Like we spoke about yesterday, we seek validation for so many reasons.  Human nature related to the desire to belong or the desire to be heard, the desire to be right.  We want to know our existence matters and there are times we feel we’d do anything to KNOW we matter.  While I was working my 9-5 the other day, listening to music, I was brought into the moment with a line from a song by SpillTab-Velcro.  I’ve heard it a million times and I’ve always loved it but something in that moment caught me and I realized how important and significant it really is.  The line says, “Every other chance I get to go without you, I go out to see if I’ve lost my stride or if I still run; Betting on a plan with no variables I’m easily thrown by every little influence under the sun.”   It speaks to needing to know who we are, to not get so wrapped up in other people, overly attached to what they do, their thoughts and opinions.  We need our own identity no matter what.  We are ourselves first and always will be regardless of who comes into our lives. 

We bring our whole selves to our work and relationships and we create something new—we don’t immerse ourselves so deeply in something that we BECOME that thing or that we lose who we are to that effort.  We express who we are through these pursuits rather than use a pursuit to give us meaning.  It’s because we are connected with our work that we find purpose.  We guide ourselves and we keep our awareness of our direction, mission, vision, goals outside of what we do with other people.  We need to believe in our own strength and identity because at the end of the day, we stand with ourselves and we have to look at our actions and determine if they were right—we only know that if we know our own values.  If we are influenced by everyone else, then our best laid plans will never pan out.  We can have a goal, a singular focus, but if we take other’s input to heart too often, then we will never cross the finish line of our own goals because we will spend more time trying to incorporate and bend to what other people think is right than doing what we KNOW is right for ourselves.

We’ve previously spoken at length about what it means to seek validation outside of ourselves In terms of relationships and work and anything we do hoping to get some sort of approval from others.  We tie our worth to what we receive from the outside, what people think of us, and soon we become the chameleon, adapting and shifting and changing with each situation.  That’s the fastest way to lose ground on our personal identity.  Every now and then, even in the HEALTHIEST of situations, we need to take time to recenter and make sure our actions are aligned with our values and beliefs and that we aren’t doing something simply for the sake of getting a specific reaction out of people.  We always need to remain separate because the truth is we are not halves made whole by any other person—we are whole beings on our own with specific talents that require our mastery and knowledge so we can bring those skills to use in whatever we create.  No one will fill the gaps we may feel related to finding purpose—we must recognize those gaps and create the means to fully express what is needed.  No one can do that for us.  So go out and remember how to run to our own rhythm and don’t allow the outside to throw us off. 

“Don’t seek validation. Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.  Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.  Real success, real mastery, real sanity that comes only by tying it to your own actions,” Marcus Aurelius.  The real measure of success is knowing that we are doing better than we did yesterday.  As we’ve been talking about, competition and comparison serve no real purpose beyond creating an imagined hierarchy.  Let’s be clear: at the end of our lives, we all end up in the same position—a body that will decay and fade away.  No matter what we have done in life, we all turn to dust and that is the great equalizer of this Earth.  Logically, that means there is no truth to the separation we create between us, there is no better or worse, there is no real power play.  We all need guidance from each other every now and then but that doesn’t make anyone different than us—we are all human and we all have something to bring to the table.  When we need someone to affirm our worth, we’ve lost sight of our role.  I think it’s fine to be ambitious and it’s fine to know our contribution to this world but playing the game of finding worth from outside sources and showing the world is a slippery slope to losing sight of our purpose.

Life is meaningful on its own.  We are here through an alchemical mixture of timing, genetics, creativity, destruction, hope, emptiness, wholeness, purpose, and endless potential.  There is pure magic in that and the fact that we are here is indication that we don’t need to achieve some arbitrary mark to prove our worth.  We don’t need to acquire a certain amount of things to show our value.  Expressing and contributing our gifts IS our value and we find worth in ourselves through learning to master those skills well.  Our safety and well-being can never be granted from someone else because we tie ourselves to their values and ideas rather than our own and our path becomes determined by someone else.  Do what feels right and learn to navigate the world through that feeling, an ever present connectedness that guides us to the next step. 

