Grief Is Really Just Love

This quote really spoke to me because somehow when anything really hard enters my life, this is how I always handled it.  In my mind I have this room and it has shelves with boxes of all sizes.  When I am overwhelmed with pain or any other negative emotion I don’t know how to handle, I go into this room and pull down a box and put the story I am telling myself inside of the box.  Then I let the story go.

When some time has passed to where I feel I can handle some of that pain, I will pull down the box, work through what I can and then put the remainder inside a smaller box.  I do this over and over until one day it is just an empty box.  The pain is gone, the story has “the end” typed onto it.

Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing.  Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming.  All we can do is learn to swinm” – Vicki Harrison

Those boxes are my way of swimming.

When deaths nightmare enters your life, people will ask you – “How are you?”  And when they ask you, you will quickly filter through a million answers.  And the one you will land on most of the time is “I’m fine.”

I’m fine, are two words when strung together actually say the opposite.  They say I am lying to you, because it is too hard and too much to tell you how I am really doing.  And really you don’t want to know, because then you will be at a loss of how to respond.  So, instead I am going to say, “I’m fine” and you will be relieved of any burden to fix it or make me feel better.

When someone has lost a loved one, instead of asking how they are feeling, ask can I give you a hug?  Will you give me the honor and privilege of letting me support you even if it is only for a minute?  Can I tell you from my heart that I know your heart is breaking and just let me hold you for a minute or two so that you can borrow some of my strength and love to carry you just a little further down this dark hallway?

“Grief is a solitary journey.  No one but you can know how great the hurt is.  No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died.  And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song.  It is the nature of love and death to touch every person in a totally unique way.  Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey, and solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again” – Helen Steiner Rice

No one can grieve for you.  But they can grieve with you.  No one will ever fill the hole that has been shot through your heart, but they can help heal the edges of it.  No one can fill up all of the silence when you mind reaches for the sound of the voice that is missing, but they can help you to hear the voices that are still there.  This journey of loss is yours alone, as each of us grieve in different ways for those we lose.  Each loss is a totally different kind of grief.

But the comfort comes from listening to those who have a similar story, a similar loss.  When my mother died, I found so much comfort from words I remembered from an NPR interview.  They were talking about grief, and they said, “grief is a hole you walk around during the day and fall into at night.”  During the day, you can be busy and keep the grief locked up behind a fence.  But at night that grief slips through the fence, slides under the door, and creeps up to engulf you so tightly that you can’t breathe.

A few weeks ago, one of my nieces lost her son to suicide.  For our family, this is a new grief.  A devasting kind of loss, because it naturally makes you ask why?  Why didn’t I know he would do this?  Why didn’t I question how he was really feeling?  Why couldn’t I tell what was going to happen?  Why didn’t anyone see it coming?

There is the infamous hindsight, where every action, every sentence he said is questioned – was that a clue?  So much self-blame to go around.  And none of that self-blame is true.

“There are losses that rearrange the world.  Deaths that change the way you see everything, grief that tears everything down.  Pain that transports you to an entirely different universe, even while everyone else thinks nothing has changed” – Morgan Devine

They say that there are things in life that will change you.  Some things like music and art open the world up to you in ways that can never be taken away.  They fill your soul and help you to lead a life of passion and joy.  Art and music can open you up to every single emotion.  It can bring you up into the heavens.  It can take you into the darkness and threaten to drown your soul.

There are other things in life, like love that change you forever, as well as being subject to loss.  And loss is in a category of itself in being a life changer.

When you experience loss, it is important to remember that you are a brave soul.  That this is a battle that feels never ending, but that is losses lie.  It is losses untruth that keeps you drowning in grief, when in fact if you just took a moment and tried, you would find you can stand up and bring your head up above the water.  You could take a deep breath and just breathe.  Water isn’t what drowns you.  What drowns you is forgetting to stand.

“I don’t believe that time heals everything.  It helps, it does.  After a while you won’t cry about it all the time.  It won’t consume your every thought anymore.  You do get better.  You’ll laugh, and smile.  You’ll even have a lot of great days.  But it’s still there.  You just learn to live with it.  This is how things are now.  So, you get used to it.  But that doesn’t mean it ever goes away.  It’s still deep in your soul.  Still makes you cry when you think about it too much.  Still stops you in your tracks when something reminds you of it.  You’ll have those moments when your heart hurts really bad.  I don’t think time heals everything.  Sure, it gets better, but it’s a scar that never goes away.  A broken bone that still aches on rainy days” – Melinda Caroline

The thing to remember is that life changes.  Every moment it changes.  Years ago, after my nephew was murdered, and our family was struggling to understand what had happened I came across a story from a grief counselor.  She was talking to a woman whose baby had died.  It had been close to a year, and she just wasn’t getting any better in dealing with her grief.  She finally sought help because she thought, “I’m doing grief wrong.”

The counselor told her, “The amount of grief you feel, is comparable to the amount of love you had for your child.”  There is no right way or wrong way to grieve.  There is only your way.

“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” – J Rowling, Harry Potter

What is important is that you don’t get stuck.  It doesn’t matter how many stages of grief that you go through.  There isn’t any kind of order that you have to follow.  What is important is that it flows.  Like water it flows toward a destination.  It might become hard like ice.  It might be hot and angry like steam.  It might be like a flood or a simple drip.  What’s important is that it flows.  Because what it does is remake your life.  You become forever changed by it.  Just don’t forget the second part.  When it remakes your life, it begins a new chapter.

Living In The Depths Of Solitude, You Preserve Your Own Soul

Updated 4/14/22

“Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no whenever you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing” – Eve Ensler

It was really interesting in locating a photo for this quote. I looked up woman in solitude, and 90% of the photos showed women who were depressed, some even suicidal with a hangman’s noose besides one woman and suicide by pills in several others. I couldn’t believe that solitude was paired up with depression and suicide.

Solitude is critical to being able to love oneself. This is not being an isolationist, which could become unbalanced when taken to extremes. But rather as a sign of being balanced, because you are happy with your own company. Being alone doesn’t make you lonely. It took much longer than I thought to find a photo that actually displayed that kind of joyous feeling within it.

As a woman you give so much of yourself away.  You constantly see to the needs of others.  Solitude is how you can balance this out, so that you are not giving too much of yourself away.  Solitude is strength.

At various times of the year, it is vital to have some solitude to review the past few months and do some deep thinking for how you want the rest of the year to be for you. 

• What dreams did you bring into reality? 
• What dreams did you sideline? 
• What dreams need to be released, as they no longer fire your soul with passion to be accomplished? 
• What dreams are waiting to come into your life? 

“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul” –  Marcus Aurelius

In reading anything that talks about the “crowd mentality”, it talks about how if you feel you must always be with people, it can be a sign of weakness.  This is because you may become prone to follow whatever everyone else is doing, just to belong.  

• You can determine this by how afraid you are to speak out against the crowd when you don’t agree? 
• How important is it to be considered “normal”? 
• How often do you avoid doing something you want to do, just so that you won’t stick out?

