Judgement Day

I always think about what I want to instill in my children as they grow..what type of people I would like to see them grow up to be.  Mainly, we're striving to ensure they don't grow up to be total materialistic, douche-y jerks, but hey--it can happen and all we can do is try.  Our own lives have been filled with a lot of struggle and hardships since ours were born, and yet, they have also been the most fulfilling, maturing set of years experienced thus far.  I am thankful we have experienced the struggle (even though during I thought I would break) because it makes me so much more appreciative of the little things.  Little things I may have missed if we were clipping along with no challenges.  Each day, I feel really lucky that I have been given the life I have.  I feel inspired, happy and eager to share things with others.  To lend an ear when someone is going through their own strife.  To listen and help without judgement, because if there is anything I've learned, it is not to ever look at anyone else and think you know better than them.  As a 20-something, I used to look at the homeless and think, "Geez, get off the booze and drugs & perhaps your life would improve a bit, eh?"  Yet I've never experienced addiction or perhaps the hardships those folks went through.  (& even if I had, who is to say how much strength I would've been given in the same circumstances)  I'm sure anyone can look at things I've done in my own life and make judgement-calls about what they would've done differently, but really--and it's taken me so long to learn this lesson---who cares?

We all have a path & co-create it with God.  We will always get what we ask for, but we should be prudent in our wishes.  To look at another and wish for their life is asking for trouble because you never do know what really lies within that person's experience.  I find my happiness when I am doing things to create and breathe life into things.  I feel appreciated and as though God puts me in the path of people whom I can assist and, in turn, who help me to feel whole.  I have found that the times in my life when I am "not doing it for the money" but instead, some sort of greater good, I am fulfilled and alive.  Of course, money resulting from creative endeavors is no evil, but eventually the wind will come out of your sails if that is the only end goal.

If there is anything I would like my children to know and understand as they get older, it is that it's okay to like what you like and be who you are.  Sometimes you will be ridiculed, sometimes you will be in disagreement with others (even me, your mom ;) about your choices.  In the end, your choices dictate your path and whatever path that is, there is a plan behind it.  As long as each day you wake up with your spirit intact and live your life respectful of the others in it, your choices will always be "right".  So no, Guy-In-The-Parking-Lot-Who-Steals-A-Space-From-A-Teenager-Because-He's-In-A-Rush, you do not get a free pass to be an a-hole to everyone, but if you don't feel like giving up the spot you rightfully found to an old lady who can't find a handicapped spot...so be it your own business.
Everyone deserves the chance to live a life of their own choosing.  



“Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.” 
― Fulton J. Sheen, Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary


“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” 
― Margaret Mead

"I'm late...I'm late!"

Many a timely person has been angered and/or irritated by a friend, co-worker or client who repeatedly shows up 5, 15, 20 minutes late to appointments, meetings, playdates.  They believe the wrongdoer exudes the arrogance of "my time is more important than yours" and takes the offense personally.  Rarely is this the case.  More often than not, it is actually the offender themselves who feel inferior.  I am one of those people consistently late for everything, (I was even 15 minutes late for my own wedding--my husband thought I had caught cold feet!) and I can tell you it truly DOES NOT come from some power play directed towards others. Where I do think chronic lateness may come from is a power play directed at yourself; the desire to control your own world as well as the constant need to fill every hour of the day with as much activity as possible. (with a dash of scattered, unorganized thoughts thrown in for good measure) I have tried everything externally...from setting my clocks ahead to "trick" myself, (my subconscious self always reminds me I've alloted extra time and I find more ways to use that extra 15 min) to asking my husband to please push me harder to get out the door. (turns out, I end up getting annoyed with him for trying to help!) It makes me mad at myself that I never seem to make it on time places and I am sure that it is silently whittling away the part of my self esteem that claims to be a mature, responsible adult. When I work outside the home, I am so deathly afraid of it undermining my great work ethic, I've actually made my self wake up at 3:30/4 am just to ensure I will be ready to roll out the door an hour + earlier than necessary. As you can see, if this was a daily routine, it would surely take its toll on my health as well. Friends and people who know me "understand" my time management challenges, and know I'd never keep them waiting out of disrespect for them or their time, but it still dismays me to think I am receiving their grace for a reputation of guilelessly having my head in the clouds. Lateness is not something the guilty find powerful, in fact, more often it makes one feel incredibly powerLESS.  


