap people have made us feel about ourselves.  It takes a certain level of understanding to see that those who are hurt and desperately looking for an answer can sometimes come across a little feral.  They can see that those who don’t share all they feel may be hurting the most, or protecting themselves.  They also cut through the bullshit and see that even if we feel scared or angry or if we have trauma that prevented us from incorporating and understanding how to make a lasting, genuine, accepting human connection, that it doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility of owning our shit. 

I don’t want to continually spend the rest of my life on the precipice of what if, the limbo of does this person want me or do they not?  Am I good enough as I am?  Are we too different for each other?  How do we resolve this if we can’t talk about it?  Why doesn’t this person want to talk about it?  What about owning their mistakes makes this so difficult for them?  Is it because when they’ve made mistakes before they were shunned?  Is it because the key people who were supposed to be there for them couldn’t accept them and couldn’t help them be who they were meant to be?  I don’t need to be someone’s all—I want us to be all on our own.  But I also can’t settle for being someone’s maybe.  It’s the maybe that hurts.  The waiting that hurts.  I’ve spent most of my life waiting for someone else to make a decision and then I would make my move.  Ever the people-pleaser I needed to make sure they were happy with their decision so then I could make mine.  But now it makes me feel different.  The waiting makes me feel less than.  And I can’t make someone take responsibility for their role in a position they accepted but no longer want to work for.

I’m learning to accept that when someone makes us the option, we are to remove ourselves from the situation.  We will never be able to make them love us a certain way, or feel any particular way about us.  If they don’t have the desire to work with us or to own their portion of the relationship, then as challenging as it is, we need to remove ourselves from the situation.  If we are an option to them, we can’t treat ourselves as an option.  We all have so much light to offer and we can’t let if fall into the abyss of someone who runs hot and cold, someone who doesn’t even know who they are.  Someone who went along for the ride, accepting the life built together only to discover that they didn’t want it at all.  It’s painful to discard that type of work after that many years.  We need to find strength in who we are.  We need to hear what someone on the outside says and take it to heart.  Sometimes we are too close to the forest and we can’t see the trees.  Sometimes the ones we thought planted us really only buried us, or they trimmed the bloom when it got too big.  I have a lot of light and a lot of growth to share—and still more growth to come.  I don’t need to wait for someone’s approval to grow.  We just need to grow, we need to be that voice that tells us we aren’t crazy.  Know our worth.  Know when to walk away.  Know what is worth nurturing.         

I am an Aries, born to two Aries grandfathers.  One I knew, one I did not.  I am part of the one I did not know in that I am creative and entrepreneurial and driven and stubborn.  I am like the one I knew in that I am determined, I am hard working, and I love and accept people and want them to succeed.  I am both of them in that I have my limits—I will give chances until I can’t do it any longer.  I had no say in the matter, this is truly a part of who I am.  In relationships there is an acceptance of life—accepting friends as they are.  I am who I am.  We can’t change anyone.  We can’t fight anyone on their natural course, their path.  But when it comes to boundaries, we need to question if we are staying because we are familiar or if we are avoiding some other form of rejection.  I faced a lot of rejection as a child so I struggle to maintain boundaries because I want to be friends with people.  I am flimsy with them, wishy washy in decisions, always wanting the other person to make the choice first so they aren’t upset.  That is not the trait of an Aries person. Believe me when it comes to temper I am all fire and venom and rage.  It passes quickly but you will get burned if you get too close.  I love as fiercely.  And sometimes, even in love, if you get too close you get burned.  Even a fire sign can get burned if they stay too long in their own flame.

We don’t have much choice in the matter when it comes to how people are.  People are capable of changing depending on their goals and where their focus is, but they will never change for someone else.  We are responsible for our own happiness, our own reactions.  We are responsible for who we allow in our lives.  Relationships mean accepting the responsibility for allowing others to be who they are and not expecting them to be anything else.  We can’t expect people to be who they are not.  We can’t make them do what they do not want to do.  We can’t make them feel a certain way about us or agree with us on a specific topic.  If all of that aligns, then great.  But when we disagree we have to practice allowing.  We can’t turn people away if they aren’t 100% on par with us.  That isn’t how life works.  We must accept all of people.  It’s far easier to work with people if we understand and simply allow them to be.  If we allow ourselves the same grace.  I tried to make people be a certain way with me for a long time because I didn’t want to get hurt and I thought controlling how they behaved would control how they treated me.  But we have to surrender and allow that person to be who they are.  Just as we have to surrender and allow who we are.      

