Tag: navigating the world

Take a Step…

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Today, I want to play a game of What if…. This is a game that we don’t often play, especially in our increasingly social-media-obsessed world. We spend our time viewing the lives and “successes” of others rather than thinking about our own. As long as our day-to-day life is going smoothly, we prefer not to consider what might be if only we took the first step, chipped away at our goals a little at a time, or simply started.

I say “game” because thinking about What if… can be fun. It’s easy and risk-free. You get to try on possibilities from the comfort of your own living room. What was it that you once dreamed you might do? Have you ever really thought about it? Is there any way to move yourself closer? Do you even want to?

So we’re going to start with this one: What if… you were living the life you’ve always dreamed of? What would that look like?

Of course, there is the chance you already are living the life of your dreams. But I know that somewhere along the way, many people give up and settle for something less than their dreams—something closer to their current reality. Whatever obstacles they come up against keep them from moving forward. What if… you hadn’t given up? Where might you be now?

What if… you took a moment to examine what’s been holding you back? Knowing what’s standing in your way can only help you remove barriers or adjust your approach to move beyond them. For me, it’s my tendency toward introversion. I need quiet and solitude to process information my brain is taking in, the path my life is going, and even things that happen on a given day. My processing looks different from what’s considered the “norm” in our busy, extroverted society. But knowing that I need this alone-time is my superpower. When I am overwhelmed, I can step aside, recharge, and move forward with greater power and a greater sense of direction. I don’t need to be around people who fight against my introversion, and therefore, against me. Life is too short for that.

Once you figure out what’s holding you back, what if… you take a step toward your goal, toward something you’ve always wanted to do? I’m not suggesting you jump all in. Rather, simply take one small step. Because one thing I’ve learned is that with the right support, one step leads to another, and another, and pretty soon, your life has changed in significant ways. One step at a time. If you took a step toward your goal, toward what you want in life, what would that step look like?

Life is short, and it passes in the blink of an eye. No matter where you are in your life—young adult, mid-life, or later life—you can make a change. You can take a step. And step by step, you can transform your life and live closer to your dreams. Anything is possible if you just take the first step.

Sometimes, we forget…

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Sometimes, we forget to have patience.

We forget to have patience with our children. They are young and slow and unable to perform simple tasks. Maybe we need to get somewhere on time, and—as is typical of children—they are not in a hurry. Or perhaps they are not yet adept at the task at hand. Ever watch a young child tie a shoe? It can take f-o-r-e-v-e-r! We grow impatient, and we rush them, yell, or yank them out the door. Or maybe we are trying to teach them something or help with homework. They are not getting it, and we grow frustrated. We give up and let them struggle on their own, perhaps crying as they do so. Children are young and inexperienced with the ways of the world. With what they are learning… so many things And they need parents and caregivers to be patient so they can learn, feel nurtured, and grow their independence and confidence.

Sometimes, we forget to have patience with our coworkers, friends, and family members. Perhaps we asked someone to do something and they didn’t do it. We might have even reminded them. Or maybe they did it, but they didn’t do it the way we wanted them to. So we grow frustrated. We might know someone who has different views than we have. Rather than ask them about their views and the ideas and experiences they have had that have led them to their conclusions, we lash out, call them names, and “school” them in why they are wrong. We don’t engage and we definitely don’t compromise. We are right and they are wrong, and we don’t have the time to mess around in finding some mushy middle ground.

Sometimes, we forget to have patience with strangers. Someone cuts us off when we are driving, and we immediately honk our horn, flip the driver the bird, or get right on his bumper to teach him a lesson. If someone is too slow in the grocery line, even if it is the fault of the cashier or the manager, we stand in line and shift our weight, roll our eyes, and sigh or groan loudly.  When our restaurant order doesn’t come out fast enough, or the server forgets something, we are not nice. And if someone cold calls our phone with a promotional offer from a service we already use—or don’t—we hang up on them rather than politely declining.

