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.

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 🙂

Notions of Grief

Notions is a word that reminds me of creative arts.  Sewing, paper arts, crocheting/knitting and so on. Tools that you use to make something beautiful and wonderful.

The dictionary says notion is also: “a conception of or belief about something,” and/or “an impulse or desire, especially one of a whimsical kind.”

In the case of this quote a notion is a belief about what grief is all about.  It isn’t something that is just outside of you – or inside of you.  It’s both about how you are inside of yourself and how you impact the world outside of yourself.

It’s about vision, both internal and external.  And like looking through a kaleidoscope, what you see outside of you changes each time you turn the mechanism inside.  For you, each of those moving pieces inside the kaleidoscope are made up of your personal stories.

• the stories you tell yourself about who you are – your definition of who you see yourself as being, your self-worth.
• the stories you tell yourself about your experiences in life – did they happen to you or for you?
• the stories you tell yourself about the roles you have in your life – do they reflect the true you are or they an act?
• the stories you tell yourself about what your potential is – are you living up to it or running away from it?

In a recent article in the Washington Post, they were discussing political views around Russia in a recent poll.

“It goes to show you that in terms of public opinion, people remain in their silos” Vera Zaken, an expert on the intersection between information and foreign policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me.  “They’re going to believe whatever truth or disinformation fits their views.”

I thought this was so interesting in how we all live our lives.  We live them filtering out anything that doesn’t support our beliefs.  It’s as though we don’t hear or see anything that contradicts our worldview.  Like we have this force field bubble around ourselves that bounces out any contrary beliefs, thoughts and only lets in what will confirm our beliefs.

This is what change, loss, and grief is about.  It’s an opportunity to examine your beliefs.  To peek out of the filters that keep you confined in your comfort zone.  To see the possibilities of something else.  To see the potential that is waiting right across that line of the comfort zone.  To admit in new truths and let go of whatever no longer serves you.

Like shedding an old skin, the process of grieving requires you to transform your life.  To alter in some way, from who you used to be into a new person, a new self-definition.

These beliefs you protect are really all about who you have been told all of your life that you are.

• Smart – or not smart.
• Pretty – or not pretty.
• You let others in – or you keep them from getting close.
• What you draw your meaning in life from – a job, a spouse, a parent, etc…,

Watch any good detective mystery show.  The main character is always a flawed hero in some way.  Yes, they catch the bad guy, but their motivation to do so comes from a brokenness.  Going back to the main quote, whatever happened to you, became an altered part of you.

One of my favorite stories, is about how you throw a rock out into the water.  It creates ripples that expand out to every part of the shore, until slowly the ripples fade back into the still calm water of the lake.  It looks like nothing happened.  The lake has the same water line, as the rock wasn’t large enough to create an impact to the water levels.  Yet the lake has forever been changed, as at the bottom lies a rock that wasn’t there before.

The stories you tell yourself about your life are like that rock.  Each story is created by the impact of that rock as it breached the surface of you, the lake.  As time passes, the ripples of grief you experienced die down and everyone around you thinks you are fine.  You even think that you are fine.  But you are changed forever by the rock that impacted you.

You experience a form a grief for every rock.  Some rocks are very small – someone hurt your feelings.  Others are larger, like losing a job, or not getting the promotion you worked so hard to get.  Then you have a huge boulders of grief from the death of a loved one or a divorce.

Some rocks are just part of life, like the kids going off to college or moving out to get married.  Retirement.  Things that are part of “normal” life experiences, that aren’t viewed as life altering but really are.  Because what they do, is alter or change how you view yourself.

The empty nester wonders who am I, if I no longer have kids to mother on a daily moment by moment basis?  The retired person wonders who am I if I am not “this job title”?  They both wonder what do I do with the rest of my life?  What is my purpose if I am no longer …, (what I have identified myself as)?

These rocks are not problems to be solved.  There is no mystery to them.  They are just the reality of your life.  These rocks are experiences that shape who you are.  It is what you do with the rocks that matter.

So, enter into the world of unfiltered “what if’s” – take out a piece of paper and write down 4 things that have happened to you recently.  And start writing out possibilities of what you can paint on your rock.