So in those moments when I don’t know where to go, when I am trying to run by standing still (like in yesterday’s piece), I feel that fire leeching out of me and I am hurting.  I am sensitive.  I am struggling to find the balance between ego, boundaries, flexibility, and giving.  Perhaps some of my boundaries are too stringent.  I protect my heart and I am sensitive to whether or not people accept me so I am quick to cut people off who make me feel a certain way.  I can tolerate some of what they do, but what is done to me, I put up a shield and it is virtually impenetrable.  What happens when a heart of fire turns cold?  It doesn’t know what to do—indecisiveness is also uncharacteristic of an Aries.  Indecisiveness will get the best of any sign but for those signs based in action,  it is particularly frustrating and draining.  There are times when we need to either move or we need to slow down.  The question of which depends on the situation.  When are we hurting through non-action and when is moving creating friction? I often wonder about where I come from because these genes, and this does come from someone.  I wonder how they would handle some of the same situations I have faced.  I wonder if they ever felt as I did.  As I walk their footsteps in so many ways, as I forge my own path, I feel less alone knowing these things came from somewhere, as unchangeable as other people are.  It’s inevitable.

“Some people run away by packing their bags.  Others run away by staying in the same place too long,”  Richard Gadd (Baby Reindeer).  I’ve heard and read some incredibly powerful quotes and they often give me pause—a few have stopped me in my tracks.  This one was full stop, slap in the face, reality is here.  Certain things resonate with us at certain times in our lives and this is one of them for me.  I needed to hear this in the midst of the circumstances going on between work and home right now.  Doing the same thing, being the same person every day only gets us more of the same.  If we are happy in that regard then it isn’t an issue.  If we aren’t happy or if it seems the weight of holding up something not meant for us to hold in the first place becomes too much, then we need to consider why we stay. 

The human brain is an amazing thing.  It can convince us that we aren’t capable of changing the circumstances.  That we are meant to stay where we are.  That is too scary to move forward whether on a goal or on what to eat.  It is capable of showing us the most beautiful dreams and tearing us down.  I’ve experienced both kinds of running away.  The kind where we think the answer always lies somewhere else, anywhere else but where we are.  That we have to know it all and that if we let down our armor we will be vulnerable so we can’t stay in one spot.  I’ve also been the one to stay where I am for an unhealthy amount of time, both out of stubbornness, and out of fear, and out of hope that things will change.  Right now I am in the same place. 

I’ve created so much work for myself saying that it’s all for my family, that I’m trying to build a better life for them.  That is true—but how much of this is also so I can avoid the reality of the differences building in my home?  How much of this is trying to control what’s going on around me because I have no control over some major portions of my life (events at work, thoughts/beliefs from other people).  I’ve said before the human brain isn’t designed to stay in limbo, wondering what if, what’s next.  So we create a response and either flee or root.  When we flee we still take the baggage of the situation with us if we don’t figure out where it started.  When we root, we like to think we are sticking out but we are avoiding what we can do to help ourselves.

The statement immediately begged the question of what am I avoiding?  It wasn’t a matter of running away through leaving, I knew instantly I was running away by staying.  By thinking I couldn’t do it on my own.  And worse, I know that decision, my behaviors and actions have mad other people stay where they are as well.  That was never my goal—that was my brain protecting itself by trying to be in control.  We have all done this at some point.  So how do we stop?  How do we stop running at all?  Facing ourselves is by far one of the hardest things to do.  Once the mask is off there is no where to hide.  There is a reality that we can’t avoid in that particular mirror.  I know that my legs are getting sore, both from the days I move, and from the days I hold myself hostage to whatever I’m going through in my mind.  We can move the mind—it shouldn’t move us.  So it’s time to unleash the chain and see how far I can go.  Will you go with me?    

Today I am grateful for catharsis.  I’m not sure how much of the story I will eventually share because it is still in progress, but my husband and I have had a tumultuous several weeks to the point where we knew we were going to have to make a decision about our marriage.  He and my son are on a trip with my father, my uncle, my brother, a mutual friend, and a group of my father’s friends and when they left I felt my whole world shatter.  The people you love leaving on uncertain terms is such an unsettling feeling.  I had a lot to process in those first few hours.  I went about my normal business, cleaning and organizing.  As I was putting things away, I couldn’t contain the emotion.  I started howling and crying like I hadn’t done in ages.  It felt like part of me had been ripped out, I felt nauseous with uncertainty about what we do next.  I cried for about 2 hours.  Once I pulled myself together, I finished planting some of my seeds and working in the dirt.  Then I did the dishes.  Then I worked out for over an hour.  Then I made myself some food—I hadn’t eaten all day.  That was my first meal alone in ages.  I went upstairs and I put laundry away, organized my son’s drawers.  Then I drew a hot bath with bubbles and salts and I sat in it for over an hour listening to healing frequencies.  I almost fell asleep a few times.  It was after that when I felt the weight fall off of me.  I can’t control what comes next, what decisions we will make individually and together.  But in that moment I could feel some peace. 

