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.

Focused Creativity And Inspiration Make Dreams Come True

If you were to concentrate in this moment, what is the one thing that you most desire in your life right now?

Someone out there would give anything to:

• To meet and marry their perfect mate
• To take the chance and reach out for that promotion at work
• To start interviewing and land a new job, that is in line with their life values
• To receive the amazing gift of giving birth to their own beautiful child
• To achieve the dream of buying their first home
• To buying their first brand new dream car
• To having just one more day with a loved one that has died

This list could go on and on.  Some things on this list are within your control to obtain.  The dream of the new home or car; the promotion or the new job – all things that you can work for and earn or obtain.

It might be that you’ve tried to get pregnant, had medical procedures to assist, and still can’t get pregnant.  It might be that obtaining this dream means that you have to adjust to a new reality of foster care or adoption to have children.  To match your dream of a child, to the child’s dream of parents to love them.

Some things might take a different path altogether.  Being with a loved one who has died, you might take the path of talking to them in a praying meditative state.  Or maybe the path of writing that letter telling them everything you never had a chance to say.

When you were a kid, did you ever take a magnifying glass or even just a glass and focus the suns energy on a piece of paper until the heat got hot enough that it started a flame? It takes focus to keep the glass still and just wait until the paper gets hot enough.  If you keep moving the paper around, it will never get hot enough to create the flame.

Creativity generates ideas.  Inspiration takes those ideas to the next level by thinking about them.

It takes focus to follow the trail that the idea came from.  It takes getting outside of the normal day for just a few minutes to say, “I wonder what happens next, and next, and where does it go from there”.  It takes focus to not get lost down the rabbit hole of other thoughts and ideas and just stay on this one trail with no distractions.  You have to harness your creativity and focus your thinking down a particular path to reach the destination.

Let’s just take the first dream on the list above and “find the perfect mate”.  Maybe the first thing you do on this path, is to take a piece of paper and write down all of the details of what your idea of a perfect mate is.  Write down as many things as you can think of, even what seem like silly details, such as they put the cap back on the toothpaste.  What their character is like; how they look; what their dreams are; what music they like; do they need to sing karoke with you ever Friday night?  Do they love to line dance at a country western bar?  Do they love chocolate?  Go all out and write down everything your heart and imagination can think of.

Once finished put that list in a drawer and forget about it.

Now start a new list.  This list is the most critical list of all that you’ve ever made.  This list is about who is that person, with all of those qualities that you just wrote the pages about, who is he/she looking for?  This is going to be about the list of changes that you are going to make in your own life, to attract that dream partner into your life.  This list is the secret of how the only person you can change is yourself.  This list is about the secret that when you start making changes in your own life, your life dramatically changes.  Your life improves by the amount of focus, power, brilliance and energy that you use to implement changes.

Focus means that you have to say no to anything that is not moving you forward in the direction of attracting your life partner.  You are surrounded by people who will take you off the path you are walking down.  There are constant distractions trying to sidetrack you.   So you say no to going out Friday night with your girlfriends because want they want to do isn’t in line with anything that you wrote down your perfect mate would want to do.

Remember that you wrote down that your perfect partner loves to line dance in country western bars.  You’ve always wanted to try it out because it looks like fun.  You never have because you don’t know anyone who would go with you.  So you’ve never gone.  So focusing on making changes to youself means, you check out some country western bars and find one that has free line dancing lessons.  You go to the next lesson and start learning how to line dance.

Just keep making these small changes to how you live your life in line with the values that you say you want in your life.  Step by step you become the perfect person for the perfect mate you are wanting to attract into your life.  You focus on what matters and let go of the rest.

Keeping in line with attracting that perfect mate, you’ve now went through all of your closets and dresser drawers and have space allocated to that perfect mate to use.  You are ready  – now those dormant forces are going to align to collaborate and transform your dream into reality.  There are so many wonderful stories out there about men and woman who have done this and attracted their perfect mate.

You can use this process to achieve every single dream you have.  You make the changes in your life that are necessary to create the space for your dream to come true.  Feel right now, how you imagine you will feel then.  Bring those emotions into your reality today.  Life the life today, that you have been projecting into your future.

“Stay focused on your goals, your peace, and your happiness.  Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t contribute to your growth.” – ihearts143Qutoes

Light Up Your Life, Shine Brightly

Sometimes simple things are the hardest concepts to put into action.  Anne Frank is quoted as saying, “Whoever is happy will make others happy too”.  Such a simple yet profound statement coming from a young girl who was in hiding from the Nazi’s makes it even more impactful.

I really love the days when I wake up happy and feeling like this is going to be a good day.  For me, it’s kind of a bouncy energy, light and airy.  Have you ever felt that way?  I’ve even used the analogy of the energy being like a balloon.  I feel like I am filled with a bouyancy that will allow me to fly through my day with no obstacles.  Then someone comes along, who is filled with negative energy.  Their balloon doesn’t lift up, but instead drags on the ground.  The negative energy is contagious and loves to come along and pop others balloons.  Just a simple statement coming from someone shooting out negative energy can steal your happiness in a moment.

About 10 years ago I received a promotion that I had been working for all of my life.  When my then boss called me into his office and delivered the good news it came with a caveat.  He said, “It doesn’t come with a raise and it doesn’t really mean anything.  Title’s are pretty worthless.”  Talk about taking  out all of the positive energy in the room – he gave me this beautiful balloon and then immediately popped it.  He made me feel like what I had worked so hard for all of those years was meaningless.  The goals I had set from highschool for myself were meaningless.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading around how managers are becoming more like coaches than bosses.   This past year, I received my “Inner MBA” which is a MBA course from NYU in being a  Compassionate, Resilient, Mindfulness Leader.  I am also getting certified in Positive Psychology.  I think that both of these courses have really expanded my view of how one negative person in your personal life, or work life – can negatively impact not only your relationship with them, it also muddies the water of every other relationship you have.

