{Etsy decal by 60SecondMakeover}

why it’s good to be a fighter…

I was born a fighter. I think I must have came out of the womb with gloves on. Well except that I was delivered via C-section so maybe I wasn’t quite ready.

I carried this mindset my entire life. It dictated my academics and shot me up from a C-average student to a straight-A’s one.

What that’s led to is a lot of great opportunities and surprising successes. And just as surprising failures.

What I’ve learned in looking back is that it’s not always the fight that wins the battle, but the letting go, surrendering and accepting what is. It’s a great thing to be a fighter. You need someone in your corner to fight for your dreams, to stand up for what’s right, to make a difference. But you need a listener to propel you into the life you were meant to live.

leaning into what is…

When you have an innately fighting personality, you believe with 100% certainty that you can control everything. Your body may be tired. Your soul may be fatigued. But your mind says, “Keep going!” And you listen. What happens over time is that you stop communicating with your intuitive voice. You live on adrenaline to keep going. Eventually, you run on empty and get sick.

It’s the same thing with living your life. I think being a straight A-student gave me the false impression that if I only work really hard, I could get everything I wanted right away. I forgot about ambiguity, faith, the unknown. I forgot about trust.

When you fill up every single space of “what if,” you leave little room for things like magic, mystery, serendipity.

It’s not wrong to go for what you believe in. But you won’t get to your dreams by going on your own. Don’t let your mind drive you all the time. Sharpen your intuition by trusting your instincts and allow your soul to guide you.

The struggle isn’t always the fight. Sometimes it’s about settling in softly into the present moment of the unknown and having the courage to walk patiently without answers, without solutions to your current problem and just be.

{Etsy print by JCSpock}

I admit I spend too much time worrying about the things that don’t end up even happening in my life. I worry about wasting time, but much of it is spent obsessing over the illnesses I have and the opportunities I don’t have.

Last night, however, I dreamed about possibility, hope and miracles. In it, I was told that everything we think we know about life is just the surface of what’s true. We grieve and bemoan our situation, for example, because we think it’s permanent. We allow logic to override miracle. We’ve grown too accustomed to computers and smartphones that tell us what is true instead of figuring it out for ourselves. And the weather? Trust your forecaster or Siri instead of just popping your head out the window.

As a result, intuition falls to the wayside. Hope no longer exists unless we have evidence to prove it.

Because something seems impossible or improbable we give up. But the whole notion of faith and miracle is dreaming up the impossible. If so, what we believe can be true is delivered to us on a platter.

Sounds easy, but the real struggle is challenging our old and jaded minds. We have to fight the fear of being vulnerable, being wrong, being disappointed.

We knew this as children. Every thing we absorbed then was magical. Do you remember it? But we let the pain and suffering of growing up wound us. Some allow it to wound them permanently.

If we can strip away the negativity, the paranoia, the obsessive need to know in this moment, we might return to that place of innocence, hope and joy. Instead of searching intently for a way to rid of your current ailment, let’s spend a moment in prayer and acceptance for what is so that we may lay open a door to possibility that everything. is. okay.

You won’t get that from the internet, a friend, your spouse, a sibling, or even a doctor. When you sit quietly or stand in the middle of nature, however, you will know it.

Do what you can with what you have and then surrender it and let it be. Life will happen regardless of how much you try to control it. But within those seemingly confining boundaries, there is and always will be hope. Trust in it. Hope is the armor of courage best used in battle. It will carry you through sleepless nights of worry, distrust, and panic. It is the only thing besides love that will help you through the unknown. And when you’ve landed safely on the other side, remember it. Remember that there is always a ray of light upon you just as you look back toward the shadows. It matters not what you go through, but where you’re focusing.

{Flickr photo by 27147}

Between moving to our first home and landing a new writing gig, I haven’t had spare time to write for fun, much less keep up this blog. [insert =( here.] But I know the value in doing it. It’s forced me to sit on the ground with my laptop, exhausted after 5 hours of moving behind me.

Why?