“Don’t be overheard complaining.  Not even to yourself.  Look inward, not outward.  Don’t complain.  Don’t meddle in the affairs of others.  When you see someone acting objectionably, remember when you have acted that way,” Marcus Aurelius.  The theme of looking inward and taking responsibility for ourselves continues.  I don’t deny that sometimes the world delivers what feels like unfair blows, bestows gifts to those we don’t necessarily feel deserve it (or we have an opinion on it—we’re human, we have ideas of who deserves what 😊).  But when we complain, we are stuck in a state of comparison, essentially saying that what we have isn’t right, it isn’t good enough, it isn’t worthy or something similar.  We’re essentially saying that we don’t belong where we are or the circumstances we are in aren’t correct.  The truth is we will never know that.  All we know for sure is that we only have control over our actions in the moment.  We don’t have foresight to how every circumstance will turn out—we aren’t meant to know every answer to everything.  That’s a lot of weight to carry.  All we can do and all we are responsible for is walking our path—and every step along the way is part of that path, the good and the bad.  We are human, we all make mistakes, we all have faults and flaws—and that is by design.  So why would we complain about things we can’t change? 

Another theme from this week is the concept of time.  Our time here is so incredibly brief, why would we waste any of it being upset about what we can’t change?  Why would we focus on what went wrong versus what we can make right?  Sure, we need to understand what went wrong to avoid similar mistakes again, but if we stay stuck in the wrong, we will never move on to what’s right.  We only have control over our reactions and our decisions and we never know the full story of what someone is experiencing.  Sure, it may look like the grass is greener elsewhere but we don’t know what that person endured to get there.  We don’t always consider that just because certain facets of other people’s lives look good that there are other areas where they struggle.  Often those with impressive gain have equally impressive losses either through taking chances or through some sort of lesson of fate that taught them to move forward.  It isn’t up to us to judge that person.  We never know where they are on their journey.  So yet again, the question remains, why would we waste time complaining about that which we have no control over nor do we fully understand?  We aren’t meant to understand it.

Our time is much better spent on activities that produce the results we ARE looking for.  We may not hit a home run our first time at bat, but the more we swing, we get closer and closer to it until we get our timing and power right to knock it out of the park.  We develop skills and resilience and strength and we learn to appreciate that other people have skills and resilience and strengths in different arenas than ours.  They aren’t competition.  There really is no competition in this world.  Man created it as a means to create a hierarchy and separation over people in an effort to control them.  We need to look at what we have in a different context.  What we have are the tools we’ve been given in our lives.  We’ve spent a lifetime building a kit to help us walk our paths and there will be a time our paths intersect with someone else, perhaps learning the same lesson, perhaps using our lessons as a stepping stone, and we will use those skills to learn something else.  So don’t worry about where we are on the journey—understand that we are on OUR journey and that looks different than everyone else’s.  There is no comparison for that, there is no one who has lived our journey before.  So keep going.      

“Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown.  Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus,” Daniel Chidiac.  If we have no control over other people’s actions, then why do we continue to show up and interact with them expecting them to change? When we’re younger, going to the circus seems like a fun thing, but as an adult, we tire of the façade, the sleight of hand, and he needless filler that wastes our time. If we take the time to express concerns about our relationship to the other party and they continue to engage in the specific behavior that caused the issue in the first place, that has become a choice.  That is crossing a boundary and outright disrespect.  Sure we can continue to bring up the issue to the person but if they aren’t going to take the time or put in the effort to change a behavior that causes distress, then that is a relationship that needs to be put to rest.  Why do we keep coming back?  We’ve been open and honest and they aren’t reciprocating and they certainly aren’t showing respect or regard for our feelings.  Expecting someone like that to change is futile.  So why do we engage?

I believe in giving people chances and I have probably given more than was reasonable in some situations.  I should have gotten the hint way sooner than I did and walked away from the scenario because it was clear where I stood with the person.  They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them—and there were people who clearly showed me who they were and I continually hoped they would treat me right or realize what they did and we could make amends and move on.  Some of those people did and some didn’t.  I equated my value to the ones who didn’t seem to want to treat me how any decent person should have been treated and I allowed my boundaries to be crossed repeatedly no matter how vehemently I said I would stick with them.  I needed the validation and I often never got it even after making allowances and going against my values.  That was one reason for going back to the circus.