Sometimes, we forget to have patience with ourselves. We think we should know something, but we have forgotten. We put something in that ever-elusive “safe place,” and now we can’t find it. We are taking too long to find something on the Internet or it takes us too long to get ready to leave the house. We forgot to do something. We forgot to call the doctor to make an appointment or write down which spice it was that we ran out of last Tuesday when we were cooking dinner. We grit our teeth and think we should know better.

Impatience is all around us. Sometimes, we forget that people make mistakes, that people have feelings, and that every situation offers us an opportunity to decide how to respond. We can be patient, or we can be impatient. The problem is, by being impatient, we miss out on an opportunity to connect with another person—family, friend, or stranger. Patience requires connection. It requires understanding. And it requires us to experience life in the present moment.

So be present. Make the connection. Have patience. It may take a little extra time, but it will be worth it.

This Is It

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So often we sit around waiting for life to happen—to us, through us, around us. We wait. We expect life to come. A new perfect job will come along. Fate will lead us to our destiny, whatever that means. Opportunities or people will cross our path. And so, we wait.

But this is all very passive. This is about all the things that will happen to us while we sit around doing nothing. Waiting for life.

This is not the way life is supposed to work. As we wait, we are not taking advantage of all that life has to offer. In fact, we are likely blindly scrolling the internet or binge-watching some mind-numbing show on one streaming service or another. If we look around us at any given moment, our life doesn’t look like what we are expecting life to look like. Therefore, the here-and-now, the this-is-it doesn’t get our full attention. We stay on the couch, bored and restless.

And yet, this is what is—the present moment. This is the best we’ve got right now. And it just may be that this is it. So… I have decided to approach 2024 with a This Is It attitude. Since this is what I’ve got right here and right now, there is no sense in waiting for what might come. I mean let’s face it… we all have a plan for what we will do if we win the lottery. But you’ve got to play to win, and I don’t play, so there’s that.

A life without lottery winnings is pretty much what I’ve got. This Is It. I have the moments and the opportunities that present themselves. That, a little bit of luck, and a positive attitude. I’m pretty sure I can fly with that. And so, I will examine the moments and the opportunities that present themselves. I will dig deep into the here and now and the challenges I must overcome. And I will recognize that if I seize the moment—and I do it well—I could be facing a completely different reality as this year comes to a close, from This Is It to This Is Amazing!

If you were to take your This Is It and run with it, how would you move forward?

Old Friends

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There’s something about an old friend that can provide connection to the past to keep you grounded.

Sometimes, you just need to spend a little time with an old friend. Sometimes, being with someone you haven’t seen in years can do wonders for your soul. For your well-being.

On Friday, I had an opportunity to spend some time with just such a friend. We hadn’t seen each other in years since we live on opposite coasts, and the opportunities to get together are minimal. But we picked up as if we had just seen each other the previous day.

What I realized is that spending time with an old friend can bring life into sharper focus. It can remind you who you are, how far you have come, and where you are going. Your old friends, they knew you back when life was new and fresh, and opportunities lurked around every corner. You were still figuring out where you fit and how you could contribute to the bigger picture of life. These friends… they helped you to form your identity as you struggled through challenging times, navigated new environments, and started to settle into your adult life, forming new perspectives that were truly yours (and not your parents’).

Old friends are the best friends. You can go years without seeing them—or even communicating much at all—and yet, you always find yourselves right where you left off. Conversation is comfortable and casual as you move from one topic to the next, sometimes circling back in that weird way in which conversations flow. And yet, it never seems weird.

Sometimes, you just need an evening with an old friend. An evening to re-examine who you are and who you’ve become. An evening to reminisce and remember that change is not always a bad thing. An evening to look ahead as life changes from one phase to the next and you continue to evolve… even through midlife and beyond.

Sometimes, you just need an old friend to help you reconnect to all that once was, and still is, and will be important in life.

Refocus

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What is going well in your life? I would love to hear about it.

We have trained ourselves away from asking that question. We focus on what isn’t going well, and we endlessly pick away at those bits as if throwing ourselves into what isn’t good will somehow make it better. We believe that strengthening the weak areas and taping up the cracks that threaten our lives will somehow make us happier.

