It’s YOUR Inner Voice

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I believe that our destiny is to be our best selves. To realize our innate strengths, gifts, passions and values and then use them to make a difference in the world, to help out or contribute in some way, big or small.  I believe that our destiny is in us when we are born and that free will helps determine how the journey will go.  One mistake so many of us make is to turn that free will over to others, often those with the best of intentions, but they can only make the best decisions for their selves, not yours. Many times, when we dutifully follow the “shoulds” of others, despite the feelings in our gut, or voice in our head, telling us otherwise, we live with the loss later, often in the form of regret and resentment.

For some reason we repeatedly listen to other people’s inner voices yet we tend to silence or discredit our own. Why would someone else’s inner voice know more about what’s right for you than your own?  Who else has lived your entire life, experienced everything you have experienced and perceived it the very same way?  Who else has heard all of your thoughts? Who else do you know that has always, and will always, be with you every night when you go to sleep and every morning when you wake up, for your entire life?  And yet, that is who’s voice we tend to ignore or discredit.  Why? There is no good reason, I think it’s just habit. Habits are comfortable, after all, we are neurologically wired for survival and our brains know “doing ‘this” has kept me alive this long so….continuing to do it is safe”, and safe is comfortable (but there is no growth in the comfort zone…)

When we were younger we needed to rely on the voices of others for survival.  Somewhere along the way this was no longer necessary yet it’s what we’ve been conditioned to do. I’m not suggesting that seeking and/or receiving guidance is in any way shape or form bad, I’m a huge fan of learning from others experiences. I just believe that, once you’ve gathered whatever information you think you need, your own inner voice should be the ultimate decision maker for what’s right for you. Use the voices of others as guidance, not orders.

We spend years learning, or being conditioned in some way, to listen to others; our parents, teachers, mentors, authority figures, bosses etc… When are we taught how to be in touch with, listen to, or even hear, our own “voice”? Why does that concept even sound strange? Is it the idea that we need to be told or taught to hear our own inner voice? But we are told/taught to listen to others….

It seems logical to treat a 2 year old differently from a 12 or 42 year old. They are in different stages of life and, therefore, should live by different standards. So why, when it’s us, do we allow ourselves to be ruled by our same old standards? Why do we continue to listen to the “rules” that were put into our heads when we were children? We aren’t 12 anymore yet so many of us still do things because “that’s the way I was taught”, or brought up.  Did you ever stop to think about how old you were when you learned a particular rule or standard that you have continued to live by? Is it possible it was applicable to your life then but really isn’t any more? Do you continue because you believe it’s right for you, or is it just a habit?

If it’s habit, is it a good one? Is it still beneficial or even applicable to the new realities of your life? If not, than how do you break it? For me, the first step was stopping long enough to question my thoughts and my actions; to just become aware of the fact that they really don’t make sense for me any more. Once I started doing that, the rest just sort of happened, and continues to happen… What about you? What “shoulds” do you still follow for no other reason than because you always have? Do they still work for you? Did they ever? Why do you continue? If you could do something different, what would you do? What’s stopping you? Who’s “job” is it to make up the rules for you these days? Who lives with the consequences? If you could rewrite the rules for your life today, knowing all that you know about your current self, what would they be? Think about that, that’s your first step…enjoy the journey, after all…it’s YOUR LIFE, what is YOUR inner voice telling you? 

p.s. If you’ve decided to stick with the “status quo” for whatever reason(s), before throwing in the towel completely, ask yourself: “How will I feel 5 years from now if I don’t make any changes today?” What are you putting off or not doing? Imagine your dream life two years from now? Are you on your way there? If not, what’s one thing you can do to get closer? Maybe it’s just making a plan? Remember…small steps forward vs. big steps nowhere wins every time.

 

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Every Season has its Reason: Live for the Moment

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Why do we waste any one stage of our life wishing, hoping, or trying, to make it like another; each stage has its time and its purpose, but we only get one shot. Live for the moment, enjoy the things that are only available, possible or even acceptable, in that moment…and then move on. Get everything you can out of the stage that you are in, it will only help you in the next, but you have to be in the moment you are in if you don’t want to miss it. Before you know it, those moments were your life. Remember, it’s not about how much time you lived; it’s about how much you lived during your time.