I think most everyone would say they are afraid to stand out, not be “normal”, or speak out against a crowd.  The real dividing line is do you let that fear stop you?

There is nothing more freeing and empowering to like your own company and be your own person no matter where you are.  It is more fun to be considered weird.   Be the orange fish in a sea of blue fish.  Go your own direction.  Be weird.

• W is for wonderful; 
• E is for exciting;
• I is for interesting; 
• R is for real and 
• D is for different.

I love the first quote because it shows great courage to do things like take trains to somewhere you have never been by yourself. To go so far away that you lose the fear of finding your way home. That you will do something that you know in the depths of your soul is yours alone to do, even when everyone you know disagrees. 

“Solitude is the soul’s holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves”  –  Katrina Kenison

I believe that you have that kind of courage, but sometimes you are still letting life hold you back. I believe this is true of all of us. 

There are moments of indecision.  Of not being sure of your way.  In the end, the only way out, really is, to go through. To step past the place of safety on the sand. You need to actually cross over the line into adventure, stepping into the sea. 

“True happiness is impossible without solitude…, I need solitude in my life as I need food and drink and the laughter of little children.  Extravagant though it may sound, solitude is the filter of my soul.  It nourishes me, and rejuvenates me.  Left alone, I discovered that I keep myself good company”  – Sophia Loren

Only by being alone with yourself can you come to true honesty with who you are, and how you are being reflected in the world.  It is in this place of honesty, you are able to authentically release the parts of you that are not you, and own in the real world the parts of you that are crying to be released into life. 

Only to the extent that you expose yourself to the changing tides of the sea, can you transform into who you are becoming. I think that we all want to find out what we are doing here, and we can’t do that staying safely on the dry land.  You have to step over the line to experience adventure. Here is to smooth sailing!

For an idea of something that you can do with relative ease, try Forest bathing.  It is the practice of immersing yourself in nature in a mindful way.  It has a whole range of benefits for your physical, mental, emotional, and social health. It comes to us from Japan and is known as Shinrin-yoku. ‘Shinrin’ means forest and ‘Yoku’ stands for bathing.

Forest bathing in nature allows the stressed portions of your brain to relax. Positive hormones are released in the body. You feel less sad, angry and anxious. It helps to avoid stress and burnout, and aids in fighting depression and anxiety.  Immersing yourself in the solitude of you and the forest is very healing to the body, mind, and soul.

A forest bath is known to boost immunity and leads to lesser days of illness as well as faster recovery from injury or surgery. Nature has a positive effect on our mind as well as body. It improves heart and lung health, and is known to increases focus, concentration and memory.  Certain trees like conifers also emit oils and compounds to safeguard themselves from microbes and pathogens. These molecules known as Phytoncides are good for our immunity too. Breathing in the forest air boosts the level of natural killer (NK) cells in our blood. NK cells are used in our body to fight infections, cancers and tumors. So spending time with these tree is a special form of tree bathing.

This Is The Part Where You Find Out Who You Are

Revised 4/14/22

“It is not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not” – Denis Waitley

I was recently talking to my coach about my book that is being published this summer.  It is a collection of 90 of my posts and it will be called, ‘Timeless Treasures for Today’s Living’.  We were talking about how to promote the book and she was telling me of something that she had read about another author.  They had created a program, where if you bought 50 books, you became an ambassador of the book and author.  In return she included a bunch of bonus items wrapped around some personal coaching calls, her monthly subscription program etc…

The first thought in my mind was I am not worth someone spending that much money on me.  No one would think that what I have is that valuable.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt

This quote includes not letting your own negative mind talk make you feel inferior.  Immediately check those thoughts of being unworthy.  What was so interesting is that I had been looking for new graphics for a post, and I saw this picture with her hand on the mirror and looking away.  I felt immediately called to write about self-love.  My intuition was telling me that another layer of not accepting who I am was about to be revealed.

You wouldn’t let anyone tell you that you’re not worthy or capable of doing whatever is in your heart to do.  So why would you allow your inner negative critic to do so?

It used to take me awhile to recognize that “Cami” was running my mind and was in control of my thoughts.  I named my negative mind talker Cami, because she is so good at camouflaging herself.  She sneaks into random thoughts, inserts herself into conversations and just all around makes a pest of herself.  Cami and I journal together sometimes.  I will write down a question for her, and then just detach from the answer and wait for her to tell me what to write down.  She comes from a place of fear.  She puts the worst interpretations on everything.

Have you ever been at work, just minding your own business and you get a call to go into your boss’s office?  What is the first thought that comes into your head?  Is it, “Oh no!  What is wrong?  What did I mess up?  Am I going to get fired?”  And then you go into your boss’s office, and they just have some random question for you?  That is your own internal Cami at work.

“The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts” – Marcus Aurelius

Your Cami is just trying to protect you.  She is afraid of everything.  She criticizes you to keep you within her designed comfort zone.  Within that zone she controls the world and keeps you safe.

The problem is that you’re busy expanding that zone.  You’re busy learning new things.  You have dreams that you want to grow.  So, when you are looking for ways to expand your own comfort zones, you will need to confront, reason, and work with your own version of Cami.

“Embrace the glorious mess that you are” – Elizabeth Gilbert

The quickest way to bring your own Cami around to your way of thinking is to take what you want to do in steps.  Kind of like when you take a small child to learn to swim.  First you hold them and get their feet wet.  Then they would stand, and you would walk out deeper and deeper into the water.  Each step is a new victory.

The only way to be confident of your own talents, gifts and abilities is to do what you are afraid to do.  So, make your Cami a deal.  You will walk so far and then you will talk and negotiate a new distance to explore.  Eventually you will have her swimming in the deep end of the pool with a new comfort zone.

If you try to bulldoze her, she will trick you.  Like being lost in the forest, you will walk in circles. You will think that you are making progress, but little things will keep drawing you further and further away from your chosen destination.

Have you ever had a day, where you planned out this list of things that you were going to get done – yet you find yourself 12 hours later, exhausted and you only were able to cross off 1 thing?

That is your Cami at work again.  Bright shiny objects grab your attention.  A sudden desire to clean out a closet.  You went to the grocery store just to buy milk and you came home with a months’ worth of groceries 3 hours later.  Cami struck again.

“I am strong because I know my weaknesses.  I am beautiful because I am aware of my flaws.  I am fearless, because I learnt to recognize illusion from real.  I am wise because I learn from my mistakes, I am a lover because I have felt hate.  And I can laugh because I have known sadness” – Unknown

By trial and error, you too can find a way to deal with your Cami.  Maybe like me you will learn to journal and negotiate with her.  Maybe you will be successful with willpower and bulldoze your Cami into submission.

There are over 80 different kinds of hammers.  Most of us are familiar with one kind.

Now you can use that hammer for a multitude of projects, and sometimes it will sort of work out.  You might have a few dents, scratches, dings, but you will have a finished product.  Or you could use the right kind of hammer, and end up with a beautiful work of art.

Take the time to learn who your Cami is.  What she is afraid of.  How she wants to communicate with you.  Learn how to reassure her.  Appreciate that she is doing what she thinks is the right thing, based on your own past experiences.