So what is there to do when it seems all options are exhausted?  Well, short of therapy, I have found a few sneaky ways to improve my timeliness.  (note that these do not improve time management)  


1.  When making Dr. appointments, write an earlier time than the actual appointment in your calendar.  15, 30, 45 minutes...or go crazy and choose any random number!  (keeping in mind lateness, always make this number at LEAST 15) When I do this, I change it each time so that my clever subconscious has no concrete number from which to calculate additional minutes of free time.  This means quickie Starbucks runs are out out of the question because I rarely can remember what kind of allotment I've given myself.  (how's THAT for Jedi Mindtricks?) 


2.  Tell your friends/family to purposely give you an earlier time to parties/functions.  (without informing you) If they're worried you'll end up showing TOO early, tell them to ask you to pick something up for them on the way.  This will definitely set you back just enough to possibly arrive right on time!  Make sure they, also, change this number up, or your savvy brain will soon associate the person with a certain amount of leeway time.  (Jane=a 20 minute fake-out, Dad=an hour...you get the picture)


3.  Find a reason to get somewhere earlier.  Does your Dentist's office have great celeb gossip magazines that you'd feel frivolous subscribing to?  Show up early to get your People/US Weekly/InTouch fix.  Does your manager bring in doughnuts first thing every morning, but there's only plain cake ones by the time you get there?  Wouldn't you love to snag that first eclair?  If you're the betting type, make a bet with someone that you'll be there before them.  (last one there buys the first round!) Make it a little more enticing to arrive on time by adding an extra incentive.  

All in all, TRY.  Cheap parlor tricks, although inspiring, leave much to be desired in your own psyche.  Do you really want to spend your life deceiving yourself just to be on time?  Put the effort in everyday to commit yourself to change and slowly you will develop habits that will make a real difference in your life.  Wanting to be better will, eventually, make you better...it's a matter of practice makes perfect.  Reach high, grab that eclair!


A favorite writer of mine has a great blog for organizing (both inside and out)  I actually have it set as my home page to "infuse" her lovely sense of zen into my own life.  Commenting on a recent post of hers is what inspired me to do this one.  Check her out:  www.juliemorgenstern.com/blog/

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

Give us this day...

"Give us this day our daily bread" is part of a great prayer. It also has secular meaning as well....to remember to live today, to live in the present. I am a huge offender of this. My mind runs 100 miles per hour mostly thinking about tomorrow, or if it's focused on today, it is on "to-do". Certain things that require immediate attention stop this over thinking, forcing me to pay attention to what is happening around me. (Kids are great for this!) It's like a lightening bolt reminder that time doesn't stop just because you're thinking about something you deem important...life goes on.

In the past month, many friends and family members have lost loved ones or found out about some serious illness that someone close has been diagnosed with. 8 people just in the last month that we have learned of their passing and/or disease. It was a real wake up call. It is always unimaginable to think of your own mother, father, sibling, spouse or child being taken away from you...as it should be. However, when it happens to someone you know, you start to take those quiet, "boring" moments and cherish them all the more.

Haven't you ever looked back on a time in your life and said to yourself, "wow, I didn't know how good I had it..." Or maybe you did & took in each moment with a breath of thankfulness, loving just "being" at that point in your life. For many it is the former, because it's so easy to forget that life is not supposed to be perfectly plotted out...it's supposed to be lived. I have noticed that the best times in my own life have been when I am taking care of business as usual, and leaving the rest to God. For you that may be the same, or you might call God The Universe, your Spiritual Guide, your Guardian Angel, etc. For me it's God, and things always seem to strangely turn out exactly as I wanted..perhaps not in the exact way that I had planned.

This week as I spend most of it rocking (read: bouncing!) a baby to sleep, dividing up army men for bickering boys & telling them for the umpteenth time that beds are not trampolines, I hope I can remember to appreciate my "daily bread", both literally and figuratively...because life is a gift.

The Best Things...

