WORK

We wait for inspiration to descend before making changes to our lives.  We wait for inspiration to present us with options and make the decisions for us.  This is true if we continually complain of not knowing our purpose in life, what will make us happy and feel fulfilled.  It’s a stall tactic.  We’ll know by doing, by trying this and trying that, by eliminating what we don’t like doing or what doesn’t fulfill us.  Ultimately...

“Inspiration is for amateurs...the rest of us just show up and get to work.”  ~ Chuck Close

RATIONALIZE

Creativity is just one of the ways in which rationalizing stifles the outlet.  In all other aspects of our lives, rationalization is the way we construct stories about ourselves that are not true.  Rationalization is the way we get and stay stuck.

"The intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth — who you are, what you are, what you want to be."     ~ Ray Bradbury

UPON

We are not acted upon.  We react upon.

Our circumstances are a result of our reaction to what comes our way.

PSEUDO-REALITY

What reality have you bought into?  The social media reality that says everyone is looking for you and really wants to know what you’re doing every nanosecond of the day?  The marketers reality that has you convinced of not only what you want, but what you NEED?  Your boss’s reality that says, you’re not overworked, you’re lucky to have a job?  Your kid’s reality that says you suck as a parent because you’re not indulging my every whim? 

These other realities look really attractive because much of our time is spent in us not liking the reality we’re living.  Here’s the thing, all of these pseudo-realities are ‘pseudo’ because they look like a life but actually are not.  They are vacuous facsimiles of existence.  They are a proposition with an agenda driven by the people who have created it: social media, marketers, your boss, etc., all exist to satisfy their specific need.  Pseudo-realities have nothing to do with us and our wellbeing.

Yet we get caught up in them all the time because we’re looking for an escape.  It’s so much easier to disappear into these alternate realities than make hard decisions, face our fears, live authentically.  

GIVE/GET

You can’t give what you don’t have.  Conversely, you can’t get what you don’t give.  It might be a cute little phrase but it’s true.  We expect compassion, love and respect from others but have none for ourselves.  

How do we know we don’t have any for ourselves?  When our default response is angry and defensive, anxious and fearful.  When we feel as though there’s not enough for us, when we believe everyone is trying to take something from us, when most of the time we feel empty. 

How can we possibly offer anything to anyone if we come from a place of emptiness?

DOORMAT

Living our life with love and compassion doesn’t mean we become doormats. It comes down to knowing our boundaries.   

A quick and dirty guide to knowing what your boundaries are, goes something like this:

1. Stop doing things that make you feel bad
2. Do more of the things that make you feel good

Simple right?  But not easy.  Our culture confuses us with mixed messages.  For example, #1. Stop doing things that make you feel bad, doesn’t mean that you stop doing things you know you need to do to grow and be responsible for your life.  It doesn’t mean stop when things get uncomfortable and challenging.

It’s the same with #2 Do more of the things that make you feel good, doesn’t mean being irresponsible with our behaviour.  Doing things that jeopardize our health for example, or doing things that make us feel good in the moment but have awful repercussions in the long term.

Boundaries are about being responsible for our life, for our behaviour and respecting others to take responsibility for their life and their behaviour.  Boundaries are crossed when one or the other isn’t doing that.

TRUST

Trust is not passive.  Trust is not hoping.  Trust without action is magical thinking.  It is wishful thinking.

Trust is a verb.  It is active. There’s action associated with it.  It means that we take a risk and then release the need to manipulate or worry about the outcome  because we’re confident that whether our efforts succeed or fail, we’ll not only be able to handle it, we’ll be ready to trust again, ready to risk again.  That’s trust at its most elemental.