• What if…,
• What if…,
• What if…,
• What if…,

The easiest way to do this is through imagination and curiosity.  Take any experience that happened to you from conception through the age of 18 that you believe has impacted your life in some way.

If you are really honest with yourself, you will be able to find some silver lining to any experience.  I read years ago something that has profoundly changed how I view all such experiences and it was around forgiveness.  It took me a long while to incorporate this into my belief systems, because for many years it was just too big of a leap.

It is around the concept of how you come to earth to experience things.  And you travel in this soul group, there are members that volunteer to be the catalyst for some of your life experiences.  How that person loved you so much, they volunteered to provide either the negative or positive experience required as part of living your purpose here on earth.  The author stated that if you can find yourself in this space, then you can honestly say “thank you” for what happened.  It incorporates the saying, “life happens for you, not to you.”

What this belief allowed me to see was a different way of looking at what I have experienced in my life.  From there I could see how each thing in my life has built upon what was already there.  If some of those “steps” had been missing, then I wouldn’t have made it through some of the harder things.  It was like I was being trained for an Iron Man – each thing strengthened some part of me.  I didn’t see the patterns of strength training being connected, but when I look backwards, I can see how everything is connected.

When you see how everything is connected, what you realize is that removing any piece would cause the whole construct to fall apart.  Each piece however painful at the time, was necessary.

When you first start training for an Iron Man, you probably experience sore muscles.  You probably received blisters.  You experienced the moment when you thought you couldn’t take one more step, and then broke through a barrier and found you could go another mile.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trail and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved – Helen Keller

What if…, every time I experienced a breakdown, I smiled and started celebrating the breakthrough?

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.

Bridging The Gap Between Knowledge And Action

Revised 1/12/22

The biggest gap in your life is between what you know and what you do – Bob Proctor

It is up to you to be a prisoner of your past, by remaining in it; or to be a champion of your future by building it. If your life path was to travel from one of these formations in the above photo, to the next one and so on to the end, how would you do it?

You could anchor yourself and rappel down the mountain, then walk to the next peak and scale up that peak.  Then cross the peak, rappel down the mountain and repeat over and over again.

We are human.  We are not perfect.  We are alive.  We try things.  We make mistakes.  We stumble.  We fall. We get hurt.  We rise again.  We try again.  We keep learning.  We keep growing.  And we are thankful for this priceless opportunity called life – Unknown

Or, you could become a bridge builder.  You could build a temporary bridge out of ropes or wood, or a bridge designed with stone or steel that would last for many years.

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!

The Darkness You Go Through Defines Your Light

Are you a half empty glass or a half full glass kind of person?  I think that neither one of those statements are true.   I don’t believe in either or statements.

I think that the truth is always contained in an “all of the above” kind of answer.  I think that every answer depends on the situation and the day it happens.  Sometimes you will view your life through your limitations and sometimes you view it through your strengths.  It’s all up to you and the choices you make.  Your emotions will always be the colors of how you see your life.

Sometimes you will allow your limitations to rule your emotions.  What if it is your limitations that make your story have real value in helping someone else in their own life journey?  When you think about the “feel good” books, movies, stories that we love to watch and listen to – isn’t that what makes the heroes journey so amazing?  The fact that they were able to rise above the limitation?  It’s what separates your story from simply being an “ordinary boy meets girl, falls in love and marries to live happy ever after” kind of story.

There is no growth of character in that story.  It is the overcoming of the obstacles to true love that gives the story a reward.  If Snow White had no wicked stepmother that was jealous and wanted her dead; if Sleeping Beauty wasn’t cursed by the evil fairy; if the Little Mermaid didn’t foolishly trade her voice for legs with the Sea Hag; all of those wonderful stories we grew up with wouldn’t have survived through the centuries.  It is the drama of overcoming the limitations that feeds our souls, not just the “happy ever after” ending.

It is from the damage you have had in your life, that the gold within you is purified.  It is the refining of your soul through life’s fires that makes it into pure gold and shines out brightly for others to see.