Today I am grateful to have a wish granted.  There are times they say be careful what you wish for—and it is true.  But even if those wishes don’t turn out how we expect them to, there is still something to learn from them.  I’ve often spoken of needing to be alone to figure things out.  I haven’t been without my husband and son for the last 7.5 years—we haven’t spent one night away from each other.  I haven’t spent one night away from my husband in nearly 17 years.  Even if people drive each other crazy, we get used to their presence.  So I have been looking forward to some peace being by myself, time to process and reflect while they were on this trip.  The circumstances of them leaving left me wanting and sad.  When you have that level of uncertainty, the not knowing makes loneliness a dangerous game.  Dark thoughts took over for a while regarding the state of my relationship and what I needed to do about it.  Fear.  Anger.  But as I processed through it, I realized that all couples go through rough patches.  Maybe not as bad as this one built around as much history, but they do.  As I was alone, I realized that I hated this kind of quiet.  That if I kept up my end of this bullshit I would be alone forever.  So I got my wish to have some solitude and quiet but it came with a heavy price.  A lot to work through.  We will see where it goes.

Today I am grateful to have the opportunity to learn about myself.  I’ve spent literally decades doing everything I’ve been told.  I’ve spent the last 7 years, moreso than in previous years, trying to keep our heads above water.  I’ve spent the last 3 years torn in so many directions, uncertain about which way to go, future projecting to see what the best path would be, splitting myself in no less than 5 pieces.  That kind of division leaves anyone empty and fearful.  It also leaves them exhausted and unable to process the day to day, to make their own decisions.  In the course of finding out about the quiet, understanding I am not a victim became key.  Understanding that I’ve repeated a pattern I learned about from my mother is key.  I have NO resentment toward my mom—she worked her ass off and she did what she could.  She repeated what she learned and she expressed what was done to her from my grandmother.  My mom took all of that shit and still is one of the most supportive and generous people I know.  But I can’t keep going down the victim path.  I didn’t realize how bad it was until I sat in the quiet and until a friend pointed out that this is where I come from.  All the splitting was my choice.  Yes, it was done for a reason, but it was a reason I thought I had to do at the time—I didn’t have to keep doing it.  I am grateful to see where I can change that behavior.  Make a decision.  No longer be the victim.

Today I am grateful to slow down.  Women in particular have the brunt of multi-tasking.  We are taught to wear the ability to multi-task like a fucking cape, like we have some super power.  They never tell us the long term consequences of lack of focus.  How it starts to feel like you can’t even complete a thought.  How it feels like you will never get everything done.  The frustration of starting and stopping things a million times.  Missing details and events and deadlines because of shifting priorities—then feeling guilty about missing details and events and deadlines.  The pressure to say yes and not knowing how to say no.  The anxiety of forgetting something, the clutter of sticky notes, notebooks, calendar reminders on the phone, actual calendars.  We are more than enough without having to be everything for everyone.  We lose pieces of ourselves as we try to maintain some image of what we are supposed to be—the idea that unless we can do it all without breaking a sweat that we have somehow failed.  The anger that comes when the stress wins—and it wins often.  The impact on our relationships, the resentment when it feels like the other isn’t doing enough.  The realization that it’s all a choice.  When we are forced to slow down, we are forced to reevaluate where we are—the choices we’ve made, whether or not it’s something we can change.  Our role in it.  What we really want.  We think we can take on the world and all it’s parts when all we need is to take on our part of the world.  Sometimes we need to slow down to remind ourselves that we only need to take one step at a time.  And that step simply needs to be in the right direction. 