The other reason comes down to self-esteem.  If we feel we can only have or are worth a certain type of relationship then we continually lower the bar until we can are stepped on.  If we have a healthy sense of self-worth and a firm sense of who we are, boundaries and values, we don’t tolerate the clowns in our lives and we certainly don’t keep buying tickets to go to the same show over and over again.  We know how it ends every time and we find better ways to use our time.  We find better people to direct our energy towards.  We find the worth within.  Some people simply won’t help who they are—I refuse to say can’t because anyone can change their behavior.  They feel they are who they are and that they can treat people like crap.  They can be disrespectful to others and themselves and not think twice about it and just because certain people may allow it, we don’t have to.  Who we surround ourselves with is a conscious choice and we all deserve respect and appreciation.  Anyone who isn’t holding up their end of the deal needs to go.  Stop entertaining them.  Life gets a whole lot better, more clear, more manageable when we get rid of the people running a riot act on our lives.  Eliminate the chaos and watch what happens. 

“Do not get upset with people or situations.  Both are powerless without your reaction,” Daniel Chidiac.  I unfortunately was one of those people who took everything personally and felt like there was a “right” way to do things and to behave in all situations.  Even if I hadn’t experienced them myself, I thought I knew what had to be done and I held people to it.  I put my nose in situations I had no business in, things that had no impact on me whatsoever, and when I wasn’t asked.  I liked control and I liked to show people how right I was all the time.  Not an attractive trait by any means, I know and I’ve long since reconciled the need. Regardless, I realize this is another waste of time.  We simply have no control over people and there are those who will fall in line and play exactly by the rules and there are those who will write their own rules and there are those who will go contrary to the rules simply because they can and there are people who just want to see what they can get us to do—they like to see how they affect people. My habit of reacting and correcting people had total power over me—instead of learning to control myself.  The entirety of the world had control over me—I ran around the mountain.

I want to be clear that there is a time and place to voice our opinions and concerns and there is a time to evaluate the people in our lives.  Sometimes we have to make tough decisions and cut those people out of our lives rather than try to control their decisions and reactions.  Sometimes we have to realize when we are the issue and our commentary isn’t needed.  People have the right to live their lives as they see fit whether we agree with it or not. We don’t all fit in the same box and we aren’t meant to.  Time moves too quickly for us to worry about what others do when it comes to things that have no impact on our lives.  Life is about freedom and we can’t truly be free if we run around the mountain telling people what they need to do when we’re heading to the same place—it doesn’t matter how we get there.  Sometimes those contrary people exist to show us another way.  It isn’t worth allowing a temporary situation to dictate how we feel and what we do.  I know I’ve made a fool of myself acting like I knew what path they were on when I didn’t even see my own. 

At the end of the day the only path we have control over is our own.  Reacting to everything only takes away from our own focus and takes away from our own power. Don’t give away power voluntarily toward pursuits that have no bearing on our course.  Keep calm, centered, and focused, and let people run their own race.  Stay in our respective lanes and deal with the course in front of us.  The amount of control we have over our lives is astonishing and the amount of progress we can make, the amount of life we can live, and the lessons we can learn on our own course is astonishing.  That’s the only course we need to know and the truth is, simply living our lives will create ripple effects throughout the world that we can’t begin to imagine.  Just because our footprints fade away doesn’t mean our echoes can’t be heard in the work other people do.  It’s a fine line between the things that matter and the things that don’t—and in terms of legacy, we won’t be here and we certainly won’t have a say in the stories people tell anyway.  So let people live and live our own lives, exactly as we are meant to.   

“Don’t suffer imagined troubles.  We spend so much time worried about how bad things are going to be, that we actually torture ourselves more than the thing we’re worried about every could.  We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” Seneca.  This follows nicely after our piece Saturday about using our energy to worry.  Why would we spend our time creating destructive scenarios in our mind?  Most of us would agree that is what we seek to avoid and we’d all say we want the best outcome yet our brains tend to anticipate what’s wrong with a scenario over what’s right.  As we spoke about Saturday, that is the amygdala’s function—prepare for what’s wrong so we are kept safe.  I spent a majority of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop no matter what I was doing.  I approached every day ready to fight, searching for the next thing to tackle in an endless circle of useless vigilance.  I’m not saying there weren’t times it paid off—I pride myself on my ability to handle a real crisis.  I mean, I should be able to handle anything considering how often I’ve already played that scenario in my head.  But was it truly worth my time?  All the time spent worrying over what might happen rather than simply enjoying the moment.  All that time trying to be someone else or to appear a certain instead of allowing the real me to shine. 

When we use our energy to worry or to create things to be troubled over, we live in a troubled state.  We’re in our heads far more than anywhere and negative thoughts make our minds a veritable prison.  We are aware of this and we all acknowledge that we know we need to manage our thoughts yet it still proves to be one of the hardest things to do.  Those neural pathways are engrained deeply into the core of who we are and changing that routing takes a ton of effort, focus, and repeated trials.  It’s a real challenge to focus on what’s right after ages of finding what’s wrong.  It’s a trauma response.  If we live our lives in an ever vigilant state, it’s because we never felt safe.  Maybe we moved around a lot as a kid, maybe there was addiction in the family, maybe we had to take responsibility before we were ready, or maybe we were just witness to things we shouldn’t have been.  Regardless of the reason, we never learned to settle in our own skin and trust that no matter what happened we would be fine.  We thought we had to control the uncontrollable and we thought it all fell to us.  That’s a painful existence and it’s exhausting.  That translates to bigger and bigger things as we get older, creating more things we have to take control over.

The world will keep going regardless of what we do.  Whether we think we win or lose, there is always another day and there always will be.  There will come a day when the sun sets on our days and eventually that memory will fade into nothingness.  So with such precious little time here, we need to truly consider from the depths of our souls why we are so keyed up on being perfect, on worrying over things that will have little impact in the end.  That is to discourage people from trying to have an impact, rather, it’s to remind people that the only way we can have an influence is to act on something, to DO something and, no matter what we do, it will eventually be interpreted differently than we intended or it will be left with the wind.  Live life and live it well.  We were given the opportunity to experience all this world has to offer and we should jump in whole heartedly because we will never get another opportunity.  Don’t waste time pretending the world is on fire because we see the sun.  Face the light and take the leap.  No matter what we will land and we will learn.  We can’t live our lives in a bubble—we will not arrive at the finish line unscathed so we may as well take the time to dance in the light.    

Today I am grateful for impulse.  I don’t always advocate for quick decisions based on how we are feeling in the moment but I’d be remiss in saying there aren’t times it’s warranted.  We decided to take a last minute trip to visit a friend a few hours away just for the hell of it.  I hadn’t seen her since July and we’ve been making a diligent and focused effort to reconnect with each other.  This has been my best friend for over 30 years so taking a few hours out of my day to drive over and see her isn’t a huge ask.  I mean, I know I couldn’t do it every day, but there is no reason why I can’t do this every few months, it’s not like she’s overseas.  She’s just a bit further over.  So making a last minute decision to go and visit and strengthen our bonds more is well worth it.  It’s nice to show appreciation in gestures like that and there was a time I may have decided that I couldn’t afford to do it or that I was too busy to go, but there are ALWAYS ways to get done what we need to. Sometimes we just have to get our of our heads and follow our instincts.  Believe me, it’s always worth it in the end.

Today I am grateful for getting back to the basics.  I’m starting a new series of pieces from the stoics this week. I’ve done a series like that before, but I feel it’s time for all of us to de-escalate a bit.  We need reminders to not get so heavily emotionally invested in what’s happening around us.  We are born with strength and opinions and ideas and a firm sense of right and wrong as well as a determined sense of purpose.  We don’t need to get lost in what other people are feeling nor do we need to do their feeling work for them or clean up after the messes created in emotional outbursts.  We need to learn to temper those emotions, to handle our thoughts, to regulate our responses, and to react with intention.  We are human and I don’t pretend that we are free of emotional reactions.  I’m saying we’ve allowed emotion to run things for too long and we’ve gotten ourselves into some pretty sticky situations lately whether socially, economically, politically, or from any other social construct that we need to shift our focus.  Our feelings are transient and will change—we need to stop making rapid fire decisions based on how we feel in the moment.  This differs from what I was talking about with impulse above—the impulse to connect is vastly different than the impulse to create strife between people because we feel our opinions weren’t heard.  So we need to recenter and refocus and put our efforts toward creating peace and hope and a place for use to express our given talents.  We need to learn to come together again and express opinions and not take them personally—we need to argue the idea NOT the person.  So we need to take a breath and remember WE run the show-not our opinion or feeling in the moment.