“Neurologist claim that every time you resist acting on anger, you’re actually rewiring your brain to be calmer and more loving.” – Positive Energy Quotes

Everything that I read about the energy field that we have as humans, reflects that it is like a magnet and positive attracts to positive.  One of my favorite philosopher’s is Jim Rohn.  He had this way of making everything so simple.  When I lived outside of Los Angeles, I would listen to his recordings on my commute back and forth to work.  California drivers can be pretty aggressive.  Jim talked about how you can shift your mind to not allow others to pop your balloon of positive energy.

So when someone cut me off or was driving aggressively, I started to practice what he talked about.  My immediate first reaction was anger.  I wasn’t an aggressive driver, so I wouldn’t try to cut off the bad driver in revenge.  But it would pop my balloon of positive energy and drain it completely dry.  So part of my practice was to catch myself letting someone else drain my positive energy.  It took a few weeks, but I got to the space where I was able to be grateful they were in front of my car – their cutting me off was saving me being rear-ended by them when they couldn’t stop fast enough.  I would actually say out loud, “thank you for getting in front of me”.

You can apply this to anyone in your work or home life that constantly has negative energy.  In your mind you can practice the Jedi mind trick – “I’m not the person you are looking for.  You can go about your business.  Move along, nothing to see here”.  Send them on their way, being happy that you were able to keep your balloon flying high.

Just as negative energy is catching, so is positive energy.  Have you ever been in a creative space with others and seen this happen?  It’s like the idea that one person generates takes on a life of its own and touches each person in the group. They take the idea and reshape it.  Expand it.   Evolve it into the perfect thing that is needed to move the project forward.  It is a Eureka!! moment.  It’s like everyone in the group is holding on to a large number of balloons of positive kenetic energy.

“Vibrate so high that toxic people if your life fall back, because they no longer know how to approach you.” – Unknown

When you get into this space of positive energy generating a field around you, those people in your work and home life just stop coming around.  They don’t understand you.  They even have a term for you, being a “Pollyana”.  Pollyana had a game she called the glad game.  So take it as a complement and keep shining out your brilliant light of positivity.

“The game was just to find something about which to be glad about, no matter what it was…, you see, when you’re hunting for the good things, you sorta forget about the other kind.”  Pollyana

They can’t relate to someone who refuses to enter into the drama that they create.  You never have to get rid of those relationships.  When you keep that positive field generating around you, they will stay away themselves.  It is sort of like a repellant, and they consciously don’t even realize that they are avoiding you.  You just have to stay close to those with a positive energy, people and places that make you feel glad to be alive.

Like most things that I talk about, this is all about doing the work on the inside.  You have choices every moment in your life to let someone into your energetic space or keep them out.  It takes work and time to learn, but it is so worth it.  Instead of having your mood reflect everyone else’s day, it can begin to reflect what you have personally chosen to accept.  When someone comes into your space with a low frequency, negative vibration, choose to energetically push them on their way.  “This is not the droid you are looking for.  Move along.”

Breathe, Release, Remember…,

“What I know for sure is that we are a resilient people, in spite of the difficulties and challenges of life.  We can look deep within ourselves to resolve our own issues so that our light will be our guide.  And we should reach out and extend to others the lessons we have learned so that they too can be empowered.  I’m reminded of a quote by Maya Angelou:  “When you learn, teach.  When you get, give.”” – Ramona A. Gray

I sure that everyone has seen the classic photo of a lone wolf howling at the Full Moon.  But the truth is that a lone wolf is a dead wolf.  The wolf needs a pack to survive.  When something goes wrong in your life, the first instinct is to hunker down by yourself – to isolate yourself.  But like the wolf you were created to be part of a community, you must have connection to thrive.

Isolation simply creates more issues for you in the long run.  There is nothing that stops your mind from catastrophizing, in an endless loops as it pokes and pricks at the pain, thereby increasing the suffering.  I read an interesting quote today that was talking about suicide.  It said that there is an Arabic saying that goes this way:

“You want to die?  Then throw yourself into the sea and you’ll see yourself fighting to survive.  You do not want to kill yourself, rather you want to kill something inside of you”.

I found this so interesting.  It’s not that you truly want to die, even though your mind is trying to convince you that you do.  You just want to end something that you can’t see ending any other way.  It’s the isolation of those feelings that creates the harm.  When you are in this place you need to be reminded and believe that you are a beautiful soul, that is going through temporary suffering.  Let me repeat that “Suffering is Temporary”.  That you are worthy of having a better life.  If you want to change your life, you must open up yourself like the Lodgepole Pine cone and let the fires of what you are suffering release the seeds to create growth and change.

You need to open up to friends about what is happening.  You need to seek counseling.  You need to reach out and reach up and keep reaching until you have transitioned from being in pain and suffering into a positive outlook for your future.  To see the open doors waiting for you to walk through them.  To grow in the new rich ash filled soil, to flourish once again in the sun.

“Let go of what you expect to embrace what’s there” – Chloe Jones

The Lodgepole pine cone is a squat egg shaped pine cone that embeds its seeds inside with a sticky resin.  The seeds are basically locked into a botanical safe.  You would think that it would not be a wide ranging tree – yet it grows from Alaska all the way down to Baja, California in all different kinds of weather zones.  The secret to their seeds being released is extreme heat, such as in a wildfire.  The seeds don’t just survive a catastrophe, they thrive in its aftermath.  This is the definition of resilience.

