See your Bridge

“The days you work are the best days.”  -Georgia O’Keeffe

Friday.

Its the end of the work week. It’s time to chill.  It’s time to relax. And yet sometimes you can’t.  Sometimes you keep on.  You just have to.  You can’t sit still, it just doesn’t work. You have to keep busy.  It’s your therapy. You don’t stop.  You stay focused and keep running.  Your goal is ahead of you.  Every now and then when you least expect it, you see a glimpse of it.  You can almost grab it then.  Keep that vision.  Keep running across your bridge.  Trust your innerness. She is fantastic. She knows where she is going.

Just walk.

No actually, run.

Venture Out

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”     -Helen Keller

Think about animals in the wild.  They do not have 100 percent security.  They have danger everyday.  They do not know what each day will hold for them.  Their instincts protect them.  Their instincts guide them and lead them where they should go.  If they were afraid of danger, they would never survive.  They wouldn’t eat.  They would die.

Why do we get so padded?  Why are we so afraid?  Our culture has taken away any need for danger.  We are told to be safe.  To be protected.  To not try anything too difficult or out of our league.  We do not gain anything by sitting around and not acting.  If we stay in our den, we gain nothing.  If don’t venture out, we never learn the wild ways of nature.  We will forever be an infant in our wolf den.  The strong one, goes out.  The strong one believes. The strong one lives outside the safety of the wolf den.

Nature doesn’t question itself.  It just acts accordingly.  Why do we second guess?  What are you called to you?  Why do you second guess nature’s calling to you?   What are your wild instincts telling you?  Listen.  Don’t be afraid.  Trust yourself.  Believe that you have a purpose and go for it regardless of culture.  Be your own animal.  Venture out of your den.

Be yourself

If I am not I, who will be?  -Henry David Thoreau

I probably already wrote one of these be yourself-ers.  But I was driving back from dropping off my daughter at school and it was raining.  I was listening to the music of the drops on my truck and I guess I just felt it again.  I guess I don’t say it enough.  Maybe because some people need to hear it more.  Some people have it all together.  But most of us don’t.  Most of us have to hear stuff over and over before it finally sinks in.  I wish it wasn’t that way.  I wish we could just learn it, and bam, it was injected into our being.  But that’s not the way it happens.  It happens bit by bit by bit.  Just like the rain.  It drizzles.  I mean sometimes it pours.  But the ground gets wet and stays wet by a somewhat constant drizzle.

Be yourself.  Start today that way.  Wear your new hat.  Dye your hair.  Wear long boots.  They are in you know.  I read that on this artist’s blog that I follow.  Start a trend.  Love yourself.  After all you don’t get to be another.  It’s just you….and you.

It’s great being you.  No one else gets to do it.  No one else knows how.  I mean sometimes people think they know better than you.  But they don’t.  You know yourself  best.  Be proud of that today.

Discipline Week

“If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.”  -Napoleon Hill

Discipline.  Not a fun word to hear.  But a word that we need to hear more.  If we want to accomplish our goals, we cannot do it without discipline.  How come we get out of school and into mid-life and it gets harder?  I’m not really sure it does.  I used to think of myself as a very disciplined person.  I mean I run. That’s discipline, right?

No.  That is not discipline.  It’s not discipline because I like running.  It’s not hard for me.  Discipline comes when we have to do something that we don’t like.  It comes from making ourselves do things that we hate, but doing them because we know that we have to.  We know that they are good for us and get us to where we want to be.  

I hate figuring out numbers.  I hate cleaning, I hate sitting down and figuring out something on the computer that’s halfway hard.  Discipline is making myself do it anyways. 

This week is the first week of Discipline Week.  Fun.  What happens in Discipline week.  Every day write out your goals and plan for the day.  You should write out your weekly goals too.  Then break down your weekly goals into day by day goals.  Do the rotten things first. Write down at least one area of your life that you want to get a grip on.  Decide to tackle that area this week at Discipline Week.

Persistence

“Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your promotion”. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why is it so hard?  To keep on.  To make yourself doing something?  I mean it’s easy to start, and start again and again, but in order to be successful you have to not give up.  When it gets hard and boring and you’ve been sitting in the coffee shop working on the same piddley upload for 8 hours without a break, when it takes you 8 months to fix a table leg on a buffet piece that you created a year ago, when you get sidetracked and downtrodden and overloaded.  

