Further Down The Road Of Self-Forgiveness

It had been about 20 years since my last visit, but I remembered this stretch of road quite well.

Interstate 89 is that long and winding road which would take me from Concord, New Hampshire northwest to the Vermont state line. My recent ride was personal, but for many years early in my professional life the curves and contours of this 60 miles of highway became well known to me.

As I meandered silently on this early Sunday morning drive, I felt as if I was getting reacquainted with an old friend as my mind wandered back to a different time in my life. A time when I was very much a different version of me. A time when I wasn’t really a very good friend to myself.

Despite my professional success, these years were not a happy period for me. Corporate pressures were compounded greatly by the internal pressures I placed upon myself. While my successes seemingly masked my silent fears and insecurities, those fears and insecurities were very Continue reading “Further Down The Road Of Self-Forgiveness” →

The Clarity Of Impermanence

I hadn’t seen Steve in quite a while. We grew up in the same neighborhood, a bunch of us kids enamored with hockey and The Three Stooges. We all knew him as Zig, a nickname my older brother had endowed upon him. I never asked why. Life eventually took all of us in different directions until the unexpected reunion of us neighborhood kids at Steve’s wake.

Losing a friend hits differently. I’ve lost both of my parents, and as painful as their passings were and at times continue to be, I’ve come to accept the inevitable progression of children eventually burying their parents. But there is no natural expected progression when losing someone your own age.

Seeing Steve for the last time brought back a plethora of happy memories of my childhood. I could see all of us again as we once were.

And now one of us was no longer here.

There was a sense of randomness about his passing. As if it could have been any one of us who was no longer here. It was in that randomness I felt the uncomfortable presence of Continue reading “The Clarity Of Impermanence” →

Know Yourself To Grow Yourself

All I heard was nothing.

Recently I discovered a rather interesting piece of music which contained absolutely zero music.

None.

It was composed by an American avant-garde composer John Cage, it’s initial performance in 1952. The title of this work is “4:33” as in 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Of silence. Of musicians seated and poised on stage simply silent and still for the next four and a half minutes.

The true music of this piece, according to Cage, is in the ambient noises found in the silence. Primarily noises from an uneasy audience not knowing what to do in the unconventional absence of sound.

An imaginative use of silence.

Silence can be uncomfortable, often labeled as awkward. And while silence has at times been both uncomfortable and awkward for me, silence has also been a transformative portal for my own inner growth and understanding.

Sitting in my own silence, I get to hear the not-so-ambient noises within me. I get to hear the Continue reading “Know Yourself To Grow Yourself” →

Enthusiasm Is Always An Option

“Anesthesiologist.”

That was Avery’s response when I asked her what she intended to work towards as she’s now a week away from heading off to college. Avery is very intelligent, and when combined with her drive and work ethic she leaves you will the impression that she’ll become anything she wants to become.

On the cusp of an exciting new chapter of her life, her level of excitement and enthusiasm are infectious. She’s worked hard to get to this point and she’s ready to dive in to what’s next.

I have to admit, when I was young and heading off to college my level of enthusiasm was never at the same level as Avery’s. The only thing that was infectious was my indifference and sense of stagnation. Maybe it was my lack of direction or vision for my life, or maybe it was me not being ready or even willing to fully embrace the next chapter of my life.

My relationship with enthusiasm had always put the pressure on other people, external events, and desired outcomes to give me something to be excited about. There was no inner organic sense of enthusiasm to be found, especially as I assumed the responsibilities of being an adult.

In reality, there was plenty to be excited and enthusiastic about. If I simply decided to see life in that way.

One of the most important milestones in my emotional and spiritual evolution was when I began to assume full responsibility for my life experience. When I decided to hold myself accountable Continue reading “Enthusiasm Is Always An Option” →

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 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” →

When There’s Nothing To Look Forward To

The future has always been a utopian distraction from the present. The future is where hopes and dreams and aspirations all reside, a perfect escape from the mundane nature of where we can find ourselves right now.