Reflecting on this moment is of the utmost importance and sharing all the mini lessons I learn along the way makes it all worthwhile. Even if there are only a handful of you still reading this now.

2012-2013 has been filled with some of my most exciting and painful moments. I’ve said goodbye to good friends, got slammed with unexpected good and bad news and was continuously tested on my faith. The question that kept looping in my head was: Do I choose to live in fear or faith?

To live an inspiring life, many might assume that it means living a pain-free one. Some might think that true happiness is a life void of difficulty and filled to the rim with constant joy, and luck. Those who feel this way can get pretty tied up in feeling sorry for themselves (I can vouch for my own self-pity parties in the past.). But what they don’t realize is true happiness and joy stems from having the confidence to overcome obstacles, from being able to put one foot in front of the other regardless if you know where that path will lead.

Any one of us can easily fall into the gap of paranoia and fear especially in regards to the news lately. Any one of us can stay in the past and glorify a frozen moment. It’s easy to let yourself get overwhelmed by difficulty, problems and uncertainty. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

On the other side of the fence is hope. It’s still scary there. Unknowns lay like hidden potholes. But love, courage, faith there are stronger. I’m not saying that the road is easier. In fact, if you decide to live your life with faith, it may even be harder. But if you choose it, your confidence will grow. And in doing so, you will reap the benefits of a truly lived life.

I meet a lot of people these days who like to play their lives safe. Being cautious feels smart. It feels like the best way to live your life. But play things too cautiously and you’re putting yourself at great risk. You’re risking your ability to love deeply, laugh loudly and experience the life you were meant to live.

We were not meant to live life problem-free. We were meant to bend in the wind, to fall, to bleed, to shed our leaves and grow beautiful like the trees…

{Etsy photo by Theresa Durant Photography}

There is something magical about this moment.

It’s the only one you’ll ever have.

Whether you’re grieving over a loss, bored out of your mind, or simply enjoying the ordinariness of this moment, if you can take the time to appreciate how fleeting it all is, you’ll find meaning in your life.

As I sit here on the bare floor writing pen in hand, I am listening to the rain while observing my 7-year-old mini lop bunny hopping around me and pushing his soft nose in my chubby knees. It’s a thing to marvel at. Maybe you don’t find anything magical about a person and their rabbit journaling maybe self-indulgently about their life. But that’s just because you don’t see what I see.

Magical moments are not simply ones that make dreams transpire out of nothing, but being able to notice the moment without being so busy you let it all pass you by.

When life feels uninspiring and void of meaning it’s because you’ve drained it of its magic. You tell yourself:

“I know everything.”

“I’ve seen everything.”

You’ve become closed to age and time. And being the weary-traveler, you shut yourself out to anything new, any potential for possibility in your life.

When you shut out magic, you open the door to a meaningless life.

Your life isn’t meant to be strictly a huge to-do list of insurmountable tasks and brag worthy accomplishments. It’s meant to flourish, to savor, to share love and joy, to teach and to live. When you’re closed off to chance and live by the book, you leave little room for all the good things in life like hope, courage, and faith.

According to Dictionary.com, magic is:

{via Etsy shop TiffysLove}

Some bad moods come and go like dark clouds on a wishy washy weather day. Other moods linger like negative friends, draining your sunshine.

Since I’ve had a few of the latter ones lately, I thought I’d share with you a few tricks I’ve learned (and continue to learn) to shake off the doldrums. Whether you’re suffering through a bad day, a bad week or just a bad moment, these tips should temporarily lift those gray clouds and bring you some much needed relief.

1. Practice the art of healthy distraction.

When suffering, some of us numb through food, drugs, video games, etc. Those temporarily aids often end up being destructive. Not only do they teach you to avoid your problems, but it also makes you rely on unhealthy ways to self-soothe. But distraction is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes to get out of a funk, you need to change your energy, your environment, your state of mind. Try engaging in an activity that requires your full attention. Swimming, hiking, tai chi and yoga do it for me. It refocuses my mind on the present moment and releases me from any problem burdening me.