We throw resources at our lack of talent and our lack of happiness. We chase after the goals we can never reach—but that wouldn’t make us happy, anyway. These goals are not ours, but someone else’s goals imposed upon our lives.

And these are just band-aids.

What if, instead, we focus on what is going well? What if we take some time to truly examine our lives and untangle the good from the not-so-good. The amazing from the “eh….” And then, once we have figured out what is working, what makes us happy, we focus on those areas. What if we look at life from the standpoint of abundance rather than from lack? What if we concentrate on the things we do well and the things that make us happy? I believe we should take what we’re good at and the activities that bring us joy and do more of those things. These things, these activities… they will lift us up.

This is a strengths-based approach—to use our abundance to create more happiness. If we bring more positivity, the rest will work out. By focusing on what is working, we will be happier. We will be more rested. We will feel cared for. And rather than making the “tough” our main struggle, tough can be our side job. Because focusing on the things we are good at and the ones we enjoy, we can make the tough that much easier.

So what is going well in your life? I would love to know!

The Path

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Photo by David Talley on Unsplash

The path we travel is seldom straight. It twists and turns, skirting the edges of danger as we hold on tight. Our path takes detours around pothole-ridden streets and over stumbling blocks in order to set us in the direction we are headed. It redirects to new routes and sometimes presents more opportunities than we can handle. And others we might not want.

Nowhere is this meandering more evident than in our young adults. They spend their early years in state-mandated school until then they are suddenly expected to choose what comes next. The choices can be overwhelming.

There is no doubt there are many 18-year-olds who know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives. They step from high school graduation onto a fully paved path they’ve planned out for years, and they never waver. They go on to reach their lifelong goals in careers they chose when they were small children.

The vast majority of young people, however, have no idea what they want to do when they ‘grow up’ despite teetering on the line between childhood and adulthood. And a large portion of them are afraid to admit it. We put so much pressure on kids to know what they want to do that they feel they should know even though they don’t have enough experience to know. Or worse, we have steered them in the direction that we think they should go rather than letting them decide for themselves what is best and which path(s) they will travel. The pressure to choose a direction is so intense for kids this age.

What they don’t realize is that very few grownups know what they want to do next week, let alone 10 years from now. Adults—young and old—are expected to be solidly on a path with one career in view. But this is not often the way life works anymore.

Young people are much better off when they take the time they need to figure out their own best direction. Will they pursue a degree? Work? Go to trade school? Join the military? There’s nothing wrong with trying out some of the available options before they settle on one. The only way to figure out where you truly want to be is to recognize where you don’t want to be. Rather than push kids to make premature decisions about their futures and expect them to know exactly what they want when the emerge from high school, shouldn’t we be laying out their various options? Maybe we should be encouraging our children to experiment and try new things rather than taking the “safe” road and ending up somewhere they suddenly realize they don’t belong.

The path is not straight, and it is not easy. The bumps along the way…, the uncertainty in the choices that arise…, these are all part of the process. They help us to put things in the proper perspective. And for young people, this early part of the process sets them up for many of the obstacles they will face on their journey through life.

The path we travel is not straight, and the obstacles are many. But somehow, with a bit of trial and error, we all figure it out.

Lost

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Photo by Dunamis Church on Unsplash 

When I look back on 2021, I will remember this as the year I lost my way.   

At the beginning of the year, everything seemed to be going along pandemic-fine, thank you very much. And by “pandemic-fine,” I mean I was figuring out how to exist in the world with the constant ebb and flow of the waves of COVID virus. It took a little time, some deep thinking, and lots of creativity, but we had even figured out how to work side-by-side with students without infiltrating their enlarged 6-foot radius of personal space. At the beginning of 2021, I kept my head down, plugged along, and stayed the course.

Things were going along fine—at least… they seemed to be. Until they weren’t.