The older I get, the smaller the things are that make me insanely happy. Did you ever wonder why your Grandmother treasured that crappy craft you made in the seventh grade, along with all the other crappy crafts that were just like it? Why did she hang on to each and every birthday/holiday card, even the ones just signed "Love, ___"? (enter name) I'm sure it wasn't because she thought they'd be worth something some day, or even for the fact that her grandchild made it...more so, it was probably the feeling it gave her to receive it from you. The sheer joy she felt from simply being thought of. Grandmas know to take those moments and tuck them away...(crappy crafts & cards just serve to spark the memory! ;) When we're young children, we need nothing but the true basics to make us happy....food, water, shelter & love. Then we become socialized and all of a sudden there are wants. The "keeping up with The Joneses" syndrome starts early and we place a lot of our self worth on what things we have. Mind you, nothing is wrong with wants. It just takes up a lot of space in our heads to think about them constantly! We believe that a new car, cute outfit or the latest cool cell phone can make us happy, and they CAN...for a minute anyway...ok maybe even a few months! Then the excitement wanes and we want our next "fix". Our grandparents and their counterparts have been through this cycle enough times to know it's like a copy of US Weekly...fun but flaky. So where do we find dependable, steady happiness? Prozac? Hawaii? (yes, Mahalo! ;) Seriously though, studies have shown that the defining trait of a happy person is their ability to notice, and appreciate, the small blessings that each day brings...most of which are largely taken for granted by the general population. (although most people in their golden years seem to understand the value of this) Call it corny, but look at your own experience and tell me if that doesn't ring true. Some of the best days are the days that nothing in particular happens at all...you notice the warm sun beaming through your kitchen window, or you get 5 extra minutes to sleep in. For me it is listening to my sleeping children breathe, and watching their eyelids flutter as they dream. It's having a friendly, smiling barista at the coffee shop, or hearing an old favorite song play on the radio. I stop to give a mental "thank-you" to the powers that be for my tiny but day-brightening gift. Years ago, I probably would have been too busy and frazzled to even notice these things as a big deal, but today they trump anything else going on around me. Yes, I still get frazzled (very) and I still have the mentality sometimes that a bigger house, nicer shoes or a new couch will change my life, but I know that one day I'll come to my senses and see that "the best things in life....aren't things" at all.

Be Strong & Surrender

In this tough economy & ever-stressed world, many people are going through a lot. Your neighbor's a lot may not be a big deal to you, and your life-changing circumstance may not be a catastrophe to another. However, we've all been to that place that feels like the breaking point and then we turn another corner only to realize there was something new & possibly even better than what we were so focused on before. That's the kind of change that is welcomed...if we allow it. Many of us fight ourselves so much to be what we think we should be, that it creates this horrible battle inside of us which keeps us from being who we really are & ultimately, from being happy. Why do we do that to ourselves? Are we really that attached to our thoughts, which may have served us well in years past, but just no longer fit, that we can't make room for new knowledge & experience? Don't get me wrong. I am a traditionalist in MANY ways. I believe in culture, customs, family & a lot of other things...(including ones that may perhaps be a bit too conservative for many tastes.) With regards to our egos though, (and I mean that in a Freudian-sense, not in a Hollywood starlet one) I don't believe in letting ours get in the way of who we want to be today. Just because our ideas about ourselves worked for us a few years ago, or even a few months ago, does not mean they are the best thing for us now. It is one thing to learn and draw from our past. It is another to stunt our own growth with an unrealistic expectation of being the same person we were yesterday.

For most of my life I have been accustomed to change......a lot of it. Sometimes the change was the welcomed kind. Other times it hurt me & made me a stronger person. After enough of the hurtful type of change, I became so "strong" that a part of me wanted to be vulnerable and not have to deal with all the garbage and responsibilities that came with being that strong person. I wanted to curl up into a ball and have someone else figure it out. Ironically, those surrendering times were when I came to realize how strong I could be. I learned, or was re-taught, how to trust myself & believe in what I knew. Who would've thought that giving up could make so much progress in a person? Well, really it was more a matter of realizing that just because I was out of my comfort zone, it didn't mean the world was coming to an end. Even better than that, I was being given something new, which to this day, has always far surpassed my previous expectations. Allowing your life to evolve instead of constantly chasing it is not being passive. It's only called "letting life pass you by" when you are not enjoying the journey.

"The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender." - William Booth

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

GIVING

...and upon starting this blog, I swore to myself I would update it at least once a week, if not every couple of days. "It will be a creative outlet....I will have pages upon pages of quality prose that I'll be able to print out for the kids when they're older. A "life's-little-lessons-from-mom-book", if you will....

Fast forward 7 weeks later, a cross-country move, (which is not yet finished) time away with the hubby & my owing this thing at least a half-dozen entries. I am left feeling only slightly better when I remind myself we've been a bit unsettled, making it difficult to take time out, let alone focus on writing something more than a family member's phone number that I can't seem to commit to memory.....excuses, excuses! In actuality, I realize that in taking the time to do something you love, you make yourself more efficient for all of the things you "have" to do. In taking your own personal time, (free of work obligations, social obligations, children & even your spouse) you are cultivating a happier, calmer, better you. Call it selfish if you will, but an hour for yoga, a book, a run or even your Facebook fixation is quality time, because it is something you are GIVING yourself. You spend lots of time giving to others, you may even have others reciprocate, but how many times throughout the week do you actually give something to yourself? You deserve your time as much as any of your loved ones do. If that makes you feel guilty, think about the kind of person your friends & family deserve to have in their lives. Who doesn't want a partner that's happy & positive most of the time? What child wouldn't love a parent/grandparent who has tons of energy to keep up with them in all their creative glory? Running around frazzled, chasing the clock & feeling constantly bled will never get you there. The "take time to smell the roses" thing...(or peonies, or lilies, as it suits you) is a proverb worth integrating into your daily life. Otherwise, you'll feel the same "navagating-through-resposibilities-without-the-necessary-just-me-time" that I fell prey to in the weeks past. Just start @ 10 minutes...seems like nothing, but if you are an especially busy guy/gal, it will feel like Star Wars time. Increase accordingly. Rinse, repeat & condition yourself to needing it. Some addictions are good...

Happy You-Time!



“People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you’re fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

CHUTZPAH

It's a fun word, isn't it?  chutz·pah (KHŏŏt'spə, hŏŏt'-) n. Nerve; effrontery (yiddish)  Fun to say, fun to have.  They say someone has it when they believe in themselves and can walk without abandon into a situation they may not know the outcome of.  

My three year old has chutzpah...enough to assume that everyone who enters our home wants to shoot hoops with him for their entire visit.  And they do.....at least for a while, when they see the sheer joy and happiness it brings this kid to pass the ball back and forth with them, becoming an instant BFFL.  Chutzpah is contagious too.  It's inspiring to see someone put themselves out there.  It makes you think the bridge is safe to cross.  Having chutzpah is crossing the bridge first.  Scary, but exhilarating....and utterly liberating.  I have not had many chances in my lifetime to possess this unconstrained, wonderful feeling; but when I have, it has brought me to places I would've never dreamed I'd go.  There is nothing sweeter than the taste of success from taking a risk, and nothing more gratifying than an accomplishment born from intuition.  

Today a friend had some chutzpah, and I commend her on it.  There was a misunderstanding and, without knowing the details, she put herself out there to find them out.  It takes a lot for a person to extend their hand not knowing if they'll be bit.  This kind of courage is a beautiful characteristic that is still somewhat foreign to me.  When upset by someone else, I simply resign myself to the state of acquiescence, saying there is nothing that can be done....oh but there is!  The things that are "hard" to do, (usually not quite as hard as you're imagining) are, by far, the most rewarding. 

Think of the people that ARE chutzpah.  They breathe it out of their pores and are the most intriguing, interesting individuals you know.  They know themselves.  They know their strengths & their weaknesses, but choose to "forget" the latter.  They realize life is short and their list is long.  

 Here's wishing you some "chutzpah" today :) 

Excerpt From Connecticut College's 1980 Commencement Speech by Alan Alda

"Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah. Don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Laugh at yourself, but don't doubt yourself.  Let the strength of your desire give force and moment to your every step.  Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been.  You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing, but what you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself."