URGENT

Drinking and celebrating with a keen urgency has always seemed to me to be a surrogate means of punishment for that sense of disappointment for not having achieved more during the year.  

END

When you’re striving for something and you fall down it’s never the end.  So long as you’re still breathing it’s not the end.  There are no judgements that matter except your own.  So long as you keep getting up it’s not the end. 

It may be the end of the year, and you may have accomplished some or all the goals you set for yourself, it still isn’t the end.  There is only one end -- the great equalizer that levels us all, literally.  But until that happens, and you may find yourself stumbled and down, it’s just for the moment, it’s not permanent.  Get up and if you have to, start again.  

ONE THING

Resolve to leave all thoughts that do not help you in 2012.

TWO

Either/Or

Yes/No

Black/White

Are NEVER (yes never) the only options.

If we’re insisting using them what we’re really doing is stacking the deck.  Influencing the outcome.  Narrowing down the possibilities so thinly means we need to manipulate and control the outcome.

SEE

See an excuse for what it is...FEAR.

SPECIAL

Compassion, understanding and forgiveness are available to us in great abundance and at all times.  Not only is there enough to go around for the people in our immediate circle, there is a huge surplus for others.  We need to disseminate it, spread it, give it away, touch as many strangers as we possibly can.

To do it just at this time of year is to be contrived.  Is to engage in fraud.

ALTERNATIVE

So long as the alternative is still not painful enough, we will not be compelled to do what makes our heart sing.

The alternative needs to NOT be an option.

TRY

The only way we can possibly disappoint is if we don’t even bother to try.

WILDERNESS

 “God let you go through the wilderness first, so when you get ready to lead others, you will have credibility through the things you have suffered.”  ~ Bishop TD Jakes

Yes, yes, yes.  Those of us who are struggling right now thinking whether it’s all worth it, heed those that have come through the other side. It is worth it.  Don’t give up.  It will all make sense.  Nothing is wasted.

EVIDENCE

The thing is we are already good enough, worthy enough and whole but we don’t believe it, it’s too much of an abstract concept.

Doing what we were meant to do is the evidence.  It’s the proof we need to believe it.  That’s what makes all the difference.

WHOLE

Not doing what you were meant to do means that you’ll never experience the feeling of being good enough, worthy enough or whole.  Until you’re doing what makes your heart sing you will always be at the mercy of those that will tell you, and take great pleasure in telling you, how you come up short.

Doing what delights you means you’re feeding your soul.  It means that you feel good enough, you feel worthy and you feel whole.  When you’re feeding your soul other people’s opinions will not sink in.  Rather it will roll off you like water off a duck’s back.

SHOWING UP

That’s 25 percent of the work.  Seventy-four percent is in showing up the next day and the next and the next.  The one percent is the actual work.

Showing up once is good but not a big deal, anyone can do that.  What sets sensational apart from good is the consistency, the dependability, the focus, the determination, the doggedness to just keep showing up until you accomplish what you set out to do.

START

Waiting for the perfect time to start toward your goal actually means you’re waiting for the time that the fear you have in doing the work to achieve that goal, will go away.  

Here’s the thing, the fear won’t go away.  I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again.  If you have a goal, whatever it is, start now.  You don’t have to wait for New Year’s Eve to make a resolution.  Start now.  That way when New Year’s Eve rolls around you’ve already made some progress in moving toward your goal.

Think about it, a year has passed.  Another year will also pass.  So where do you want to be?  Do you want to be in the same place you’re at right now bemoaning the fact that you got derailed or you procrastinated?  Sure you can be stuck there, it’s a nice safe place to be.  But time will pass, a year and then another and then another will pass and you will be in exactly the same place you’re at right now.

Start now.  Do it in spite of...despite of... the fear.  What you have to remember is that EVERYBODY does it this way.  Everybody who has achieved their goals has done it this way.  Has moved forward in spite of the fear.

GO.

