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5 Motivational Tips for Starting Something New

Photo by Jordan Christian on Unsplash

In light of it being the start of a new year, I thought it might be helpful to discuss the concept of starting something new. It seems like there is a lot of glamour and mystery in the idea of starting something new. A new job, a new school, a new opportunity, a new hobby, a new sport, etc. The opportunity to start fresh and make a good impression. But there is also the fear and anxiety of the unknown that accompanies that excitement and mystery. And if it has been a while since you have started something new, you might have forgotten how painful it can actually be to find yourself in a situation where you are not the expert on the matter. You may have experience with the task or the topic. You may have done it a long time ago. You might know that you will be great at it once you finally get it down. But it’s the ‘getting good’ that presents the challenge. And this is even harder for our egos to swallow if we have become accustomed to knowing how things are done and now we find ourselves starting all over. So here are some tips to keep in mind when you are feeling particularly challenged by your new experience:

  1. Rome was not built in a day. – I know there is a strong desire to dive in headfirst and prove to yourself and everyone that you are a rockstar. While it is extremely valuable to be eager and ambitious, it is also smart to proceed with caution and build a good foundation prior to taking the plunge. In the beginning, slow and steady might just win the race. If you rush through the basics, you may find yourself scrambling when you increase the difficulty of the task or activity. A good solid foundation is always a great recipe for success in the long run.
  2. Be open-minded and listen carefully. – Learning something new is what you choose to make of it. If you choose to question everything, you might be hindering your ability to open up to a new way of looking at things. And that new way of looking at things may, in fact, be your key to your future success. Just remember that you only know what you think you know and you don’t know what you don’t know. 
  3. Be prepared for the unexpected. – You may be surprised that something you thought you knew well, you might not know as well as you thought. This makes me think of Forrest Gumps’ “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get” quote. You may think that you will be great at something right out of the great, but then you may struggle where you never thought you would. The more you can choose to embrace the reality of what is instead of what you believe to be true about yourself and your ability, the stronger you will come out in the long run. And you may find that you are more perseverant than you imagined.
  4. Embrace what you know to be true for you. – If you know you are a visual person, speak up, create visual components that will help you succeed. Do what you know works for you. You have been yourself your whole life. No one knows what works for you better than you do. And you might have to be your own advocate. You might have to create your own version of things. But knowing that and doing what it takes might just be what gets you where you need to be and you will be better for it.
  5. Stick it out ‘til you figure it out. – Do not quit. Do not ever give up on yourself. Even if you determine that you may not end up being the best, complete the program, finish the course, learn one song, play one game. There is something to be said for seeing something through. Even if you determine that it is not for you. Honor your commitments. It reflects on your character, but more importantly, it speaks to how you see your own value. If you promised yourself to try, you owe it to yourself to see it through for your own personal value and integrity to yourself. And who knows, you might surprise yourself. Often we tend to quit, give up, or sabotage ourselves when we feel challenged so we can blame someone else when we fail. But this only hurts you, because now you will never know what would have happened if you had stuck it out.

Here is a fabulous music video by Avicci called Broken Arrows that I think displays the concept of persevering extraordinarily well. Enjoy!

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Love the life you have, Get the life you want

What if you lived your life believing that you had already accomplished your dreams? How might that change your mental state? What would you do if you weren’t worried about where you were headed because you had already arrived at your destination? Would you take more time to smell the roses? Would you find yourself feeling more peaceful? Would you be more appreciative of the journey and how you got to where you are?

My bet is that you would. So my question for you is, what are you waiting for? Why are you waiting to get somewhere else to be grateful for where you’re at. The world has conditioned us to believe that the journey is something to be endured only to arrive at our destination. But really, isn’t life meant to be lived, felt, experienced? And shouldn’t we feel grateful for those experiences we encounter on the journey of getting where we are going? So why are you missing it? Why are you belittling all that you are right now for a belief that what is coming will be, has to be, needs to be better?

I have a feeling your answer to that question is that you aren’t happy where you are? So what is there to relish? What is there to be grateful for when you’re working a horrible job while going to school in order to forge a better future? What if I told you that it is that very desperate and debilitating mindset that is actually generating that miserable experience you are feeling?

I know that we as humans do not generally like to accept responsibility for our misfortunes, but indulge me here. What if I told you that learning to find gratitude in where you are can transform your current experience and the negative vicious cycle you are generating begins to shift into a journey full of potential, opportunities and growth?