“The light you’re seeking out there is already within you.  You hold the light of millions of stars inside your own beating heart.  Stardust runs through your veins and comets shine through your eyes…, My beautiful friend, no one can dull your spark because it comes from within you, it’s yours.  Your spark comes from being wildly yourself; it comes from accepting yourself – strengths and flaws and all.  It comes from being the person that you’ve always wanted to be.  And the more you align with your heart, the more you allow your true light to shine.” – Nikki Banas

It isn’t that some people are heroes and others are not.  It is in the overcoming of the obstacles, the living through the adversity to the other side, that you are revealed as a hero.  It is in the doing of the thing that you thought you couldn’t that your inner strength is revealed.

J.K. Rowling said, that if she had succeeded in anything else, her true calling would never have been called forth.  The one place that she belonged, would never have been uncovered.  So when you think that you’re just a failure, think again.  It simply means you are still revealing who you really are and what you were born to do.  Failure is simply a matter of opening the wrong door.   Keep walking down the hallway and trying more doors.

Adversity is a stepping stone, not a stumbling block.  Boiling water soften potatoes and hardens eggs.  It’s not about the water boiling, it’s about who you are and what you are made of.  You have the strength to be a shining star in the dark night.  Just keep taking one more step.  Don’t look at how far you still have to go.  Just keep taking one more step and give it all you  have.  You can do this!

“People are like stained-glass windows…, when darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Just remember each time you made it to the goal line.  Each time you climbed another mountain.  Each time you were defeated and got back up again.  It is in the conquering the challenge, that you begin to understand just how strong you are.  Every time a doubt enters your mind, think of all of the times you conquered a similar doubt.  Every time a fear tries to stop you in your tracks, think of all of the other fears that you have walked through.

A really good friend of mine has a different kind of bucket list.  His list isn’t of the places he wants to see, or the things he wants to do.  It’s a list of the things that he’s afraid to do.  And every year he crosses out one or more things on that list.  He loves the feeling of conquering a fear.  It gives his life a special meaning.  It lights him up.  He sails high on the adrenaline rush for months afterwards.

“Do the things that light you up from the inside out.  Write that book that you want to see written.  Make the pottery that you want sitting on your shelf.  Cook the delicious meals that you want to enjoy.  Fill your walls with art that you adore.  You are meant to live your life beautifully and entirely yours.  You are meant to fill it with all of the colors and art and wonderful things that fill you with delight…, You are meant to live in a way that lights you up from the inside out.” – Nikki Banas

Are you living through a challenge right now?  Get excited about it.  Get passionate about fighting for your dreams.  About living your passion.  About tearing down the barriers.  About crossing the line and living the life that scares you.  Discover what you are made of.  Broaden your horizons.  Learn something new.  Experience something that scares you and makes you heart beat faster just thinking about it.  Create a bucket list that challenges you and changes you.

“Be a warrior.  Fight for what you believe in and never, ever hold back.  Fiercely go towards your dreams with boldness and lust.  Hold your ground in the face of conflict.  Knock barriers down with courage and grace.  Do not give up when you find yourself face to face to an obstacle, instead continue forward with abandon.  Keep the fire in your heart burning strong and do not ever let your flame fade away.  Remind yourself that what you are fighting for is worth it.  And remember that you will overcome everything that comes your way – because my beautiful friend, you are a warrior.” – Nikki Banas

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

To Understand Your Full Potential, It Is Necessary To Step Into The Unknown, Part One

Every story has a story.  How the story is shaped defines how you grow.  The way forward is never down a straight and narrow path.  Growth is like what happens in the “Alice In Wonderland” story, where you do “Six impossible things before breakfast”.

We think that growth is a linear measurement.  But all growth doesn’t happen with forward momentum.

• Progress can happen when it feels like you’re sitting still
• Progress can happen when it feels like you’re backing up
• Progress can happen even when you are walking in circles lost in the woods
• Progress can happen at one minute before the midnight deadline

Charting your course means that you need to be open to adjustments, revisions, false starts, rewriting your goals, refocusing your passions.  You need to be able to both dig in your heels and let go at the same time.  You must, must, must have a willingness to change.

Step 1

In starting any journey of self discovery, it is important to engage your curiosity muscle.  When you are around a little child you see that muscle in action moment by moment.  From the minute they are born, they are wide eyed looking at everything.  Everything is new and wildly uncertain.  They are on a mission to discover and understand this new world they were born into.  They grab onto everything.  They put everything into their mouths.  When they start talking, everything becomes a “why”?  For every answer you give, you get three more “why’s”?