Resilience is being endlessly inventive, unrelenting, and forever evolving through the chaos of life’s changes.  It is having the flexibility to adapt to what is happening in the current moment without regard to what happened in the past.  You can’t prevent upheavals from happening in your life, but you can be more adaptable to changing conditions.  By putting yourself in the present moment, taking deep breaths and releasing the emotional charge, you can reset yourself.  You can discard the anxiety that is ripping through you, and put your troubles into perspective.

It is in a fire racing through an area that the opportunity to drop the seeds and grow a new tree emerges.  Change opens as many doors and it closes.  Change is going to happen.  You can’t stop things from ending, but you can reach out to the new beginnings that the change brings.  Be courageous and creative enough to embrace whatever happens.

 

“What I have learned over the past 15 months – and the only thing I know for sure – is that everything is temporary.  Happiness, sadness, control, chaos, highs, lows:  They all come and go.  It’s both unsettling and reassuring to rest in the notion that nothing is permanent.” – Kristen Bell

Rest, Renew, and Regenerate

In the aftermath of a wildfire, the Lodgepole pine seeds can become like a thick lime-green carpet across the ground.  The ash-infused soil is prime with rich nutrients to help the seeds grow.  Unlike prior to the fire when the ground was shaded, now the sunlight shines on the seeds as they shoot forth their new life in the aftermath of the destruction of the wildfires.  When a tragedy strikes like a wildfire, such as a death, divorce, loss of a job or illness – resilience is what will help you to see the future as a period of renewal and growth.

Life’s transitions could mean a relocating to a new area to live or working in a completely different field.  It could mean a new opportunity for growth where you are.  How many stories have you heard from friends or relatives who look back on a divorce or a job loss as the best thing that ever happened to them?  It took a catastrophic loss to wake them up.  To acknowledge to themselves that they were merely surviving their old life.

We all need at least one friend that understands what is not being said.  That calls “bullshit” when you say you are fine.  That won’t leave until you open up and say what’s really happening.  That goes down deep into the conversation, until you release the damn you created to hide all of the pain behind.  When you finally start really feeling it, and let out the pain – that’s when you can begin to heal.

I am blessed with both friends and sisters who are the image of this quote:  “Having a sister is like having a best friend you can’t get rid of.  You know whatever you do, they’ll still be there.”  When I was going through the pain of losing my dad they were there.  When I am going through the pain of my husband illnesses and worrying that he’s about to go through deaths door,  they are there.  When I have a tough night of grief striking my heart with the realization that I’ll never see my grandson again, they are there.

They are there because I reach out and say I need it.  As the sayings goes:  “Friends are like bras, close to the heart and there for support.”  The bra gives no support if you don’t put it on.  So when life sends you into the emotional roller coaster of chaos and change, reach out and let the heat of their love release the seeds hidden deep inside of you for growth.

Trust Your Inner Voice And Leave Behind The Illusion Of Knowledge

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking

Have you ever felt lost?  That feeling that says you don’t know how you got to this place in your life.  That fear that eats at your soul, causing the “fight, flight, or freeze” to send you literally fleeing into the darkness, with no idea where you are, or where you are going.  You have no idea how to extract yourself from the situation that you have somehow blindly created.  My visual mind sees the proverb of “painting yourself into a corner”.

‘All progress starts by telling the truth.’  – Dan Sullivan.

If you don’t take the time to listen your inner voice that is what happens.  You get lost in the maze of unconscious decisions.  You come to a dead end, but can’t remember the left and right turns you made.  Unconscious decisions are almost always made from the inner child, who is trying to protect you.  Unfortunately the inner child is under the “illusion of knowledge”.  What you understood about life at 4 or 5 years old; or 10 or 11 years old; or even 18 or 19 years old; that knowledge doesn’t compare to what you understand at 30, 40, 50, or even 60 years old.

These unconscious decisions are made from the “illusion of knowledge” in which you use the same old childish ways of thinking to make decisions that are incomplete, incorrect, or even self-sabotaging and paint you into a corner.  All progress begins with you being honest with yourself.  Becoming self aware.

When you wake up to who you are, you become more self aware.  Every experience in your life is contained within you.  Some parts of those experiences, instead of being healed were judged and rejected as being wrong.  They were pushed into the shadows to be hidden.  When you begin the process of integrating the pieces of you that you have named as shadows, you begin the process of healing those judgments.  Those experiences are not broken pieces of you.  They are just mislabeled.  Healing them means that you are alive.

• You begin to accept all of the parts of yourself, as the unique, special person that you are.
• You pick up those rejected pieces of you and re-own them.
• You acknowledge that you are not perfect, that you have made and will continue to make mistakes.
• You understand that you can’t become what your family, friends and the world wants you to be.
• You  stop pushing away the pieces of you that you are judging as “not good enough”.

What you do with your life from this moment of truth is so important.  It is part of the self discovery of who you are.  For me, I identify with being a life long learner.  Of seeing the connections to everything and everyone in my life.  Of being strategic in following my decisions on  life’s chess board as far as I can and then making the best decision I can see.  I know that many times these decisions will not be the best, but I have left off judging them as shadows.  I do the best I can in that moment – and that whatever happens will just create a new learning opportunity.  I try my best to remain open to the fact that the “truths” I know today can be changed by the experiences of tomorrow.

I love the analogy of a rainbow.  You might think of the primary colors as being the colors of the rainbow.  But it is actually the combinations of those colors in millions of shades that make up who you are in this moment.  No one else has your colors in the shades and combinations that make up who you are.  Don’t reject your colors.  Build your own life from those colors, taking in others perspectives and keeping what resonates with you and leaving what doesn’t behind.

