My Resolution to Flourish

I begin 2024 with a deep sense of pride. I am proud of what I have accomplished in the past year and how far I've come since I began making myself a priority. Too often, we start a new year with a resolution (a tradition that I loathe). What are New Year's Resolutions anyway? Just a collective self-deception that things will change just by wishing it to be so.

As I look back on some of the posts in this blog, I realize that, while they are not perfect, I see myself reflected in each one. I see my mindset, the deep changes I've undergone, some intense and sincere thoughts, emotions, and reflections. But most of all, I see my resolution to live life fully every day and to create for myself a life full of musings that inspire me to share with you (my dearest reader).

I don't feel awkward or ashamed to say I'm proud. And if I'm being 100% honest, I see my value for what feels like the first time ever. Mind you, I don't see it in every single aspect of my life, but I do see it in my intentional turning inwards, in my resolution to prioritize myself and my values. By doing so, I have opened up, and I can see and feel that I am flourishing.

What a great word. Flourishing.

What better word to describe exactly what I am feeling and how I am doing.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't a passive act. It is an ongoing intentional choice that requires dedication and resolve. I am prioritizing myself. I am examining my life, actions, behaviors, and words, determining if they are yielding the life that I want to live. It's hard work every day. Sometimes it's exhausting, but by doing so, I'm shedding some long-held seeds of self-doubt and finding that I am indeed flourishing!

I owe so much of this to some simple changes that I have made, to changing my perspective, to switching up how I spend my time, to prioritizing my health, to paying attention to what I put in my body, to curating with whom I spend my time, and to setting time for me to be in my own company.

If you're looking to do this too, be warned that it is hard work. You must be ready for it and willing to show up every day. There is no room for half-hearted attempts here, my friend.

You must carefully craft each aspect of your life so that it reflects who you truly are. If you find a problem, a void, or a contradiction, no one is going to change it for you. YOU are your best agent for change. YOU are capable of anything to make your life one that you feel fulfilled by and proud of. YOU have all the strength and ability to create whatever it is you desire. YOU just have to start doing whatever needs to be done by starting with one small step at a time.

Make that phone call.

Send that text.

Take that course.

Throw away that thing which no longer serves you.

Set aside time to do that right now.

Don't wait one more minute.

Don't wait for that fateful "one day" that will never come. Stop doubting yourself. Turn inwards to find who you truly are, what you truly love and value, and make your days reflect those many wonderful things that make you exactly who you were meant to be. Make this your resolution. Resolve to be steadfast to yourself, and undoubtedly you too will flourish.

When Life Gives You Lemons Make Lemonade

I got thinking about the old adage "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" while reading an odd little book that reminded me of the Lemony Snickets series.  Lois Lowry's The Willoughbys is quirky, satirical and ends hilariously.   

Basically, the story goes a little something like this: the parents of the 4 Willoughby children are horrible, the family in general is miserable, and everyone is longing for something that they're missing.  BUT, in the end (spoiler alert) they all end up happy (although not all necessarily alive) because they make the most of things going terribly wrong and take advantage of their misfortunes.

I can't say that it's always easy to see the good in horrible things.  But sometimes, even when times are the worst, you get little glimpses of the good here and there.  Even now, as we continue on with social distancing and home isolation there is a silver lining.  

There are many silver linings to the mess that Covid-19 has created:

1.  I have a renewed perspective on what's important to me; on what I can live with and without while still maintaining my happiness.  

2.  Being home all the time has given me the opportunity to spend more time with my children.  Instead of desperately trying to reconnect with them in the precious few hours we would typically have after a full day of being apart, I am a part of their daily life.  I don't have to catch up and question them to know  what they've been up to and how they are doing.

3.  I've seen my kids grow and develop in ways that I didn't expect.  They have developed so many life skills in caring for the home and contributing to the family.  Social distancing has given my children the opportunity to build their life skills in ways that were otherwise not possible.