For some reason you lose this voracious appetite as you grow older.  You start thinking that you know the answers, or you are afraid that everyone else does but you.  So you stop asking why.

A great exercise to start bringing more attention to your curiosity muscle, is to start putting a question mark behind your first thought when trying to solve a problem that has come up in your life.  Start asking why is this, the way it has to be done?

Most things in life can be successfully completed in a variety of ways.  There are usually multiple solutions, and multiple paths.

Focus on using curiosity as a focal point for engaging with creativity.  Sometimes you have a better journey when taking the long way home.

Step 2

Uncertaintly is hard to live with.  You want to know everything there is to know about something, so that you can feel that you’re making the perfect decision.  That your work will be perfect.  That your life will be perfect.  But that isn’t how anyone’s life is.  If you were to talk to anyone who you think has the perfect life, they will tell you that fame, fortune, status – whatever criteria you want to measure by – doesn’t make their life perfect.  They still have problems.  They still make mistakes .  They still make bad decisions.

When you throw away the word perfect, you are left with imperfect.  Which is how we all are.  We are all perfectly imperfect.  We are all left feeling like we are blind as to how to make the best decisions in our lives.

So what are we left with then?  Uncertainty.  We are left with blindly following rules that have a multitude of exceptions, based on faulty or fuzzy logic, and sometimes just plain guesswork.

Watch any good mystery or crime drama and at some point someone is going to say, “I have a bad feeling about this”, or “My gut is telling me not to walk away”, or something similar.  In the real world you use your gut instincts or intuition a lot.  Subconsciously you may be making decisions without your mind even knowing why you just turned right instead of left.  It just felt like the right way to go.

One thing that I have learned in the corporate world, you can make facts and figures, statistics say pretty much whatever story you want to tell.  I love logic, but I also know from experience that if I walk out my front door feeling like there is something I am forgetting – I am 99% of the time forgetting something.  I have sat in my car ready to leave going down a mental checklist as I tell myself that I can find nothing that I have forgotten.  But the minute I get to my office and sit down in my chair, a random thought surfaces with the thing I forgot.  My intuition was right.

Knowlege is always provisional and incomplete.  There are always new facts that surface as time goes by.  New evidence comes to light.   If this wasn’t true then there would never be a drug company being sued for side effects discovered as time went by.  No airplanes would fly in the sky.  The world would still be flat.

So when you think you know everything there is to know, just be aware that you don’t.  So what do you do?

Step 3

Dragonflies have large, compound eyes, with thousands of lenses and photoreceptors sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Although we don’t know exactly how their insect brains process all this visual information, by analogy they see multiple perspectives not available to you.  Dragonfly-eye perception is common to great problem solvers, as they take in 360 degrees of perception to encompass multiple viewpoints and ideas at once.

Kalidescope eyes that view life through multiple lenses. This way of thinking is a way to see beyond the familiar patterns that your brain pushes into place. By widening out the periphery of your vision, you can look out beyond all of the filters your mind sees the world through.  You look at a problem from multiple perspectives.  This is where compassion comes in.

When a two year old has a meltdown at a store, many times you will see a mother about to have one herself.  A compassionate viewpoint sees two over-tired individuals, not a bad child or a bad mother.

• The two year old that doesn’t know how to express his/her feelings in any other way.
• You see a mom who is also overtired.
• A mom who worried about if she is just doing this whole motherhood thing wrong?
• A mom who is flinching from her own self judgment and self perception, that she is now being judged by those who are witnessing the meltdown of her child.
• A mom who has a million other things she has to get accomplished on her “to do” list, and now she’s wondering if she just go home and forget life altogether as this is a complete disaster.

Your brain like to think in patterns.  Good or bad.  Black or white.  This or that.  Putting things in containers that belong together free’s up your brain to think faster.

By using dragonfly eye’s, you can view the world around you in an entirely new way.  Whatever problems you are facing; whatever decisions need to be made; you can start to see the many possibilities and probabilities in front of you.  Instead of just:

• Rabbit holes – unlocking secret doors and passageways, or
• You can start down a new life path and go to a tea party, or
• This way or That way, or
• Wrong way or Right way, or
• Down here or Down there, or

You see “and” not “or”.  You can go up, down, backwards, forwards, straight, crooked, ladders, slides, caves, etc…,  you see all of the possibilities at once.  The secret to developing a dragonfly-eye view is to “anchor inside yourself” rather than outside as a starting point.  To work on that curiosity muscle.  To develop more trust in your intuition muscles.  To exercise your compassionate view of yourself when you try to be perfect.  To embrace uncertaintly.  To have dragonfly eyes.

1 – Be Curious

2 – Live life as an Imperfectionist

3 – Have Dragonfly Eyes

In this blog we covered steps 1-3 of the below diagram.  Read the next blog for part 2 as we review steps 4-6

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.

Breathe. It’s Only A Bad Day, Not A Bad Life

“She was a true fighter, you could see it in her eyes.  She was not born strong, she was made strong.  She was sculpted to be her own hero when the world let her down, she kept picking herself back up.”  – Unknown

Your power comes from:

 Letting go of what you can’t control – you can’t calm the storm

 Letting go of what doesn’t serve you – stop trying to calm the storm

  Appreciating all the good in your life

  Bringing good to other people’s lives

  Treating your soul like a soulmate and honoring what it tells you

 This is temporary, Breathe through it, the storm always passes

Breathe in the strength, power and courage you need to move on

Breathe out all the pains, frustrations and sorrows that are weighing down your heart

Trust the storm to bring in something better than what it has taken away.

You are where you need to be.  Just Breathe.

The power of the breath cannot be overstated.  When you are stressed out, overwhelmed – when you are in emotional turmoil – your breathing becomes quick and shallow which causes a number of reactions in your body.  Your adrenals are impacted as they release cortisol and start the “fight, flight or freeze” reaction in your body.  Breathing deeply and slowly instantly calms you down mentally so that your body can stop being triggered and relax physically.

Embrace the uncertainty because when nothing is certain then anything is possible – relax and enjoy the beauty of becoming

Strength  is not found in perfection,

• It is found in both the moments of trying and in failing.
• It is found in both the moments of laughing and in crying.
• It is found in both the moments of tenacity and in giving up.
• It is found in both the moments of giving, and in receiving.
• It is found in both the moments of doubt and in believing in the goodness of life, in spite of it all.
• It is found in the moments of courage, bravery, as you continue your journey through both the up hills and the down hills.

That is real strength.

“The world needs strong women .  Women who will lift and build others.  Who will love and be loved.  Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce.  Women of indomitable will.” – Amy Tenney

“She remembered who she was and the game changed.”  – Lalah Deliah

So much of what you worry about in your life, the things causing you to have anxiety are in reality “the small stuff” of your life.  Many of the deadlines that you push yourself to meet, are self created.  Will the world end if dinner is at 6:30 instead of 6:00?  Does it really matter if your child goes to school wearing a stripped shirt and polka dot pants?  Did the PTA call you to say that you have been condemned as the worst parent in the school because you brought store bought cookies instead of baking home made cookies?  All of these things are “the small stuff”.

“When she finally learned how to let go of the things that didn’t matter, she discovered all the things that really did.  Just breathe.”  – Unknown

• What is important is that you cooking a healthy home made meal.
• What is important is that your child’s clothing was clean, neat and that they were happy wearing what they were wearing – expressing who they are as their own person.
• What is important is that you showed up to support your child and their school.

When the “small things” in life get you down.  When life trips you up.  When life sends you on an emotional roller coaster, don’t forget “you are only human“.  You’re still learning.  It’s okay to have a meltdown.  What is important is that you don’t pack your bags and move into the zone of constant emotional turmoil.  Take some deep breaths, re-center and ground your emotions.  Refocus on what is important.  Let go of what isn’t.  Remember what Cristen Rodgers said, “It’s the risk of falling that makes life a grand adventure rather than a guided tour.”

“And one day she discovered that she was fierce, and strong and full of fire, and that not even she could hold herself back because her passion burned brighter than the stars.” – Mark Anthony

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.