Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life.
~Marilu Henner
I just accomplished the rarely achieved and the utterly unexpected – I slept for nearly 12 hours. I walked in the door last night, kissed the family and laid down on the bed. That was it until coffee time. I felt pretty good and profusely thanked my dear husband who, with four children, had to have worked very hard to leave me uninterrupted. His response, “No worries baby, you must have really needed it.”
Needed it maybe, but probably not deserved. I have been really slack lately on listening to my body and managing my health. Stress is a natural occurrence in life. I do not find it evil or good. As far as I am concerned, stress is amoral. It just is. My ability to name it, handle it and work with it is where the opportunity lives.
It has been overly easy with the hustle and bustle of summer, the desire to perform professionally, the interest in moving my writing forward and the ever ball of excitement that is my home to throw up my hands and say, “well, it’s just not going to happen.” It is exceptionally simple to say, time, money, opportunity, resources are limited, therefore, I get a pass in paying attention to the habits and techniques that not only balance my stress but allow me to be an overall healthier person.
I hear an abundance of excuses, how about you? Now admittedly, some of our excuses are legitimate. The last thing I want is for you to think that I am coming from a standpoint that says you fail if you can’t figure it all out. I certainly am not. I could not, at this time, spend hours a day in the gym, hire a personal trainer or spring on my children a whole new dinner menu. I don’t expect most folks could.
But, I can stop talking about what I can’t do in this area and start focusing on what I can. Seems to me to be a far more positive, if not productive, means of confronting the challenge and communicating with myself.
Today, I encourage you to name that thing that you know would benefit you in some way – health, stress, finances – whatever. If you are anything like me, you have already considered all the “can’t” reasons. Try for a moment to find the baby steps. Redefine the win. Where are the small, doable “cans”? This morning, it has become clearly obvious to me that this is one thing I must do. I can’t think of many days where a 12 hour sleep cycle will support my schedule. And the husband, as gracious as he was, shouldn’t have to either. Racking the body and the mind until it collapses into a coma is not the smartest way to handle life – and we all know how much we love the smarter way!
The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is. ~ John Lancaster Spaulding
Transparency. In today’s world, this item is becoming more and more important. With the soaring popularity of Web 2.0 interactions such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it is possible for people to become whom ever they choose – and we would be none the wiser.
It can be tempting to assume a persona that is not truly our own. Many times, we feel under equipped, over shadowed, and unappreciated. In order to move around these feelings, our voice becomes inauthentic.
However, this manner of practice seldom works and never lasts long. The good news is, you don’t need it all. Your family, friends, associates, and clients deal with you because they trust and depend on you. This is a huge responsibility and requires dedication and hard work. Don’t make it harder by attempting to upkeep a façade.
The uniqueness of ourselves is the thing that makes us wonderful. The display of that is a step on the road to greatness!
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
A Bit of Encouragement…
I currently have Conway Twitty’s Hello Darlin’ playing in my head right now. It has been a long time. And it is nice to see you.
I struggled with putting TAT on hold nearly 2 years ago. It is something that I love to do. Graciously, those whose inbox receive it seem to enjoy it as well.
In all honesty, I struggled with bringing it back. You may have noticed a bit of that in the email you received a few days ago. I was completely prepared to give TAT a complete overhaul – even down to when it was sent out.
The response was fairly overwhelming. So, as you can see, aside from the face lift, TAT is still pretty much the same. And I am filled with gratitude.
Ideas like “failure” and “give up” are pretty interesting to noodle over.
In July, I DNF’d (did not finish) a race. You can read more about that here
I did give up. And, while I justified it in the physical, it was my spirit that failed.
During that same race there were others who wanted to give up as they were physically shot. But their spirit held on and they finished. My spirit is pretty strong too…I was pretty close to finishing…until I just quit.
I learned a lot from them and about myself. I like to think that if I learn anything then the failure has been redeemed. The only true failure is quitting, giving up, and refusing to glean any lesson from it.
Success is also an idea that has to be addressed on a regular basis as there is no dictionary passage that does it justice. What success is, what it looks like, not only differs from person to person, but across situation, point in time, and perspective. Understanding its dynamic nature cannot be overlooked.