What would change by shifting that perspective? I am telling you everything would change. The reasoning here is two-fold. First, the most rewarding feeling you can have is to learn to appreciate where you are at. I mean, let’s face it. None of us are actually promised a tomorrow. And we can never truly be anywhere other than where we are at any present moment. So why are we waiting for tomorrow to find value in our lives? All we are ever guaranteed is where we are and what we have right now. The second reason living your life with gratitude for where you are, not just where you are going, impacts how you are communicating with the world about who you are and what you are attracting to yourself. When you focus on all that you do not have, you are sending a message to the universe that you are lacking in your life.

I know what you are probably thinking, Well I am? So why wouldn’t the world respond by giving me what I want? But that just isn’t how it works. It is sort of like the notion of misery loving company. The more you complain, the more you attract others who complain. Meanwhile, those who are trying to look at the more positive side of life tend to distance themselves from the complainer because it is hard to remain positive in the presence of negativity. And by distancing themselves from that negativity, they become more in tune with themselves and all that is good in their lives. They, in turn, tend to start noticing other things that are good around them. Other opportunities seem to present themselves that may have always been there, but they may have been too busy being negative to notice them. Perhaps others weren’t interested in sharing the opportunities with them on the assumption that they simply wouldn’t be interested since nothing seems to make them happy.

The ideology behind this is that when you live your life longing for what you do not have, you are coming from a place of lack. It actually affects how you make decisions and interact in the world. Now, of course, I am not suggesting that you spend money you do not have or anything of that nature. However, if you approach your life grateful for what you already have, you tend to make different choices, better choices that may lead you to your “better life”.

Maybe you are going through something challenging right now like changing careers or finishing school. If you are constantly focused on the struggle that change and starting over often tend to bring, then you are going to make more defeated choices. This could cause you to miss an extraordinary opportunity because you were so focused on your despair.

What if you imagined that you were already where you wanted to be? What if you recognized that where you are is setting you up for the future, not the waiting room for your future?  How would that change your interaction with others? You would likely be a more pleasant person to be around. You would maybe make a new connection that might lead you to that big break. I really cannot promise you what would change, but things would change. Because you are now CHOOSING to be grateful for who you are and where you are in your life. And Gratitude is a powerful thing!

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You think You Can and the World Does Too

I recall an experience from my childhood, where I was angry about something. For the life of me, I cannot recall what I was angry about, but I know I was really angry. And I was telling my dad about how angry I was and he just replied, “Who’s angry?” I agitatedly responded, “Me!”

“Who?”

“Me!!!” I yelled, even more irritated.

“Who’s me?” he replied with an annoying calmness.

“Your daughter!” I exclaimed.

This went on for a few more back and forth exchanges until finally, I realized I was now laughing, and what I was previously so angry about now seemed inconsequential. It completely diffused the situation. I didn’t really understand at the time what he was trying to teach me at the time, however, my dad is a philosopher, so I was accustomed to these sorts of exchanges.

What I understand now was that he was showing me that I was only angry because I was attached to my perspective of the situation. I could only see my view, and I was holding on to it. When he questioned me, I forgot about my viewpoint and just like that, the anger was gone.

So what does that say about the power of our thoughts? What if we paid attention to them? What would change? Just the other day, I was meeting with my coach and she pointed out that, while discussing my frustration with life getting in the way of my writing and such, that I was using language like, I have to and I need to. I didn’t even realize I was doing it! But that feels different from I want to work on my blog, or I can’t wait to be able to start writing again.

Have you ever focused on how you are talking to yourself and how you are talking about your hopes and dreams? I bet you have never given it a second thought. But the truth is our thoughts are vibrational messages that we are releasing out into the universe telling it how to treat us. So it really does merit our attention. Think about it. If someone makes a rude comment to you, you internalize it. It bothers you, even if ever so slightly. But why don’t we pay any attention to how we treat ourselves. That should be the person we care about most. Now I bet you’re I saying, no, my kids come first, my husband, my dogs, whoever it may be. But the reality is that, if we do not care for ourselves, we cannot be there for the ones that mean the most to us. So we really do need to pay attention to our thoughts. They have a huge impact on the way we see our lives and the world. Our thoughts even have an impact on how we treat the very ones we value most in our lives.

Imagine, if you think that there is no possible way for you to get through a difficult situation, odds are you either won’t or you will, but it will be far more excruciating than it had to be. But if you learn to control your thinking, you have the ability to hone in on what you can control and let go of what you cannot. It is empowering to think that we could have so much power over our own lives. All we have to do is change how we are thinking. It sounds so simple, yet it is actually quite a challenge to shift your established thought patterns. The truth is that you have likely not ever given your think pattern much focus. It is even more likely that you have not ever analyzed why you may think the way you do, i.e. your upbringing, your experiences, etc. After that, the next step is to then shift your thinking into thoughts that are more in line with your desires. It certainly is a process and a practice that you have to continually work on. But once you start to embrace it, you begin to see the results of your dedication fairly quickly. You start noticing that you are in a better mood, that something that you know would have bothered you didn’t. After a week or so, you start to notice opportunities that either were not there before, or you didn’t see because you were too busy complaining about everything else that was wrong.

It is really quite exhilarating to become the master of your own ship. It can also feel somewhat daunting because you are now admitting that you cannot blame anyone for your misfortune. It is all on you. So if you don’t like what you are attracting, it’s not your boss’s fault, it’s not your spouse’s fault, it’s no one’s fault except for your own. It is your thought pattern that you are communicating with the world about how to treat you. Perhaps you have heard the expression, You teach people how to treat you, meaning that how you allow others to treat you determines how people will continue to treat you. Well, this is similar. If you continue to send the vibrational thought messages out into the world about complaints, anger, injustice, the world perceives this as if this is the stuff you enjoy dealing with since you are focusing so much attention on them. But if you send thoughts of joy, love, compassion, understanding, the world also understands that is what you enjoy feeling and so draws that to you. It truly is a fascinating thing to try out and then witness it begin to work. I challenge you to take reins in your life. If you don’t like what you are getting, thoughtfully change the direction you’re heading. Happy navigating!

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Embracing Your Truth: Learning To Do You

In my previous post about Embracing Your Truth, I shared with you a personal story that inspired a revelation in my life. I would like to continue to build upon this notion however, to further discuss the concept of learning to focus on who you are, what you believe, and what you want. We spend a substantial amount of our lives focusing on others, what they think, how they react, and how their actions make us feel. It feels like we are being incredibly caring by letting them know how we believe they are getting it wrong for us.

While sharing your thoughts and feelings with those you love is an incredibly important aspect in developing a mutually sustaining relationship, it is also important to understand that harboring a belief that you have the power to control or change another’s behavior serves as an invitation to personal disappointment. What I mean is, you will likely be disappointed if they do not react or behave in the way that you desire. But it is simply a delusion we have been duped into believing; this notion that we have the power to control and change another’s thinking in order to make ourselves feel better. But what we can control is our way of thinking about their behavior and, in turn, we can modify our thoughts and behavior about the situation or the person. We can only control our portion of the relationship or the situation.

My dad, Dennis Miller, a philosopher, and retired philosophy professor, introduced me to this concept by calling it “The 50/50 Rule”. You are only responsible for “Your 50%” of the relationship. The other 50% is the responsibility of the other person. You might not like how they handle their 50%, but you have no control over that. So being upset about it is inevitable due to that lack of control. Not unlike what I discussed in Great Expectations, you are setting yourself up to expect something that you simply cannot alter or change in any way.

Here is an excerpt from some of the writing Dennis Miller has done on this topic:

The 50/50 Rule of relationships is a “mindfulness training” or practice designed to enhance our awareness of the nature of relationships and a deeper understanding of our role and function within the relationship. Attention to the Rule can change the way in which we relate to our partner which suggests that the only thing we can change in our relationship is our Self and the way we relate to our partner. [..]

The seed idea of the 50/50 Rule came from my own experience and I was facing divorce in a  marriage of 27 years. Through much meditation and mindfulness practice, I discovered that I had failed to understand something about love and relationships, which presented an opportunity for self-growth and greater awareness of love as a mindfulness practice.

I discovered that I had not understood the 50/50 Rule of relationships because no one bothers to teach us the practice of learning to be in a relationship and so we often simply repeat the patterns and habits we absorbed from our environment. The Mantra that began to change my perspective about relationships was: “It’s never about that …” but rather the problem was always in my relation to “that”.    This changed my perspective in realizing that problems in relationships arise when we step across the “/ mark” into our partner’s space. We blame, accuse, etc. our partner for making us feel this or that and declare that we would not be or feel this way as if our partner is the cause and we are powerless and incapable of relating in any other way to the situation.

The 50/50 Rule reminds us that we are responsible only for “our half” of the relationship, not that of our partner. When we cross the line we transgress the boundaries that define us as separate individuals and disrespect the space of our partner who is likewise responsible for only for his or her half. We can be responsible and change something only in our self and our relationship to our partner; we cannot and should not try to change something in our partner which intrudes upon his or her space and freedom also to choose to be responsible and change something within his or her self. This is respect for the one we love.