There is only one way.  Just do it. Just figure it out. Don’t give up.  Remember the tortoise and the hare.  The tortoise wins because he never stops.  He might be super slow, but he keeps on, trudging along in life.  

Some of us have hare tendencies.  The fairy tale hits home a bit.  Remind yourself to be more like the tortoise.  Take it slow and simple but don’t give up.  Persistence.  That is what causes you to succeed.   Keep on keeping on.

This is your Life

“Dreaming ties all mankind together.”  -Jack Kerouac

It’s a great day.  Monday.  Start again day.  You’re still here day.  Begin day.  If you didn’t get a chance yet to write down your goals for the week, do it now. It’s not too late.  If you missed taking your trash out to the curb, it’s not too late.  Your week can still be fantastic.  Get going on your life.  It won’t wait for you.  But it is there, ready for you to come find it, ready for you to take it by the horns and run run run with it! There is no dress rehearsal.  This is your life.

It is all in your head

“The brain is wider than the sky.”  -Emily Dickinson

We really are given the greatest gift of all….our minds.  We take it for granted and yet without our mind we could do nothing.  We would be unable to conduct life.  We don’t understand how brilliant our mind is.  We don’t use it to it’s greatest potential.  We don’t trust it.  

That might be an unfair thing to say, because some of us are great at it.  But I’m talking to us that don’t understand the power of the mind.  It believes what you tell it.  It believes whatever you say.  You can do anything if you teach your mind to believe it.  

Think of an area of your life that you want to improve.  Tell yourself that you are good at it.  Tell yourself it everyday for a month.  Maybe it’s running.    I mean wake up everyday and tell yourself, “I am a good runner.”  Then go running.  Just go one mile.  Do it the next day and the next.  (Take Sundays off).  But go for a run everyday for a month and tell yourself that you love to run and that you are good at it.   See how you feel after a month.  I guarantee that you will be a better runner.  Your mind make you believe that you are.  And you will be.

Do this with learning to lead people. Or getting organized.  Or leaving the house on time to get the kids to school.  Tell yourself first, and your body will follow.  .

The sky goes on and on and on.  It is never-ending.  And yet our mind is wider than that.

Keep on your Path

“Just when you least expect it, the magical happens.”  -Shelley Steinley

Be alive today.  Be awake.  Love life.  Try again. Remember that every day is another gift.  Another breath of freshness for you.  You might meet a new friend. You might see an old acquaintance.  You might stumble upon a new endeavor.  You might see the most beautiful sunset.  Maybe you’ll see a falling star.   Keep on on your path even if it’s hard.

Today.

“Apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen today”  -Mark Twain

Each day holds within it the possibility to be great.  It has all the power, all the potential, all the elements of anything and everything we need.  It’s a new beginning.  A fresh start.  And yet we don’t realize this.  We wake up and just go through the motions of another day.  Whatever our routine is, we do that.  Maybe it’s wake up, coffee sits on the bathroom counter while we shower, drink coffee while we towel off, dry hair, put make-up on, get kids to school, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch t.v., go to bed. Every day.  Day in and day out.  We didn’t try to do anything different.  We didn’t break up the routine.  We just followed the pattern of our normalness.

If you want something else, if you want to have more excitement in your life,  if you want something different, then you have to be the one to change. We cannot just sit around and wait for change.  We have to be the ones to make it happen in our own lives.  Figure out what part of your life needs it.  Don’t just go through the motions. Don’t settle.  Your life is not handed to you.  You have to create it.  The materials of life are all there for you to use every single day.   

 Sit down with yourself and think about what you want.  Think about how you would want your day to go.  Where do you want to be spending it?  What do you want to be doing?  Anything is possible if you remember that you are the one that can make your extraordinary life to begin.

What matters

“Live with reverence for yourself and others.”  

  Today is a fragment of your life.   Sometimes life gets overwhelming.  I was driving my daughter to school this morning, and I reminded her that when she gets stressed out to ask herself, “Will this thing that is bothering me matter 5 years from now?”  Ask yourself that question.  Will whatever is bothering you matter in 5 years?  Will you remember it?  Most likely not.  Most stuff won’t matter.  I mean the daily.  I mean the little piddly stuff that we worry about.  Remember that your life is so much more important then the stuff you stress about.  Today is just a fragment of your life.  All will be okay.  Just take one day at a time and focus on that.  Be happy.  Be alive in your body.  Smile and all is well.