When Butterflies Are Afraid To Fly

Caterpillars don’t really have much of a choice, do they?

Whether they like it or not, becoming the butterfly they were created to become is inevitable. A chrysalis is in their future, and on the other side they will be reborn and begin their life anew.

Butterflies have long been used as a metaphor for transformation. Their metamorphosis is spectacular yet relatable. And for those on their own journey of growth and evolution, the presence of a fluttering butterfly can be seen as a spiritual symbol of divine guidance and encouragement.

Unlike caterpillars, we humans do have a choice as to what we will grow into. Or not. We get to decide if we will continue to crawl or learn to fly.

Learning to fly is a messy process. Most human metamorphosis is. Becoming something other than what you’ve always been is a daunting process of unaccepting what you’ve always accepted about yourself as being true, making room for a new empowering story to take its place.

One of the greatest inhibitors to our willingness to fly is who we choose to surround ourselves with. As human caterpillars we are often surrounded by other human caterpillars, those who’ve never grown wings of their own, those who tend to want to keep others wingless as well. Those who’ve never flown can feel threatened by those who decide to do so.

We can easily let the familiarity of what’s always been derail what could be for us, keep us crawling and flightless. After all, if crawling is all we’ve known we can chose to accept that’s all Continue reading “When Butterflies Are Afraid To Fly” →

8,600 Days Of Sobriety

It was like losing an old friend. Consistent. Reliable. Predictable. I recognized the arrangement had grown quite toxic, a toxicity I simply accepted as a fundamental cornerstone of the relationship for far longer than I should have.

Alcohol. A trusted companion which always took me exactly where I thought I wanted to go.

Until I no longer wanted to go there.

This week an important milestone snuck up on me. I had gone 8,600 days without alcohol. A month-long beer binge in December 2000 had pushed me to the point where I knew I needed to stop, at least temporarily. Honestly, the real challenge was seeing if I actually could. Now, over 23 years later, I guess I was able to definitively answer that question.

I never intended to quit drinking. I was simply taking a break, a longer break than usual. For several years prior I had given up beer for Lent, not for any religious purposes, but as a test to see if I could go 40 days without it. My abstinence would start earlier in 2001, six weeks ahead of Lent.

It wasn’t easy. Once my body recovered from what I had done to it in December, it was ready for more. And it wasn’t happy when I told it no. This temporary abstinence was a personal challenge and honestly I was deeply afraid I would fail. Established habits are powerful forces in life, even if those habits don’t serve you.

As I gained some traction with sobriety, I started to wonder how long I could actually keep it up. I’d always taken comfort in knowing Lent would end after 40 days and I’d then be free to go back to my usual intoxicated ways. After all, I never said I was quitting, right?

But this extended Lenten season would be different. The clarity of sobriety created a space of Continue reading “8,600 Days Of Sobriety” →

Square One Is Much Different The Second Time You Start There

I’m sure the heat didn’t help, but the results reminded me of how far I’ve fallen.

Saturday was the day. With my body all stretched out and my running shoes firmly attached to my feet, it was finally time to get back to running. After several sedentary months of working through various ailments I was ready to move again.

I didn’t move very far.

The course was a familiar one, a three mile loop around the neighborhood I’d been running for years. And while I knew running this loop in its entirety for the first time in months would be quite challenging, my months of inactivity were simply no match for my lofty expectations.

Sometimes the body reminds the mind who the boss is.

The run became more of short periods of running between long periods of walking. And I wasn’t happy about it. I’d not run in months, but I am a runner, and I should simply be able to run because that’s what runners do, right? I flashed back to when I first started running eight years ago. I remembered the struggle of simply running the distance between two telephone poles, and now here I am with years of road miles behind me and I’m back to Square One.

When I started running a few years back, I did so embracing a degree of patience. I knew starting Continue reading “Square One Is Much Different The Second Time You Start There” →

Embracing The Discomfort Of Commitment

“It’s like running from Boston to Dallas.”

Julie is a dedicated fitness and wellness professional, and as a personal trainer running has become important to her. She shared that this past week she set a personal record for miles run in a week. Annualized, that total would cover 1,768 miles, the distance from Boston to Dallas.

“That is crazy!”

I sense that people fully committed to meeting their goals encounter that word often. Crazy. Those who show up daily, driven, fueled by a vision others can’t see nor even understand, those with zero tolerance for excuses, those willing to hold themselves accountable for the commitments they have made, especially the ones they’ve made to themselves. Behavior like this is for the most part unordinary, dwelling outside the realm of what is considered “normal” which can then easily be categorized as crazy.

But it’s never labeled as such by others also honoring their own commitments. Because they know what personal commitment demands and they forge ahead anyway.

It’s never the easiest path.

Life give us a choice as to how we decide to live it. We can take what comes our way, or we can Continue reading “Embracing The Discomfort Of Commitment” →

The Rest Of Your Life Is Going To Happen With You Or Without You

What am I going to do with all those wasted days of my life?

In my hands I hold the next 90 days of my life.

I wonder how many of them I’m going to waste?

For a few years now I’ve been using a Best Self three month planner. It’s been a great tool for me, an even greater tool for me when I remember to consistently use it. Setting up this planner requires some initial work as it is undated meaning I need to manually write in dates on each of the 90 pages. This process begins my relationship with each one of those dates I write on each pristine page. How I choose to show up for that relationship will impact the quality of my life.

In setting up the new planner I will also go back through the just-completed planner to transfer over any important information I may need going forward. My process also included revisiting each of the previous 90 days, reviewing day by day how I actually spent my time during the last three months.

I hate the blank pages.

Blank pages. Days of my life where intentions were replaced with whatever was going to happen that day. Days full of possibilities and opportunities I never bothered to fully show up for. It’s not as if the planner is very complicated to use. All it asks of me is to set three intentions for the day, three tasks I get to commit to and complete. Yet some blank pages remain at the end of those 90 days. Some days I didn’t show up. Continue reading “The Rest Of Your Life Is Going To Happen With You Or Without You” →

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” →

Creating A Safe Space To Not Like Yourself

Relationships are inherently full of challenges, aren’t they?

Including the one you have with yourself.

For much of my life my relationship with me wasn’t particularly healthy. Especially when I would set for myself some often unrealistic expectations and how falling short of them would trigger a disproportionately harsh response within, often bordering on abusive. If I could have filed emotional restraining orders against myself I would have.

My version of self love wasn’t very loving.

It wasn’t that long ago when I surprisingly called myself out for the way I was treating me. After a particularly intense episode of self rage, with a compassionate curiosity I asked myself why I was being so brutally hard on me. To that question I couldn’t find a valid reason. It was just something I habitually did, something I had experienced as a child and perpetuated as an adult. But asking myself “why” was the start of me changing my relationship with me for the better. Because there was no good reason for me to treat me the way I was.

In that moment, a process began.

Gone now is the harshness and the abuse, in time replaced with acceptance, compassion, patience, and encouragement.

A far more loving version of self love.

One paradox I discovered on the road to loving myself more was the need to create a safe space to not like myself. It’s an important space where I allow myself the room to be human. To be disappointed in Continue reading “Creating A Safe Space To Not Like Yourself” →

Smashing Through Your Own Glass Ceiling

Instagram reminded me of an experiment I first saw years ago. Researchers had placed fleas into a glass jar and sealed it shut with the glass lid. Instinctively, the fleas attempted to jump out of the jar to their freedom but with each jump were stymied as they hit the glass lid above them. Frustrated, at some point the fleas simply stopped jumping. And when the researchers removed the glass lid, the fleas remained in the jar, now conditioned to accept their captivity even with the barrier to their freedom removed.

I kind of understand the fleas’ take on this. They tried repeatedly to make it out of the jar without success. At some point, when do you simply stop looking for a way out and accept your limitations and learn to live with them?

As part of my journey, I’ve thought a great deal about my own limitations. Specifically, where did they come from and who put them there? Limitations are an extension of a belief system, and my belief system for a good portion of my life was a belief system I inherited. No one ever sat me down and clearly defined the limitations I would eventually accept as my own. Rather, I witnessed them slowly unfold around me in real time, destined to perpetuate a belief system which I knew wouldn’t serve me but accepted none the less.

The glass ceiling on the jar of my life was never actually there. It didn’t matter, though. I never knew I could actually jump.

Until I decided to started jumping.

The things we choose to believe about who we are and what’s possible for us will greatly shape our identity, which will always shape our life. We can accept the limited version of where we are as some sort of fate or destiny, pointing to our life experience as evidence of such, further conditioned to accept our own form of captivity. Or, we can decide to think outside of the jar, out-jumping the limitations we’ve accepted, free to more fully express ourselves as we choose to redefine our self identity as one of possibility and expansion.

Limitations are simply opinions we’ve accepted as truths. But we get to decide what is true for us.

It doesn’t matter how those limitations got there.

What matters now is what we decide to do with them.

You’ll be amazed at how high you can jump…

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

Honoring Those Mountains You’ve Climbed

Perhaps you’ve forgotten how resilient you actually are?

There they were, relics from a different time in my life. Two good sized pieces of crystal with my name engraved in both. I forgot I even had them. These were given to me in recognition of exceeding sales performance expectations from earlier in my professional career. Actually, these weren’t given to me.

I earned them.

While results get the recognition, they never really tell the entire story of what it took to get those results, of what was endured in the process, of what you had to grow through and who you needed to grow into to earn a symbolic piece of crystal with your name on it.

As I unpacked these towel-wrapped pieces from the unmarked cardboard box which had been in the attic for more than 25 years, this older version of me was reminded of who this younger version of me was when I was received these trophies. I remember the challenges of this sales position and the difficult task I had willingly agreed to take on. My focus then shifted toward remembering the challenges I was facing simply being me at that time. The doubts, the fears, the anxiety, the pressure. Yet, somehow that version of me was able to stand at the base of this daunting mountain of a challenge and reach a summit which had never once felt remotely possible for me. It was a brutal climb, bruised and bloodied, but I guess I just kept climbing.

This older version of me cracked a little bit of a smile. I was proud of that younger version of me.

I try not to look back in life. There’s a lot in the rear view mirror that I really don’t wish to re-experience. The losses, the pains, the regrets, the mountains I wasn’t able to climb. Sometimes, though, looking Continue reading “Honoring Those Mountains You’ve Climbed” →

Life Lessons From A Brick Oven Pizza

It was the best pizza I’ve ever had.

And I’ve eaten a lot of pizza.

Pizza has somehow become rather important to me. I’ve baked my fair share of pies and I’m always trying to improve my results, often reverse engineering each bite of my favorite pizzas to try and uncover the secrets hidden inside. Having done my best to befriend my server she eventually revealed the four ingredients used to make the dough which I hoped to replicate at home.

“Flour, water, salt, and yeast” is what she told me.

“And…time.”

Time. An often overlooked ingredient. Time is what’s needed for flour, water, salt, and yeast to come together and fully develop their flavor profile. While some may try to manipulate the process, like most things in life the best results usually can’t ever be rushed.

Ours is a world at odds with patience. It’s a world which rewards the immediate, even if the immediate is inferior to what could instead be more fully developed if given the time to do so.

As I’ve worked to more fully evolve in life, I’ve come to understand that my evolution is a process, a process which takes time. At times I, too, am at odds with patience, trying to force a process which Continue reading “Life Lessons From A Brick Oven Pizza” →

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Tag: growth