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

If you want some assistance to name your Cami, to discover who he/she is – contact us.  We are here for you.  Keep trying to find the right hammer for your progress.

Be Yourself, An Original Is Worth More Than A Copy

Revised 4/13/22

Mother Nature freely expresses herself every day, and she doesn’t apologize for it. Most of us learn at an early age what we are taught as “good manners”. Good girls are seen, but not heard. Don’t express a different opinion. Never contradict an authority figure, even if they are wrong. And so on, and so on.

“Sometimes our lives have to be completely shaken up, changed, and rearranged to relocate us to the place we are meant to be” – Unknown

Have you ever been in a building like a lighthouse when a really strong storm comes into shore?  The whole cliff shudders and shakes.  The waves are so strong it feels like it can actually tear apart the bedrock foundation of the lighthouse.  Sometimes you have so bought into being the story of pretending to be someone else, that you have totally forgotten who you really are.  It takes a severe storm to shake up the foundations and uproot your life.  It is time to bring you back to who you are, and what your purpose in life is.

I love the writing of Don Miguel Ruiz and his book The Four Agreements. The Four Agreements have more to them than this, but this gives you a taste of them.

Be impeccable with your word– I love how it includes not speaking against yourself. How many times have you called yourself dumb or stupid or something equally demeaning?

Don’t take anything personally– What people say and do is a projection of their own reality, not yours.

Don’t make assumptions– This is for me the most important thing, as you assume you know what someone else is thinking and they think they know what you are thinking and the truth is that most of the time we are having two totally different conversations.

Always do your best– The only way to avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret is to do your best.  I love that saying, when you know better, you do better.

Don’t be afraid to be who you are.  Don’t let fear convince you that you are less than you really are.  What people think about you is really none of your business. 

What you think about yourself should be your primary concern.  Be the best you can be, and when you make a mistake (like we all do) then own it.  Clean up anything that needs to be cleaned up and move on.  Don’t pack it in your suitcase and carry the weight of it around for the rest of your life.  That kind of baggage creates limitations and keeps you in a cage, afraid to be who you are. 

When you have reached the place, where you no longer require validation from others as to who you are, what your gifts are – that is when you become the most feared person on the planet.

“If you find yourself asking yourself (and not your friends) Am I really a writer?  Am I really an artist?  Chances are you are.  The counterfeit innovator is wildly self confident.  The real one is scared to death” –  Steven Pressfield

Reveal your authentic essence, the part of you that isn’t watered down.  This is what makes you a “one of a kind” authentic original human being.  The world, especially the social networking world. will judge you for who you are. So why not just be what makes you happy?  Be proud of who you’ve become.  Hug yourself with both arms and be passionate about how you live your life.

When you pretend to be someone that you aren’t, you are only hurting yourself.  This habit you have of saying what you think others want to hear, is what leads to so much miscommunication.   The mask you put on talks to the mask he puts on.  So no one talks to the real people behind the mask.  Miguel Ruiz really speaks to the removing of these masks you have created in your life.

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.  Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place” –  Unknown

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

Remember that LemonadeMakers is here to walk alongside you.  We love the deep conversations 🙂

Growing Beyond Your Current Life

I recently watched “Around the World in 80 Days” a new movie adaptation of Jules Verne’s book.  The story is the typical hero’s journey.  Transformation of life is a requirement of the hero’s journey.  It is not only the main hero’s transformation that is necessary, but the whole cast of characters around him also go through life changing transformations.

Phileas Fogg, the hero of the story.  A man who’s spent the last 20 years existing instead of living his life.  Jean Passepartout who needs to learn to trust both life and those around him.  Miss Abigail “Fix” Fortescue who just wants to break out of the stereotypes and be treated as a liberated woman and be judged accordingly.  Bernard Fortescue who needs to deal with past mistakes and become a better man because of them.  Nyle Bellamy who needs to transform the most but doesn’t.

If you were to travel around the world in the shortest time frame possible today, you would have to make conscious choices of how that would work.

• Would you fly?
• Would you travel by water?
• By car?
• By camel?
• What would be the order of countries that you would go through?
• Contingency plans would need to be made.
• Rules and requirements would need to be in place.

Honesty with yourself is what is necessary for transformation.  Phileas Fogg stopped living in school when he was bullied.  When he was engaged and was going to leave his comfort zone and go on a real journey outside of England, he allowed the bully to make him so afraid that he left his fiancé on the boat and returned to his home.  He spent the next 20 years blaming that moment for his lack of courage.

If it wasn’t for the courage of his servant Passepartout and the spunky reporter, he would have once again abandoned his need for transformation and returned to his comfort zone.  Slowly as his journey takes him around the world, he sparks the creativity needed for transformation and while he many times goes back to the comfort zone, each time he stretches is a little further, a little wider.

When he reaches New York and has the conversation with his ex-finance the final piece moves into his transformation.  He realizes that he had fixed his lack of happiness on her, and that she in fact was not where his happiness lived.  To have real transformation in your life – this is a critical tool to have.  Honesty is when you realize that everything you want or need in your life resides in you.  Not someone else, not someplace else, not in anything outside of you.

Once you have stepped into being real with yourself, the next step is to release everything that doesn’t serve you.

This happens for Phileas when he has arrived back at the club in England and confronts Nyle and exposes him for the man he really is.  It happens for Passepartout when they were shipwrecked.  It happens for Abigal when she meets Jane Digby and then later confronts her father.  It happens for Bernard when his daughter tells him she knows what he did and then he later is told she has died.

There is a point in each and every hero’s journey that you take, where the pivot of the transformation takes place.  In most cases it is a point of failure.  A point of falling from grace.  A death, divorce, being fired from a job – something that devastates your soul.  It is the time of letting go of what no longer serves you – because it has just failed you when you needed it most.

For Phileas he saw this happen time and time again.  There were some intentional failures due to agents trying to make him fail.  There was the failure of “England” his country of origin putting him into jail, flogging him. The failure of friends with Passepartout and Abigail being true to him.

The journey always gives you grace in return.  The grace of forgiveness in acknowledging that you are imperfect and those who love you are imperfect too.  The grace of revitalizing you to continue your journey to the end of that destination and realizing that your journey isn’t over.

The scene at the end, where they get curious about a story being told around London, about a mysterious ocean creature that may in fact be something mechanical.  It is the realization that curiosity will keep us moving forward.  That it will being us new adventures.  That you in fact are living the “never ending story” in your own life as you seek out new ways to reveal your hidden potential.

There is a process that many use in business, where at the end of task you do a “postmortem”.  You analyze what went right, wrong and sideways as the task was worked on and completed.  You do this to see what lessons have been learned.

In a transformation journey you do the same thing.  It is a matter of “unlearning”, which is really false assumptions of what you thought was happening, versus what was really happening.

False assumptions are a rush to judgment.  Someone makes a comment, and you take it the wrong way.  You assumed because of your own filters/thoughts that they meant one thing when in reality they meant something totally different.   It’s how the majority of arguments and hurt feelings happen, simple miscommunication.