DISTANCE

Some days what’s needed is a little distance...a little distance from ourselves.  Consciously stepping outside of our head even for just a brief moment, and observing ourselves as if we were watching someone very dear to us, reminds us how very hard we are on ourselves most of the time.  

DISCOURAGEMENT

Discouragement, I think, hasn’t really been awarded sufficient respect for its potential to devastate.  But discouragement is insidious.  It creeps up, and in and under and worms its way into the crevices in your brain and before you know it, what was just moments ago a vague sense of “dis-courage” or lack of courage, feels now like the deepest pit of despair.

Sometimes people discourage us because they’re trying to shield us from harm.  But other times those that will discourage us do so out of their own lack of courage.  Your inner wisdom will know the difference.

DWELL

Dwelling doesn’t serve anyone, most especially us.  We tend to dwell on a thing most when the lesson we’ve just learned is a big one.  When we didn’t fully grasp what the universe was telling us, but now, now that the brick wall has fallen on us...we get it.  

Be grateful for the education and move on.  The people who love us will not judge us and they’ve moved on already.  

TEACHERS

Teachers aren’t here to teach us what we already know.  Teachers show up to show us what we don’t know.  What’s perhaps difficult for us to grasp.  What we didn’t even know we didn’t know.  And what we thought we didn’t know we needed to know.

And if you think you can spot your teacher, think again. Sometimes they look like a puppy, a cat or a rabbit. Sometimes they look like a police officer writing you a ticket, sometimes it’s a little old lady crossing the street, and sometimes, our teacher looks like the guy who just cut us off...and is flipping us the finger.

I find it ironic that teachers more often than not show up to teach us patience and gratitude.  Weird, huh?

WISH

Rarely does what we wish for arrive the way we want it to.  Most of the time it’s almost unrecognizable and we continue to wish for it because we can’t see it.  Other times it so exceeds our expectations that we still can’t see it because we don’t feel worthy.  

The point, I think, is to receive whatever presents itself with grace knowing that good or not so good doesn’t last forever.  And rather than lurch from the depths of disappointment to the highest peaks of elation, a steady state of gratitude will always serve us best.

MONKEY WRENCH

Peace of mind comes easily sitting on top of a mountain in the Himalayas.  It comes less easily when, in real life, you continuously have monkey wrenches being tossed in your direction.

That’s not to say that we stop trying to achieve peace of mind, it just means we need to be very, very kind to ourselves in the process.

DARKNESS

Ignorance precedes judgement.  Judgment precedes gossip.  Gossip precedes cowardice.   All together they precede hate.  Not hate of the other, hate of ourselves.

ROAD

Once we reach a certain age there aren’t many roads that are unfamiliar.  In fact, we’ve tread well-worn paths on roads that are a variation of ones we’ve walked down at one point or another.  We become complacent.  We look for the predictable and deliberately avoid roads that look even remotely unfamiliar.

That’s a shame because it’s getting lost in unfamiliar terrain, facing unpredictable challenges and ending up at unexpected places that not only keeps the roads we travel on interesting, it keeps us interesting.

CLIFF

The thing about jumping off that proverbial cliff and building your wings on the way down, is that until you get those wings built you will need to get comfortable plummeting to earth head first.

But engaging in any risk takes getting used to the free fall that precedes regaining equilibrium.  And then...perversely, once that risk becomes a sure thing, we’ll be looking around for another cliff.

Moving from cliff to cliff is how we realize our best lives.  If you think about it, it’s really less scary than sitting around watching your life pass you by.

MORE

Lack isn’t the absence of a thing.  Lack isn’t about not having more, or enough.  No.

Lack is about not being grateful for what we have.

MAGICAL

The magical thing that happens when we look for ways to help others is that our life immediately feels better, lighter and brighter.

We clear a path for light and brightness when we disengage from our narcissistic tendency of gazing at our own navels.  

It feels like magic...but it isn’t.

EXPANSIVE

Life may be short, but is your life wide?

Does your life include people that you truly care about and truly care about you?  Is your life filled with things that matter to you?  Is your time spent on things that make a difference not just to you and your immediate clan or kin, but to complete strangers.

An expansive life, a wide life, is judged by the delight you bring to others.  It truly is.

We move toward an expansive life when we ask ourselves, often: “How can I make someone else’s life easier?”

BEGINNING

We’ve got one month left on 2012.  It’s now that we need to look back.  Not January or February.  By that time we need to have hit the ground running.  Why?  Why is there urgency?  Because of yield.  Because we will need to explain to ourselves why we didn’t yield the life we wanted.  

Make 2013 the year that you’ll be ready for.  Make it the year you have a clear intention of what you want to accomplish.  

And make it this year that you stay so present that you get yourself back on track when you get derailed.   

APATHY

Whether our nest expands is predicated on cultivating vision, intention and action.  Whether our nest shrinks is predicated on an apathy of vision, intention and action.  Either way the genesis and evolution of our environment is a realization of our inner dynamics.  

It’s an old message but one that I’m only now truly understanding.  

You will reap what you sow.  

In other words, if we suddenly realize that our nest is incredibly small, our environment meagre, and our life paltry, then we are reaping the harvest of apathy.   

Here’s what I’ve understood.  Vision, in and of itself, is not enough.  Intention alone is not enough.  Action for its own sake is not enough either.  It takes a consistent and energetic cultivation of all three to push past apathy.  And apathy is a fear-based seed that we grow, feed and water in our heads.

HELP

I was out walking my little dog several months ago.  An elderly lady was walking toward me.  She was well into her 80’s and walked slow and careful.  She kept her head down making sure the ground was steady and clear for her footfall.  She was bundled up with a hat and scarf and warm coat.  She had sneakers on but the laces, on both shoes, were undone and dragging on the ground.  Our eyes met as we were about to pass each other.  I looked down at her shoes and then back into her face.  I stopped and turned around, she did the same.  I walked back to her and said:  

“Nice and brisk, today, isn’t it?” I bent down and tied her laces.

“Yes.” She said.  “It’s lovely.” She beamed at me, then turned around and walked on.

I never saw her before and I have never seen her since.

You see when we ask the universe to be of service, she provides us with opportunities.  We just need to see them.  This is how we are connected, by gestures that ripple out, by nests that rest on the many branches of a tree.

ACCOUNTABLE

Awareness makes us accountable.  We cannot become aware and refuse to be accountable.  

Is that why people choose to stay unaware, because they then don’t have to be accountable? Indeed, people will go to great lengths, burrowing their heads deeper into their nests, hurting themselves in some cases, just to avoid becoming aware, and facing their fear, anger or shame.

When we deny our accountability, our responsibility to act on resolving, or facing our issues, we deny an education, we deny growth, we deny our life. 

Isn't that the point though?  Aren't we here to be accountable for our life?

TEMPTING

Sometimes it’s tempting to just snuggle into our nest and pull the covers over our head.  We know our nest is dysfunctional and we know we’re not living up to our potential.  The thing is...

...we’re tired.  We don’t want to struggle.  We just want to lie here quietly with the covers over our heads.  Perhaps flight just wasn’t meant for us.

It’s okay.  Because we do get tired.  That’s reality.  So rest for a while.

It’s helpful that while we rest, we remember to be thankful for what we have, grateful for what we’ve accomplished so far.   We’ll weave together the strands of our lifeline that way.  The lifeline that will pull us through our rut, our dysfunctional nest and our repetitive destructive behaviors, through our fears, sadness and melancholy.   Thankfulness and gratitude are the only way through.

LUXURY

Do you think your nest, your environment is luxurious?  Why not?  I think for many of us we associate luxury with expensive and external -- a high monetary value, a material thing.  It’s no surprise really since as a society we have come to measure value and luxury in a terrifically skewed way.  

In truth, the value of a thing lies in its transference, in making us feel good, loved or cared for.  A material thing will never make you feel that, not at your core and not for the long term.

True luxury comes from something bigger than us.  From our spirit that gives and receives selflessly a smile, a kindness, a loving gesture.  From the universe we receive luxurious gifts through nature, animals, the stars.  

It’s easy to fill our nests, our environment with luxurious things -- flowers, our pets, creating a loving and nurturing atmosphere.  This is meaningful luxury we can all afford.  Luxury that fosters wellbeing, safety and nurture, luxury that is truly PRICELESS.

Heading into the holiday season this is really important to remember.

(Taken from the spirit of the 21 day meditation challenge with Dr. Deepak Chopra:  https://www.chopracentermeditation.com/Bestsellers/LandingPage.aspx?BookId=172)

SOARING

“Good is the enemy of great.” ~ Bishop TD Jakes

Good for great people is easy and it’s a seductive place to stay.  Like the good nest you’ve grown accustomed to, like the good job, like the good friends.  

Great is work.  Soaring away from that nest is work.

The biggest tragedy is when we settle for good because we’re too afraid to do the work to be great...too laden down with fear to soar.

CURSED

There was a period in my life when all hell broke loose. I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop and there seemed no end in sight.  In trying to make sense of it, I concluded that I was cursed.  

Martha Beck refers to periods like this as rumble strips,  “...a barrage of seemingly unrelated catastrophes so severe you cannot ignore them.  You have no idea what’s happening or why, only that this feels too freakishly bad to be coincidental.” 

It’s interesting how we blame ourselves, how quick we are to assume we’re deficient or damaged in some way, when in truth it’s simply the universe stirring the sticks.   Mind you, sometimes the universe doesn’t just stir the sticks, sometimes she actually beats us with them.  

When that’s the case, when you find yourself dealing with a set of freakishly catastrophic events, you may need to take notes or pack your bags, either way, pay attention.  The universe is speaking.

STAGE

A new stage in your life will require a new nest, a fresh environment a shift in perspective, a new opportunity to live a fuller, purpose driven life.  

Be grateful for the exciting time ahead.

EXPAND

Change that helps us grow and expand and soar is a very good thing.  Change that helps everyone else around us grow and expand and soar is even better.  As we aspire to new things, new environments, new challenges, we need to remember to look back.  Chances are there is someone behind us who could use a hand up.

Our capacity to live our lives to our fullest potential is predicated on our willingness to expand beyond our current comfortable horizons.  The more expansive our environment, the more inclusive our reach, the bigger our life.

MIND

Pay attention to what follows you today.  Pay attention to what shows up. 

Then step back and think about what’s been on your mind all day.  Chances are that’s exactly what’s followed you.  That’s exactly what you’ve asked to show up.

This is how your mind plays a role in creating your environment.

SOFT

Our bodies are part of our environment as well.  Keeping our bodies soft, free of anxiety, worry, and myopic tightness, will ensure that when a storm rages across our landscape we will bend and not break. 

Stillness, breath and stretch, even just a little bit every day, is the surest way of keeping our bodies soft.

POOR

Eggshells build very poor nests.  

Fractured nests that are held together by tension can only produce dysfunction.

LANDSCAPE

We know our landscape, our environment, our nest, best.   

But some folks make whole careers out of asking other people for their opinion on their landscape.  Most of the time it’s because they’ve been taught to believe that they’re defective in some way and only a ‘professional’ can help them understand why their nest feels too small.  Or, why the same stuff keeps showing up in their landscape, over and over again.  It’s so much easier to ask someone else for their opinion than coming up with our own.

The truth is, nobody knows our landscape the way we do.  And nobody is better at interpreting what’s showing up better than we are.  What’s required though is a willingness to dig down to our roots.  If we’re courageous enough to climb down our family of origin tree and are brave enough to revisit that landscape, we’ll find the answers. We’ll arrive at an understanding of the what, why and how of our life.

WHEREWITHAL

We sometimes need to remind ourselves that we have, in the past, figured stuff out.  So if you feel stuck in your environment, in your nest, remember that you have not only the wherewithal, but past experience to figure it out again.

Q v Q

Quality always trumps Quantity.

Inventory your environment to weed out one and have more of the other.

EVICTION

It happens when we stubbornly refuse to move.  

Make no mistake if the Universe, God, Grace or whatever you want to call it, decides that it is time for change to happen in our lives, change will happen.

Like they say in the movies, it can either happen the easy way, or the hard way.

We make change easy by paying attention and opening up our hearts and minds to the shifts in our environment.  We make change hard when we stubbornly refuse to move, are evicted and carried out of our nest kicking and screaming.

The choice is ours.

STRUCTURE

Some folks really need structure in their environment.  It means they thrive on working within well defined parameters.  Others on the other hand, feel too constricted by defined parameters.  These folks prefer to make up the lines that define their environment, as they go.  

It’s not putting too fine a point on the matter to say that it is critical to find out which is more important for you.

The quality of your life depends on it.

The quantity of joy in your life is defined by it.

RESPECTFUL

Remembrance isn’t about dwelling on the past and letting it define our present environment or the one in our future.

Rather, remembrance is a respectful reflection on our history where with the help of retrospection we can distinguish between the things worth learning from and those destructive things worth leaving behind.

INWARD

We can't forget to build stillness into our nest. 

Stillness is the gap between the sticks.  The gap that allows us to travel inward.  It's when we journey inward that we see our path and hear our heart's desire the most clearly. 

And our heart's desire is our north star that guides us toward our best, most fulfilling life. 

You can only hear it with stillness.  Stillness is critical.

TRUST

Why is it that we trust our skills and competencies when someone else is telling us what do?  When we’re working for a ‘boss’ and they’re asking us to do something we’ve never done before, instead of dissolving into a puddle of insecurity, we say, ‘no worries, I’ll figure it out.'  

Yet, when that job disappears and you’ve got a glorious window of opportunity to do what makes your heart sing, you invariably dissolve into that puddle of insecurity and you suddenly forget, you mistrust that skilled and competent person you were only hours before, the fearsome woman who said, 'no worries, I’ll figure it out.’

What’s that got to do with nest and environment? Everything.  The ‘boss’ example is a nest built by someone else who’s letting you stay in that nest until they say otherwise.  The window of opportunity is the nest you will build yourself.  The one where you dictate what it looks like, the type of sticks you’ll use and the amount of time you’ll stay in it.

HUGE DIFFERENCE in whether you'll DEVELOP or CORRODE your self confidence.

STIRRING

The nest is the environment that we build for ourselves.  We make it comfortable.

And that’s the problem.  The nest becomes so comfortable, so safe and so familiar that we don’t catch the moment that this nest becomes our prison.   

The thing is our environment is temporary, it is a thing in flux that expands relative to our growth. 

When the sticks of our nest start poking us in the ribs instead of paying attention we start eating too much, drinking too much, spending too much time at work, too much time socializing, too much time trying to distract ourselves, too much time making excuses.      

If we paid attention we’d realize that the nest has become too small, too constrictive.  If we paid attention we’d realize that our body and soul is seeking to transition, to grow, to learn.  This is a wonderful thing.

Transition, growth, change is an imperative whether our ambitions are modest or spectacular.  

Growth is disruptive.  Growth stirs our environment.  If there's a rustling in the sticks of your nest, pay attention.

NEXT

Start asking for what you want from yourself.  Create the story you want to live.  Infuse the sticks that make up your nest with a story full of strength and wisdom and insight worthy of passing on to the next generation.  

Not just a story but a nest filled with coping skills taught by example, skills that actually make kids strong.  Skills that will be useful to them.  That will set them up several steps ahead, rather than having them struggle to disentangle themselves from unproductive and dysfunctional mechanisms that only serve to slow them down.

If what you’ve always done isn’t working for you, then do your kids a favour and stop modelling it to them.

OTHER

The sticks that made up our nests contain within them the story: patterns, behaviors, coping strategies, dysfunction, etcetera, of our family of origin.   It is not surprising then when we grow up and construct our own nests we infuse our sticks with this story as well.

Therefore, if in our family of origin problems were always seen as created by others, even if the other was another family member, then chances are we will also look at our problems as coming from an ‘other’ AND (because it is ‘other’) are powerless to affect change.

So, if you think that your life sucks because your partner (boss, cousin, cashier, etcetera) isn’t acting the way they should, or your job sucks because  _______ fill in the blank, then you are dipping into your family of origin nest story.

This means you haven’t understood that:

1. What you see as most profoundly wrong in your life derives from an old pattern or dysfunction, and

1. While a circumstance may present itself beyond our control, whether we see it as a problem, or make a problem out of it, is never the influence of an ‘other,’ it is rather only influenced by us.

We create our problems, truly we do. I know, you’ll be sputtering...but, but, but... .  

Bottom line: You want something to change in your life, then don't reach back to your family of origin nest for answers, don't do what you've always done.  Try something new.  Change you.  

Change the way you look at something.  

Change the way you deal with something.  

Change the way you approach something.

Change the way you ask for something -- better still START ASKING FOR WHAT YOU WANT!

MOVE

What gets us stuck is using the goodness of fit gap as an excuse.   Whatever we didn’t get as kids produced fear, anger and shame and as a result we’re afraid to move forward.  

Here’s the thing, we’re adults now.  The power is in our hands to choose differently.  And we must.  The pendulum needs to swing toward healing, toward spirit to get unstuck.  Otherwise we run the very real risk of being buried under a mountain of regret.

As Bishop Jakes says, “Don’t die in your nest - don’t die where you got started.”

NEST

If you can put your particular religious beliefs aside for about 30 minutes, I’d like to invite you to look at this video.  

It is on point with the GOODNESS OF FIT I’ve been talking about, and I’ve been talking about it because I’m working on a large project that deals with precisely this critically important issue that underpins all of our pain and suffering.   When I saw Bishop TD Jakes speak of the same thing so beautifully, I had to share it.  

Listen to WHAT he’s saying: http://www.tdjakes.org/  Click on the POTTER’S TOUCH BROADCAST

ADULT

While the gap in our goodness of fit had its impact on us as children when we had no defense, it all changes when we’re adults.  Rather than using these issues as excuses, as adults, we have to come to this sometimes difficult realization....

"All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you."

 --- Joseph Campbell

PUNITIVE

The life as lesson theory feels punitive.  It suggests that we’re defective in some way and some external force with a master plan is making us suffer so we can redeem ourselves.  I don’t buy it.

I think that more often than not we forget that we are that force, that we are what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin so eloquently said, “ We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Our suffering and pain stems from the focus being heavily weighted toward the human experience and only scantily toward the nurturing of our spirit, a nurturing that has nothing to do with religiosity.

In fact we continue to surround ourselves with things that will move us further away from our spirit.  Our hyperactivity, our spending large amounts of time on small things, our obsessive need for drama and NOISE, is the antithesis of nurturing spirit.

Our true punishment is this, it’s this moving away from our spirit.  It isn’t a lesson of life -- it is life.  We are not being afflicted externally, we are afflicting ourselves.  

LESSON

Continuing on with the issue of GOODNESS OF FIT, it’s true we can’t choose our family of origin.  As a metaphysical argument some say that we are born into our family to learn life lessons that are particular to us.  Awesome.  I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with that.

I understand that it's a rhetorical way of trying to make sense of our experiences on this earth.  I get that.  My question to the family as lesson theory however is, why does the exact same shit keep showing up?  

Anger, guilt, shame are the trifecta of symptoms that underpin our OCD, addiction, anxiety and depression.  We, as humans, have had to learn the exact same lessons for millennia.  So either we’re not doing a very good job of learning our lessons or it’s a faulty belief at best.  

I mean why can’t we be perfecting our lessons on compassion and awareness and love right from the get-go, why are these lessons arrived at only as byproducts of anger, guilt and shame?

MATCH

Goodness of fit is also a critical measure of whether as children, we received what we needed from our parents.

In other words, did what we need match with what our parents could give.

I don’t mean material things here.

Rather, were our parents able to nurture us in the manner in which we needed to be nurtured? 

All of the ways in which we were mis-matched with our parents, are all of the ways in which we created, out of necessity, mechanisms to bridge that gap.  Mechanisms that manifest as OCD, addiction, anxiety and depression.

Only by understanding this gap can we begin, as adults, to mitigate it, can we begin to nurture the fit we need.  It isn’t too late.

FIT

As in GOODNESS OF FIT* and how we adapted (or did not adapt) to the environment in which we were raised.

As adults we still come up against this goodness of fit.  Every time we make a decision that’s based on what our head tells us, rather than what our heart tells us, we move further away from that GOODNESS of fit.

*Based on the ecological model and the evolutionary adaptability of a species.

I AM

"Whatever follows “I AM” will come looking for you."   ~ Pastor Joel Osteen

In other words:

I am tired means that sure enough I will be

I am broke means that yes I will be

I am unlucky means I am

Similarly:

I am healthy

I am joyful

I am grateful

Changes the paradigm.

“I AM” IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESY.

It cannot be said any more plainly:  

YOU ARE THE CREATOR OF YOUR EXPERIENCE

WAIT

Not a single solitary person has every accomplished anything of value by waiting for the right opportunity.  

Anything of value?  How about just catching the morning bus.  It means that you have to get up, get ready and stand at the bus stop and create the opportunity for that bus to stop and pick you up.

Waiting is overrated.  The wisdom is knowing what circumstances are made better by waiting (rare to none) and which are squandered by it (almost all).  

Clue: It’s better to leap and apologize later for the gargantuan mess you made, than never leaping, never learning, never risking.

STICKINESS

Your experiences, whether good or bad, will continue to stick to you so long as they’re useful to you.

Even bad and painful experiences will be useful to you in keeping you stuck, in precluding you from moving forward, in keeping you from having to experience the fear of change.

WAH WAH WAH

If we’re suffering from lifestyle illnesses like chronic hypertension and type II diabetes and we continue to not exercise and eat crap while telling ourselves that life’s too short and we don’t want to deny ourselves, remember that what we’re actually DENYING ourselves is the opportunity to feel good, be healthy, be engaged in our lives.  The two go hand-in-hand.

So carry on.   But let’s not hear any WAH WAH WAH when we receive no sympathy for the stupid choices we make.

INFLAMMATION

We know better than to pick at that scab, but here we are poking at it, worrying it into an oozing wound.  

Or we’ll reach for a switch - a switch as in a stick the width of our thumb and as pliable as a whip, to lash ourselves with.  (It’s the same switch that husbands were permitted to beat their wives with, back in the day.  The ‘rule of thumb,’ was a sanctioned method of torture.)

The metaphor doesn’t matter.

The trigger that tips us from poking to picking doesn’t matter either.  It could have been the dark and stormy day or a fight with the kids, or the burning of our toast this morning.

The scab and the switch are our insecurities.  They lie dormant until we turn our attention to them. But if we don’t catch ourselves in time, we will pick and prod our insecurities into a roaring inflammation, an infection, or worse, gangrene.  And this matters.  It matters because we are raising welts on our souls.  

The truth is that we will never be rid of our insecurities, they are part of what makes us uniquely us.  However, inflaming our insecurities is damaging. 

In fact, any kind of pain inflicted by an outside source PALES in comparison to the breadth and depth of the damage that we can inflict on ourselves by simply continuing to pick at that scab or reach for that switch.  

When we can feel our insecurities rising, rather than poking at that scab or eyeing that switch, STOP.  Show some compassion.  More than at any other time, when we’re feeling vulnerable and our insecurities are threatening to burn out of control, we need to be kinder to ourselves. 

We need not surrender to the perverse voice in our head who wants to see a bonfire.