For me, “success” is nearly synonymous with “purpose”. My purpose in my runs is to be better than I was before. Therefore, even when I don’t perform as well I can, the purpose is still achieved and there is the success.
Today I want you to recognize purpose in the things that are important to you but currently feel unproductive, hard, or just no longer viable. If they are truly purposeless, then let them go (heck, maybe you just need a break!) But give the ideas of success, failure, and giving up some real consideration. It is very possible that we really are just that close.
“Asking the proper question is the
central action of transformation… Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women who Run with the Wolves
New Year’s Day is fast approaching. Weather notwithstanding, it is one of my favorite times of the year. While I do not think one particular square on the calendar is more conducive to setting the intention to do better than another, I do love the way January 1st kind of stands there, hands on hips, giving a great reason to try the hard things that shove us out of our comfort zone. In fact, it almost demands that we do so.
Over time, the dance on January 1st has had the tendency of being more cliche than the Electric Slide at a wedding reception. We all know it’s coming, we all know the steps (eat better, exercise more, quit a bad habit, pick up a good one, turn, and repeat). But most of us love it (at least until mid-January), get excited at the first beat, kick our shoes off, and jump on the dance floor. There are the others that refuse to participate. Their resolution on New Year’s Day is to make no resolutions. In a move that has become almost as banal as joining the fray, we sit in our chairs and side-eye the uninspired choreography.
I have been a proud member of both those groups. I am still super supportive of both approaches. I do love a line dance (even a really old one), and am one of the easiest people on the planet to get out on the dance floor. The need to do what makes us comfortable is not lost on me. When we do the best we can with what we have, we are living our best life.
But am I doing the best I can? And there it is. That was my one question that birthed a wealth of questions that, like January 1st, demanded attention. In truth, I have been asking that question my whole life. However, I was asking it from a place of fear. That place would only allow me to ask it in a shallow way and give the “well of course I am” answer. But of course I wasn’t. Once the question became, “Am I really doing the best I can?” things changed.
Today I want to encourage you to ask questions. Are you a “get up and dance”er or a “chill out and watch”er? Does that change? Why? Maybe your questions are completely different than mine. Maybe you need to create some new ones, revisit some old ones, phone a friend. But ask the questions. There may come a time when the answer makes us question the asking. The answer is hard and the work to process it is real. And, as in most things, the rewards for that kind of effort are great. We got this.
[…] the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
This, one of my all time favorite quotes, read like the first time for me today and became new again. I love it when they do that.
When I first came across this Fitzgerald gem, it resonated quickly as I was engaging in a civil disagreement over matters of social and political opinion. I really enjoy those types of conversations with people who know how to have them; people who can hear and consider the idea of another yet still hold their own thought and give both their just due.
A few days ago I had a really rough time finding my center, my groove, my chill – whatever it is you call it when you are overall really fine, there is no major or even minor, crisis, but something about your day is just a tinky bit off kilter (I’d love to hear what you call that).
After some really involved, and frankly overly dramatic, self “what if” statements, I determined I was feeling over stimulated. And bored. And resentful. And thankful. And neglected. And cared for. And lonely. And loved. My hitch was that I had found myself unable to retain the ability to function while evaluating the truth hidden in the myriad of opposing feelings. I was unable to give myself permission to have conflicting feelings at all.
I do not believe all feelings are truth. I do believe all feelings are indicative of a truth. There’s a difference. I had gotten so caught up in defending the need to feel centered and “normal”, that I had became unable to process the alternative idea that there was a bit of internal information processing that really needed to happen. The harder I was on myself, the more I berated myself for being ridiculous or too much, the worse the situation became. The opposing idea was not just going to go away. It was there. It needed to be heard, understood, and moved through.
Today I want to encourage you appreciate your ability to consider opposing ideas – may they be yours or someone else’s. The act of doing so does not make us weak, wishy washy, soft, manipulable, too much, uncommitted, or any other manner of discreditable thing you may say to yourself. Being able to function while doing so creates space for relationship, connection, and growth – may that be yours or someone else’s.
Dig a little deeper. Think of something we have never thought of before.