But what if there was nothing to look forward to?

Could I be at peace, at least for a moment, if all there was in my life was that which was already around me?

I’ve been a runner most of my life, running from what was towards what I wanted it to be, only to be consistently disappointed when I got there. Undeterred, I’d then find something else to run toward, convinced that this time would be different while intuitively knowing the disappointment would be waiting for me when I got there.

And it always was.

You can never outrun the present moment, no matter how good you are at running.

When we’re focused solely on the future we do so at the expense of the present. When our Continue reading “When There’s Nothing To Look Forward To” →

Making Space For The Hurt

I bet Mother’s Day has always sucked for Shawn and Zig.

Shawn and Zig were two friends I grew up with in the neighborhood. Both lost their Moms when they were quite young. They were old enough to understand what had happened, yet not quite old enough to understand why it happened.

I don’t think they’ve ever understood why, even all these decades later.

Their pain was never something they brought up. They just carried it with them, silently, as they bravely tried to move on with their forever-changed young lives. Time simply doesn’t heal wounds of this magnitude. You just learn to deal with it, in your own way, in your own time.

To look at them both you’d never know of the heaviness that was weighing them down, their pain undetectable to the uninitiated. But that’s kind of how we deal with our pains, isn’t it? Silently. Isolated. Our burden, ours alone to carry.

While pain may be visibly undetectable, life has taught me that the vast majority of us silently carry our own degree of pain and hurt just below the surface. Life certainly is a contact sport and we all have our scars and bruises inherent with simply being alive.

Everybody hurts.

Yet, do we make space for the hurt?

You’d think with the commonality of pain we all share we’d all be a bit more understanding. Since we do Continue reading “Making Space For The Hurt” →

Finding Your Own Sacred Space To Be You

I didn’t intend it to turn out this way.

But I guess it did.

It’s late 2008 and I’m highly annoyed. The world inside me and around me full of frustration and negativity. At that stage of my life I was quite good at complaining, easily adding my highly opinionated voice to the “somebody should do something” chorus knowing that I would not be the one to try and actually do something to change anything.

But for some reason something told me I should try and do something. My lack of qualifications as a writer was offset with a passionate conviction to try and give positivity a little more visibility in the world.

Especially mine.

15 years ago – April 20, 2009 – I anxiously hit the “Publish” button for the first time and this blog went live. I offered my faint voice of optimism into an increasingly negative and hostile universe.

Posting uplifting quotes gradually lead to me to actually attempting to post original content, again, driven by a desire to add my own voice and share some positivity, hope, and optimism into the lives of those who visited the site. And while the goal was to write for others, writing eventually became something I needed to do for me.

Turns out I needed the same positivity, hope, and optimism I wanted to offer others.

Writing these posts over the years has served as a form of self-therapy. Often posts are birthed out of my attempts to deal with my own frustrations, confusion, and pain life at times creates for us all. The Continue reading “Finding Your Own Sacred Space To Be You” →

The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations

The quote arrived in a social media feed.

“Expect nothing. Appreciate everything.”

The appreciate everything part…I can learn to do that. But the expect nothing part?

Is that even possible?

I’m not sure where my expectations come from, but they’ve always been there in one form or another. Expectations for myself as well as expectations for others. Especially the ones I had for others. Buddha warned that unmet expectations certainly can be a source of great suffering.

That’s exactly what they’ve been for me.

My problem with my expectations is they would often contradict reality. It was me not accepting What Is in favor of how it is I felt it Should Be. Or needed it to be. Forcing is a form of fear, a need to control that which is out of your control. Yes, a perfect breeding ground for a great source of suffering to flourish in.

Releasing expectations is a pathway towards peace, but for me it’s been a bit of a rocky road. Having no expectations means no one can disappoint you nor let you down, right? But many attempts to expect nothing proved to be nothing more than jaded, passive aggressive attempts to defiantly deal with my Continue reading “The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations” →

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Tag: life