Only when you have released all of the incorrect data/thoughts that you have can the last piece of transformation happen.

As you close the door on this journey, a postmortem helps to cement in the new learning, by releasing the old bias, thoughts and judgments.  This happens because you have become more intimately knowledgeable about someone or something.

In the case of the three main characters in “Around the World in 80 Days”, they are about to enter into a new journey of transformation because they have a new destination to go on.  In this second journey, they will have the benefit of all of the learnings from the first journey.  They built strong friendships with each other.  They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how to support each other in the journey.

Most importantly they know more about themselves because they released the false narratives, they had about themselves.  They unlearned the false stories they had about who they are and why they are going on the journey.  They learned to trust themselves.

The journey is what is important.  It is what leads to transformation.  It is what makes life worth living.  It is why you are here.

If you are ready to take the next step in life’s journey, get ready to get uncomfortable.  Get ready to unravel the false truths you have in your life.  Remember that in each transformation you are completely remade from the caterpillar to the butterfly.  While it can be painful, it is also beautiful, amazing, and it is always worth the cost.

Transformation Is Not One And Done

Transformation isn’t a one and done kind of thing.  The butterfly is used as a pretty common analogy for transformation.  The caterpillar building the chrysalis and emerging is the common use.

But did you know that the transformation for the caterpillar begins much sooner?  Monarch Butterfly caterpillars’ lives are divided into 5 instars – this is the time it takes to outgrown one skin and burst into a new one.

This is where choice comes in – do you simply shed a skin, and move seamlessly into your new stage of growth, or do you fight the moment of growth.  Do you try to stay in your comfort zone so long that you burst through your current comfort zone?  Bursting sounds a little messy and very painful.

One way or the other you will change.

For example, you may have outgrown your current position at work.  Or you may hate your job, but you have those golden handcuffs on, in that you make too much money to leave.  It doesn’t matter if you love or hate your job, the time has come to move on and expand into your full potential.

Shedding your skin means that you are proactive and look for the next position, either within your current company or outside of it.  Bursting your skin means that you leave in the worst possible way, either getting fired or quitting in a temper.

When you shed your skin by bursting it, it leaves you to clean up a mess.  I had one job in which it took weeks before I had worked through the bad emotions and was capable of updating my resume and getting into looking for a job.  It took much longer to work through the lessons learned from bursting my skin.

Each time you expand your comfort zone you develop new skills and grow your own internal gifts.  I took a job once that I thought was going to finally help me break through being a senior loan processor and become an underwriter.  That was how the job was sold to me.

I started work and in addition to processing loans they had me review, edit and complete a manual that they used for mortgage brokers that sent their loans to this company to be sold to them.

I worked hard on the manual and upon completion the company that I worked for decided they needed to downsize and laid me off.  I was devasted and angry that I had worked so hard on that manual.  I felt like I have been used up and thrown away.

I wasn’t able to find another position in the San Diego area because interest rates had increased, and everyone was laying off people.  I ended up having to relocate to find work.

What I realize when I looked back at this time is that I was being pushed into a new comfort zone.  When I relocated, I was hired as an underwriter.

The savings and loan I worked for needed a servicing manual, so I wrote one for them.  They needed training done for their loan officers in their many branches, so I wrote out a program of training and trained them.  I ended up teaching classes at South Seattle Community College for the bank for loan processors and loan officers.

All of these skills I had acquired at that job in San Diego.  Without that job, I wouldn’t have had the skills or the confidence to step up to those opportunities.  When you shed a skin or burst a skin you have the opportunity to grow of stagnate.  To take on a new color, or stripe, or to shrivel up and remain where you are.

When you shed a skin or burst one, it can take time to grow into who you are becoming at this stage.  You may need recovery time.  It could be that where you are living now is not where the next opportunity is for you to grow into who you are becoming.  You need to allow the space and time for things to unfold.

When the butterfly at last crawls out of the chrysalis it needs to take the time to pump its wet crumpled wings.  It can take up to 12 hours or more before it is ready to take its first flight.

When you consider that the adult butterfly’s life is between 15-50 days, that 12 hours takes on a whole new meaning. It is not a short period of time for the butterfly.  It is like months of time.

Learning and adaptation are how you embrace and absorb new skills.  And as you learn and adapt you need to let go of the old way of doing things.

A baby first learns to roll over.  Then to crawl.  Then to stand up.  And at last, to take that first step.

Trial and error are involved.  Failure is a given.  But with hard work, resilience, and determination progress is made to go from that initial learning to roll over to running.

• Sometimes, that time and space you need to allow yourself means that you are required to take on new knowledge, such as going back to school.
• Sometimes, it means that you are taking a lateral job move instead of an upward job move.
• Sometimes, it means that you are taking a position that is lower than what you previously had.

To shed a skin requires a mind shift and an identity shift.

We all have the habit of identifying ourselves with our job, our position. We give ourselves a label that describes who we are.

This means that in each of these periods of growth, you are required to let go of “who you think you are” and reinvent yourself.  You need a new label.

What happens is that as you try to stretch and challenge yourself, you’ll have a really hard time finding anyone to talk about it.  Someone who can understand your new level.  Every time you get into a creative space, something transformative will happen.  As Alice said, “I knew who I was this morning, but I have changed a few times since then”.

“Explore the things that shake you up as well as the things that bring you joy,” says writer Alexandra Elle, the author of the guided journal In Courage. “When you stay curious, you can become your own greatest teacher.”

Richard Powers shared that at its root the word “bewilderment” actually means “to head out into the wild”.

• It’s time for you to shake up your understanding of that word and to head out into the wild yourself.
• To shift your perspective of the world around you.
• To feel a little unmoored, so that you look at things in a new way.
• To lose your certainty and remove your head from the sand.

So, this week I’m inviting you to be bewildered. To let go of your certainty and your self-protectiveness and to come alive to the world’s magic. I wish you grace. I wish you peace, and a great week everybody—bewildered.

Living Your Life From A Place Of Curiosity

Albert Einstein traced the root of his accomplishments to curiosity.  What triggered Sir Isaac Newton to discover gravity from a falling apple, as apples had been falling from trees hundreds of years.  Had no one ever got curious as to why the apples fell in a downward motion?  How much of the world around you, do you observe with wonder?

Awe is a part of wonder and curiosity.  Psychology Today has described awe as “an overwhelming, self-transcendent sense of wonder and reverence in which you feel a part of something that is vast, larger than you and that transcends your understanding of the world.”

Taking a walk in nature can result in being awestruck.  I love that word.  If I am going to be struck with something, please let it be awe.  To suddenly see something with new eyes will send you off with a sense of adventure.  To me it is like the photo of these two boys.  They will question everything they see.  They haven’t yet entered into the age where they think they already know everything.  They will ask a lot of “why” questions seeking to understand.  They will see things in a different way, because they don’t yet know the “rules” of how something is supposed to work.  And that is where the sense of discovery, wonder, and curiosity begins.  It is the beginning of an adventure.