Today I am grateful for connecting to myself.  I don’t know how to maintain it yet but I am aware now that accepting ease and allowing ease opens the doorway to allowing life, allowing what we truly want and who we really are to come to fruition. Embracing surrender and honesty about who we are, what we want, our capabilities, our ability to change—all of that is a state of what is.  Ther is nothing more we need to do than be with who we are in this exact moment. Being who we are will bring us exactly where we need to be.  When we allow what is, we allow life to flow, and as we’ve discussed many times, flow is where life actually happens.  It is here that we connect with who we are, knowing what we like and what we don’t like, what our preferred pace is, what we want to accomplish in life.  Ther is no pressure here.  There is no need to be and do a million things at once—to be all things for all people.  No, we simply are who we are and we are firmly grounded right where we are.  Sometimes we have to see the dark and embrace it in order to learn to step toward the light. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions,” Oliver Wendell Holmes. Ironically this was on my calendar as well as in The Leader Who Had No Title on the same day.  They say the timing of the universe is impeccable and everything happens for a reason when it is meant to.  Clearly this message is meant for us now. When we talk in terms of inevitability and creating momentum that can’t be stopped, we need to know that once we have opened the flood gates, we cannot close them again.  Once we have seen the other way we can’t unsee it. We aren’t meant to play small once we have seen the expanse of our imagination and our place to use it.  We are designed to grow and create and it is for that reason that once we see other options and know what the possibilities are that we are forever changed—unable to go back to what we once knew.  It is new experiences, new thoughts, new actions that shape and mold who we are.  Why would we ever want to step in the puddles when we know there is an ocean that awaits us?  That isn’t to say there isn’t a time for everything, a time when we need to walk even though we can fly—but this isn’t about discernment.  This is about continuing the path of progress and not forcibly shutting our eyes to drown out what we now know exists. 

The very point of growth is to experience new things—new is the catalyst for growth.  Big ideas don’t come from small minds so we need to ensure that the goal is to constantly learn and explore and find new things to be curious about.  That curiosity leads us to possibilities.  What is this world without possibilities?  How do we know what is out there, what we have the option to become if we are repeating the same experiences every day?   For those who are content on their path and find their purpose/fulfillment in a particular pattern, it can be challenging to discover new options.  Not only is this about frame of reference, this is about shifting belief.  Stretching the mind means being open and learning to accept not only our fallibility, but the fallibility of the entire construct we’ve been raised with.  It requires letting go of fear and taking steps to find comfort or trust in something new—or trust in our ability to handle something new.  There are the lucky few who truly find contentment on a particular path, they are aligned with a goal and they continue to expand on that front.  That’s how we create the masters we spoke of the other day. 

The real test of growth is when we continually and consistently seek out those opportunities to stretch the mind.  We seek the experiences to create growth.  So not only are we allowing change, we actively seek it because we know we will find more opportunities as we go.  We seek growth because we know it expands our foundation.  This isn’t to say we are seeking to destroy what we have built—we are simply working on new ways to add to what we’ve built.  We always have the choice to ignore things we’ve learned.  But making the choice to stay small not only prevents our growth, it can inhibit the growth of others.  We are meant to be a light for each other and if we keep our light dim, then others won’t find their light.  Once we see that light we can’t go back to the dark—we want to expand the light.  Once we know there is more out there, we feel the hunger for it.  We can only feed it through new action.  I hope when those tests come in our lives that we all choose to grow.  I hope we all choose to keep our eyes open and I hope we all choose to believe that we can handle whatever comes our way.  Embrace the shape of the new and learn to fill the space we are given—learn to create the space we need.  There are no limits.  

“Daily ripples of excellence become a tsunami of success,” Robin Sharma.  This is the compound effect.  The things we do add up whether we see the results immediately or not.  It’s about finding what works, it’s about honoring who we are, it’s about staying the course.  It’s about learning from what we’ve done the day before, and learning today, and learning more beyond that.  Compounding (😊) on our discussion yesterday, it isn’t about sharing a perfect idea.  It’s about perfecting it as we go, as we learn from it.  It’s about getting that little bit better every day.  Gong for it every day.  Committing to it and building on it every day.  Shifting our mindset toward that level of success is only sustainable in increments until it has built into something that can’t be stopped.  Taking a large leap is sometimes necessary but the mind isn’t designed to take on massive change all at once every day.  We are meant to integrate and allow ourselves to become a different version through adaptation. 

The amazing thing is that after the first hump in taking on these new thoughts, habits, it becomes a natural state.  Sharma suggests that it takes around 40 days—40 days of discomfort and tiredness, anger, frustration, fear—to allow the new way of being to become our new way.  Once we have adapted and integrated and accepted this new way of being, the rest is inevitable.  Once we align with that new way of being it can’t avoid us as it is naturally drawn to it.  We have become something else in the process, something that attracts what we’ve been hoping for.  Hope becomes a reality with focused thought and dedicated, consistent effort.  Often it provides a greater result than we could even imagine.  Sometimes a leap is necessary, but it is easier to sustain the long term changes through incremental steps.  We have a stronger foundation that way.  With a strong foundation, with each choice we make, we create and develop our opportunities for success to the point where we become successful.  Take a little step every day. 