~A. A. Milne (1882 – 1956)
It is no secret I am a huge fan of social media. I have engaged online since the very early offerings. It has been a lot of fun connecting with old friends, making new ones, learning about different places, and finding new ways to photograph food. I enjoy almost everything about it – almost.
With this ability for virtually anyone to say anything to anyone anywhere, there has also been a few setbacks in our growth as people. I blame the meme. Don’t get me wrong, I love most of them. But this trend toward the bumper sticker, shallow idea has begun to thwart our vision of our best selves and hindered real connection with others.
Those two things – vision of best self and connection to others – are, in my opinion, where nearly all the magic happens. It is where challenges are overcome, goals are realized, new adventures take shape. It is, essentially, where life happens. When we give in to less than in exchange for the easy, when we allow the fluff to take the place of substance, we zap all the amazing out of what it could have been. Kinda like window food. Sure, some of it is great, fast, and easy. But it can’t begin to compete with the smell that comes out of a kitchen when someone is wearing an apron and the anticipation of what is coming next.
Today I want to encourage you to think a little deeper. Pick any topic you want. Current events, social issues, a work project, a recipe, anything. Take a minute and consider all the things you think are a given about that idea – no white after labor day, salting the water before the potatoes, why democrats are considered liberal – you get the idea. Think about those things and consider them in a new light. What if we turned them around just a bit, maybe attempted to imagine our background was different, our worldview was altered, anything to adjust the thought and dig a little deeper. We may still think the the original thought, but the practice of thinking actual thoughts and having actual conversations will encourage our best self and greater connections. Promise.
Success means doing the best we can with what we have.
Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.
**************
The real test in golf and in life is not in keeping out of the rough,
but in getting out after you are in.
– Zig Ziglar
A few days ago, I found a very sad three year old at my knee. “Momma, my bear has a boo boo.” Indeed, the beloved bear had a small rip in the seam of her leg and the stuffing was ever so slightly poking out. I am not surprised. This bear, loved daily, has seen her fair share of tea parties, swing sets, rescues and other amazing adventures. The fact that this small tear was all she had to show for it was, in itself, impressive.
After I assured her the bear would be fine after a little “surgery” that I promised would not hurt, she placed the bear in my care and went back to her play happy enough. Looking at this bear, I can’t help but be encouraged.
This little bear is not perfect. It can’t be. There is room for improvement in the design, material and manufacturing. Then, even if all those improvements were made, all we would have is a bear few could afford, few would enjoy playing with and minute details would still just miss perfection.
Because it is not perfect, the discussion must be when it fails, when it breaks, when it lets down – not if. That is, if the discussion really has to be had at all. The truth is, the bear is quite capable of fulfilling her role as my daughter’s playmate without considering the “what if” of either of their short comings. My daughter my be careless or overly aggressive. The bear may be poorly designed or equipped for the task.
However, this never prevents either of them from enjoying the relationship or their roles in it. In fact, there is no focus at all on the brokenness until the brokenness effects the situation. Even then, there is no judgement in the deficiency of the bear, no statement of character made about the child. There is concern for the injury and graciousness in the attention to the need. The shortcoming is brought to the one who can fix it and the issue becomes solution based and challenges are overcome. The lost stuffing defines neither the bear nor the child.
Today I just encourage you. In a climate of perceived or actual scarcity, unknown and fearful, accurate or sensationalized, be encouraged. We are all broken people that sometimes find ourselves in broken situations. This does not make us less than or speak to a hard wired character flaw. It makes us humans interacting with other humans in a meaningful way. It makes us a community. It makes us great because these interactions create the humanity that brings about all good things. I, you, are not defined by lost stuffing.
And as always, thanks for joining me for that cup of coffee…
*Originally published as a Turn Around Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Some day you will be old enough
to start reading fairy tales again.
~C. S. Lewis, 1898 – 1963
If it feels like change is occurring at a pace faster than before, you would probably have most folks agree with you. The development of technology, change in the social landscape, and general sense of “when I was growing up” is happening so quickly and often that many of us are looking around trying to maintain some concept of balance.
Of course there are a few folks that will say the idea of accelerated change isn’t a thing. If you take certain statistics from certain benchmarks, turn them a certain way, and look at them in just the right angle, there is a case to be made that things are evolving at the rate they always have. It is just you.
There has always been lots of opinions on things like change, seizing the day, living life to the fullest, bravery for the unknown, and acting your age. These discussions are all too often coated in fear and judgment. From the very earliest fairy tales we read as children, there is an adventure to be had, change to be made, naysayers and villains attempting to thwart the path. We read these as children and knew the adventure was good and worthy, the path worth walking. We knew the hero would be better for the journey.
Today I want to encourage you to recall the courage you had when you read those fanciful stories. Maybe, if you are feeling particularly defiant, pick one up and read it. Cheer for the underdog. Embrace the silly and be uplifted by the sheer joy we often allow only in children. Let yourself get to the place where you knew slaying the dragon was not only possible, but a foregone conclusion.
There are all of these platitudes that people use
when trying to convince us that we’re better than ourselves.
The truth is, unless you have the
wherewithal to get off your ass and do it,
you’re not going to.
~Thom Williamson, Navy Buddy, 2004 – forever
I have been getting all my past writings together in one place in an attempt to become more organized and better service folks who ask, “what have you written.” I discovered two things I found interesting.
First, I have no idea how many Turn Around Tuesdays I’ve done. However, the first TAT was published over a decade ago on April 3, 2007. Ten years, depending on how you account for time off, I have been sharing a quote, turning it around, and having coffee with you. That’s a really long time.
Second, I still have no idea how many TATs I have done. I didn’t know when I had written the first one. I am embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to find it. Unbeknownst to me, I was dangerously close to losing the entirety of the first seven years. I missed its 10th birthday. Realizing how flippant I have been about the whole thing is curious.
I have had a lot of support through the years. I was a better steward of some it than others. But my path always turned into a jungley mess of convoluted. There are a bunch of influences there – some ridiculous, other therapy worthy – but all topics for another day. Regardless of the ancillary, the end result has been the same; I have been blessed with a lot of convincing platitudes and still couldn’t get off my ass and do it. As usual, I am betting I am not alone.
Today I want to encourage you to consider your influences. Thought I was gonna say get off your ass? I was. In fact, I did and deleted it. In the typing, it occurred to me that’s the very thing we just discussed wasn’t enough – someone telling another what to do. The thing that moves those unfinished things we have created in or around ourselves is not platitudes, it is wherewithal. I am going to tell you that you have it, but you already know that. No amount of me telling is going to push past the absolute siphoning effect negativity or doubt has on the energy required to step into our best selves. But, when we find the thing that’s holding us down on the couch, we can start getting some work done.
Nope, it ain’t Tuesday yet.
But I have some housecleaning
and decorating to do
and I need your help.
~April
I have transitioned to a full time Writer, StoryTeller, Content Creator, Consummator of Nouns and Verbs. It’s amazing and scary and wonderful and wild. Having the love and support available for this to even be an option for me is mind blowing.
I have been here before – writing for others. But it was always as a side hustle. As much as I enjoyed it, it had significant disadvantages – stress, missed deadlines, loss of focus, inability to produce quality work.
There is no more side hustle. There is only this. And I could really use your support.
1 – Let’s reconnect if we haven’t in a while. I know my life has changed a lot since the last run of TATs. I am sure yours has too.
2 – Share my stuff. The newsletters, the Facebook posts, the links. Check out other places here at See the Butterfly. You’ll see familiar stuff there as this is both a consolidation and the place for new stuff. If you enjoy it, share it. If there’s something you’d like to see there, suggest it. Subscribe to it.
3 – Recommend me. Been on LinkedIn lately? Check it out. Leave a review, click an endorsement. Met somebody who is looking for a story to be told, content to be created, copy to be produced? Let them know. Let me know.
4 – Keep me posted on how I can support you. I believe a rising tide lifts all ships.
Thanks for the coffee, the support, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
“Asking the proper question is the
[…] the test of a first-rate intelligence is
Dig a little deeper.
Success means doing the best we can with what we have.
I have been getting all my past writings together in one place in an attempt to become more organized and better service folks who ask, “what have you written.” I discovered two things I found interesting.
Nope, it ain’t Tuesday yet.