“Noticing the world as constantly changing can help us dance with the flow of life.” – Sarah Jane Shangraw

In reading an issue of Mindfulness Magazine, they stated the following steps in taking a walk in nature what will bring “awe” into your life.

• turn off the electronics on your person.
• believe you are going to experience awe during your walk
• use all of your senses in discovering that sense of awe
• go someplace different – a new park, or a different path
• look at the details, see the veins of the leaves, the depressions in the bark or look up into the higher branches instead of just seeing what’s at eye lever
• slow down, powerwalking is not a voyage of discovery
• pay attention to the details, listen into what you thought was silence and hear the breeze stir the leaves, rattle the branches or hear the small creatures digging into a hiding place

Curiosity and exploration floods your brains with dopamine, which makes you feel happier.  It gives you higher levels of positive emotions, lower levels of anxiety, and greater satisfaction with your life.  It’s a skill that can be developed. It is a habit of applying wonder, and feeding your desire to learn more.

Curious people want to try new things – so next time you go to a restaurant, try a food you have never eaten before.  Curiosity begins with asking questions.  In searching for different answers.  In making a new or different connection.  In taking what you discover and using it to make sense of your newly expanded world.

“Becoming happier is one of the most vital and momentous things that you can do for yourself and those around you.”  – Sonja Lyumbomirsky

Some adults think that asking questions somehow implies they lack knowledge.  But what I have found through the years, especially with the meanings and emotions triggered by words, is that there are a lot of words that I think are communicating one thing, but were received as another.  Words can have more than one meaning.  So I try to communicate what I have to say, using a lot of examples and analogy’s.  Then I watch how it lands.  If it seems to have landed wrong, I then use another analogy.  I keep doing this until I know that what I meant, is what is understood.  I ask a lot of questions, seeking understanding and connection.

Asking yourself the right questions can make a huge difference in how happy you are.  We can train our brain to look for answers by asking it to focus on a certain task.  If you ask yourself these three key questions everyday, your brain will step outside of the negative self judging that your mind tracks down.  These questions will help rewire your brain to focus on the positive.

• What have I done well in the last 24 hrs? (Celebrate it!)
• What is one thing I want to improve in the next 24 hrs? (Discover, investigate from a place of curiosity, not judgment)
• What is one action step I can take to help make this happen? (Curiosity, ask more “how” questions)

Curiosity is a strength within the virtue category of wisdom, one of the six virtues as described in Positive Psychology.  The other strengths in the wisdom category are creativity, judgment, love of learning and perspective.  According to Wharton University, curiosity has a genetic component, which can be grown or limited according to ones environment.

NASA’s rover on Mars is named Curiosity.  She’s been on Mars since 2012 and since her battery is thought to be able to last for only 14 years, she’s nearing the end of her lifespan.   NASA is looking for answers by collecting data on Mars.

It will certainly be interesting to see what they discover in that adventure – answers they were looking for – did Mars ever have the proper conditions for life to survive.  So far they’ve discovered that Mars had sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – all key ingredients for life.  What things will be discovered that no one knew to ask?

From Britannica Curiosity Compass, “10 Ways to Improve Your Curiosity”

• Power up your passion – doing what you love keeps those curiosity juices flowing
• Ask awesome questions – “tell me more about that”, “why do you believe that or why is that important to you” – then listen with an open mind/heart
• Teach and be taught – ask about someone’s most treasured memory, their biggest passion, favorite hobby – all of which helps you to “know” something about someone.  It stirs your curiosity to learn more.  It opens doors to others teaching you something new, to learn about something in a new way
• Connect the dots – how can you use the fundamentals from a game or the basic elements of cooking in other areas of your life?
• Walk it out – taking a walk stirs your natural curiosity and stimulates your senses
• Get uncomfortable – Try something new.  Push yourself to do the thing you are scared of trying.
• Embrace thine enemy – Part of being a critical thinker is understanding the other persons viewpoint – argue both for and against all of your beliefs.  You will gain empathy and learn something new about your own beliefs.
• Tech Time-out – play a musical instrument; drawing; cooking; any hobby that doesn’t involved a screen.
• Explore your environment – walk in a new direction; check out a park; hike in the woods.  Get to know something new.
• Mirror, Mirror on the wall…, – Reflection is also an important part of having a curious mind.  Through reflection comes a higher understanding and brings you even more curiosity.

Curiosity makes your brain more receptive for learning.  It is like a muscle and the more you use it the stronger your mind becomes.  When you are curious, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to what you are curious about.

One of my favorite things about Jim Rohn was when he would get this look on his face, with his hand on his chin and say, “I wonder what happens next?”  It was his way of not going into negative emotions when something you might judge as a bad experience happened.  He used the analogy, when someone cuts you off driving down the road – instead of getting angry, say “I wonder what happens next?”  I started saying, “Thank you for getting in front of me, because you are in a hurry and I don’t want to be the person you rear end when you follow to close.”  This is because I have been rear-ended several times and gotten hurt twice.  So I am truly grateful when this kind of driver passes me, even if he is cutting me off.

So using curiosity, and “I wonder what happens next?” thinking – what things happen in your life, could you turn around from a negative experience?  How instead, could you turn it around, staying calm and centered in wonder?

Life is full of change.  Seasons change.  You change.  Use the fall season to complete and release what no longer serves you.  Use the winter season to rest, digest and restore yourself.  Use the spring season to get curious about what new things can you seed into your life to grow you as a person.  Use the summer season as a time to harvest the new beginnings that you started in the spring.

So go on some new adventures.  Ask open ended questions.  Listen intently and ask others why this is so important to them?  Give others experiences instead of things.  Learn a new hobby.  Go on long walks, listening, looking, smelling, – using all of the senses to discover what you have missed.  Live a full, happy life!

This Letter Is To You

I love that we are all the same at certain points in our lives.  No one is perfect.  No one lives a life without getting scars, both the kind you can see and the kind that no one is allowed to see.  There are days when you feel all alone.  But in truth you never are alone.  Not in what you are going through.  Not in how you feel.

When the storm is raging through your life, there is that moment of calm, right before it all blows away.  The sun comes out and the winds blow away all of the clouds.   In a short time you can’t even tell that there was a storm.  It seems like life has gone back to “normal”.  But you know what changed.  You know that sometimes nothing can be the same again.

So when life’s storms batter you, and leaves you feeling lifeless on the ground – you must remember that you are loved.  And while it might not be in this moment, or even this week,  the day will come again, where you will be having the best day of your life.

“Don’t forget while you’re busy doubting yourself, someone else is admiring your strength.” – Kristen Butler

Until then, remember you are loved.  There are people like us everywhere, who are just waiting to know you and love you.

You are like a wildflower, so let yourself be scattered by those winds when they come.

• Grow wild wherever you land.
• Grow tall and brave to face whatever the weather brings to your door.
• Grow in the cracks of the brokenness of your past.
• Grow into your full potential.

Put your face to the sun.  Let it warm your soul.  You may have blemishes.  You may have scars.  You may feel tarnished and dirty and like something the cat dragged in.  But beneath the dirt and dust your soul is shining like a jewel.