2. Practice the art of letting go.

Stress can wreak havoc on a person’s mind, body and soul. When you already deal with illness on a daily basis, any extra stress will compromise your health. And that’s one way to worsen a bad mood-make it permanent. Instead learning how to let go of insignificant worries will go a great deal to shift your overall mood. How do you do it? Imagine every single problem you have right now as a balloon or leaves in a stream and visualize them drifting away. You don’t need to control everything. Even if you tried, you couldn’t anyway. Let things be as they are supposed to be.

3. Practice the art of patience.

These last few weeks I have been agitated because I’m impatient. I’d like to move sooner. I’d like to be healthier right now. I’d like to know what I don’t know. I’d like everything I ever wanted to be done in this moment. When I get like this, I’m reminded of a 2-year-old child. It’s normal to want everything right away, but obviously life doesn’t happen this way. If you’re in the creative process, for example, you may become frustrated that you’re not where you want to be. Or you may be an impatient bee like me and want everything to happen right now. How do we get through it? Practice. When the 2-year-old in me screams, “I want it now!” I respond with the following: “Life unravels in divine order.” I heard a similar phrase by Deepak Chopra and while it seems like a silly practice, it works. It reminds me that everything has happened in my life when it should. In order for life to continue to work this way, I need to stand out of the way.

4. Practice the art of present-mindedness.

Sometimes all it takes to get me out of the chaos in my head is breathe. Breathe calm in and stress out. It could be 15-minutes of meditation or just a simple reminder to take a deep breath. When I take the time to do that, I remember that nothing is as important as this moment.

5. Practice the art of self-indulgence.

Remember when you were college and had to pull occasional all-nighters? There was gold at the end of that rainbow. Even though there would be weeks when you would be head in a book, had no social life, and smelled like a rat, eventually life would return to normal. You knew you could get over that hurdle because the end was coming. Why not create an artificial end by practicing the art of self-indulgence? Set up a special day to look forward to in between work stress, test stress or any daily stress. Make a date with your friend, your spouse, or do something on your own. Having that gold to look forward to will make whatever storm you’re currently in seem much more tolerable.

What draws you out from an Eeyore to a Tigger? Is it deep breathing, surfing, playing with your kids/furry kids?

I’ve been in the process of buying our first home so forgive me if this platform has been sparse lately. But don’t forgive me for neglecting creativity.

Creativity is the undercurrent of this blog. It is the root of anything worth its beauty and within its process contains the very essence of life itself. It doesn’t matter if you’re uber creative and masterfully write, paint, or craft for a living. It matters only that you try.

Every person is creative. The need to make something out of nothing stems from a sacred place. We were all “created.” Anyone who has temporarily put down a paintbrush and taken up their computer instead has nostalgia for the first time they created something.

For you who sit and work and live and tend to your children, but do not tend to your own creative garden, this post is for you.

If you are harboring fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, discontent, boredom, lack of meaning in your life, you may be neglecting your creative self.

There have been many people I’ve met who are creatives at heart. They are dramatic and over-the-top, fun to be with, energetic, passionate. But the energy that could be spent on their creativity gets transformed into obsessively worrying, overworking, or an unhealthy focus/obsession on others.

Why would we miss the chance to paint or draw or be out in nature? We deem it unimportant. The older we are, the more we lose the voice that tells us this is important too.

I love what author and speaker Dr. Brené Brown says about creativity on her website and in her book The Gifts of Imperfection:

 “I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.

What have you given up as a result of neglecting your creativity?

Is it your life, your freedom, your sense of meaning, your self?

I’ve learned that when I choose to watch TV or internet surf instead of create, my personal and professional life takes a hit. The only way I can continue to grow, to feel purposeful, to feel grounded despite the chaos of daily life, is to partake in an act of creativity.

I vow to take up a creative task daily.

What will you start to create today?

{Etsy art by spunkyfluff}

Many people get caught up with words like, “progress,” “certainty,” and “maturity.” They worry when they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. They beat themselves up when two steps forward leads to one step back. They are self-critical and ashamed when they are “acting immature.”