Recently I sat through an assembly in my son’s middle school where we were given a folder full of papers with names and descriptions of, not only classes students could take in High School, but suggested clusters of classes for various career paths. The catch was…you pretty much needed to have it all figured out by Tuesday.  Suddenly I felt a wave of anxiety wash over me. I automatically started looking through the papers and wondering; what should he take? What if he takes this and then decides he should have taken that? Can he take them all just in case? Etc… Just then I turned around to look at my son, sitting several rows behind me with his buddies, and I noticed that they weren’t even listening. My first reaction was to be annoyed, but almost simultaneously, I had to laugh. He was just acting his age, living in the moment with his friends, not stressed out about what he was going to be when he grew up, but simply trying to get a little balled up piece of paper into another boys sweatshirt hood a few rows ahead.

Instantaneously I felt concerned by the assembly. How is this helping our society? Why are we encouraging children to focus so narrowly on their future instead of what might benefit them right now? I mean….I get it, it’s the “way things are” and I commend our school for preparing our children for that harsh reality, but could there be another way? Who is benefiting from the current “way things are”? Do kids seem happier? Are addiction rates or drug abuse down? How about school shootings or the suicide rates of college/university students or young adults? Do the “way things are” seem to be working very well to you?

Sitting there, I felt like I was witnessing an example of the out of control social pressures on our kids that have now become “normal”. We are picking a “career path” in 8th grade… If in 11th grade a child realizes he made the wrong choice, or changes his mind about what he wants to be when he grows up, does he risk making his transcripts look bad and take the opportunity to try something new? Does he value the learning he received, even if it was simply discovering what he didn’t want to do, and start in a new direction? Does he push those feelings away and march forward to achieve the goal he set simply because he has already come this far? In 11th grade is anyone encouraging him to think about how much happier he’ll be in 5, 10 or even 15 years by changing course now? To think about what his gut is telling him? Or is he being informed about how much better completing the courses will look on his resume etc.…? What if he has been doing well in these classes? Who will advise him that it’s ok not to continue even though he’s good at it? Will human nature deter him from wanting to “throw away or waste” all the time and energy he has spent getting to this point?

What does it mean to “waste time” anyway? Especially time that has already past. If it’s already past, and you gained something from it, is it possible for it become “wasted” at some point in the future, or is that just a matter of perspective? And if its perspective, can’t we change it? I think so. To me, when we stop listening to our own inner voice and let ourselves be controlled by the voices of “others”, that’s wasting time; that time is your life.

What if life is just a bunch of experiences and all we are supposed to get is what we learn from each one of them? (Versus a big job or paycheck etc.…) What if we looked at each moment as precious in itself and merely tried to get the most out of it rather than just using it as a stepping stone to a “better” future moment (which may never come).

As I sat in the assembly, I couldn’t help but wonder, when did we become more concerned with teaching our kids what to think then how to think? When did it all change? No wonder kids seem so stressed out today; not only do they have to deal with the out of control peer competition on social media, but they also have to compete for their position in life as an adult as well. When are they supposed to just be that awkward, in between, not a child or an adult, hormones taking over my body, teenagers? I can’t imagine feeling all that pressure and not yet having enough life experience to have the tools to deal with it. I have to admit, I suddenly couldn’t even hear the speakers, all I could imagine was a huge factory; with our unique, individual, creative children on a conveyer belt going in one side, full of life and laughter, and coming out the other side as robots. There were are few different makes and models, but basically just little adult robots with all the childhood sucked out of them, never to be seen again. An entire stage of life…gone. It was heart wrenching.