“I am changing…, but not in a way you’d expect.  I am changing how I view myself.  I am changing how I talk to myself.  I am changing what I allow and who I allow in my life.  But most of all.., I am no longer changing myself for others, the pressure to fit it and be anything other than myself.  I am creating a revolution in my own self care.” – @ MOULE_T

When you look at the word struggle, it seems too much.  It has a weight to it that makes you feel like it can’t be lifted.  But if you just adjust the meaning, a tiny little bit – you see it hides the sparkle that is laying beneath it.  Struggle is like see the sign on the highway, rest area ahead.  Your journey has been long.  You might need a bathroom break.  You might need to just stretch your legs.  You might need to grab a snack or something to drink.  Struggle means:

• Change, and change is good.  It means something new and exciting is entering your life.
• Growth – Remember as a child measuring your growth against the wall and seeing how tall you were?
• Expansion – a good stretch and walk to widen out the boundaries.
• Progress – Remember when you were in grade school and you took home a progress report?

If you change your definition of something that seems scary, like struggle and change – you widen your worldview to see how all of those words are something to celebrate, not fear.

I learned something a long time ago about decisions.  It came from antique shopping, of all things.  I had started collecting those green milk glass dishes because my grandmother had them and they reminded me of her.  There were times where I found a unique piece, but it was a stretch financially to purchase and I would vacillate on whether I should spend the money or not.

Sometimes I didn’t, then I would go back a few weeks later to buy it, and (heavy sigh) it would be gone.  So I started asking myself this question – “If I come back tomorrow and this is gone, how upset am I going to be?”  Sometimes the answer was “oh well”.  And sometimes the answer was “very upset”.  I always walked away from the “oh wells” and bought the “very upsets”.

“Trust the wait.  Embrace the uncertainty.  Enjoy the beauty of becoming.” – Unknown

I started making decisions in life the same way.  Opening up my heart and asking “what if…?” this works or doesn’t work.  How will it affect me?  How will it affect my life?  How will it affect those I love?  When you get quiet in your soul and ask the right questions, the right answers are found there, just waiting for you.  You have to step out of the wants, needs and desires of others.  You have to feel into that space of inner calm and see what surfaces.

It really is simple.  Living life as your true self is what will make you happy.

• It sounds hard.
• It sounds like you are being selfish.
• It sounds like you will lose those you want to love you.

But those are the lies that are told to keep you in that place of being the good girl and doing what you are told.  That place that leaves you unhappy inside.  That says you are not enough and just need to try harder.  That is the place that you need to grow from.  The place that needs to be expanded, so that you can grow into your full potential.  To be the sweet wonderful person you are at a soul level.

“The only difference between where you are and where you want to be is the steps you  haven’t taken yet.” – Rigel J Davidson

The Unending Silence of Grief

This blog is a little heart rendering, so I am warning you ahead of time.  It might be the one you need, and it might be the one you want to avoid.

I thought I knew what grief is all about.  My mom died from cancer when I was in my 30’s.  I was one of the primary caregivers the last three months of her life.  It was a wonderful gift to be able to care for her as she made her transition.  I thought I was ready, but I don’t think that anyone can ever be ready to lose a parent.

About a year after her death a lot of secrets came out of her closet.  It was probably the hardest year of my life, even harder than losing her.  It ripped that window of grief wide open.  I thought that I had made it through the grief process.  I was wrong.  I had to then  process the anger of what she had hidden.  The anger of not being able to talk it through with her , so she could explain it all.

Eighteen years later I lost my 19 year old nephew when he was murdered.  Starting this blog was how I started processing the loss not only of him, but what we all lost in relationship to our sister.

Nine years later I lost my birth father and had to process the grief of not just losing him, but losing the opportunity to have the kind of relationship I always wanted, but he wasn’t able to provide.

The following year I lost what I call my bonus dad.  He had a long journey of heart disease that slowly took away his health.  His was probably the easist death to process, because in the 15 yrs he lived with us, he had cleaned up what needed to be cleaned up with me.

I thought that with all of these losses, I knew what the grief process was all about.  I had experienced it many times.  I understood the grief stages.  More importantly I knew I would survive.  I thought, “I know how to do this”.  Then a few months ago, my three year old grandson was killed in an accident.  I now know grief in a totally unique way.

This journey I now understand is not only individual to the person, it is individual to what has been lost.  The loss of someone so young rips apart your heart.  Then experiencing the loss through your own child, as you witness his struggle to find his way through the grief process, turns your heart to ashes.

“You will lose someone you can’t live without and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with a limp.” – Anne Lamott

The truth is that grief for every person is a solitary journey.  I can’t know how great my son’s pain is.  I can’t understand the anger and depression that he is currently working through.  I have no real idea of how to help.  I struggle for the right words to say, and even if I feel I have found them, I struggle to know the timing of when to say them.

I also know from my own history of grief that just showing up and giving a hug can get someone through one more day of loss.  What tends to happen with loss, is that at first everyone is there to support you.  But time moves on for all of those dear friends and family members.  They have  processed the loss.  They have moved on with living life, because that is what life does, it goes on.

When you have a loss that happens too soon, that feels too much to bear, your time line moves much slower.  So it becomes a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life, especially when that someone is your little boy. And no one but you can mourn the silence, that was once filled with laughter as he ran around your house chasing the dog. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way.

“You’re under no obligation to be the person you were before life flattened you. You’re just not. Trust yourself to navigate this part of the journey.” Stephenie Zamora

Grief is not a journey in which you just push yourself through the stages and arrive at the end.  There is no pushing through.  What there is at the end is acceptance.  You absorb it deep inside and it lives forever in your broken heart.  Like a deep cut, it eventually scabs over.  It is a healing process, where you pick at the scab and it bleeds and produces a new scab, over and over.  Until one day you are picking at the scab and it just falls off.  It leaves a scar that fades with time, but never completely goes away.

Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith, but the price of love.  If you find yourself stuck in stage for a long time, it is time to seek a qualified therapist that can help you unblock the dam that has been created.  If you find your friends and family are worried about you; if you find yourself putting on the fake smile and working hard to create the impression you have moved on (when you haven’t), it’s time to seek counseling.

“Grieving is a process. There’s a process of the shock, the anger, and then coping with the situation. You have to experience all of those levels to move forward, and sometimes you need help in that” Angela A Bridges

5 Facts about the stages of grief

• 1 – Our grief is as individual as our lives. Each person is unique in how he or she copes with feelings of grief.
• 2 – Not everyone will go through all of the 5 stages of grief
• 3 – The five stages of grief do not have a predictible, uniform or linear pattern
• 4 – You can switch back and forth between each of the five stages of grief
• 5 – The five stages of grief are simply tools to help us frame and identify what we’re feeling

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hallow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” favin.com

3 things to know about the denial stage of grief

• 1 – it’s normal. It is a defence mechanism that buffers the immediate shock of the loss
• 2 – it’s temporary. It carries us through the first wave of pain
• 3 – there is a grace in it. It’s nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

“A thousand moments I had just taken for granted…, mostly because I assumed there would be a thousand more.” Morgan Matson

Anger – You may feel as though the whole world seems to be conspiring against you.  You are mad at everyone, especially God.  You feel as though you are walking a road to your own death, burning in the fires of your devasting anger.  I think this quote describes perfectly why there is so much anger.  You’ve lost all of those future moments.