I had been so focused on what I was doing that I must have missed an important turn. Or maybe I took a turn that I shouldn’t have. Because when I had the opportunity to look up and study my surroundings, I didn’t recognize anything. There was more shade than I’d grown used to. Space seemed a bit warped from what I remembered. And time had a unique way of crunching together while simultaneously stretching out to the horizon. Seriously, nothing looked familiar. And try as I might, I could not figure out how to get my bearings when I didn’t recognize anything.  

For a bit of time, I walked the line between fear and intrigue. How would I find my way back? How would I ever get back on track? And did I even want to? I just couldn’t see how this situation would right itself.

But as time dragged on and direction remained elusive, I settled in to experience the ride and figure out what had happened. Time is a funny thing. And Lost is a curious place. I kept working, hoping for familiar, and a funny thing started to happen. I started to get used to being lost. I started to recognize the unfamiliar, and I became just a bit more brave. I took on tasks I didn’t know I could complete. I made small changes that surprised me. And I forged a new path because no matter how lost you are, you still must continue to move forward.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and from here, I can look back on my journey and see it for what it has really been (and continues to be)—a shift of focus. A readjustment of priorities. And a need to exit the fast lane. I now have a new focus and a new direction.

Somehow, in the busyness of life, I got caught up in what I do, and I forgot who I am. I forgot why I’m here. I forgot that life is short and finite. Losing my way has made me realize I am not where I want to be. I am not living the life I want to live. Somehow, I lost myself when I lost my way. But the disorientation that always accompanies Lost allowed me to reconnect with something deeper. It allowed me to reconnect with the real me and the meaning of life—the meaning of my life, but that also allowed me to find my way back to a better life, a stronger me, and a greater sense of purpose.

Maybe I didn’t lose my way after all. Maybe I just took a scenic detour and ended up traveling in a new and unexpected direction to a brighter and more appealing destination.

The journey from Lost is not over. In fact, this journey—the one that will take me into the new year and beyond—has just begun.

Running Ragged

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Lately, I have been run ragged by life. If I were a toy, my seams would be ripped, my stuffing spilling out. It’s funny (or not), but sometimes life does that to you. I have slumped into a funk that I can’t escape. I keep pushing to move beyond this point, so I can get back to the energy and light that creativity brings. And so I am working to develop a strategy to get me through.

I am pulling myself away from noise and into silence. It is in the silence that we can hear what is going on inside our heads. It is the silence that reveals the truth.

I am turning away from busyness and moving toward stillness. Busyness pulls and rubs and irritates, but stillness is peaceful and soothing. Stillness is like the hug of an old friend—warm and comforting.

I am rejecting chaos and clutter for simplicity. Chaos and clutter are a result of the worldly and material taking over as the focus of life. Simplicity brings calm. Simplicity allows us to disconnect from the material to reconnect with the spirit.

Sometimes—often, in fact—you need to reject the ways of the world if you are to see your own light. If you are to spread your light in the world.

Sometimes, you need to be alone in reflection to see where you fit in the world with others and within your own life.

Don’t be afraid to take the steps necessary to care for yourself, to rediscover yourself. Too often, we get caught up in the everyday. We try to live in the expectations of others, of the world, and we lose ourselves. We lose what makes us true and right and unique. We lose our passions.

Without passions and creative energy, our light dims. Our candle burns out. Our life becomes a series of day upon day upon day with no real rhyme or reason.

It is only in pulling back into the silence that we can escape the noise. It is only in seeking stillness that we can recognize the poison that is busyness. And it is only in letting go of all the trappings of the here and now that we can truly find ourselves among the simplicity.

So let go. Find your way back and reconnect with your true self.

Wreckage

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My train of thought has derailed. I got caught up in the What ifs of life, and my thoughts were swept away under their own momentum. Remember the Little Engine that Could? That determined little engine used positive thinking—I think I can… I think I can… I think I can…—to pull its cargo of toys and treats up a hill it didn’t think it could climb.

In my case, it is a whole train of negative What ifs that has pulled me off track. In fact, the mantra What if… What if… What if… has been growing stronger and steadier. My train of thought picked up speed going down a hill. It was going faster and faster, and when the track veered off to the right (or the left, I can’t even remember anymore), my train of thought stayed straight and derailed.