In this excerpt, Miller fleshes out the general premise of the 50/50 Rule and his personal experience of discovering it. I think his story beautifully illustrates the impact a lack of understanding of the 50/50 Rule can have on our lives and our personal well-being. Perhaps you are questioning why a discussion of how you interact in a relationship is relevant to your individual well-being. But the reality is that, as humans, we are social beings by nature. A simple anonymous interaction with another individual inhabits the same dynamics of a relationship despite its brevity. Imagine that, when you are buying coffee, the clerk insults you. You are likely to spend the remainder of the day complaining of their behavior and soliciting others to affirm your opinion on the interaction. Now imagine that the clerk compliments you. You will conduct yourself in a similar manner, telling others how kind the clerk was this morning. You don’t even know this person, but they have fully impacted your day!

Let’s look at this interaction under the scope of the 50/50 rule. In this scenario, as it has currently been depicted, the actions of “their 50%” have full control over your emotional state. They insult you, you’re upset. They compliment you, you’re elated. Now let’s locate “your 50%”. They insulted you, did you do anything to them? Let me interject here as I feel the anger rising, this is not about blaming you and indicating you “deserve” anything. The truth is, that is not how the universe works. That is part of the myth. No one deserves anything, including happiness. Our personal state of mind is earned and created only by our own interaction with “our 50%”. What I mean is, if you review all of your behavior and you believe that you interacted appropriately and they insulted you, then let it go. It simply does not matter. You have no control over their behavior. You are pointlessly rallying an army to make yourself feel better when all you had to do was determine within yourself that it was not merited and therefore disregard their comment and go on with your life. If you determine that your actions may have been less than desirable by your own standards, you have discovered an opportunity to learn, grow and move forward more the wiser.

So why does our 50% matter if they compliment us? That’s simple. While their personal choice to compliment you reflects well on “their 50%”, it still has little to do with you. How do you think about yourself? If you were down on yourself and needed to hear that, why were you down on yourself? I hear your point, why do that matter? It matters because you are not guaranteed to receive a compliment from someone else’s 50%. So were you just going to have a bad day if they hadn’t complimented you? This is why your focus on your 50%, defined by your actions and your thoughts, is all that really matters to bring you peace of mind.

I say peace of mind because, while happiness is typically what we seek, you cannot be happy all the time. The universe also works on 50%’s: Happiness and Sadness, Joy and Anger,  Yin and Yang. We can discuss this further in another entry. I bring it up now simply to highlight that, in focusing on your 50%, I am not promising happiness. I am promising clarity about how you feel, how you can understand it, and how you can control it. I am giving you the key to understanding your feelings and how to gain control over something that we were told was controlled by everyone else. I am introducing you to your power over you. Learning to master this concept is the key to learning to attract what you want into your life and not latch onto the things that you do not want to by lending them your attention.

I would like to end this piece with another anecdote from Dennis Miller that further demonstrates the game-changing power of the 50/50 Rule:

Driving a school bus for many years in addition to teaching philosophy at the university a young 12 year old schoolboy, I will call him Tom, before he was about to get off the bus at his stop said to me, “Hippy, [that’s what the kids called me] I’m afraid to go home!” I asked him why? He told me that he got into some trouble at school that day and was afraid when his Dad found out and had to sign the “form” to take back to school the next day, that as he said, “my Dad will kill me and I am afraid” [not literally, of course, it was an emotional fear].

So I asked Tom what usually happens at home when you get in trouble at school? He said that since he is afraid of his Dad he usually goes to his Mom first and tells her. In response, his Mom sends him to his room and gives him some romantic novel to read as punishment and then quizzes him later to make sure he read it.

Having heard the usual routine, I challenged Tom to “change the conditions of his usual behavior”. He didn’t understand what I meant (he’s only 12 years old) so I explained to him. I told him that I see his Dad’s truck in the driveway and that his Dad is home now so instead of avoiding his Dad (and running from his fear, as usual) I challenged him to change the conditions and instead go straight to his Dad and tell him what happened at school. His first response was “I can’t do this, he will be so angry at me!”

The challenge for Tom was to change his usual routine and habit of avoiding his fears and instead face his fear and go to his Dad and explain. I told him he to apologize to his Dad and tell him that he got into trouble at school today and that he knows he disappointed his Dad and feels disappointed in himself for his behavior. He then got off the bus saying “I can’t do this!”

It was a Friday and on Monday morning when he got on the bus I asked him what happened when he got home on Friday? With a look of amazement he said in an exuberant voice, “Hippy, I can’t believe it, nothing happened to me. I did what you said. I was so scared. I told my Dad what you suggested and you know what he said to me? He said, thank you for being honest with me. I see you understand your misbehavior so I do not see any need to punish you.”. He was elated and shocked not realizing that the whole time he had within himself the power to change his relationship with his Dad by changing something within himself. He took responsibility for his half (50%) of the relationship and changed the dynamics of his relationship with his Dad.

I hope you have enjoyed this entry! I encourage you to give it a try! Remember, this is a complex concept that is meant to be practiced and the truth discovered, not an overnight revelation. I promise it will bring you closer to becoming your best self and living your best life! Until next time my friends!

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Embracing Your Truth

How do we come to intimately embrace who we are, how we feel, how we treat people, how we react to situations? I wish I could tell you that there is some sort of magic antidote, but alas, that is not the way these things go. But I do have a personal experience that I will share with you that greatly impacted me and has helped me to understand that, in addition to honing in on where you are focusing your attention externally, it is also important to take notice of how you are talking to yourself. This part may even be more important than focusing on your external thoughts as those internal thoughts carry more weight and can have a severe impact on your mental health, let alone your motivation to accomplish your goals.

I recently had a major breakthrough while meeting with my coach. I was sharing with her how I tend to be really critical of myself. I reprimanded myself for not making time to keep up with the ambitious goals that I had set for my blog despite the fact that I simply had a lot of personal things come up that prevented me from being able to dedicate the time. She asked me if I had anything traumatic happen in my childhood, as this harsh self-talk was proving to be a recurring theme. Instantly, I recalled that I had a bully in kindergarten and explained that it was very traumatic because I grew up in the country. So I was devastated by the ridicule and judgment I experienced during my first exposure to society. She then asked me if that was precisely how I was treating myself? Tears instantly welled up in my eyes. Despite my efforts to hold it back, I just could not. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not one to cry easily and that I am a fairly tough person that holds my emotion back until I am alone. But I was amazed that she was right. I knew it instantly. And I had been doing this to myself for a very long time, despite the fact that I am someone who has focused on my own development and healing a lot over the years. I was stunned that I had never stopped to ask myself why I was so hard on myself.

Since this experience, everything has changed for me. It’s like a weight has been lifted and I no longer feel the need to punish myself for not living up to what are typically extremely high expectations. I am no longer allowing my mental and emotional state to play a factor in how I gauge my individual success, both daily and overall. Of course, this is a work in progress, but I have continued to have a lot of personal things popping up since this experience. I have been amazed at how forgiving of myself I have been, keeping my positive thinking up and opting just to focus on the tasks at hand, reminding myself that I will be able to resume working on my goals, but I must deal with any issues that take priority first.

I am awed at the state of peace and calmness that has come over me since this experience. I feel like I have awoken to a more enlightened state of consciousness. I have even reflected on situations where I would normally react in anger and instead, I have embraced a more positive and forgiving line of thinking. I have also noticed that I have felt entirely more confident. These are changes that are extremely difficult to embrace and implement, yet they seem to be flowing out of me without effort.

I am sharing this with you as I hope that this will either inspire you to share a similar experience so that we can learn from each other and build each other up. If that is not your case, I hope this experience with inspire you to take notice of how you’re treating yourself and a) work to modify any harsh criticism you are telling yourself, and b) make an effort to identify where that negative self-talk is originating from so that you might have a similarly transformative experience.

Since this breakthrough moment, I have been analyzing some past experiences I have had where perhaps I reacted defensively in an effort to learn how this behavior was impacting me and my relationships with others on a deeper level. There is at least a handful of times in the past couple of years where I know that, as a result of feeling personal judgment by another, I lashed out in attack rather than seeking to understand their viewpoint. Of course, I was doing the best I could at the time, but I have had a few people describe me as intimidating, mean, or even scary at times, and I have always questioned where that was coming from. But now I think I know. Any time that I felt as if someone was passing judgment on me as a person, my bullied-child, alter-ego-self emerged ready to pounce and protect. I had inadvertently developed a subtype of my personality that was ready to protect and defend me at all costs after experiencing the bullying situation where I felt so helpless as a young child. I truly believe that the alter-ego-self served an important role in my adolescence while I strived to define who I was and find my way in the world, continuing even into early adulthood. But now that I am a full-fledged adult, that side of myself was coming off as aggressive rather than protective, which is something I would never want to do to another person. Understanding this about myself has been a little hard to acknowledge, but it also feels liberating to finally understand what others were experiencing from their point of view.

I am sharing this intimate revelation with you to show you that we all do the best we can with the knowledge that we have. So if you have ever behaved badly, forgive yourself. But also, seek to understand why; what is going on with you to prompt the reaction or action that you are taking that you do not like. Initially, it will feel like the prompt in external, but I have to be brutally honest and tell you that it is unfortunately ALWAYS INTERNAL. While the problem feels like it is out there, it is definitely in here if you know what I mean. This is a hard concept to embrace, but it is also one of the most eye-opening and liberating revelations once you can see it and own it. It is also a lesson that will likely reoccur in your life as you face various difficulties and challenges.

My hope is that by opening up to you about this experience and the self-examination it inspired me to seek, this might help you cope with or deal with any of the personal challenges you may be facing. My hope is that you will be able to look at that difficulty and ask yourself, Why is this upsetting me? Why am I reacting this way? What has happened to me in my life that is inspiring this reaction that is in contrast with my true self?

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What Are You Focusing On?

Building on my post about Finding Your Pathway, let’s spend a little time honing in on where you are directing your attention. A friend of mine was sharing how they are having one of those weeks where everything is going wrong. We all know those moments where, just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it does. And you spend your time cursing the world and questioning what you did to deserve such misery.

If this is happening to you, I challenge you to slow down and pay attention. What are you focusing on? Where are your thoughts? I’m not much of a gambler, but I’d put my money on the fact that you are focusing all of your thoughts and energy on the thing that went wrong. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Of course I’m thinking about the horrible thing that just happened. It ruined my day; I’m in a bad spot; I’m never going to get passed this. Or any number of thoughts that keeps you stuck on that negative experience.

I hate to tell you, but by focusing your energy on what went wrong, you are karmically sending a message to the universe to send you more negative energy, another bad experience. It’s a universal law that like attracts like. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, misery loves company. That is exactly what is happening. You know the experience you have when you are spending time with that person who complains incessantly and you begin to notice that suddenly your perfectly positive mood dissipates and you yourself begin complaining about the evils of the world.

Energy is a powerful thing. And our thoughts are energy; vibrational messages that we are sending out to the world telling it how to interact with us.

No one ever says they pulled themselves out of a depressive state by focusing on their pain and complaining about their situation. You pick yourself up by mustering up the strength to find the slightest uplifting positive thought you can think and focusing on it until you find another positive thought. Then focus on that until you think of another. Next thing you know, you realize your mood has shifted, even if ever so slightly.

I know the skeptics are waiting to pounce, saying it’s all just coincidence. We can’t control our circumstances in life. That is true, I would agree. First, I don’t believe in coincidences. Second, we can control how we choose to think about our circumstances. That is where the magic is. I challenge you to practice the exercise I described above the next time life is giving you lemons. It works! And you will feel empowered and amazed. However, I caution you as well, that this is a practice, not a miracle. You will be fragile, easily catapulted from you newly discovered bliss back into despair. It takes time to expel the negative energy you have been drawing to you for so long. Don’t let that convince you that it isn’t working. It is! Practice finding the positive thought and embracing it!

Let’s imagine the following scenario: You have overslept and only have 30 minutes to prepare for work, traffic is heavy, the cafeteria is out of your favorite coffee, you forgot that you have a meeting first thing in the morning, you get to work and you realize your shirt is inside out.

Reaction A: You are angry that you have to rush to get ready, so you are instantly in a bad mood. You are cursing yourself and everyone else because you are angry at the situation. You road-rage your way into the office. Of course the universe would punish you by not having your coffee! You attend the meeting you forgot about feeling even more irritated by your miserable bad luck and you bite your colleague’s head off for telling you your shirt is on inside out. You are miserable all day and no one talks to you because you sent out a vibe that says: approach at your own risk.

Reaction B: You recognize your responsibility for not choosing to get up right when your alarm clock went off, but at least you got a few more minutes of sleep that you really needed. You rise promptly and give yourself a pep talk informing yourself that you now need to be very mindful of your time and prepare quickly. When caught in traffic, and you feel the stress bubbling up, you remind yourself that the most important thing is arriving to work safely and you will simply get there when you get there. Unfortunately, your favorite coffee is gone, but at least they do have regular coffee as an alternative to help get you moving since you are having a rough experience at the moment. You head to the meeting, at least you were able to make it in time to attend. When your colleague informs you your shirt is inside out, you burst out laughing saying your whole morning has been a bit inside out. Thanks for helping turn it around.

Which one feels better? B of course. So you see, you always have a choice in the way you choose to think about your circumstances. This is not to say that it is easy, because it is not. I get caught up in my negative thoughts all the time. But I build systems to help me pull myself out of them and I have a supportive entourage to help let me know when I’m going to the dark place. It’s ok. It happens. You just have to recognize that you’re headed there and start to turn it around.

Here is one tool that you may find helpful:

My dad, a philosopher, introduced me at a young age to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Master and global spiritual leader. I remember the first meditative practice that my dad suggested I try was Thich Nhat Hanh’s Half-Smile mediation. This is where you go throughout the day actively focusing on maintaining what is essentially a closed-mouth grin, called the Half-Smile. If you forget, you simply resume once you realize it. I remember thinking, you want me to do what?! But I did it, and the results were amazing. I was simply happy throughout the day. I wasn’t irritable, I was more receptive to even negative experiences. It was invigorating. So if you can’t find the positive thought, try the half-smile! I promise you will feel the negativity and frustration slowly begin to melt away and you will be well on your way to becoming your best self and living your best life!

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Fighting Convention, Embracing Your Truth

I have been called a dreamer for my unwillingness to believe that we must simply settle for the limitations that exist in the world around us. I am always looking for that something more, the possibility that is tucked deep within the cocoon of impossibilities. I am always encouraging others to try to see things through the lens of what is possible, rather than get caught up in all that prevents that possibility. It is remarkable when we are willing to admit our limitations and understand that we do not know what we do not know and that if someone views the world differently, perhaps it is derived from an experience that we have not yet lived, a lesson that we have not yet learned.

Mona Lisa Smile (2003) is one of my all-time favorite and most inspiring films. There is one character that I find particularly interesting. That is Elizabeth Warren (Kirsten Dunst), better known as Betty throughout the film. The reason I find Betty Warren’s character so fascinating is because she is the most changed from the beginning to end of the film.

Betty Warren begins the film is as the iconic, traditional, well-bred young woman of the 1950’s. An intelligent, young lady seeking a collegiate education from Wellesley College, a privilege in and of itself according to the school’s president. She is the epitome of the unspoken role for young women of the time with the ultimate goal being to marry, set up house with their husband’s, and restore women’s place in the home, a fact which she verbalizes as the school journalist. Her voice serves to critique and attack anything that occurs that threatens the traditions embraced by the school, students and tenured faculty.

This is in stark contrast with Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), an Art History professor who was extended a one year contract to teach at Wellesley. Ms. Watson’s character represents the new age woman who is unmarried by choice, without children, and looking to inspire the women of the future to seize the opportunity to pursue their wildest dreams. She is, of course, devastated to discover the battle she is up against when she realizes that the education seems to merely be a token experience prior to marrying and returning to the traditional role for women to rear children, have dinner on the table by 5 and be waiting for their husband at home.

The two characters butt heads frequently throughout the film as Betty sticks to her traditional beliefs and publicly denounces Ms. Watson’s subversive teachings. However, Katherine is not easily scared and fights back, going so far to insist that she attend class or Betty would fail the course. Betty, on the other hand, informs her that it is in fact she who is educating Ms. Watson.

So why do I find this dynamic relationship so fascinating? It symbolizes an invaluable lesson in life. We hold on to our beliefs so tightly, ready to march into battle over these beliefs that we mistake to be moral truths of the way things are and should be. That is until something occurs in our lives that makes them all come crashing down. That’s when it gets interesting.

For Betty, she follows all the rules of tradition with the promise that it will lead to happiness and prosperity, except it doesn’t. Her husband begins cheating on her, she learns from her mother that this is the true bargain in life that she signed up for, and very quickly, her fairytale unravels. And so, in the end, she files for divorce, a very controversial act for the era. She seeks a contact from none other that Katherine Watson to obtain an apartment and room with a character that had been portrayed throughout the film as loosely-moralled and self-destructive. Basically, she strikes out on her own, now willing to view the world with new eyes where she begins to embrace ideas and people she had previously judged in an effort to find her own perception of truth.

“Not all who wander are aimless. Especially not those who seek truth beyond tradition, beyond definition, beyond the image.” Betty writes this quote in her final editorial as a tribute and send off to the lessons she learned from Ms. Watson’s example to follow her own pathway and not to be bound by the societal rules made to encourage conformity over free-thought.

The truth is, we are all Betty Warren in some way in our life. We all enter the adult world with certain ideals that we cling to, until something shatters them. Then we are left to our own devices to make sense of our lives, to find meaning in our suffering as well as our happiness. And that is the beauty of life. And we cannot skip the step, we cannot skip the lesson. We all believe our truths until it becomes evident that they no longer serve us. It can be even more frustrating to have to watch a friend, a child, a loved one go down that path of confidence to devastation to vulnerability. But it is extraordinary when you can witness yourself or your loved one emerge a stronger, more well-rounded person that no longer sees the world in black and white, but rather shades of gray because now they have begun to understand that the world does not look the same to all people at all phases in life. Life is meant to be discovered, embraced, questioned, as I said before.

Betty did educate Ms. Watson, but not in the way she thought. She taught her that even the most difficult of prospects can surprise you, and you may get your greatest teachings from your most unlikely source. And Katherine Watson showed Betty that life is not always what it seems. You have to look closer, beyond what you think you know, to see the true potential of existence.

So I challenge you to question what you know, consider what you reject, and embrace those whose values starkly contrast your own. They may become your greatest teacher, your dearest friend, or your soft place to land when your own fairytale unravels.

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Finding Your Pathway

I was talking with a friend the other day about my Dream Big post and they mentioned that they don’t know what they want to do. So I thought I would do a post about finding your own way, listening to your inner voice and how to connect deeply with your wants and dreams.

The truth is, the universe has a way of pointing us in the right direction. However, we as humans tend to be too busy running our own lives to pay attention to the subtle messages happening all around us. If you are trying to get in touch with your life’s passion, I would start in the rational place of making a list of activities, hobbies, events, everything you enjoy. Can any of those be occupations? Maybe you just want to do it as a hobby? Can you love it even when you hate it? As my mom would say:

Does it thrill your soul?

Once you have honed in on your various interests, that’s where I believe the real magic starts. This is the part where you start to pay attention to everything happening around you. Did your friend just mention something that you never would have expected? Did you accidentally attend an event that related to your interest? These are subtle ways of the world nudging you in the right direction. They were always there, but you were not always looking. Be warned, the world is patient. It will let you take as much time as it takes for you to get it.

I had an experience where this occurred just the other day. We recently changed seating arrangements at my place of employment. I was chatting with my new neighbor co-workers trying to get to know them and I shared that I used to teach French and was working toward being a French professor. We all chatted and shared our different experiences as one had previously been a teacher and another had a relative that was a teacher. But that was the extent of the conversation. A few days later, I’m sitting at my desk and one of the people I was chatting with before spouted out a statement in French. I was completely stunned. It caught me off guard. The truth is I love French and speaking French, but I’m severely out of practice. However, it is something I would love to mess around with and be able to bring back into my life. So where is the universal connection in this? We just changed seating and she sits right next to me! And, to be honest, French is not the most common major or language that people tend to study in the area where I live. Subtle, but the message was received.

Now, again, I can hear the skepticism. It’s all just a coincidence. First, I do not personally believe in coincidences. Second, I would challenge the critic to simply give it a shot. Start noticing the things that are going on around you. Within a short time, I assure you, you will be taken aback by the results. I challenge you to try it out and share your thoughts and experiences either way! I welcome the conversation!

As I stated before, the world is always throwing opportunities your way. The problem is that we are usually too engrossed in our “issues” to notice them. When you can quiet the mind and really focus on what you want and what is going on around you, it is truly miraculous what can appear. To learn to quiet your mind, you must learn to understand and take control of your thoughts. I hope you are starting to notice a trend here:

EVERYTHING we Feel, Do and Experience starts with our THOUGHTS!

So let’s discuss addressing our thinking patterns in a little further detail. This part is essential to learning to connect to your true passion(s) in life. Most of us just let our thoughts run rampant like an unattended toddler. We believe we have no control of them. But if you stop and notice them, if you begin to question them, and if you challenge yourself to change them, you begin to realize that we have far more control of over our thoughts and emotions than we once believed. Mastering this skill is the key to tapping into communicating to the universe what we truly desire to attract into our lives.

I’m going to keep the Power of Thought discussion high-level for now, as it merits a full posting or several in and of itself. It can be a challenge to Master. And truly, it is really more of a practice that you get better at, but that you always have to work at. Learning how our thoughts dictate our feelings and actions and how they communicate with the universe is a subject that I find truly fascinating and I’m excited to begin sharing this amazing discovery with you.

So let this posting be the first in a series to follow on how to begin to connect with your inner self, your passion, and how you can draw it to you. I will be sure to link them as I post them so you can follow along on this journey of self discovery!