“In grief, depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervious system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle…, as difficult as it is to endure, depression has elements that can be helpful in grief. It slows us down and allows us to take real stock of the loss…, Allow the sadness and emptiness to cleanse you and help you to explore your loss in its entirety. when you allow yourself to experience depression, it will leave as soon as it has served its purpose in your loss.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Depression – I think it has to do with the hole in your heart.  It is consumed with emptiness.  You can’t fill it up or sew it back together.  So you mask it.  You deny to others that you are continuing to grieve.  You’ve run out of tears, out of anger, out of the ability to cope.  So the quiet emptiness just grows until it consumes you.  You’ve shut off the support system and isolated yourself behind the mask.  You are alone and feel like you will be alone until you die.  You feel that your family and the world would be better off without you.  You think that you are all alone in your grief, that everyone else has moved on.  It’s depression that is controlling the mindtalk and thinking.  When the grief turns into this kind of depression it’s time to take off the mask and seek help.  Even though you think you can’t escape the sadness, therapy will help you see past the depression.

At the end of the grief process, it is not so much a moving on, as a moving forward – as you bring your loved one along in your heart and your very breath. They are a part of you now and always. You move forward with them.  You continue to engage in life because you’ve become inspired by this love.  That is my wish for all of us.  To reach that space where we are able to continue our journey with a peaceful heart.  With the good memories that make us laugh and smile.  With that inner knowing that your loved one is still in your heart.  The connection is still there, it is still real, it has just changed form.

Dare To Choose Better

You  might think that when I chose to create this quote and graphic that I was thinking of judging and forgiving others.  It is very true that when you seek to understand others, that judgment goes by the wayside and patience comes in for the struggles that they are having.  However, when I was thinking about what to write about this morning, it was in connection to self judgment.

“Self awareness is not self judgment.  It is looking, and seeing, and discovering who you really are.  So check your judgment at the door.” – Trans4mind

You set goals, dreams, ideas of how your day is going to go.  You are plan your life out.  You will grow up, graduate college, get a job, marry and have a family, climb the corporate ladder, live in a nice home with the white picket fence, and live happy ever after.  And then it happens.  Self sabotage enters into the picture and you do it wrong.  You destroy what you’ve built.  You crush someone else.  Self judgment burns you like a fire that is raging out of control.

Negative self talk enters your head:

• How could you be so stupid?
• Can’t you do anything right?
• You are the worst!
• You’re not good enough!
• You are a fake and a phony!
• Everyone hates you!

“What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgments about these things.” – Epictetus

You are not perfect.  Nobody is.  So you will make mistakes.  Some of those mistakes will be disasters.   Some of life’s disasters happen from things not in your control.  Your mom dies from cancer; your nephew is murdered; your grandson is hit and killed by a delivery truck.  Life just happens.

You can’t go back and change what happened.  But you can in any moment create a new beginning.  Starting over. Let it go.  Done is done.  Stop carrying the emotional baggage of your past.  Take responsibility for your actions.  Rectify whatever can be shifted into a better place.  Then free it from your mind.

As part of your self awareness journey, you have to discover the courage to ask the difficult questions, both of yourself and others.  You need to learn to communicate clearly.  It is one of the hardest lessons.

Sometimes you are so scared of what the other one might say, that you don’t ask the question that you know in your soul needs to be asked.  Or, you lie to yourself that you can make something happen that you know is not really in anyone’s best interest.

Self awareness takes a lot of courage.  It is the only way to avoid the misunderstandings, drama and sadness that happens when we ignore the signs and continue walking down the wrong road.

“We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are, or the way they should be.  And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions.” – Stephen Covey

It might be time to start examining all of your assumptions.  Get curious as to what you things in life you think that you understand.  Years ago there was an aquaintance in the church I attended.  Someone had seen her having dinner in a restaurant with a strange man.  When they left the restaurant they were holding hands and the man kissed her goodbye.  That person went around telling everyone that she had a boyfriend.  The gossip took off like a wildfire.  What really happened was that her brother was traveling and stopped off to see her for dinner on his way to another location for business.  The person who saw her made an assumption and they thought what they saw was the right interpretation of facts.  It wasn’t.

How many assumptions about yourself, others, and life itself do you have that could have another interpretation?

I love the writing of Joseph Campbell.  He talks about the cave you fear to enter.  There was a demonstration of this in the original group of Star Wars movies.  When Luke is being taught by Yoda and he enters into the cave.  He asks Yoda what he will find inside and Yoda tells him, only what you take in with you.  Per Joseph Campbell, “The cave you fear to enter has the treasure you seek.”  You need to find your own cave.  Own the fear(s) you have and enter it.  Like Luke you will learn something powerful about yourself.

“Own the fear, find the cave, and write a new ending for yourself, for the people who you’re meant to serve and support, and for your own culture.  Choose courage over comfort.  Choose whole hearts over armor.  And choose the great adventure of being brave and afraid.  At the same exact time.”  – Brene Brown

So set your intention to keep moving forward.

Create the space and intention to remove the armor that keeps you feeling like you’re stuck.  You’re not really stuck.  You just need to check the thinking that created the circumstances you find yourself in.

• Life is messy.
• Life is complicated.
• There will always be something that you’re afraid to face.
• Life has painful moments – show up anyways.
• Life can be awkward – live it anyways.

Climb Out of Your Comfort Zone

When was the last time you did something that was both scary and exciting?  When was the last time you felt that mix in your stomach that said simultaneously, “No don’t do it?” and “Come on lets make this happen“?

“Do one thing every day that scares you” – Eleanor Roosevelt

What if doing one thing that scares you, was on your “to do” list every day?

• #1 To Do – Something that scares me
  • Talking to a stranger
  • Trying out for a team sport
  • Rock Climbing
  • Surfing
  • Skydiving
  • Trying out for a movie or TV role or even drama club
  • Asking for a raise
  • Asking for a promotion
  • Interviewing for a better job
  • Asking out that special someone for a date
  • Proposing
  • Speaking in front of a group
  • Networking
  • Asking for the sale
  • …, Fill in the blank

What else would you put on this list?  What pops into your head?

How many days would you push that scary thing, to the next day on your “to do” list? 1 day, 2 days or everyday?

How many things have you thought about trying, but put off or backed away from?  How many things have you been scared to even try?

If you did try and failed, did you quit?

If you tried to surf once and fell off the board, did you say – “Forget it, I will never be able to do this?”  The odds of being able to surf on the very first try are so high I couldn’t even type out the number.  To learn to surf, you try and learn something.  Then you repeat it over and over, wave after wave, until you have learned enough to stand up on the board and ride it into the shore.  And even when you are an expert, one thing you know for sure – you are still going to fall off the board.