Today I am grateful for reminders that I can help.  In some cases all it takes is listening.  Change is challenging and when we witness the people we care about going through a change that they can do nothing about, when we see those we love feel helpless and trapped by something, it can be just as daunting for us as well.  I used to hide from the hard stuff like death, disease, the loss of the ability to communicate and flow.  I feared all those things and honestly they still scare me.  I still feel angry and helpless at the fact that we all deteriorate.  Sure, I logically know that there is a season for everything, we all have our time.  That doesn’t mean I have to like it.  And the fact that I don’t like it doesn’t mean that I can do anything to stop it.  So seeing the ones I love and looked up to start to get to a point where they need care and they are afraid and unsure of what to do next, it made me feel good to face those fears and stand with them.  I listened, I held space.  This isn’t said with selfish intent but the truth is their change is a change for me as well.  It’s the loss of the roles we played and what we knew for nearly our entire lives.  My heart mourns the close of a chapter of life that held so much meaning to me.  Sure there was conflict and not every day was perfect, but it was ours.  Ther comes a time we have to move forward without those we love and there will be the before and after, when they were here and when they aren’t.  And all we can do is be present for each other.  Nothing will stop the passage of time or the effects it has on all of us.  We just need to be there for each other.   

Today I am grateful for understanding.  Sometimes it takes longer than expected to get to a place of understanding because we’re dealing with a version of reality we expected to be a certain way.  The brain can’t reconcile what it thought against what is actually happening.  I’ve stuck with a vision in my mind of how I thought life should be and I haven’t been able to get there—I became stuck trying to backtrack and recreate the path, recreate the way I thought things should happen.  I had to accept that THIS is where we are.  My reality wasn’t the same as the reality in my head.  I lived on potential and dreams and drive, some days just pushing through on pure grit.  It would have been far easier had I taken in the reality around me and believed what I knew was the truth but didn’t want to accept.  I understand why I did that.  We all face varying degrees of trauma and my trauma led me to hyper fixate and control.  I felt safe thinking I knew the outcome.  I’d prepare for every scenario.  That’s a lot of pressure for one person to handle.  But I understand now that this is where w are.  We have to ask the question what we are holding onto and why and then we have to let it go.  That’s the scariest thing in the world.  The moment we let go of what we knew, the moment we accept the reality of what is and let go of what could be.  We have to let it go.

Today I am grateful for expanding outside of myself.  I built my little world around what I knew and what made me feel safe and what I hoped or thought I could control.  I fell behind the time.  As I said earlier I got stuck because I thought things had to go a certain way.  I’ve learned that life doesn’t play fair—and the first time I learned that lesson I couldn’t handle it.  I froze where I was, trying to figure it out, thinking I could start again.  We can’t live frozen in time, some new age-ish version of Miss Havisham.  The world moves on.  Time moves on and we can either prepare and be ready to move forward or we can fight it.  The fight we will lose.  So we have to look outside of ourselves and seek a way to do more for others because the only thing we can control is what we do. The answers we seek are so often within and they lead us to what to do.  This is slightly tangential but it tracks with the healing process. We can’t do anything if we don’t accept what is.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Stop using your energy to worry.  Use your energy to believe, create, love, grow, glow, manifest, and heal,” Daniel Chidiac.  This is a lesson I’ve advocated for and forgotten countless times.  It’s amazing how the brain can be so engrained that it lies to itself and would rather keep itself running in circles with the same anxiety inducing thoughts than it would to create positive energy.  I often wonder when the mind started shifting toward fear and stress based behavior.  Naturally there was a time when humans, as animals, needed to be aware of dangers in order to survive and somehow that vigilance has translated to creating an environment in the mind that keeps us perpetually stuck in fear, a state of hyper awareness and preparedness.  Energy is an amazing resource and we can do amazing things with targeted focus and purpose.  The amygdala is doing what it’s supposed to do to keep us safe and it looks for any potential ground that may harm us—in today’s society that is mainly revolving around ego and loss of power.  And after our talk of manifestation, I think it’s pertinent to say that we should be more mindful of where our thoughts are and how we talk to ourselves and what our intention is. 