4.  I've rediscovered the joy of comfy clothes all day.  I now realize that it's a throwback to my university days of attending tutorial in my PJ's and I'm not sure how I'm ever going to go back to regular clothing!  Is there such as thing as professional stretchy pants?!

5.  Slowing down and getting to those tasks that I otherwise find hard to get to.  These things are on my "one day" list and I'm slowing but surely crossing them off and boy does that ever feel good!

6. Approaching life in the slow lane has its perks; what's wrong with sleeping in, managing my time more freely, relaxing at the end of the day and just settling down with a hot tea and a good old novel?  This is a welcome change to the good old "go, go, go!" of everyday life.



What silver linings have you found recently?  What transformations are you experiencing?  In what ways are you turning these difficult times it into a opportunity for success?

We all have the chance to make a little Covid-19 lemonade if only we take the time to.  And if you do, it sure does make this sour situation a little sweeter.

If You Feed It, It Will Grow

Can you name the movie with that famous line, "If you build it, they will come"?  I can tell you that I have jokingly used that line many times not really thinking about what it actually means.  In fact, I can still see the image of the baseball field and the ghost players coming out from among the corn stalks towards the diamond.

If you know what I'm talking about then you'd know that I'm talking about Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner.

The Cream Always Rises (But Turds Also Float)

How many of you have found yourself in an unlikely shape because of the pressures from work, home, family, friends, or society?  How many of you feel unrecognizable as you struggle to make it through the day?

I know I have.

One very distinct memory comes to mind when I think about pressure and how it changed me.

It was in 2013 when I changed work locations (not entirely because I wanted to) and I found myself in a new building, with new colleagues, new courses to teach, new curriculum to figure out and no department members that knew the school, students or staff.  Both the department and the curriculum had been wiped clean like a blank slate and I found myself utterly alone and drowning the the amount of work that it takes to run a department pretty much alone and from scratch.

Looking back now, I realize that it was the most stressful work year of my life.

And the day I realized that the stress had changed me was when I was sitting in our basement office frantically working through yet another entire weekend just to complete lesson planning for the following week.   I remember it was a cloudy November afternoon and when my youngest daughter walked into the room (again) and tried to get my attention (again) I turned to her then tiny 3 year old body and barked "WHAT?!" after she tried to gain my attention.

Her response to me made me freeze in my tracks.

When she dropped her head, eyes downcast to the floor, shoulders slouch moving slowly away from me she whispered apologetically, "Sorry mommy..." in response.  That's when I knew something was deeply wrong.

Something had changed me.

In Allison Dickson's book The Other Mrs. Miller I was reminded of this moment when Wyatt said, "Pressure forces people into a lot of unlikely shapes."  It rang true to me and not only did I recognize this in myself but also in what's happening in the world right now.

We typically live a life so full of appointments, responsibilities, events, meetings and get togethers that it's all too easy for us to loose sight of ourselves and become misshapen.  Sometimes the pressures are situational and temporary - like my story of starting a new position at a new location.  As stressful as that year was, it eventually came to and end.

But often it's simply how we go on living our lives day to day that wreaks havoc on us.  We go about doting all the I's and crossing all the T's just so that we can say we're doing our part - but it ultimately makes us unrecognizable in the end.  It causes us to change shape and lose sight of who we are.

Even in terms of the characters in this book we see how quickly they become twisted and misshapen doing things that (at least to me) are absolutely inconceivable.  Even though this book made me question the goodness in people and the lengths people will go to get what they want in life, it was also interesting as I wanted to figure out how twisted and sick people can get.  It's far from any experience I've ever had but it spoke to the human experience of pressure wreaking havoc on one's life.

You'd think that as things get ugly one would stop and say, "NO.  This is not what I want in life."  But this book showed me that under pressure we change shape and don't necessarily do anything about it likely because we can get away with it.  As Phoebe's best friend Vicki points out, "The cream always rises.  But turds also float."

Why make a change if what you're doing is working for you in some way?