Using your imagination, would you be able to put a new or scary thing to try on the list every day for a month?

If you never try, you won’t know what you can do.  I don’t believe that anyone really lives up to their full potential.  You are capable of so many things that you won’t ever think of to try.  When my mom was in a early 50’s her best friend talked her into a art class.  My mom didn’t believe she could draw or paint and I don’t think beyond school drawings she ever tried.  But her best friend had started painting porcelain tea cups and wanted to get better at it, so she convinced my mom to sign up for the class just because she didn’t want to do it alone.

A funny thing happened.  My mom painted this amazing forest scene that I have hanging up in my living room.  Her first painting revealed an unknown talent.  She would have never known if her best friend hadn’t twisted her arm to sign up for the class.  If you never try, you won’t get to feel that satisfying feeling of breaking out of your patterns and doing something amazing.

The funny thing about comfort zones is that they are very static.  You have a routine that you follow, day in and day out.  You punch the clock in the morning when you get up, and then you punch the clock at night when you go to bed.  I remember years ago I worked with a firm that bought failing healthcare businesses and turned them around.  On the bottom floor of our building was a TGIFridays.  Every day the President of the company placed the same exact order for a sandwich.  He never tried anything else on the menu.  I always thought how boring.

I love to try something different when I order food in a restaurant.  Something I don’t know how to cook.  There are so many amazing cultural foods out there.  Even in the U.S. they don’t make things the same way in the South as they do in Texas, as they do in California, or the Pacific Northwest, or Duluth, or NYC.

The thing is – unless we break out of the comfort zone, we can’t grow to a new level in  life.

“A ship is always safe at the shore but that is not what is was built for” – Albert Einstein

This week, make a list of things outside of your comfort zone.  Pick something that could become a hobby that you’ve never tried to do, something with your hands that engages your creative powers.  Pick something that could build your confidence and courage to grow that comfort zone just a little wider, a little longer.  For my mom it was an art class.  It doesn’t have to be something terrifying.  It could be something that you always wanted to do but are scared to try.  It could be something you don’t think you can do, like painting, sculpting, woodworking, or even knitting.

If you want to go skydiving, maybe the first step is a hot air balloon ride.  It gets you up in the air and grows your courage just a little bit.  Maybe the next step is just going up in the plane and seeing everyone else take that leap out into nothing.

Sir Edmund Hillary is famous for climbing Mt. Everest.  But that wasn’t his first climb.  His first climb was in 1939 ascending Mt. Ollivier.  Unless you are a mountain climbing fan or expert you would have never heard of his first climb.  It was 1953 when he ascended Mt. Everest.  The years between were spent expanding his comfort zone to the point that he could attempt and finally achieve the goal of climbing Mt. Everest.

So start small – pick something that expands your comfort zone and begin growing into your full potential.  Each victory or achievement builds upon the courage and confidence to get to the next level.  Find your own Mt. Everest and go for it!

“There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise up to meet” – William F Halsey Jr

Embrace The Wholeness Of Who You Are

Every adventure starts out as a journey of self-discovery.  Part of the discovery is who you are deep down inside.  As you learn about the parts of yourself that you have hidden away even from you – you will learn to face your own shadows.

“When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible” – Tina Lifford

What are your shadows?  They are the parts of you that you disowned as a child because you were made to feel that they weren’t acceptable.  They peep out at you, when you see the same shadows in other people.

What triggers you to instant anger, shame, rejection of others – there is your shadow.  Once you face and embrace your own shadows, you will quit attracting them into your life experience of others.

The values you have at your core, also come from your childhood.  Some of them are from your parents.  You either choose to emulate their values or you could go 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

For example, my mother used to say in complete truth for her, “Do as I say, not as I do.”  One of my core values is not being a hypocrite, because this was a real hot button for me.  My other core values of being truthful and honest, come from this same place.  The one thing that I will not tolerate from my friends and family is being lied to.

“If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your nature. If you don’t know your nature, you don’t know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.” – RZA

“Knowing yourself is life’s eternal homework” – Felicia Day

Part of really knowing yourself, is understanding what are your core values, and where did they originate?  When you begin on the journey of self-discovery you will find things that surprise you.  You will find things that may dismay you.

The great thing about this journey is that you have the ability to adopt new values, transform the existing values and basically transform your life from the inside out.  You have the ability to attain self mastery.

Attaining true wisdom, means that you have invested in yourself.  This means an investment in both time and money.  Some things are easy to do by yourself.  Some things are easier when you have a coach or mentor that can help you to see the things that you are blind to.  You are the one who has to begin the journey to self-enlightenment.

You can start your investment in reading books and eLearning for self-education.  Then you could add in a personal coach, begin taking courses with seminar or workshop programs.

The investment in yourself helps you to explore your creativity, innovation, ideas for your life purpose.  You learn how to plan and achieve goals with less effort.  You learn what motivates you.  How to brainstorm new ideas for the vision you have for your life.

Fear takes a partial bit of truth,

then makes the worst catastrophe possible all around it

and sells it to us as the absolute truth.

Fear will try to hold you hostage to limiting beliefs about yourself.  I have always loved this quote, because what you have identified as the fear is never the fear.

It is in the investigation of what is hiding behind the fear, that you can truly identify and then release the real fear that is holding you back from your life.

Reality of Fear:

You’re not scared of the dark – you’re scared of what’s in it

You’re not afraid of heights – you’re afraid of falling

You’re not afraid of the people around you – you’re just afraid of rejection

You’re not afraid to love – you’re just afraid of not being loved back

You’re not afraid to let go – you’re just afraid to accept the reality that he’s gone

You’re not afraid to try again – you’re just afraid of getting hurt for the same reason

It is in being courageous that you accept that vulnerability, is what is going to help you get in touch with your true self.  Everything you have experienced in life has a purpose.  There are no mistakes or coincidences in your reading this today.

It’s time to focus on you.  It’s time to commit to who you are beneath the surface.  The world won’t stop spinning because people choose to not accept you, or understand who you are beneath the surface.

• What makes you happy?
• What makes you feel at peace?
• Focus on loving what you think is weird about yourself.
• Focus on loving your personality flaws.
• Focus on your true purpose in life.

“To know yourself as the being behind the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.” – Eckhart Tolle

“You have to get new knowledge and force yourself to really implement what you’ve learned.  You have to set boundaries in place for yourself.  The important thing is if you don’t know real love, someone will teach you self hate.” – Tony Gaskins

Take swimming as an example.  You can read a book about it.  You can watch a video about it.  You can watch others swim.  But your actually learning how to swim means that you have to get into the water and experience how you can move through the water and not sink and drown.

The important part of about truly knowing yourself, is the application of what you are learning through and from all of the different mediums.

It’s about effecting real change deep inside of yourself.  It’s about not just planting a seed of knowledge, it’s about watering it, weeding around it and pulling out the things that might stagnate or keep that seed from growing into a healthy plant.  It’s about first transforming your inner world, and then your outer world, and then the whole wide world.

“The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery.  To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you must not be afraid to be alone.  Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle