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Travelling has never been important to me. I’m a homebody and I was always tremendously homesick as a kid, so being away from home and the animals was not fun for me.

The horse shows I attended were days long at a time and we would stay wherever it was, but otherwise I was always happiest in my own bed and under my own roof.

You hear people say they need a break, they need to relax, and they need to get away. Most of this never made sense to this homebody, and being a stay at home mom for many years I usually took my work with me, so that wasn’t applicable either.

On the trips I did take I considered myself a bad traveller. I was permanently exhausted, and didn’t feel well most of the time. I assumed it was flying or the change in altitude that beat me up.

I still carried lots of anxiety about leaving home and being away from home.

In the last 7 years I have travelled more than ever. Sometimes all alone (which used to terrify me) and some times with amazing people.

Work has me jet setting a couple of times per year, and I have also taken the odd holiday. The more I travel the better I learn how to manage my energy and the more I see the benefit.

I heard on a podcast with Brian Chesky, founder of Airbnb, that when you leave your comfort zone in the first 48 hours of going somewhere, it creates the most memorable trips. The kind where a small part of you dies and is reborn into a newer version.

Experience is what changes us.

If you need to recreate yourself, the more experiences you have, the more recreating you get to do.

We don’t pay much attention to our everyday reactions in our usual routines. But when you are in a new place, with new stimulus, and new choices forcing new decisions, you start to get some insight into what makes you tick, what scares you, where you feel vulnerable and where you are really secure.

Since learning that I have tried to do ALL of the things when I go somewhere.

See what I want to see. Do everything I can think of doing. And really be present.

I turns out I am having the best trips, even to some of the places I’ve been several times before.

As you go about your holidays this year, try new things.

Pay attention to what excites you, and what drains you.

Get out of your comfort zone.

And see who you are beyond the everyday hum drum of life.

You don’t have to go far, you just have to go beyond where you’re comfortable.

It will be worth it, I promise.

I can see an evolution within myself.

When I was young, and until quite recently, I was afraid of authority. I was called to the principals office once in junior high because someone wrote a nasty note and signed my name on it. I remember it like it was yesterday. My knees, hands and voice were shaking, my mouth was dry, and I had a lump in my stomach.

I became a doormat in my marriage. I hated confrontation, I’m not a fighter, and becoming apathetic was the only way I knew how to keep the peace. I didn’t speak up. The only time I stood up for anything was when my momma bear came raging forth. There ain’t no controlling my momma bear.

In the last 5 years I feel like I’ve become an entirely different person.

It started with not rolling over when someone spoke harshly to me. I learned to separate who I was from who I was being told I was.

I worked at being on the high road and not allowing myself to stoop to someone else’s level. I decided the type of person I wanted to be, and I stopped allowing others behaviour to direct that. I learned that how they treated me was their choice and the type of person they wanted to be…I had a choice too. I wasn’t going to be like them…no matter what.

Slowly I started to realize that when you continuously choose the high road, one day it magically changes and the high ground begins to hold you up. The more you choose it, the easier it becomes to choose.

Over time, being on personal high ground and choosing the high road turned into a question as to why others weren’t doing the same. I started to stand up for fair treatment and doing the right thing. It surprised me to realize I had a voice that was heard when I used it from a place of high ground.

This has been morphing into a new realization for me. I’m finally starting to understand how important it is to do the right thing and stand up for the right thing instead of just remain quiet.

To stand by and watch, or ignore bad behaviour is almost the same as doing it yourself.

To allow a bully to continue to control a situation simply because I don’t like confrontation is another way for me to hide.

If I’m not part of the solution, I’m part of the problem.

I never used to be able to see a solution when I came up against strong, dominant or authority figures.

I have learned that love wins. It might take a little longer, but it’s a whole lot more powerful than any other force I’ve seen. When I’m faced with a tough person or a hard situation I am learning to ask the question, “how does love win here?”

The more I ask that question, the more I find ways to be better at responding with love.

You can sure tell the difference when I forget to ask the question, because love is definitely not the easy or natural response, but it is who I am choosing to be.

Plus … I like winning.

At my very first appointment with my therapist/intuitive energy lady, she talked about how we each have our own mountain and how I was never living on mine, I was always on someone else’s.  

Life is so interwoven with experiences, people, ideas, triumph and struggle it was hard to understand what was my mountain and what wasn’t, and it took me a while to sort out consciously what exactly she was referring to.
5 years later I’m still sorting it out… I just realized I’m back on everyone else’s mountain again. 

Our path is on our mountain. That’s where we are heading, it’s our truth, our dreams, and our hearts desires. When we are on our path we are intrinsically motivated, up at 5:55 am instead of 6:00, excited for life, and feeling fulfilled. 

But our path isn’t a straight line, it’s full of crooks and valleys, rain and snow, obstacles and injury.  

All of the things we have struggled through to get where we are, everything we have built, pieced together, created, and come out of the other side of, combined with our path forward make our mountain.

Sometimes when my mountain seems too easy or seems too hard, I will move onto someone else’s mountain.  Lots of times when someone else is really struggling, I will jump over to their mountain, and sometimes I will unintentionally be lured onto someone else’s mountain.

Getting onto their mountain is easy for me… I can jump, run, skip, fly and teleport there.

Getting off their mountain, and back onto mine is hard… but the universe helps me out when I need it. It makes the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easier.  

It turns my mountain into a priority by throwing curveballs, creating struggle, or affecting my health. Pretty soon I have no choice but to get back on or things will implode… and I don’t like implosions.  

So here I am, recovering from sickness and quite a few days of curveballs, getting back on my own mountain and back on my path, and things are starting to fall into place again.

Your love language rules a huge part of your emotional life.

When you are feeling loved and handing out love, you are on top of the world and you feel invincible, creative, and you can be your best self.  I’m quite certain love is the antidote to almost everything.

When you aren’t feeling loved you feel bitter, resentful, and angry.

Someone who doesn’t understand your love language can bring up those feelings in you completely unintentionally.

You can have a mixture of love languages, or you can be very strong in one, but not the others.

One of my stronger love languages is Acts of Service.  This means I express love by doing things for other people.  Cooking a big thanksgiving dinner is one of them.

And when I do my Acts of Service it makes sense to me that other people will feel really loved by all of my dedication and hard work to prep the meal.   It seems to me that when they get there, they will be pitching in and helping out and in my mind it will become a lovely team effort and we all feel very loved and grateful by the end.

But not everyone has the same love language as I do.  When we come together and I keep doing all of the work by myself I start to feel unloved and I feeling angry and resentful.  Out of this resentment and brewing anger, I might say something unkind to someone who’s love language is Words of Affirmation.

The person who’s love language is Words of Affirmation has probably been cheering me on the whole way because that is how they show love – I haven’t even noticed it because I’m busy showing love by doing the Act of Service.  Now they begin to feel angry and resentful because I didn’t affirm them and tell them they were so great because I don’t think they are that great if they aren’t helping me.

Pretty soon we are all just a touch angry and  bit resentful and nobody is feel thankful and we go home exhausted and upset with each other.

But once you know your love language you can begin to see how these situations play out.

You can honor your love language once you know what it is.  Then you can make choices based on how much love you want to dish out, instead of trying to receive love in return.

You can take a quiz to find yours out here.  I’ve learned mine and others by simply paying attention to when I feel loved and when I feel resentment.  Quite often this is simply a love language at work, or a love language miscommunication.

Vows, beliefs, and promises are all made up of words that have a strong energetic bond and create chords between you and another person, or situation.

They are hard to undo.

You may hear them, say them, think them, or write them, but they are never to be taken lightly.

They matter and your life will begin to form around them – sometimes in a good way, and sometimes in a an unhealthy way.

They can trap you into a place that doesn’t serve you and leave you feeling stuck.

But they can also give you the strength you need to move forward creating a new life if you use them properly.

Sorting out your priorities and then making a promise to fulfill them in alignment with your values will give you a solid foundation for change.

Make sure you include vow to yourself about not breaking your promises, not betraying yourself, and not letting anything or anyone derail you.

This is your life, it is your responsibility to live it to the fullest.  Nobody can or will do it for you.

Stephen Covey said, “most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply“.

Once you see this tendency in yourself, you will see how common it is. When you have an agenda or you’re trying to make a point with someone else it shows up. Some people only engage in conversation when they have an agenda.

Listening well builds trust and connection, which is the foundation of meaningful relationships. Listening is a skill, and like any skill it needs to be practiced and honed in on.

When you become good at it, you will see others who are good as well.

When someone is really listening to me, I can see it in their eyes. Their eyes soften and they are tuned into you.

The best listeners I’ve ever met are animals… but they didn’t listen to me until I started listening to them. I think there is a something to be learned from that.

20 years ago my counsellor told me that a large part of my human struggle was my lack of boundaries.

I had no idea what she meant.

She probably mentioned it in 2 or 3 different sessions until I finally asked what a boundary was exactly. She tried to describe this completely abstract term to me because even the definition was somewhat perplexing. I seemed to have no frame of reference whatsoever.

She recommended Melody Beattie’s book, Codependent No More, and sent me on my way. I read her book and then spent the next 20 years trying to figure it all out and apply boundaries in my life.

Boundaries were hard to set. I lived in scarcity and felt like all I had was all there was. I was afraid that when I told someone ‘no’ they would feel rejection and it would result in loss. I would lose a friend, a spouse, or an opportunity. When you live in scarcity the fear of loss is amplified 1000 fold and you need expert level boundary setting skills… I had none.