Show The World The Difference Between Breathing and Being Fully Alive

Watching my grandkids grow up, I have seen things about my own life, that I never thought about before.  In my own childhood I came into adult responsibilities at grade school.  I stepped in trying to be the perfect little girl that picked up all of the pieces of motherhood that my mom was dropping or abandoning in living her life.  I got breakfast for everyone, made sure they got to school, helped with homework, cleaning the house, and so on.  I missed so much of the “fun playtime” of being a little girl, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.  I thought how I was being raised was normal.

There were  a lot of things I did different in raising my own children, but at the same time my mom still peaked out in what I said and did.  I think that for most of us, that is a true statement.  There were a lot of great things in how my mom raised us.  Almost ahead of her time she had no filters or judgments based on a persons race or sexual preference.  For her, it was all about who you were at a soul level.

“The wild woman NEVER FADES, she is constantly shaking loose everything that is not pure soul…,” – Shikoba

When I look at my grandkids I see the “wild soul” in its pure existence.  Like my mom and even myself, I see my own children try to tame that spirit in my grandkids.  They try to break it up into things you don’t say, how you don’t act in a certain way.  I don’t think that the “children should be seen and not heard” way of raising kids is very prevalent today, but I do think that the practice of filters is still hammered into our children.

It teaches them to filter out their inner truth, their honesty about how they are feeling, and instead speak about a filtered, watered down truth so that they don’t go against the rules.  Then as adults you have to awaken once again to those truths.  To be honest in what you think.  To shake off the shackles, the masks, and become once again fully alive.

Most of the time you are not awakened gently.  You are awakened by the betrayal of a friend or loved one.  You are awakened by loss.  You lose a job, a significant other, a divorce, a death of someone close to you.  Sometimes it comes from the violence of someone who is supposed to love and take care of you.  Sometimes it comes from finally admitting you have an addiction that is destroying your life.

With each challenge to awaken, you grow.  You get stronger mentally.  Your emotional turmoil, from floundering to find your way, creates a muscle of resilience that helps you bounce back again and again.  You learn to give a voice to everything inside of you.  You grab hold of that wild spirit that has been trounced on and beaten into submission.  You free it, letting it breathe in the freedom of expression in your own unique voice.

“They are scared of women like you.  Women with hearts big enough to house a suitcase full of pain, women with laughs so therapeutic they can heal wounds, women with a passion fierce enough to start wildfires.  They are scared of what they can’t tame or understand” – The Inner Voice

Each awakening starts a new journey of self discovery.  You go back to the beginning and start releasing everything that no longer serves who you are becoming.  You let go of the pain.  You let go of the victimhood.  You let go of the judgments against those who failed you when you needed them most.  All of the feelings of abandonment, betrayal, hurts both physical and emotional.  You let it all go.  It no longer matters to the new person you are becoming.  It’s all “water under the bridge”, gone and never to return.

Waking up is not for the faint hearted.  Self Awareness is like picking at the scabs and scars to dig down beneath and dig out all of the roots of feelings and emotions that never served you.  You begin to see a new life path forward.  A path of freedom from the past.  The chaos never leaves, because it is within that chaos that growth happens.

The chaos becomes the road sign for a new adventure.  For a new journey to uncover more of your “wild soul”.  The chaos is the preview of “coming attractions”.  It makes your heart beat faster.  It slips in the joy of showing the world another piece of your magic.  It is the process of learning to know and accept yourself on all levels.

“Within her soul a seed of resilience was planted.  Even in the darkness she knew that as long as she kept reaching up towards the light she would grow.”  muses from a mystic

When you focus on personal growth and self awareness, you experience life on a whole new level. Your life becomes filled with peace, love, joy, passion and fun – all within the chaos container you have built.  You see how to structure your life, design your life – all on your own rules.  You have the potential to make your life be anything you want.

It’s time to step out from the stories of who you are.  To grow instead that “wild soul”, and start creating the story of how you want your life to be.  Acknowledge and free yourself from the past.  Heal the present.  Listen to your inner voice.  Refuse to surrender who you are, to what others want you to be.  Love yourself, your body, mind, and spirit -celebrate it.  Surround yourself with other “wild souls”.  Write out your own story and dance it into life.

 

 

Start Designing Your Life With The Teacher In Your Soul

Listening to internal guidance can be very hard to do when life is stressing you out.  The noise of the chaos around you drowns out that inner voice.  Everyone will have an opinion on what needs to be done.  People will freely tell you how to live your life, what choices you should be making.  They will show up, try to convince you, dazzle you, and intimidate you.

The first thing to do is to drop resistance to what is happening.  “It is what it is”.  When you stop fighting against it, you find the ability to cope with what is.  You lose a loved one, it can’t be changed.  Your employer lets you go, it is what it is.  Coping can only begin after acceptance of what is.  Since you can’t change it, stop pushing back.

Glennon Doyle  in her book Love Warrior said: “I have met myself, and I am going to care for her fiercely.”  She outlines phases that we go through in life.  The typical hero journey where life is good, then tragedy happens, and then we find our way out.  In the process we make discoveries about who we are, and we make changes in how we show up in life.

At this moment in time the whole world is in a unique place.  The whole world has been going through a massive hero’s journey.  It began at the beginning of 2020.

STAGE ONE: LATE STATUS QUO (pre Covid)

You are living in your comfort zone and life is rolling along.  You might be hitting a few speed bumps once in awhile, but on the whole, life is good.

STAGE TWO: FOREIGN ELEMENT (Covid)

…Bam! An unexpected event occurs.  The foreign element of Covid instantly and urgently, changes everything.  Your entire life is turned upside down.  And it’s not just you.  It is happening to everyone around you too.  From normal minor things such as getting groceries, to something more major such as the kids being home-schooled.  If you’re lucky you’re working from home, if not you may have been furloughed or laid off from work.  You’re required to wear a mask everywhere.  You’re told to shelter at home.