But it’s all part of the process. According to Care of the Soul author Thomas Moore, it’s neglecting the complexities of our inner child (the part of us that is playful, creative and spontaneous) that hurts us most. He says progress and growth are prioritized in our society, but they are not always necessary or relevant. Sometimes in order to grow or heal we need to take a step back. Sometimes in order to know what we want, we need to honor the child. To go forward, it’s imperative that we look back. He believes that taking care of your soul requires that you accept, nurture and pay attention to all aspects of yourself. And in fact, ignoring or attempting to deny your childhood desires, your inner joy, spontaneity, and your creativity can cause significant suffering.

Who you are right at this moment is a conglomeration of who you were, who you are and who you are about to become. To neglect any part of your soul in disgust, distaste or disdain will work against you. It’s like a critical and demanding parent who controls you into being the person they want you to be. You will never know your true purpose or calling if you continue on that path. The only way to awaken the part of you that asks the following:

Who am I?

What do I really want in life?

What do I want to be when I grow up?

…is to listen.

This means prioritizing play in your life. Respect the time you devote to reading, playing, creating and protect it as well as you protect time spent working. Embrace your inner child’s wants without judgment, criticism and reprimand. You’ve had enough of that in your life and that’s the reason why you are where you are in this moment. I’m afraid the only way you can free yourself from the hold of a stifling past is to release your fears and finally respond to the part of you that you’ve been hiding for so long.

It’s a frightening, but worthy cause.

For today, let yourself be immature,

open your eyes to life as if you’ve never explored it before,

and be okay, just for this moment, with not knowing what’s through that unopened door…

{image via The Urban Slant}

The hardest thing to do, which is also the most life-changing, is to take responsibility for your life. This means that you look at everything going on right now, not as evidence of bad luck or misfortune, but as the decisions that led you up to this point.

It is not about self-blame or self-pity. You may indulge in both for awhile. You may need to. But to truly grow as a person and be happy, you need to empower yourself. That takes seeing your life as it is not colored by someone’s bad choices, your parents’ mistakes or hard luck.

When it comes down to it, it’s so much easier to blame someone else than to understand, have compassion for, and be aware of what you did to yourself.

It was a hard look at my own life that made me realize this. It took years for me to wake up. I saw that the company I chose to surround myself with, the situations I put myself in and the life that I used to lead were the results of bad choices stemming from a low self-worth. It’s also hearing a quote by Theodore Roosevelt spoken aloud by author, professor and public speaker Brené Brown on Super Soul Sunday that made things sync for me.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

It’s not bad luck that led to moments of insecurity and self-doubt when it came to following my dreams. I realized that I chose people in my life who reinforced a long-held belief that I could not write, that I was not a good enough writer, and that I would never live the life of my dreams. I saw a trail of critics who validated what I was feeling internally. When I finally lifted myself out of the negativity, I saw that I was the one who was putting myself on the line, risking everything, and being vulnerable by following my dreams. The people I listened to were simply good at being on the sidelines, feeling courageous in their critiques.

I say this because you may be in the same boat as me. You might be struggling, working hard, dealing daily with people who don’t support your dreams. You will encounter this whenever you strive for a non-traditional life. Don’t make things harder on yourself by surrounding yourself with negative, non-supportive people.

Happiness and success come when your insides match your outsides. When you notice that the people you spend the most time with are loving, understanding and genuinely care about you, then you’ve done it! You’re on the road to the life you were meant to live.

Usually it’s not until days or even weeks later when people lament the end of a trip. They gaze teary-eyes out the window about umbrella drinks and shorts wearing weather after they’ve settled comfortably albeit coldly back into their normal life. But for me, I anticipate the end of a trip while I’m still in it, the hours of time I get to idle away, the luxury of building out a day based purely on fun. I’m always looking for ways to freeze every moment in my memory as if it were my last. This past trip I closed my eyes and actually sang along to Christina Aguilera’s newest song, “Feel This Moment,” in the hopes that it would remind me to live fully and as completely as I could.