Fast forward to today. I believe in abundance, and spend most of my time living abundantly. I am learning that people, feelings, ideas, and things are in great supply, you simply need to choose what you want to hold space for, allow it to work it’s magic, and then follow the path that connects you. I believe that every thought, every person, and every thing in my life holds space, and letting something go creates open space that will once again be filled.

This makes boundary setting so much easier. There is no fear of loss, there is nothing personal and no emotional charge attached, there is simply the choice of whether this particular energy is aligned with where I’m heading, if it doesn’t, I let it go and search and allow for what does.

On the flip side, I’ve learned relationships are easier when someone opposite of me has clear boundaries for me to follow. I don’t want to overstep, cause harm, or operate in someone’s territory that hurts them or takes them off of their path in life. All of my relationships are partnerships, and they aren’t parasitic. We each survive independently, but understand we can do better together. When someone doesn’t have clear boundaries with me I spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out their boundary myself in order to respect their journey.

My counsellor was right. It’s been a journey. I’m certain neither of us understood how long it would take me to figure this much out, and as I sit here and write it all down even I’m impressed with how far I’ve come. If only she could see me now… 🙂

There is so much talk about gratitude.

Be grateful for what you have.

You can’t be angry and be grateful

Gratitude turns what you have into enough.

Write a gratitude journal and it will change your life.

Its true.  Gratitude can change a bad attitude into a good one almost instantaneously,

Its important.

But even gratitude has a bit of a dark side.

Gratitude can turn into a way of hiding… we can find any number of ways to hide from life, and we need to always be aware of how we are avoiding showing up.

If you dampen the fire inside of you that wants more from life, the fire that sparks you to get up and get going, the fire that keeps you working towards the life you dream of and overcoming obstacles, and pushing through resistance, you are hiding.

If you choose to dampen that fire with gratitude, and tell yourself you need to be grateful for what you have instead of wanting more… you are hiding behind gratitude.

And while that gratitude will keep you from feeling bad – it will also keep you from moving forward… and you become stuck.

Yes, its important to be grateful for everything – but it is ok to seek better.  It is actually an important part of the human condition.  Our happiness is derived from progress and the way to progress it to strive for better.

Make things better – there is always room for improvement.

Then be grateful for every step forward, every insight, every gift, and lesson learned along the way because they show you are making progress.

And progress is what its all about.

I don’t like masks.

I like to smile at people and I like it when they smile back

I like to read facial expressions.

I like fresh air.

And I like to hear what you’re saying to me.

I do not like masks. That is all.

While I was scrolling on Facebook this morning I came across a blog post from Tara Mohr.

She refers to a quote that she had come across from Otto Scharmer,

“The future arrives first as a feeling”

Tara said, “though you can’t name it yet, you can softly carry the future that is arriving within you”.

I thought that would make an excellent “just for today” post… so here we are.

Just for today softly carry the future that is arriving with you by feeling what you will feel when it arrives.

Today is Canada’s birthday, it’s a great day to look forward and feel the vision of your future.

Also today marks the half way point of 2019. It’s a great time to revisit the plans you made at the beginning of the year, and feel the reward of accomplishment, or the feelings you will have when you get there.

Happy birthday beautiful Canada!

“With great power comes great responsibility”, and just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

As I’ve watched my teenage children become adults I’ve noticed that they gain so much more power as they grow up.

Yet they don’t realize that’s what’s happening.

I didn’t realize it when I was growing up.

Having the power to make life choices for yourself comes with a responsibility to make the best choice you can.

Researching the options, weighing the pros and cons, and being thoughtful about how your choices affect others begins to matter more and more.

We are all so oblivious about the power we hold… and then one day you start to realize the power you have. And then you should start paying attention to the responsibility that comes with it.

Your power is forever growing.

Have you realized it yet?

Einstein has been quoted as saying, “insanity is the definition of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.  (I don’t think this is actually his quote, but that is definitely how it is recognized)

We must all be insane.

We keep trying to do the same thing we have always done and hope that things change… or we do the exact opposite of what we have always done and hope for the best.  But we are still coming from the same place with the same intention.

Einstein also said you can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.

This is so true!   Especially with the hard problems, the ones that have us backed tightly into a corner or seem impossible to solve.

If you aren’t aware of energy, vibration, and don’t have a sense for the levels – this might sound like mumbo jumbo, and you certainly won’t be able to see how to get to a new level, but I can tell you, once you really start to hone in on it – its real.

How do you get to a new level?

If you focus on the problem, you will never find a solution.  As soon as you stop thinking about the problem, and start thinking about the solution, you start to shift.  But that’s not enough.

