Guided By Your Own Light

I’m sure I knew not to shine the flashlight into my eyes. But somehow I ended up doing it anyways.

Black Friday Weekend and I find myself meandering through the aisle of Lowe’s. I wasn’t actually looking for a new flashlight, but a deal is a deal so I stopped to check them out. Apparently the brightness of light is measured in something called lumens, and having no concept of what a lumen looked like I turned the flashlight a bit too high and ended up temporarily blinding myself in the process.

Now I know what a lumen is.

The lumens grew even brighter as I adjusted the flashlight’s beam width from wide to narrow, decreasing the size of the illuminated circle while intensifying its glow.

I’ve found myself doing the same thing in my life, adjusting the width of my focus from wide to narrow, decreasing the size of my own circle while intensifying the glow on what really matters.

I guess at some point if you keep working at it, life finally gets clearer. Purpose meets intention Continue reading “Guided By Your Own Light” →

A Birthday Gift Of Defiance

On the eve of my next birthday I sit recovering from this morning’s 5k benefit run. Age has a way of reminding you how old you are, especially when you take the steps to hopefully slow it down.

Age will ultimately win. Inevitably it always does. We can let that be a reason to simply let nature take its course and passively succumb to the process.

Or, we can defiantly choose to keep showing up, keep moving forward, respecting our age while Continue reading “A Birthday Gift Of Defiance” →

Gratitude Is The New Caffeine

I do admit I miss the jolt.

It was like zero to sixty in just a few sips.

I could always count on my morning indulgence of caffeine to quickly get me into an elevated state. Something would shift in me, turning me from sedan to sports car with the greatest of ease.

My relationship with moderation can be, at times, challenging, with indulgences quite capable of morphing into over indulgences. Caffeine was no exception, which is the main reason why I go to great lengths to now avoid it.

I give caffeine a great deal of credit in its ability to awaken a daily dormant version of me, changing my subdued inner perspective to one of enthusiasm and possibility. But I would now need to find a different source of fuel to ignite me in the morning.

My new beverage of choice is gratitude.

Sometimes I forget about gratitude. In my ever busy world surrounded by an abundance of blessings I Continue reading “Gratitude Is The New Caffeine” →

Mindfulness And Those Annoying Little Gelato Spoons

Thursday night. Old Town, Alexandria, VA. Our whirlwind trip to Washington, DC took us across the Potomac in search of a quick bite to eat as we prepared to head back north to our next destination.

We had packed quite a bit into a few days, and a relaxing dinner took us out of tourist mode for a little while. Sometimes vacations take on the same intensity vacations are supposed to take you away from. We managed to hit everything on the wish list, but we were always aware of where we were on our schedule.

After dinner we stumbled upon a small gelato shop. As an avid frozen treat consumer, stopping in was the easiest decision of the trip. After trying a few flavor samples, I settled upon the pistachio.

I’ve shed a great many less-than-healthy food vices in my lifetime. I’ve come to realize over the years the real issue for me, though, has less to do with the actual vice and more to do with my relationship with moderation. Cookies, donuts, alcohol, and caffeine were never ingested with moderation. If it was worth doing, it was worth over doing.

Especially when it came to frozen treats.

In my hand was a small cup of pistachio gelato. In my other hand was one of those annoyingly small plastic gelato spoons. As someone with a proven track record of over indulgence, the annoyingly small size of this spoon made over indulgence a substantial challenge for me.

Maybe that was the whole point?

As an over indulger, it’s always about the next bite. I’m sure the current bite is quite good, but honestly I usually never take the time to notice. The focus is on what’s next instead of what’s now. Continue reading “Mindfulness And Those Annoying Little Gelato Spoons” →

The Greater Risk Is Not Being Authentically You

Authenticity sounds simple, right? To be yourself, fearlessly. Yet at some point for most of us we learned our authentic self expression was actually something to be feared.

Authenticity comes with great risk, a risk that who we really are won’t be understood or accepted in our most-important relationships. The fear of such isolation often leads us to suppress many of the parts of us which make us so beautifully and authentically unique.

So, to provide a perceived sense of safety, we dim our light for those who can’t handle our brightness, for we fear being left alone in the darkness. Our fear of abandonment leads us to abandon our truest self, an increasingly high price to pay the longer we choose to do so.

Conformity makes everyone comfortable. Except us.

In time we will be pained realizing the greater risk is in not authentically expressing who we are. And Continue reading “The Greater Risk Is Not Being Authentically You” →

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” →

Resurrect Yourself

As I kid I never really grasped the significance of The Resurrection. Easter was always more about a celebration of food than a celebration of the Truth.

With each Easter sunrise, though, I am now reminded of the power and resiliency of the Truth. The truth of a Light, an inextinguishable Light, created to cast out the darkest of all darkness and to illuminate our collective path forward.

Within each of us is also a light. The light of who we are and who we have been created to become. Life has a way at times of dimming that light, and in that darkness we can often lose our way on our path to fulfilling the promise of our own creation.

In our inevitable moments of individual darkness, let us all be reminded that the Light is always accessible if we choose to resurrect our connection to the Source of all Light.

We need never walk in alone in the darkness.

Photo by Claudio Guglieri on Unsplash

The Unexpected Wisdom Of Blueberry Pop-Tarts

My perfectly scheduled afternoon wasn’t running so perfectly.

An upcoming minor surgical procedure required me get a couple of vials of blood drawn ahead of the surgery. The plan allowed me time to get a quick bite to eat after my blood work which would still give me enough time to get back to my desk for a rather important conference call. When the blood work ran much longer than anticipated, eating lunch morphed into grabbing whatever I happened to have in my glove box in the car as I raced back to the office to make my 1:30 call.

In this instance, the only thing to eat in the glove box were Blueberry Pop-Tarts.

I can’t remember the last time I had eaten a Pop-Tart. I’d enjoyed my share of them over my younger years but they just don’t have a place in a more health-conscious food plan I have for myself. As a dad who often transports over-scheduled kids between their over-scheduled appointments, snacks can usually be found in the car to make sure the kids have something in their stomachs before jumping into their next activity.

Not having had Pop-Tarts in quite some time, it was like I was eating them for the first time. I re-discovered the crumbling texture of the crust, the sweetness of the artificial blueberries, the smoothness of the chemically-enhanced frosting on top.

I liked them a lot more before I grew up and knew exactly what I was eating.

When we try things for the first time we do so with a heightened sense of awareness. We notice all the Continue reading “The Unexpected Wisdom Of Blueberry Pop-Tarts” →

The Epic Struggle Between Two Conflicting Versions Of Me

It was one of those tough conversations you knew you had to have.

They’re always tougher when you have to have them with yourself.

December is an important month for me. It’s a time of reflection and introspection. Of looking forward and backward at the same time. My best years are the intentional ones and to prepare myself to make the most of the next 12 months I commit a significant amount of time during the last month of the year setting my course forward.

Going through some notes from a year ago, I found a list of well-intended intentions set for this year which I never actually followed through on. Intentions are promises I make to myself, and this list represented a list of promises I failed to keep. Me letting me down.

My intention setting process involves a vetting sequence. Intentions start as wishes and grand ideas, and while they feel exciting in the moment, I’ve got quite good at challenging myself as to whether I would be willing to actually commit myself to them. Are these wishes and grand ideas something I can honestly see myself getting behind 100%? Or are they simply wishes and grand ideas which would be nice to have but I know I’d never do what it takes to make them happen?

After discovering my list, it looks like I need to refine my vetting process a bit more.

As I looked at my list of unrealized intentions I initially felt a habitual degree of anger towards myself. “I let myself down yet again, didn’t I?” “I thought I had grown past doing this to myself.” I quickly pivoted to Continue reading “The Epic Struggle Between Two Conflicting Versions Of Me” →

You Owe Yourself A Sunrise

Sometimes we’re so busy looking we simply don’t take time to see.

It’s Saturday morning and I find myself just before dawn standing alone at the edge of the reservoir. It’s extremely peaceful, the only break in the silence comes from the sound of water fowl off in the distance. The eastern sky is transitioning in color as the sun begins to slowly rise, and a spectacular show it was, the colors changing by the moment as the sun lifted higher in the sky.

I can’t remember the last time I treated myself to a sunrise, to intentionally set off in the darkness and position myself to witness such a spectacular gift of Nature. Sunrises had not been the priority that they once were for me. Life gets busy and before you know it many of the self care rituals I had established for myself slowly became less frequent.

The things that reconnect you with you are not trivial. The things that ground you and re-energize you Continue reading “You Owe Yourself A Sunrise” →

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Tag: intention