The amount of energy we focus toward the things we don’t want hasn’t stopped us from creating amazing things.  I would like to think about how amazing this world would be if we stopped anticipating all things negative and we started looking at all the positive things that could do with our time.  If we’ve done the good we have as we are now, the good can only increase if we focus on the good.  I know this is a hard habit to break, as I said in the opening line, I’ve advocated for redirecting energy toward productive pursuits for years.  There’s somehow this disconnect in the brain that brings us back to the same train of thought.  I actually don’t believe that anyone denies the power of the mind but I feel they still don’t believe in their own ability to harness that power.  We’re taught to doubt ourselves and distract because if we do then we more easily comply with someone else’s dream.  We are supposed to create and co-create and dream and we have the power to heal ourselves and each other.  We’ve become so content to sleep in this altered existence that we somehow believe is real life that we are willing to forego our own creative instincts.  We are in desperate need to find ourselves and get back to our roots—the roots of our individual connection to source and the thing that drives us. 

The choice of our focus is always ours.  It may not seem like that at times and that is by design.  If we are focused on the things happening around us rather than what we can do with the energy within (and when that energy is directed within) then we won’t have the opportunity to create what WE are meant to create and we won’t have the opportunity to collaborate to create what we are meant to do collectively.  Using the energy to worry is another drain and waste of time.  There was a line from Van Wilder that said, “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.”  What adventures, what kind of lie could we live with our energy directed correctly?  What if we lived connected and in the moment all the time, aware of our triggers and aware that we are safe to create? An entirely new way of life would open before us.  How amazing would this world be if we all could put away the crap we tell ourselves and allow the full beauty of what we see to be released and shared with the world?  If we can believe the lie that we have to live a certain way or that the world isn’t ready for what we have to offer, we have the power to change that story and share the gifts we have received with the world.  Use energy wisely and we will live with no regret.

“The goal is to build a life you don’t need to escape from.  Where peace isn’t something you chase but something you live everyday,” Daniel Chidiac.  When we have a firm foundation settled in self-awareness, value, and purpose, the things we need to stay on that trajectory find their way to us.  The traditional way of life is so deeply engrained in all of us that we feel there is no other way.  We have made the people who follow their calling seem the anomaly while the rest of us simply need to accept that we are cogs in the wheel of someone else’s vision.  Until we learn to alter that mindset, that’s exactly what we will continue to live and perpetuate.  We know there are other options and other ways to live because we have seen it done.  We’ve seen people create something out of nothing and march to the beat of their own drum but for most of us, we’ve viewed that as the exception, not the rule.  We’ve bought into the idea that we can’t do what we want no matter how much we profess freedom.  Sure, the type of freedom we have is a bit challenging because we are taught that it’s all on us—we can have whatever we want but we have to work for all of it.  They don’t profess the idea that if we put in the energy and effort toward what we want that what we need will be drawn to us.

As we pull in the elements of what we want, we begin to understand that more and more opportunities open.  We don’t have to live life in the ordinary way.  And it doesn’t have to be hard.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  When we are on an authentically aligned track consistent with what we believe in and our vision, the world around us tends to adapt and provide what we need consistent with that goal and vision.  We are communal, creative beings and that means we are given complementary talents to help each other create new things.  Some of those efforts may seem to clash with each other as we fight over whose vision gets created first or in what way. That’s all ego because we were trained that being right was more important than doing what was right.  But that is a habit that can be altered as we learn that the skills we have were meant to help each other, not create an essence of power—power over people and things is fleeting.  Power over ourselves and our creation is true mastery. That’s when life really shows us the possibilities. 

There is so much beauty that exists in this world and nearly endless potential to create more.  We don’t have to repeat the same things day after day and say that’s what we are resigned to do.  We are meant to do what we are called to do and if we are in tune enough, that message is loud and clear.  I’ve said it a million times: we were each given a vision and a purpose for a reason.  We have the talents and ideas we have for a reason and we are foolish if we think we have to perpetuate the systems put in place designed to control us and make us conform, the systems put in place of eras long since gone.  There’s a reason it feels like we are trying to escape every day, why we WANT to escape every day.  There’s a reason we give into the distraction we feel all the time—because we know that what we do isn’t fulfilling us.  When we manage to follow those goals, the life we want isn’t a dream, it’s a reality and that is certainly something we don’t want (or need) to escape from.  Life is best lived in reality and in the present, that is where peace is, following purpose is where peace is.  Living the life we are meant to have is peaceful.