“A genius idea alone has zero value.  What makes it priceless is the quality of the follow through and the speed of execution around it.  Even a mediocre idea excellently acted on is more valuable than a genius idea poorly performed,” Robin Sharma.  Following up on our talk about action yesterday is the idea that it doesn’t have to be a great idea to start, it just needs to be acted upon.  We learn more as we go.  There are millions of great ideas born every second.  How many do we know about?  How many are implemented at the personal level?  At the household level?  At the friend level?  At the community level?  Beyond that?  We talk ourselves out of sharing a good idea because we are afraid it won’t matter or that people won’t understand it.  We are afraid of what people will think.  We are afraid it won’t work—or that we may not know everything about it.  We build up this notion that an idea needs to be perfect in order to be shared.  That thinking limits what we are able to accomplish because we miss out on not only sharing the idea, but on the collaboration that we foster with other people.

Sometimes we aren’t aware of the impact we can have on others—and this goes for both positive and negative influence.  Sometimes we need to remember that we are the catalyst for a good idea.  Sometimes collaboration is the source of a good idea.  Otherwise we may simply need the fertile ground for those ideas to sprout.  The same is true the other way.  We aren’t always aware of how those around us influence our pattern to keep our ideas to ourselves, or to minimize it.  Having an idea that we feel passionate about needs to take precedence over what people may say about it.  We aren’t looking for perfection, we are looking for progress—we are looking for development of something.  Sitting on a thought that could greatly improve our own lives is foolish—and not sharing it our of fear is detrimental to our core.  That isn’t to say we don’t need practice getting comfortable with developing and then sharing those ideas, but more importantly we need to get comfortable building an idea and having confidence in ourselves to share it as it’s developing. 

A while back I spoke of the importance of understanding if we have an idea or a thought, a drive or something we are passionate about, it is with us for a reason.  It is ours to develop and create.  I remember sharing a story from Liz Gilbert about an idea she had for a book that she started and never got around to finishing. After some time a friend of hers started describing a book she was working on and it was the same idea.  From this concept Gilbert says she firmly believes that ideas are always around and have need to be expressed.  If we don’t take responsibility for the ideas that come to us, they will find someone else to bring them to live.  So trust that if it comes to us, we are entrusted to handle it.  Sometimes it isn’t about being qualified, it’s about being called.  Trusting our steps along the way.  Trusting ourselves to find the steps as we go.  Have the courage to start, to develop greatness, to define and refine the thought as we go.  That will get us infinitely further than sitting on an idea not acted upon.  It does nothing to keep an idea bottled up on the shelf or concealed in the mind.  Take the steps and allow it to unfold.  

“Lots of people have good ideas but the masters become masters because they had the courage and conviction to act on ideas; What makes greatness is white hot action around red hot ideas,” Robin Sharma.  I shared in my Sunday Gratitude that there is a different way of thinking when we get to a certain level.  After a certain time we need to do more than what we are told, we need to do more than perpetuate the machine.  We need to create new options and opportunities for ourselves, those around us, and for the business.  Expansion happens with new ideas targeting new issues or concerns.  It requires action in a different way.  We can become excellent at what we do, becoming an subject matter expert on anything with time and practice.  But to excel and go beyond that is to develop and create ways to expand that subject, to see it in a new light and find ways that it can apply to more people or apply to them in a different way. Part of becoming a master of our field is going after something new—knowing how to develop rather than simply produce.

Action can be a scary thing in the respect that action has the potential to change everything.  Action has the potential to make things different than how they are—or to expose how things really are.  Our lives are skewed by our perception so we are trained to act in a specific way in specific circumstances.  That is skewed even further when we throw in the perception based on our personal experiences as well.  So when an alternate approach seems the most logical, it’s natural to be a bit leery about taking that first step. Masters also don’t let the bumps in the road deter them either.  It’s the persistence to keep going through the learning curve and to keep trying again.  The spirit of collaboration and cooperation toward developing an idea is the persistence to keep going while shifting as needed.  It’s adaptability.  In short, it’s speed toward taking action and patience to develop the idea.  Stepping out of the prescribed course and recommending another path takes courage.  To act on it indicates a boldness and conviction in the belief of the idea we have.  We became subject matter experts through repetition and practice—and seeing where things could be improved.  We took chances to streamline our workflow.  But real mastery of the subject comes from taking our expertise and developing it into something more.  We release the fear of trying something new for the potential of something greater.  Courage and confidence come from taking action on those ideas and we naturally develop them—and in turn we learn and come up with more ideas and then we have the courage to follow those and so on.  Life doesn’t pause—it moves continuously and we need to take action when we are inspired versus when the time is right.  The time will never be right for everything.  We simply need to act on it when we have the feeling.  The difference between success and living the same life over and over again is the courage to take that action.  Create a new story.  Don’t just tell it, live it.