Let me ask you this my dear readers, when the pressure is on are you the cream or are you the turd?

Because now that some of the pressure is off and we're spending our time going to much fewer places, generally doing less things, and seeing less people, we have the capacity to make some change.

Many people are feeling the pressure of home-bound living, social distancing and self-isolation citing boredom and anxiety as their primary ailments but some are not.

Some, like me, are taking a careful look at who they are and how they live their lives.  Some people are taking this time to get back "in shape" now that the pressure is off.  Even though we've given up so much and lost so many of our freedoms, we have a chance to find ourselves again. 

Most notably I feel like now that the pressure is off I feel like I have the time to tune into what really matters to me the most.  To take care of those things that I truly care about and that are within my control.  It's given me this rare opportunity to live my life in a different shape.

What about you?  What shape do you find yourself in?

Find Your Purpose and Reset Your Life

There's been a lot of news out there recently.  I admit that I scour the headlines everyday (sometimes twice a day) to keep up with what's going on in the world and especially because I want to stay abreast of what's happening the the global fight against Covid-19.  Too often the news I read is merely informative, scary or frustrating.  That being said, every now and again I come across something that is worth my while.

The following article has to be one of the best things I've come across recently and thought it would a good idea to share it with you my dear readers as it is very much in line with this blog.  

Please take a moment to read and let me know what you think:

Finding Purpose In This Pandemic: Use This Crisis To Reset Your Life

At the end of the article are some very poignant questions.  If you feel so inclined I'd love to hear your response to any of these questions:

What values do I want my life to stand for?

What mark do I wish to make?

What kind of person do I want to be others?

At life’s end, how do I want to measure success?

Gratitude Turns What We Have Into Enough

Last night I had a moment of feeling completely overwhelmed with gratitude.  I was sitting at the dinner table, eating a delicious bowl of warm, home made minestrone soup (so good - thank you Williams and Sonoma for the recipe), surrounded by 3 of my favorite people on this earth, as we lingered in the final moments of the setting sun streaming through the windows.  I had a moment of realization right then and there that in spite of everything we are going through right now, we are truly lucky.

All you need to do is take a look at the news to see that there are a lot of people who have got it much worse.   There are people who have lost their jobs, people who cannot pay the bills, people without enough to eat, people who have lost their loved ones, people who are seriously ill, and people who are very much alone every single day.

And there I was sitting in the safety and warmth of my home surrounded by love and eating a nutritious and delicious meal.  I spent the day working online as best I could during these working from home times and spending time taking care of my children and home in the spare moments in between.

I'm tired, but I know that I am lucky, I thought.

There are so many people suffering out there in the world today.  I know my life is not perfect but my goodness, I can see that I've got it good.

It's focusing on gratitude that will get me through the stress of this pandemic.

So this post in not about a book that I read but about a Ted Talk that was shared with me.  I have to thank my dear sister for sending it my way.  I have already shared it with many of my friends and family and now I wish to share it with you because it really made me remember what I am grateful for. 

When we turn to gratitude we find that we can turn what we have into enough. 

Watch and enjoy my dear readers...

https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave

How many of you are feeling a little bit of cabin fever right about now?  Feeling a bit like you're trapped at home?  Or, perhaps you're relishing in the safety and solitude of home, afraid to venture into the great wide world?  Either way, we are all spending copious amounts of time at home doing things that we typically never have the time to do.

But the reality is that some of us feel comfortable at home and some of us feel trapped.

These hours on end at home are all because of the fact that we are all so deeply connected in our day to day lives.  We've had to put a full stop on our regular daily habits, social outings, and person to person interactions.  As you already know, it only takes one person infected with Covid-19 to start a chain reaction of infection in a community.  This pandemic has illuminated how interconnected we all are.  It doesn't matter what part of the city, province, country, or world we're from - we're all feeling it and we're all in it together.