“Self-control is strength.  Calmness is mastery.  You have to get to a point where your mood doesn’t shift based on the insignificant actions of someone else.  Don’t allow others to control the direction of your life.  Don’t allow your emotions to overpower your intelligence,” Daniel Chidiac.  This can feel like an insurmountable task at times because we are emotional creatures—we were not born Vulcans.  Nor do I suggest that living solely in logic is the way to go because we would entirely miss out on the real magic that exists in this world.  There is a middle ground where we allow what we feel but we don’t allow it to control what we DO.  Speaking as someone who lived her days closer to a ping pong ball, bouncing between being a savior to whomever seemed to need it and then angry and resentful that no one saw ME, being the chameleon but never standing my ground, my entire life was malleable to the influence of what happened around me.  I approached each day as if I were preparing for battle because I never knew what I would face.  I assumed everyone lived like that—like we were all subject to how people were feeling that day.  Our thoughts can be subject to what others feel but our choices, our path, our actions are entirely our own.  Self-control means recognizing that.  It means recognizing when people are making emotional decisions and understanding our response doesn’t need to come from that.  Someone’s dark cloud doesn’t need to become my own—and used to dive right under that rain with everyone, shielding them, guiding them out whether they asked or not.  Frankly it was obnoxious and it kept me from dealing with my own crap.

That latter point is something we need to examine a bit further: dealing with our crap.  I was raised to keep my thoughts, feelings, needs on the back burner.  I’m not talking about every day needs because the truth is I lacked for nothing as far as food/shelter/water/clothing etc.  What I lacked was a sense of self because I was taught that other people would always take priority.  I was taught my creative endeavors weren’t worth the time and that it took permission and effort on the part of others for me to have a creative outlet.  I was taught to NOT listen to instinct, rather do as I was told and always do what someone else needed/wanted first.  For a long time I never questioned any of it.  I assumed everyone lived that way, with the same priority of putting others first.  When I started to wake up and the things calling to me spoke louder and louder, and I saw that more and more people simply did what they wanted, I began to question things.  I began to feel resentment that I didn’t have the same attitude or fortitude to go for what I wanted.  Ever adaptable, I could be there at the drop of a hat for anything—but people failed to take me seriously and were rarely there for me.  Being a resource for others led them to assume I was always in control but I was the furthest thing from it: I was taking on everything everyone else felt and doing the work for them and it left me raw and battered and questioning my own existence.  I had no foundation about who I was or wanted to be because those things didn’t matter.  And I got angry and controlling and resentful—so I was labeled as angry but people had no shame in still coming to me when they needed something.

It wasn’t until I realized what I was doing to myself that I understood people were only responding to what they saw in me.  They saw an uncertain, scared, little girl.  The fact that I could help people and they needed me for some of their tightest jams didn’t translate to them seeing me as an independent, intelligent, capable woman.  They saw me as a necessary evil, someone they tolerated when they were in those difficult places.  That hurt and I let that feeling take over for a long time—I fully let it run my life.  My anger and resentment fully visible but so was my desperation to make people see me a certain way.  It completely made me irrational because I spent more time trying to drive people’s view of me rather than focusing on living my life.  I thought strength was pulling people out of jams, but strength is knowing how to leverage our own talents, strength is standing on our own two feet, strength is knowing when we need help, strength is walking away from that which hurts us, strength is being authentic and sticking to our values/our identity when people want us to be their version of who they think we are.  Being hyper aware of other people’s emotions also made me super sensitive to the fact that people weren’t aware of mine.  It drove me nuts.  And then I realized that I was still giving them power over me.  Expecting them to treat me a certain way or see me a certain way was still giving them the power because I was upset over their (in)action.  I hated being controlled that way—by giving them control.  I knew I needed to take that back, to pick that up for the first time.  To truly move forward, we need to have that adaptability and awareness of who we are and the confidence to not be rattled by someone else’s fleeting feelings—or our own. Master our thoughts and emotions and the rest comes together.