When we got home I asked my son what he thought about the assembly. He told me that he “wanted to take cooking and art”. When I asked him why, he said that he loves to cook and he loves to eat, so it seemed “awesome to be able to do both during the school day”. Regarding art, he said he’s always loved art but has noticed that if he doesn’t take it in school, he just doesn’t do it anymore. He said he really likes learning new drawing techniques and drawing is something he has always loved. WOW, proud mom moment!  My son wants to make sure that he continues to do and enjoy something that has made him happy for as long as he can remember…talk about “out of the mouths of babes”.  Ok, so he definitely didn’t listen to the assembly, and he may not be able to complete the engineering or business track with these electives, but he will be reinforcing a habit of “making the time to do what makes you happy”. I believe a happy, self-confident individual is at least as capable of accomplishing whatever they set their minds to as someone who is just really good at following a curriculum. Besides, isn’t the whole point of “achieving our dreams” to be happy? What good is a great job and a large bank account if you’re miserable? If you don’t learn how to be happy NOW, in THIS moment or stage of your life, how can you expect to be happy later? Will you even remember what it feels like?

I’m not suggesting that I have all (or any) of the answers, but, I do know that my child will only be as young as he is now. There will come a time when he has no choice but to act like an adult, and it will no longer be appropriate for him to act like a teenager, so why not let him be one now? A toddler can poop his pants and its ok, by letting them, eventually they learn not to so that when they are in school they use the bathroom. When we are in elementary school we might throw sand at other kids. This is normal, but we quickly learn that we don’t like it when they throw it back, so we learn not to do it before reaching the upper grades when that behavior is no longer acceptable. As teenagers we may stay up too late and not be able to fully function in school the next day. This is typical and usually we just get a few extra hours sleep when we get home, but we have learned the consequences of our actions first hand so that, a few years later, we are less likely to repeat our mistakes when our jobs are on the line, and so on…

When did we stop appreciating the stage we are in and become “OK” with letting it pass us by while we work towards a “better” one? Why do some of us wait until we’re old to want to be young and others spend so much of our youth trying to be grown up? I’m sure it varies but, I feel as though we first step onto that treadmill somewhere in the mid to later years of elementary school; wishing to be just a little “older”, more “grown up” and given more independence. I’ve noticed that somewhere around 50 many people start to step off that treadmill and realize where they are, wonder how they got there (and sometimes why). The more I spend time with older people, 75 plus, I hear mixed reviews: some wish to be young again, to be physically able to enjoy the simple things in life like running, playing and rolling down a grassy hill. Others, unfortunately, have told me how grateful they are to have been young when they were because they couldn’t imagine living with the pressures of being young today. That always saddens me, probably because I have young children. But then I think, maybe, just maybe, the pendulum has swung so far in this direction of fast times, that it will soon start to head back the other way.

Maybe there is a whole generation of us that have spent some of the last 30 or so years with blinders on; striving for certain goals, filled with determination and absolute disregard for alternate possibilities. Now, having achieved our goals, we realize they don’t make us happy. Some of us may have recognized that we were heading down the wrong path along the way, but we kept going because other people told us we should, it was relatively easy, or maybe because we’d already invested so much time/money that we couldn’t imagine “throwing it all away”. Somehow we convinced ourselves that it’s better to waste our future time than to waste the time already spent, but does that make any sense? That time is gone…, the only time we have is now and our future. Do we have to be anything “less than happy” in our future because of our past? Maybe we can use that past, not for what we “accomplished”, but for what we learned from the experiences (thereby making all that time invaluable). Perhaps we can help teach the next generation the importance of living in the moment you are in, listening to and trusting your heart, and living your life. Can we lead by example?

“Society” is just a bunch of people; WE are those people. If things in society are not working, it’s up to us to fix them, one person at a time. A lot has changed over the last 30 years with the advancements in technology etc. The speed at which we do everything has increased dramatically; it’s normal to expect some growing pains, but now it’s time to adjust. One thing that has not changed is the amount of time we have at each stage in our life. My mom always told me that every season has a reason, and I believe that’s true for each “season” of our lives. Each has its own unique set of possibilities for a reason and no one is more/less essential than another. What can you do now that you weren’t able to do in a previous “season” of your life? What have the seasons past left you with to help you grow? This is your moment to make the most of NOW, and share what you know with those younger than you. You are “society”, so if you agree that some changes are needed, it’s up to you to start today! “Be the change you want to see“. No pressure 😉

p.s. You’ve probably heard the saying, “If I only knew then what I know now.” How do you respond to that? What would you have done differently? Why? What do you wish you knew? This is your moment to pass that on to the next generation, to make the difference you wish someone had made for you. Perhaps that is the reason you had to learn the “hard way”, to be the one who makes that difference for someone else. Someone has to start the change…why not you?