STAGE THREE: CHAOS

You may have thought at first that this would be a very temporary situation.  Maybe a couple of months.  But instead those couple of months go past a year, and you find yourself entering into a weird “new normal”.    Then just when you have adjusted to this new normal, it happens again.  Your kids are going back to school – but what does that look like?  Is it safe?  Your job is calling you back to fulltime in the office, but you like working from home fulltime.  You feel like you get a lot more done each day, and who needs that commute?  Plus now you can be home when the kids get home from school.  Just the thought of going back to that old daily commute puts your stomach in a meat grinder.  Or maybe you want to have the ability to do both, having one or two days in the office and 3 or 4 days at home.

The world has changed and what you thought you knew cries out for reexamination. What you’d hoped for, planned for, or predicted before Covid has changed.  It may no longer be possible or even desired. You need to figure out what really matters to you.  This is not a pleasant process because it is filled with so much uncertainty, both for you, your family, and your employer.  But if you just take the time to do the work, it will get you somewhere important. The feeling of being in this chaos phase can be likened to taking a car engine apart – there can be confusion as to what is wrong, what needs to be replaced.  But if you work through the process of clearing up the confusion, you can make some really important and life changing discoveries.

STAGE FOUR: TRANSFORMING IDEA

STAGE FIVE: INTEGRATION AND PRACTICE

This is the stage where you try out those new ideas from your epiphany.  Your employer insists on everyone coming back to the office fulltime.  You suggest a hybrid workplace.  You have done the research and have the data to support your idea.  Maybe it just starts out with coming back to work in the office every other day; two days a week or three days a week.  Suggest that in 30 or 60 days you both reexamine how it is working out.  You follow other companies and what they are doing.  You discover some best practices to implement.  You generate and discard several ways of transforming the workplace until you find the one that fits your workplace culture.

This same concept works for any new ideas you want to implement in your life.

STAGE SIX: NEW STATUS QUO

This happens when your breaking outside of the comfort zone shifts into the new comfort zone, the “new normal”.

STAGE SEVEN: START DESIGNING YOUR LIFE

Pick a regular time several times a year, in which you can take out those kaleidoscope “eyes” and start to DESIGN and prepare for A NEW ADVENTURE.

You can be pro-active.  You can choose how the stage resets.  Your washing machine has more than just one cycle.  Instead of waiting for the foreign elements to bring in chaos, you can choose to start the process of enlarging your comfort zone now.  Be pro-active.  Instead of just imagining what you want to do someday, “I’ll finally write that book” or “I’ll finally travel to a foreign land” or whatever you always say your going to do someday.  You still won’t have the time, the money, or whatever you think that you are lacking in this moment when someday comes.  You just have to go within and shift to stage four and start transforming your idea to make it happen today.

While it is always good to know your limits – it is never good to accept them at face value.

Your current limit is just that – a current limit.  There are so many ways to exceed those limits.  It may mean leaning a new skill.  It may mean using leverage to get around it. When the Apollo mission had to figure out a way back home, the scientists took an inventory of everything they had and figured out a way to make something they didn’t have.

Water is another great analogy.  In order to get around obstacles, it can use the power of a rushing flood to break apart an obstacle.  It can freeze up and expand thereby crushing an obstacle.  It can flow deep within the surrounding area to get under an obstacle.  It can be fog, rain, hail, sleet and snow.  It can work with the wind in a hurricane.  Knowing your limits means thinking outside of the box to discover a way around or through the limitation and still be able to achieve the desired results.

Be like water.  Be magical.  Design something new and wonderful.

“You can’t tame the spirit of someone who has magic in their veins.” – SageGoddess.com

 

Shhh….. Can You Hear It?

 

The world around you is a very busy place.  Always someplace you need to be, always something you need to do. It seems almost like someone is turning up the speed to go faster and faster.  It can become so loud you can’t hear yourself think.

Do you ever feel like you are on a roundabout and can’t get off?

It can seem impossible to find even a moment to just be silent.  To gather your thoughts; to just quietly think about your life.  But those moments are necessary.  They are to be valued more than anything else that may seem to be grabbing your attention.  The world shouts – so who do you listen to?  Can you hear the whispers over the chaos?  Can you hear the whispers in the noise and confusion?

It is in those moments that you need to hear your soul’s whispers.  That you need to hear your inner guidance.  

Sometimes when you are so busy, you aren’t paying attention to the whispers.  Then life grabs you and shakes you to slow down.  That happened to everyone this past year.  For the space of 12 months, Covid hit and everything stopped.

Concerned about my job, I kept my head down and worked.  Worries over having enough toilet paper seemed to be a high priority.  I wasn’t listening, so again life grabbed me.  My dad who had been living with us for 15 years passed away.

This time I stopped.  I listened for guidance.  The guidance was to move.  So we sold our home in California and moved back to Washington state.   You can tell when you are listening and following the whispers, because everything moves so smoothly.  Within three days we sold for full listing price.  No hiccups from the buyers.  Both real estate agents couldn’t believe how easy the whole transaction was.

The decision to move was based upon my husbands health.  He had just been diagnosed and started treatment for cancer right before Covid hit.  The guidance was to go build that dream home we were going to retire to someday.  Someday was now.  It was the time to make that happen.

Then a few months later life grabbed us again.  My 3 year old grandson was hit and killed by a delivery truck.  That stopped us in our tracks for some time.  Pain beyond tears.  Loss comes unbelievably fast.  Like a thief it strikes you and it steals away a piece of your heart.  Grief is the calling card it leaves in its place.

Like the waves hitting the shoreline, the grief flows in flooding you with pain and then for moments it recedes.  As the waves continue coming back into the shore they become a catharsis.  It brings something new into your life that fills in the cracks of your heart.  Peace expands your hearts ability to keep beating.

Everyone reading this knows this to be true.  No matter what has happened in your life in the past 1-2 years, when you are brave enough to share it with someone, you will find someone who has felt that pain, known that grief, walked that mile.  The important thing is to not get so caught up in the loss, grief, recovery that we forget to listen.

“We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity.  We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion”  – Max de Pree

Life can strip you down to the core.  It clears away the stupid concerns about finding toilet paper, rice, or yeast.  It brings you up close and personal to the basic truth of who you are – someone special.  It reminds you that your life can be filled with meaning, a purpose driven life.  It isn’t about the job, the house, the car, or any other material thing you possess or think you should have.  It is about the bare, basic fact that you can change.  You can change not only who you are, but by living a meaningful life, you can change the world.  It reminds you of what is important.

For the past year, I haven’t written much for LemonadeMakers.  It was this past month, when despite being fully vaccinated that my husband caught one of the Covid variants.  He almost died.  I had to climb out of the “I have so much going on, I don’t have the time” soundtrack buzzing in my head.  I listened and realized that writing this blog is what keeps me centered.  That it is what keeps me sane.  That this is what helps me change, and this is what helps to change the world.

“Deep breaths untie the fog.  Listen to the song of your soul.  to the lyrics of love.  To the whispers of self, and hold on to what is valuable.”  – Linda J. Wolff

So I say listen.  Stop and just listen for the silence.

When the noise has all faded away, then listen even deeper.

Listen for the whispers.  Listen to your souls guidance.

“The water is always deeper than what it reflects” – Marty Rubin

 

 

A New Life

The Oregon Trail was 2,170 miles, beginning in Independence, Missouri and ending in Willamette Valley, Oregon.  The ruts in the trail grew as high as 5 feet deep in some places.  When your life has been completely shaken up, one of the first things to do is to look at the ruts in your own life.  Where are the places that you have created a rut so deep that you can’t see the possibilities that are all around you?

“Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head” – Meryl Streep

The pasts two years I think that a lot of people are just like me.  Their lives have been shaken up completely.  Working from home, my dad’s passing, and now we have sold our home and are have to moved to another state to build a home.  We stayed with relatives for a year as everything with Covid has taken months to do instead of weeks.  Now we are renting short term as construction is finally starting.  Some changes you may have started, some changes might be the result of others decisions, or life just happening.

Moving to a city where you don’t know anyone will certainly get you out of a few ruts.  The voices in your head will tell you a lot of stories about things to be afraid of.  If you are moving to a new city and state like us, the voices might talk about how hard it will be to make new friends, to get used to a small town.  All of which is nonsense.

“We can’t be afraid of change.  You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea” – C. Joybell C.

Covid-19 is a change, an event.  Losing your job is a change, an event – even if it was your choice to leave.  Having a loved one cross over to their next great adventure is a change, an event.  Having your life partner leave you, is a change, an event.

It is hard to think of being open to these kinds of changes.  They shift and change everything in your life.  They demand you look at areas in your life that you haven’t examined in a while.  That you see where you were so comfortable that you resisted growth in your life.  They push you into a transition period.  These events require you to grow and adapt to what being without someone or something in your life means.  That you look past your fears and create a vision as to who you are now becoming.

“It isn’t the changes that you do you in, it’s the transitions.  Change is not the same as transition.  Change is situational; the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy.  Transition is the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation.  Change is external, transition is internal – William Bridges

With Covid-19 you are going through social transitions.  It might be that habits such as shaking everyone’s hands are gone forever.  I’m a hugger.  If I liked you, I hugged you.  If feels so restrictive not to do so.  However, now I hesitate because I can no longer judge if it is appropriate, or will be received by someone.  I feel called to ask if I can hug you first.  There is a psychological transition that Covid-19 is forcing on the entire world, to come to terms with what all of the changes being required by this event are doing to us.

“We resist transition not because we can’t accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up because the situation has changed” – William Bridges

The easiest example that comes to my mind is when work changes a software program or simply changes how a certain part of your job is done.  You are resistant to unlearning to do something that has become ingrained in you.  To learn to do your job in a different way. 

Someone decides that a part of your job actually should be done by a different department as it makes more sense to do so in their eyes.  You might not not agree and resist the change.  You might resist learning a new software program.  You might resist training someone who is to take over that part of your job.

“Change comes more from managing the journey than from announcing the destination” – William Bridges

Same thing happens when Facebook changes how your page looks.  When Apple updates your phone and changes how your phone looks.  When your banking app updates and changes how you access your accounts. 

Almost daily you are faced with some upgrade, some update that requires you to do something different.  When you look at these kinds of small events, changes and transitions don’t look so scary. 

• What if you took the attitude you have about an app having an update, and used that same feeling, attitude about all of life’s shifts and transition’s? 
• What if you viewed everything as an upgrade? 
• What if you looked at it like you are just getting an upgrade from flying coach to flying first class? 
• What if instead of resisting transition, you enjoy it?
  

Embrace change, no matter what kind of change it is.  When my dad passed a year ago, it created a space in my life.  I have been taking care of him for 15 years.  I’d pass by his room and miss seeing him.  The tendency we all have is to fill up this space with something.  Instead on the advice of a dear friend, I am just letting this space be.  I am ignoring this frantic message in my head telling me to fill it up.

“The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place” – Barbara De Angelis

I want to let life show me instead – what is it bringing into my life as possibilities?  What is that part of my life is transitioning into?

