What If I Wasn’t Anything?

What If I Wasn’t Anything?

What if I am too much, too extreme, too insecure, too emotional? 

What if I am too heavy, too slow, too old, too inconsistent?

Labels. We get them from others, we give them to ourselves. And no matter where we get them, we tend to believe them. We tend to live up to them. We tend to become them.

What if I wasn’t anything?

What if I was just…me?

What if I released the labels and simply gave myself a safe space for me to be me? A space of unconditional self-love and support, the freedom to grow, evolve, and unfold as I do, allowing Continue reading “What If I Wasn’t Anything?”

Creating A Safe Space For The Suck

Creating A Safe Space For The Suck

It’s a game I’ve played with myself. Or maybe it was more of a survival mechanism.

I’d always been a big fan of the present moment. Unless I didn’t like the present moment. Then I’d find another moment somewhere in the future to save me from the discomfort of the present one.

I got quite proficient at using desired future outcomes to try and outrun the emotional challenges I could often find myself dealing with. Someday took the pressure off today. Someday allowed me to defer my responsibility of dealing with what is until some time in the distant future. Reaching those desired outcomes would take care of everything, I repeatedly told myself.

And they never did.

I’ve run away enough to know that running away never gets you anywhere else other than where you already are.

Someday is full of those distant utopian promises which we allow to sustain us at the expense of Continue reading “Creating A Safe Space For The Suck”

When All Of Me Matters

When All Of Me Matters

I’ve never had a spa day, but according to Cleo spa days are a vitally important part of her self care regimen. 

I don’t know who Cleo is. She was one of several people sharing their thoughts on a podcast talking about how they like to show themselves a little love and attention. We all deserve a little pampering now and again, don’t we?

I’ve never been much into pampering. My way of showing myself a little love was showing myself a little tough love, of me reminding me why I didn’t deserve any pampering. It was a narrative I learned in my youth and continued to perpetuate as an adult. 

I got quite good at it as an adult.

It was one particularly brutal tough love “self care” session, though, which profoundly changed how I would care for myself going forward. Surprisingly, I asked myself why I was being so cruel to myself. Why was I so relentless in beating myself down for failing to live up to the unrealistic Continue reading “When All Of Me Matters”

Self Compassion Looks Good On You

Self Compassion Looks Good On You

Mom told us the day was coming, the day we would all stand before our Creator and be held accountable for the way we lived our lives. Awaiting us all will be either a stairway to heaven or a highway to hell.

Judgment Day. The ultimate exit interview. “Heaven or hell? What will it be?”

Many of us need not stand before our Creator at the end of our lives in order to be judged.

We already do this. To ourself. 

And we can make our life a living hell in the process.

In a world which can be quite cruel at times, we, too, can be just as cruel. To ourself. Because we know who we really are, don’t we? We know our flaws and shortcomings better than anyone, and no matter how well we may hide them from the rest of the world, we will never be able to hide them from ourself. 

And there is so much to judge, isn’t there? Our appearance, our weight, what we haven’t accomplished, what we haven’t become, what we drive, where we live, what we earn, the expectations we’ve not lived up to, both our own or the expectations of others. There is always something we’re falling short of if we just look a little deeper.

We can become quite good at paving our own highway to inner hell.

Sometimes we find ourselves embracing habitual patterns of our own emotional self-destruction without ever knowing why we do so. Sometimes we do so because we’ve simply Continue reading “Self Compassion Looks Good On You”

Trauma, Healing, Compassion, & Empathy

Trauma, Healing, Compassion, & Empathy

Perhaps this would have changed everything?

Just a few right words spoken at the right time could have significantly shifted the direction of that life. Or those reassuring conversations which were vulnerably started yet were met with a defiant wall of silence, the desperately extended hand not grasped by one who could have pulled us to a space of emotional safety.

The seeds of our greatest possibility never watered, the weeds of our insecurities and fears never pulled.

As I sit here this early morning, I find I am reflecting upon some of the stories I’ve both witnessed and experienced, some deeply painful life trauma stories others have bravely entrusted me with and the painful ones I’ve lived through on my own. 

Our deepest pains are personal and seldom understood by others. Or even our self. The screams are often silent, and we carry this heaviness alone, simply moving forward the best we can, sometimes in rather unhealthy ways as we try to numb a pain only we can feel. Trauma is alive and invisibly thriving within all of us at one level or another. 

As I’ve worked with my own traumatic experiences I’ve come to respect their presence in my life. No longer do I attempt to minimize their impact upon me. No longer do I chastise myself for letting events and outcomes I did not control actually control me. The pain and its impact have yet to be fully worked through, and perhaps they may never be fully processed. But there is no longer anyone to blame, neither the ones who unknowingly inflicted a pain that would shape a lifetime, nor the recipient of the pain for letting it do so.

This is where my healing truly begins.

I often wondered what life would have been like had those few right words at the right time been Continue reading “Trauma, Healing, Compassion, & Empathy”

Constructing A Life Of Possibility and Abundance

Constructing A Life Of Possibility and Abundance

What we choose to believe with shape us in any moment.