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“Treat People the Way You Want to be Treated”; and don’t forget you’re a person too…

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As I was washing up the breakfast dishes I overheard my two younger sons (my twins) talking about a classmate.  I noticed that what they were saying about him wasn’t very nice so I interrupted them and asked why they were being so mean and what this boy had ever done to them to make them not like him.  Simultaneously they both looked at me, almost laughing, and explained to me that this boy was a friend of theirs, they did like him, and that it was OK to talk about him that way because he talks about himself that way all the time.  Needless to say, my boys and I had a long conversation about insecurities, desires to make friends and/or fit in, the difference between being laughed with and laughed at, etc… and then it was time to start our day.

Later that morning as I was driving, it dawned on me, we really do teach other how to treat us.  Even as a young child, this 5th grade boy was teaching his classmates that making fun of his weight, clumsiness, etc.. was acceptable.  So then what?  If this boys “claim to fame” was these jokes, what incentive was there for him to improve in these areas? But that’s a whole separate post, for purposes of today, think about how you treat yourself. Be aware of how you are telling your friends, family, co-workers, etc that it is OK to treat you, how you expect to be treated.  Don’t be surprised if, for example, your child doesn’t always show you the most respect or appreciation if s/he doesn’t see you showing it to yourself.  Be kind to yourself, treat yourself the way you want others to treat you, because, chances are, they will. The best time to start a change is now 🙂

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What is your Why?

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What’s your WHY?  Your burning desire? Your MISSION?  What is your underlying motivation for getting out of bed each day?  Is it to go through the motions one more time?

Purpose:  I believe we all have the same purpose, to live up to our highest/best self and carry out our personal mission, which is to share our unique gifts with others, and I don’t think it matters if you share them with one or many.

My mission: Help people reignite/turn up their pilot light without fear of explosion or extinguishing it. To help you understand your WHY and not be afraid to turn it on so that how you spend your time and who you spend it with is in alignment with that Why, regardless of if others “get it” or not.  To understand it so well that it infuses everything you do.

This is your life, it’s not a dress rehearsal, HAVE FUN!

  1. Stop hiding who you really are; Get focused, get clear on your dreams – no more imposture syndrome, i.e. faking it
  2. Start being selfish – it’s your life
  3. Be creative – stop following others rules/shoulds
  4. Start scaring yourself, leave the comfort zone and explore the edges
  5. Use your wisdom – stop taking life so seriously – it’s not always life or death
  6. Start getting rid of stuff that’s weighing you down, holding you back… ie. Memories…
  7. Take action- stop being “so busy” and DO Something you love
  8. START NOW! – Don’t wait for permission – your life matters too much!!
  9. Instead of asking “Why?” ask yourself, “Why Not?”

Some may feel it’s selfish to take the time to discover your “why” and strive to achieve it, however, what I know is that; it makes you a happier person, you are more fun and pleasant to be around, you’re not filled with resentments or regret, you have more energy, you become more capable and productive and it comes more easily to you.

Take control of your life, your priorities, what is meaningful and important to you.  Give yourself permission to choose YOU, you deserve it. Stop living on auto pilot and start living, bumps, wrong turns and all.

Sometimes, when I think about life, I envision flowing water…If you always take the path of least resistance, the auto-pilot route, that looks like water coming out of a factory built faucet. But…if you leave your comfort zone and overcome obstacles, take paths less traveled or carve new ones, make wrong turns and figure out how to get back on track, even take a leap of faith… now that looks like an incredibly beautiful, flowing stream, winding through the woods, filled with water falls, calm deep pools, bends and turns, shallow pockets, rushing currents and so much more… How do you want to see your life flowing? What is Your Why?