With the passing of my dad, and moving to a new city and state, I wanted to learn what this new world can be.  I wanted to take advantage the possibilities.  I wanted to honor the space between “no longer” and “not yet”.  The space of no longer living with the “caretaker” label.  The space of “??”, the space of living comfortably with the unknown and “yet to be”.

This process had me taking a break from writing this blog for about a year.  I needed to that space to process what had ended, and what’s next.  It’s still a place of transition.  The caretaking has shifted from my dad to my husband, who has metastasized cancer.  Sometimes living life is a dance between fast and slow; between heart lifting and heart breaking – all at the same time.

The important thing is to slow down and breathe.  To let what’s happening wash over you, through you and out of you.  To realize that the waves come and go.  They kiss the shore and then retreat, only to come back again.  Each time they bring something and they take something.  The shoreline changes over time.  Expansion and retraction both happen in their appointed times.  You are in control only of how you choose to react to the changes.

“The most powerful times in our lives can be the time between times, or life’s transitions that give us the opportunity to choose” – Bill Crawford

You may have experienced some sort of event in your life recently, or may be you are experiencing it right now this moment.  Take time to have the space between what was, and what is now coming into your life.  Realize that you have a multitude of choices.  If you have lost a loved one, take the time you need to grieve, to let go, and to open up.  If you have lost your job or business, you still need some space to grieve what you lost.  Be open to transition from a title or position that you once had and see the possibilities of learning something new.  Of a new career or business, a new beginning.

“She understood that the hardest times  in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another”– Sarah Addison Allen

When you allow that space to create the vision of where you want to go, it is the space of growth.  It is messy.  It is uncomfortable.  You will experience feelings you didn’t know you had in you to feel.  It is welcoming change and loss, because that is where the growth happens.  That is where you learn something new about yourself and what you are capable of. Where you can see the opportunity to evolve.  To transition into new beginnings.

I Am The Storm

 

“Strong women aren’t simply born.  We are forged through the challenges of life.  With each challenge we grow mentally and emotionally.  We move forward with our head held high and a strength that cannot be denied.  A woman who’s been through the storm and survived.  We are Warriors!” – Unknown

There are moments in everyone’s life where their knees hit the floor.  Moments when you are in the middle of a devastating experience.   When you feel like you’re sinking beneath the waves for the last time, and you aren’t going to be able to reach the surface again.  That moment when you feel that death is a welcome experience, just to get away from the pain.  That is the moment when you discover that place deep inside your soul that is indestructible.

“Within every woman there is a healer, a lioness, a wild warrioress, a priestess, a goddess.  Never forget that.  Give yourself wings” – Unknown

When you are in that place of –

• disempowerment
• feeling isolated and alone
• when all of your plans were destroyed
• you are uncertain of being able to survive

At those moments it is necessary to reinvent who you are – at the basic core of your soul.  Nietzsche said that when you are in the place where your entire life is lying all around in the wreckage, it is critical that you look at that as a time of opportunity.  It made me think of Steve Austin in the Six Million Dollar Man.  They rebuilt his right arm, both legs and one eye and made him bionic and better than he was before.

“We fall.  We break.  We fail.  But then, We Rise, We Heal, We Overcome” – Unknown

What Nietzsche came to call this was the moment of loving your fate.  Where you would say that whatever is happening here is what I need to happen.  You look at it as an opportunity, a challenge.  A place to find your inner strength or resilience to bounce back not just back to where you were.  But better than before.  The belief here is that nothing can happen to you that is not positive.

I have read several article’s and just bought both the book and the movie for “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson.  In his book he talks about how everyone shares the condition of brokenness.  There are different levels of brokenness, but it is the brokenness that serves as a connection.  It’s part of the human condition.

There is a difference between brokenness and breakable.  Brokenness can be healed.  You gain comfort and meaning from the fact of being healed.  Storm Warriors can be broken but they are not breakable.

Being breakable means that there are too many pieces that are missing, and it can’t be fixed.  Take a teacup for example.  If it is broken, the pieces can be glued back together and it is still a tea cup.  But if the tea cup is shattered into a million pieces, the magic of healing can’t happen.

When my nephew was murdered our family faced a choice of being broken or being breakable.  Being broken meant that we worked through our grief, anger and pain.  Working through those emotions would lead us back to love and forgiveness for the person who took his life.

Being breakable still leads to grief, anger and pain.  It doesn’t stop there.  It continues down the track of becoming a victim, of being vengeful to point of cheering when the death penalty takes their life.  Of taking that victimization even further down the track into denying any compassion and as a result denying our own humanity.

“I expect to pass through this world but once; if, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again” – A Quaker

LemonadeMakers was our choice.  We chose to take resilience to a whole new level.  We chose to heal our brokenness.  We chose to become Storm Warriors.

When my 3 year old grandson was killed last year, it was another choice of being broken or being breakable.  There was a person behind the wheel of the truck that ran him over.  We could choose to go down the road of vengeance once again.

We could choose to drown in the grief that struck us.

Or we could choose to embrace our fate.  To ask, what is here for me, what is the opportunity and the challenge?  For my husband and I, it was embracing our son and daughter in-law.  It was supporting them in their time of need and being there not just the day or week of the accident, but every single day since in whatever way they allowed us to be.  And sometimes it was being there when they really didn’t want us there, but did in fact need us to be there.

Until the late 1700’s there were no life boats.  So when sailors had a shipwreck almost all would be lost at sea.  When the life boat was invented, at first they remained on land and would be used to go out to sinking ships to rescue those on board.  Storm Warriors was what they used to call the men that would go out in the storm to rescue those in shipwrecks.  Many of these Storm Warriors lost their lives trying to save others.

When you become a Storm Warrior, there is no possibility of being breakable.  Breakable isn’t a word in your dictionary.  A Storm warrior leaves resilience behind in the basement, as you race up to the penthouse.  It is that place where there is no comfort zone.  There are no boundaries.  No limitations.

It is the place you arrive when you have blown past “the zone”, the runners high, the world records.  You have not only exceeded all expectations, you put yourself in a whole new zip code, a new dictionary definition of what can be accomplished.

• To become bionic
• To “bounce back”
• To rebound without collapsing
• To withstand shocks
• To rebuild your life with stronger foundational materials
• To see life from a whole new level, without limitations
• To cope and adapt to challenging situations successfully

 

 

Resilience is a skillset you use daily in your life.  Being a Storm Warrior is a part of you that emerges when it is needed.  It is sort of like driving a normal car with gas for everyday, and having a dragster with nitro for when you are a Storm Warrior.  Most days when you don’t need a nitro super power to live your life.  But when those really bad days happen and tragedy strikes, you need to be able to pull out all the stops with your dragster and put some power into your life.

“People who have it tend to also have three underlying advantages:  a belief that they can influence life events; a tendency to find meaningful purpose in life’s turmoil; and a conviction that they can learn from both positive and negative experiences” – Amanda Ripley

Resilience is the strength of spirit to recover from everyday adversities. When you experience disappointment, you find the hope and courage to carry on. Humor lightens the load when it seems to heavy. You overcome life’s obstacles by tapping into a deep well of faith and endurance.

At times of loss, you seek out others for comfort. You grieve and then move on. You create new memories. You discern the learning that can come from hardship. You don’t cower in the face of challenge. You engage fully in the dance of life.

If you feel like your resilience balloon has taken one too many hits and is losing air, contact us.  We have lots of ideas on how you can refuel your balloon and make it like the Six Million Dollar Man – even better than before.

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

Finding Peace In The Midst Of Chaos

 

“And then one day I decided that hurry and stress were no longer going to be part of my life.  Stress is self-created; I decided to stop manufacturing it.  We can choose an internal calm and joy even amid the chaos” – Brendon Burchard

In times of uncertainty, you tend to fill in the blanks in your life, so that you give yourself a feeling of some sort of control.  I can’t control COVID-19; I can’t control political upheaval; I can’t control rioting in the streets.

But I can control what?  Most people tend to answer chaos and uncertainty with more inner chaos.  Instead try something different.

The question to ask yourself is – does this feed the chaos, or my inner peace?  What you need is a change of consciousness.  A decision to stop producing stress and instead choose inner calm and peace.

• You can control what you watch, read, or listen to – Does it build you up?  Does it make you laugh?  Does it energize you?  Does it bring you joy?
• You can control the discussions you participate in with others.  If they are not upbuilding conversations, walk away.
• You can control the music you listen to, helping you to release emotions that need releasing.
• You can do things that bring the feelings of joy back into your life.
• You can control what you are feeding your heart, mind, soul and body.

If everyone were to exercise these kinds of controls, it would end all wars, eliminate conflicts and prevent injustice.

“Staying positive doesn’t mean you have to be happy all the time. It means that even on hard days you know that there are better ones coming.” – QuotesCollective.com

“Peace.  It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work.  It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”  – Simple Reminders

Pinchmeliving.com has a great meme with 10 Truths You Need to Know for Inner-Peace & Happiness.

• It’s impossible for anyone else to define you, you’re the only one who gets to say who you are.
• You were born with everything you need; you’re not missing anything.
• Perfection is a man-made illusion, we’re all beautifully imperfect.
• You are NOT your thoughts; you are the calm awareness behind the noise in your mind.
• Your beliefs can be modified to lift you up, you are fully in control of your happiness.
• The past and future don’t exist anywhere except in your mind.  Now is the only real moment.
• Your calling in life is to fully express who you already are, unapologetically shine your light.
• Challenges are gifts for your growth and can unlock your full potential.
• Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself, to be free.
• Surrender is the gateway into sustainable inner peace.  Let go.

credit to Pinchmeliving.com

In finding your inner peace, the path leads through resilience.  It’s about focusing on this present moment.  You are trying to have an important phone call.  One child is hugging you and the other wants you to pay attention to the cat.  You have a choice in this moment.

You can go into chaos and frustration, or you can practice resilience by hugging your daughter at the same time you are talking on the phone.  You can practice resilience by telling your children to wait a few minutes, and they can have your complete attention.  Then once their needs are filled, you can give them something to do, and go back to the work that you are doing.

Resilience has the component of compromise within it.  When life throws lemons into your well-planned schedule, you have a choice to practice resilience.  You can focus on the negative things that just happened, with pain, anger, grief, and fear and let the bitterness eat at your soul.  Or you reach back into your resilience pool and focus on the present moment.

• Focus on what is still good in your situation.
• Focus on gratitude.
• Focus on peace.
• Focus on all of the magic that is still in your life.

In a storm like a tornado or hurricane there is a calm center, in life you have to find this calm center deep within yourself.  When everyone else is running around crazy, you do not have to buy into the chaos.

It’s a matter of practice, but once you’ve been in this calm centeredness a few times, it becomes easy to immediately place that peace like a protective bubble around you.  It really is a simple decision that anyone can make, to stand in the center of their own peace.

“We can weather anything if we stay calm in the eye of the storm” – Lolly Daskal

Ask yourself:

• What am I grateful for today?
• Who am I connecting with “my heart to their heart” today?
• What expectations of “normal” in my life am I letting go of today?
• What beauty in the world am I creating today?
• How am I walking in beauty today?