A major highway reconstruction project was recently shut down not too far from my home. The rumor is the project’s general contractor has filed for bankruptcy and this once thriving work area has become a dust bowl of a ghost town. With six years left on a seven year construction schedule everyone is in the dark as to what will happen next.

The main focal point of the work zone to this point is the half mile long concrete retaining wall being built to support the new expanded road surface. Only half of the wall has been poured. The other half is just exposed reinforcement bars which will remain exposed until the state decides what is next for this project.

Reinforcement bar, know as rebar in the trades, is vitally important in any concrete application. While concrete is solid, it has no tensile strength and lacks structural rigidity. Rebar provides that strength and stability, a skeletal framework of steel bars which are hidden on the inside of any concrete structure.

Seeing all this exposed rebar has gotten me to think about my own emotional strength and structural rigidity, my own internal skeletal framework of habits and beliefs which reinforce me.

My emotional rebar.

Poured reinforced concrete is engineered to withstand the predictable forces which it will be exposed to. It’s strength is calibrated and set. Unlike concrete, I find my strength requires more of an ongoing process of recalibration, of intentional reinforcement to better withstand both the predictable and unpredictable forces I as a human am exposed to.

The greatest source of personal recalibration is mindset. My strength is inevitably determined by how I Continue reading “Constructing A Life Of Possibility and Abundance”

Embracing The Silence Of An Emotional Winter

Embracing The Silence Of An Emotional Winter

So quiet you can hear it.

Silence.

It’s the start of November which means here in New England winter and it’s own version of silence is but a few weeks away. I don’t have a favorite season, but I’ve come to appreciate the lessons each season has to teach us.

The seasons of life each come with their own lessons as well.

Especially winter.

More specifically, emotional winters. When your own world grows coldly silent, even isolated…when familiar voices and noises go somewhat dormant. Life wants your full attention and temporarily removes the comfortable distractions in order to do so.

I would often resist these emotional winters. I didn’t ask for them, I certainly didn’t like them, and I had no idea why they were happening. Loneliness wasn’t something I was looking for. When I’ve been receptive during these barren times of my life, though, Continue reading “Embracing The Silence Of An Emotional Winter”

Embracing The Power Of Clarity

Embracing The Power Of Clarity

With a blizzard on the way, I was able to get my electrician neighbor to finally hook up my generator. Finally, because I was the one who had been putting it off, often forgetting I even had a generator which needed to be hooked up.

In the community where we live, good size storms have usually meant a loss of power. Trees vs. overhead power lines, and the trees usually win. No power means no heat, no water, and no light. Of all the things I take for granted in my life, electricity has to be in the Top 3. Does anyone ever marvel at flicking a switch on the wall and the lights magically turning on?

Now, should we lose power, with a few flicks of a few switches, heat, water, and light will be restored. The generator serving as a back up reserve fuel source to get me through the storms which arrive outside of my control.

Sometimes life gives us different types of storms to endure, where there aren’t a few simple switches to flick on and get our lives back to where we want them to be. These are the emotional storms, equally as unwanted as the ones nature brings upon us, but often far more damaging and painful.

It would be really cool if you could buy some sort of emergency emotional generator to get you through such storms.

I guess the only option is to create one.

When life knocks your power out, what reserves do you have available to keep you moving forward? Faith? Hope? Trust? For me, having the clarity of a vision as to what I want to create in my life has proven to be quite a powerful emotional resource, and understanding “why” that vision matters.

That hasn’t always been the case.

For much of my life I meandered about without a particularly clear and defined destination. Ever searching and seeking, I was no match for the storms of life which would show up, much like overhead power lines are no match for the weight of the snow and ice covered branches of the trees above them. My searching and seeking did eventually get me to a place where what I want and why I want it have become quite clear. That destination shapes every step of my journey. In that clarity is a strength, a resolve, and when the unexpected storms arise and knock me over, and they still do, it’s the conviction of clarity which serves as the fuel source to help me rise yet again and to keep myself moving forward.

“Pain pushes until vision pulls” as Michael Bernard Beckwith has often said. Four words which perfectly define the process of my own evolution.

Perhaps of yours as well?

Where is your vision taking you?

Please Don’t Wait Until I’m Broken To Fix Me

Please Don’t Wait Until I’m Broken To Fix Me

The real question is why didn’t anyone bother to ask why he was sitting on a wall in the first place…

When you think about the elliptical shape of an egg it’s not really surprising Humpty Dumpty had his great fall, is it? When you factor in gravity, an egg on top of a wall is an accident waiting to happen. And in Humpty’s case that’s exactly what happened.

Sure, all the king’s horses and men tried their best, but, as the story goes, they couldn’t put Humpty back together again.

Too little too late.

Sometimes we find our own emotionally elliptical-shaped self teetering atop of our own walls, and with one small change in circumstance we, too, can find ourselves in pieces on the floor, hoping the horses and men (and women) in our own life will be there trying to help us piece our emotional self back together again. And while it’s good to have friends to help you pick up your pieces, wouldn’t it be better if they never let you fall in the first place? Continue reading “Please Don’t Wait Until I’m Broken To Fix Me”