You learn.

You seek out new ways of doing things.  You ask questions.  You look for what the people before you have done.  You pay attention to what works.

You stay humble.

Assuming you know stops growth.  You probably don’t know and the sooner you admit that to yourself, the sooner you can start searching for whats possible.

Knowledge is the precursor to experience.  The only thing you need to know is that there is a problem, and you need to become a different person (in a small or significant way) to solve it.

Things don’t always go as planned. In fact they almost never go as planned.

If you have a plan to keep you moving but learn to roll with the punches there is a far better chance that you’ll end up somewhere new and better.

Attachment to your ideas, plans, people, and outcomes will drag you down. Quickly.

Staying unattached is the key. It sounds easy, but it’s not. I’m learning there is a big difference between simple and easy.

Not allowing yourself to get wrapped up in how things are supposed to look, see, or feel is hard. You can never be sure “this” is the only way or that “this” way is the best way,

You can’t possibly know what is best because there are so many factors at play that you can’t see.

I decided to make the best out of whatever happens and there have been times that it felt like what was happening was the complete opposite of good.

But I kept faith in the process of life, remained humble, and kept moving forward.

It turns out that things happen, and the less you resist what is happening, the more you can make the best of it. The hard part is to keep moving forward in faith that it will be ok in the end.

Quite often our strengths also show up as our weaknesses.

I see this in so many different ways.

My strong and persistent drive to continuously better myself can also come at a cost.

Because I am so driven to be better, I will obsess over what’s wrong in order to correct it.

When our strength shows up as our weakness it’s because we have taken something that is good and started operating it from a negative point of view.

This will trap you in dysfunctional and toxic situations.

It’s better to just keep your eye on where you’re going.

If my goal is to be the best version of myself, then obsessing over what’s wrong with me only brings me down.

Let your strengths be your strengths.

I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast one day with Cheryl Strayed, she is the author of Torch, and Wild, Tiny Beautiful Things, and Brave Enough.

She also teaches a writing class she was talking about on the podcast.  

In her writing class the first assignments she hands out is to write about your darkest teacher.

I loved this for so many reasons, one of them being that to consider the dark moments in life as teaching moments sheds a whole new light on those moments.

So I sent an email to my email list asking them who their darkest teacher was and what did they learn from it.
The responses I’ve been getting are beautiful. 

“I realized I am who I am today because of those moments.”

“I learned I am enough for whatever life sends my way.”

“The truth is, I’m glad they happened to me. Because if not, how would I know I could survive?”

Some of us choose to walk into the storm and for others, the storm descends upon us.

When I knowingly walked into my storm it was because I couldn’t live the way I was living anymore…and it was a mighty big storm.

But the price of living unhappily, feeling like something is missing, feeling alone and unheard is too high.

I promise you, happiness exists for all of us on the other side of the storm.

It will become your darkest teacher, and you will become a stronger, and wiser person because of it, in ways you can’t even imagine right now.

Don’t be afraid of the storm it will teach you how to become the person you are meant to be.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” – Haruki Murakami

I’m pretty sure I became a door mat.   

I didn’t mean to.   

I certainly didn’t want to.  I mean, nobody aspires to grow up and become a door mat.   But I lost my voice.  

I didn’t feel heard, so I quit talking.  

I didn’t feel supported, so I quit dreaming.  

I didn’t feel understood, so I stopped expressing.  

I didn’t feel connected, so I stopped connecting.   

I became a referee instead of staying in the game.  

I let down and hurt the people who cared about me, because I didn’t stand my ground or speak my truth.

I was too busy putting out everyone else’s fires to tend to the burning desire inside of me.  

I didn’t take ownership for how I was feeling, I just accepted it as my life.  

And then one day I realized I was now a doormat.  

I began to wonder where the strong, confident young adult I used to be went, and began the quest to find her again. 

You know what I found?   

Something even better…I found myself again. 

The self I was before, but a bit scarred up with some grey hairs and a heart that is broken open. 

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” – Nelson Mandela 

I learned that sometimes we have to go away a bit to fully appreciate what we already had.  

I don’t know how the word “deserve” plays into our existence.

I don’t think any one person deserves anything more than another. How do you make sense of us living in a first world country while others don’t have access to clean water. That has nothing to do with deserving.

We get carried away in our relationships thinking we deserve better than what we are getting and this thought pattern makes us angry, like we are receiving less than a normal human experience.

But the human experience is different, and the same, for all of us.

It’s about our journey and the lessons we need to evolve. None of those lessons are deserved. They just are.

The lessons in the journey exist to stretch us, to overcome our limits, our fears, and our ego, and to help us move closer to understanding our own power.

The lessons are not punishment.

Life is not trying to take you down, it’s asking you to rise.