After returning from what will be my last trip in awhile, I decided to find ways to bring the vacation home to me. It’s not always possible or necessary to devote a fat amount of money or time to a spendy or luxurious vacay. But it’s very doable and I might add important to sprinkle a little pleasure, joy and ease into your every day. Here are a few ideas that may inspire your own retreat, debt-free.

1. Do what you would do on vacation.

When we’re indulging in a little R&R, we take time to sit and read, sip a cup of cocoa, and daydream that we would otherwise label as “wasting time.” But is relaxing a waste? I think not. Devote a few moments a day or even a week to just be and breathe.

2. Pretend you’re a tourist.

You may be like me and think you know your hometown like the back of your hand. But there are always unexplored adventures to seek. I realized that after my husband took me to a park I hadn’t been to, scheduled a comedy show for us to see, and planned a dinner at a restaurant I’ve never been. There are newness and adventure to explore wherever you are. Perhaps, you just need to give as much time and energy to it as you would if you were planning a “real” vacation.

3. Plan a stay-cation.

Just because you’re unable to travel afar, doesn’t mean you can’t pretend you’re far away. Book a hotel room at a nearby city and have fun playing by the pool and savor the sweetness of being away from home, but not really being away.

I was upset as the last rays fell upon another perfect vacation knowing that I would eventually have to return to the daily doldrums that followed every day life. But since returning I’ve found a ray of sunshine follows me whenever I set aside time to be on a pleasure trip, an inner retreat, or a sacred moment to bring all the joys and revery of a vacation home to me.

{Etsy print from lizzylemonsouthsea}

From Out of Control to Controlling

I felt out of control a lot as a kid. We all did. We were completely dependent on tall, powerful beings that controlled what we could eat, what time we could go to bed, and what we did. While there is comfort in depending on others, it made me feel trapped, unhappy and unsafe. As a result, I developed ways to carve out a sense of freedom in little ways.

It turned me into a nerdy perfectionist. I demanded A’s in all of my classes. And when I didn’t get it? I pulled a Cher (from Clueless) and talked my way into one. This may not sound surprising to you. But imagine a C average grade school student who was so shy she would rather fail a class than do an oral report, and you might understand how shocking this was. But getting good grades was so immediately gratifying! There was nothing else in my life that allowed me to get direct and positive results like that. The idea that I could change my world by simply working hard taught me an important lesson about life:

Hard work = Good grades

Unfortunately, I learned after college and graduate school that life itself didn’t work that way. Sometimes you can try your hardest and still end up failing.

What Failure Means In Your Life

There are many moments in my life when I feel like a failure. I feel it when I don’t get a writing job. I feel it when I’m having a bad day. Sometimes I’m overcome with self-doubt when I wake up in the morning. But I never let it stay.

I realized that I am not God. I don’t know why things are happening so why sabotage the gift of what is for the gift I want.

On Super Soul Sunday, spiritual teacher Panache Desai said something so profound that it completely altered the way I saw my life.

He said, “Life is happening for you and not to you.”

It was just a play on semantics, a simple juggling of words. But the idea stayed with me, shook me up and changed the way I saw everything in my life.

Maybe that writing opportunity I didn’t get wasn’t right for me so it fell out my grasp. Maybe that house I was dreaming about wasn’t taken from me, but hidden for me so that I could find the true home of my dreams.

I used it on a trip to California last week and saw gifts bloom like flowers in Spring time. I didn’t hem or haw over lost sleep one night and the next morning I was grateful for the fatigue-I slept like a baby on the plane. I wasn’t worried about being on standby and got first class instead. I didn’t plan our trip to Monterey and found places my husband and I, who have been there multiple times, had never been. In the week that I was there, I learned that by letting go of my own expectations, I made room for life to unfold as it should. And the outcome was more beautiful, and more breathtaking than I could have imagined.

The thing about failure and about being “good enough” is that it’s all in the eyes of the beholder. Maybe what you’re labeling as failure in your own life is simply your life..

unfolding for you

not to you.