Now, I am sitting in a pile of steaming wreckage. Twisted metal rises around me casting spooky shadows against the foggy night sky. All the cargo that was neatly in its place is now scattered across the landscape—a million pieces of life that will never fit back into place all tidy and neat as before the derailment. A million pieces of which I may find only half.

No, sometimes life needs some shaking up. Sometimes, we get too comfortable in our day-to-day, and one thing comes along—be it good, bad, or indifferent—and steps smack into our path with a challenge: “Think you’ve got everything figured out? Try THIS!” And while these challenges force us to re-examine various parts of our life—or maybe the whole thing—seeing life from a new angle can be helpful as we search for a creative solution to a difficult situation or a path to a more productive (and more positive) future.

And so… I sit here in the rubble that was my thinking, my life. I sit in silence, not distracting myself with any of the occupations of life that got me into this situation in the first place. The longer I sit here, the sharper my perspective grows. Of course, it helps that the derailment occurred in the dead of night, and the dawn is slowly claiming the darkness. It helps that the outline of what is left of the train is ever more visible against the faint tint of early day. And as the sunlight begins to poke up over the horizon, beams of light illuminate tiny tendrils of smoke winding their way out of the wreckage. The longer I sit here, the brighter my thoughts become, and I gain a sharper realization of the steps I must take to move forward. The longer I sit here, the more certain I am that I will rise from the wreckage of my What ifs, leave this mess behind me, and move into the future carrying a smaller portion of the weight of the world.

And I’m pretty sure that as I move on and leave the What ifs behind, I will take with me only what is needed for today.

Piece by Piece

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Pieces of an intricate antique puzzle

I have become the keeper of the puzzles. These puzzles, they are very old, yet nearly new. They are barely used, but they’ve been saved for decades, tucked away in a box under the eaves in the attic, a treasure long ago forgotten. They were created with great care and attention to detail back at a time when all things were created this way.

These puzzles are the definition of jigsaw puzzle—cut from a sheet of thin plywood. They are in boxes that look like standard gift boxes, some red, some white, and some off-white, weathered and stained. They come with no photo of what they will look like when they are assembled. Hundreds of pieces. No photo.

That’s right… the puzzles of yesteryear were sold without a guide, so when you first remove the pieces from the box, you have no idea what goes where. Color won’t help you other than grouping like-colored pieces together. Pattern is irrelevant. Even the edge pieces—or the pieces that appear to be edges—could be assembled upside down before the orientation is slowly revealed. It is only in the process that the end-product starts to make sense. Piece by piece.

As I put these puzzles together, I have realized they are much like life. We did not arrive here on Earth with a guide. There is no manual for many of the things we experience as we travel our journey. There is no map or even a sign to point us in the right direction. We are simply left to figure it out as we go.

The pieces we discover along the way are random—sometimes they fit, and sometimes they don’t. Most of the time, the pieces make sense. We can see their colors and shape, where they fit—and how—as soon as we discover them. Their edges slide seamlessly into the bigger picture. Sometimes, the pieces are here for a time, and then we discover that their angles are too sharp, their picture is too dark, or the color disrupts the environmet we are creating. And every now and then, we acquire a piece we don’t want, that absolutely doesn’t fit, but we are forced to make it fit. We must do the work to smooth the edges and reshape the experience, so we can work it into our lives and find a place where it not only fits but somehow enhances the whole.

As we move through life picking up pieces, we need to remain open to possibilities, and we need to draw upon the vast array of resources we have accumulated. The more of life we have traveled and the more experiences we’ve endured, the closer we may be to figuring out how to proceed with the next piece—unexpected or not—that we stumble upon. If we are having difficulty with one piece or other, we can lean on those around us for support. They may have dealt with a similar piece, and they can share how they eventually got it to fit in their own puzzle.

No, there is no guide to this on-going challenge we call life. But with patience, persistence, a lot of work, and a little bit of luck, all of the pieces will eventually fall into place in a way that is far more beautiful than you could ever imagine.