As a result, we are aiming to protect ourselves using social distancing.  Not only has this been adopted by so many as a way to flatten the cure of this virus, but it has placed us all in a rather interesting position.  How many of us are spending time alone?  How about those of us who are in the company of others for more hours than we can handle?  For some of us cabin fever might have set in long ago, or perhaps one soggy day of rain is what finally set us off.

All I know is that in the quiet life of staying home everyday, all day, how I spend my time has most definitely shifted.

Many people are finally finding time to read that book that's been sitting on the back burner.  For me, as I read a great deal on a regular basis, that has not been the case.  In actuality, I've taken a bit of a breather from reading.  Part of this is because my mind has been overwhelmed with worry for my family and friends that rather than pick up a book to read, I find myself scanning the latest Covid-19 news instead.  I admit that my mind has been racing.

That being said it's not like I haven't read anything at all.  My latest novel, There There by Tommy Orange, kept me company over the last week.  It's an interconnected story of 12 characters from Native communities who are all making their way to the Big Oakland Powwow.  Truthfully, I have to admit that it was a sad story.  Like so many stories of Indigenous people around the world, the great injustices that they have endured and continue to endure, cast a great shadow in this novel.

But there was something that definitely stood out to me in this book besides how sad I am about what has happened to the Indigenous people.  It was the symbolism of the spider webs that caught my eye and the idea of interconnections.

The quote by Walter Scott, "O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!" couldn't be more accurate in this book.  The novel illustrates the destruction that was caused by the lies of colonizers while also reminding us of the lies we tell to comfort and distance ourselves  from the truth.

Jackie Red Feather, one of the main characters in There There, points out that "the spider's web is a home and a trap."  I couldn't agree more during this time of social distancing.  On one hand our homes are keeping us safe during a difficult time and yet, many of us are feeling the pressure of being captive.  Like we are prisoners during this pandemic.

It also got me thinking about how many of our habits become comfortable prisons that we return to time and time again.

How are you occupying yourself now that life has slowed down to a grinding halt?  Are you turning to productive activities that give back to your family, friends and your community, or are you finding ways to comfort yourself each night so that you don't have to feel the anxiety that naturally comes during a pandemic?

Surely drinking multiple shots each night just to get through this is a spider's web, is it not?

What is beckoning you during these difficult times?  Are you finding solace in things that are liberating you from boredom, or are they ensnaring you into a pattern from which you cannot escape?

I ask to you consider what type of tangled web you are weaving for yourself.

To me books are simply amazing tools.  I never would have started thinking about spiders webs if it weren't for this book.  I never would have considered how I am both at home and trapped during this pandemic.  I would have never considered the symbolism of spider webs to make meaning of what's happening right now and how I might shift my perspective as we are all at home keeping to ourselves.

I'd like to leave you with a few quotes about spider webs that you might want to use to reconsider your position in this interconnected web that we are all currently in.  I look forward to hearing your  thoughts in the comments section of this blog.

If Music Be The Words Of Love, Play On

This was shared with me earlier today.  I found it spoke to my heart and soul.  It's a little light for all of us who have felt a little bit too much darkness in the face of the current pandemic.  Enjoy and please feel free to share and comment.

LOCKDOWN 

By: Richard Hendrick

Yes, there is fear.
Yes, there is isolation.
Yes, there is panic buying.
Yes, there is sickness.
Yes, there is even death.

But,

They say that in Wuhan, after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet the sky is no longer thick with fumes.
But blue and gray and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi people are singing to each other across the empty squares, keeping their windows open so that those who are alone may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know is busy spreading fliers with her number throughout the neighborhood so that the elders may haves someone to call on.
Today people are preparing to welcome and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary.

All over the world, people are slowing down and reflecting.
All over the world people are looking at their neighbors in a new way.
All over the world, people are waking up to a new reality to how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.

So, we remember that yes, there is fear. But there does not have to be hate.
Yes, there is isolation. But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes, there is panic buying. But there dos not have to be meanness.
Yes, there is sickness. But there does not have to be disease of the soul.
Yes, there is even death. But there can always be a rebirth of love.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today, breathe. 

Listen behind the factory noises of your panic.

The birds are singing again.
The sky is clearing.
Spring is coming.
And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul and though you may not be able to touch across the empty square, Sing.

Get the Best Seat in the House

Ok, I just had the opportunity to listen to a long diatribe performed by someone I know and love very much about how much their life sucks.  Honestly, I hear people do this too often it seems that some people do it for a living and if I have to hear one more person say, "There's nothing I can do! I'm such a looser!  My life sucks!" I think I'm going to have to slap someone!

Or, maybe I'll just slap a copy of Rachel Hollis' Girl, Stop Apologizing in their hand instead.

The crazy thing is that up until last year, I had NO IDEA who Rachel Hollis was.  But, I happened to hear her speak at an event and after listening to her live, I wanted to know more about her and her message.

How can I sum her up?  Hollis is a petite blonde bomb of positive energy and a fire cracker of support and encouragement for anyone who is looking to live life like "one day" is today.

To me, Hollis is the female version of Tony Robbins (sans the "Say I" call outs and all the jumping of course).  She will inspire you with her intense desire to build a world where people needn't feel badly for wanting something more for themselves and for others.  She's a feminist on a mission to end shame and empower women across the continent.

If she were with me that day when I had to endure the "my life sucks and there's nothing I can do about it" private performance, she would have have had a few things to say.

Now don't start to cringe at the fact that I used the "F-word" earlier (kudos to those of you who automatically scanned the previous paragraphs to find it - did you find it?).  The fact of her being a capital "F" feminist makes some people start to get a bit squirmy, I know.

But with Hollis there is no male bashing.  There is no "Down with the man!" chanting or burning of the bra.  The only bashing she really relies on is one that attacks of our tendency to bash ourselves by falling into old habits of self deprecating language, bad relationships, personal hang ups and straight up lies about who we are, what we are capable of, and what we deserve.

Admittedly,  Girl, Stop Apologizing had some similarities to her 2018 Girl, Wash your Face but even though there were parts of the two books that felt a bit repetitive, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't care.  If she writes another book like either of these, repetitive or not,  I'll be sure to read it too.  I will read as many as I can get my hands on.

Here's why: I know that the only way one can stop looking at life as one sucky moment after another is to start looking at it as NOT one sucky moment after another.  And if you can't do this yet, Hollis can get you started and keep you going.

What this book does is to show you how to see you and your goals differently.  In her approach there is no better way change your perspective than to let go of the excuses you're hanging onto, adopt behaviors that lead you towards personal success and acquire the skills necessary to achieve your goals.

Ain't none of that gonna happen if all you do is repeat the "there' s nothing I can do" mantra.

I'm sorry (not sorry) I'm calling it - complaining for a living is BS.

Check yourself and check your point of view.

Can't change your perspective on your own?  Then surround yourself with people who see things differently.  Read as many books like Hollis' as possible that help you find out how you can change the things that you believe are completely out of your control.

Put it this way, if you were at the Oscars and wanted to get a clear view of your favorite celebrity on the red carpet you wouldn't say, "Oh well! I'll never get a good look at good old blue eyes cause I'm not tall enough".  No!  You'd move around the crowd.  You'd keep poking and peeking over the heads of the people in front of you.  You'd find a spot where you could see your dream boat.  In fact, you'd get the best seat in the house!  You wouldn't wait for another day.  You wouldn't make a lame excuse and say, "Sorry, I failed."

Get out there and expose yourself to anything and everything positive.  Read as many books, blogs and posts as you need to until your attitude starts to change.  Listen to podcasts.  Surround yourself with positive messaging.  As you absorb it your attitudes will begin to shift.  As your attitudes shift so will your actions.  As actions shift so will your attitudes.  It becomes a positive feedback loop.

I'm sorry, but I cannot tolerate the negativity.  Go find a better view.  Upgrade your seating today.  Change your life and seek out your dreams without apology or excuse.