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Until I made a conscious decision to be brave I had no idea how much fear played a role in my life.

Fear is a big deal and it is constantly at play.

Learning how to dance with fear is one of the most important life skills you can have.

It’s surprising to see how many people are making decisions based on fear. The decision is never to go when fear is involved, it is alswsys to stop.

The next time you are stopping, or not going, check yourself. Fear will be in the drivers seat.

You don’t have to stop because of fear. As a matter of fact if you are scared it’s a sign you should be going ahead, not stopping.

I’m not one for small talk. I don’t usually want to talk about the weather, but for today’s blog I’m going to make an exception.

For several reasons the weather that we are enjoying these days seems extra good.

It’s better than any spring weather I can remember having in a long time.

I feel like we have really earned some nicer weather.

Or maybe we just have less activities to run to and we have more opportunity to appreciate it.

Either way, I’m grateful for better weather.

Anything that’s a little bit better is worth celebrating… more now than ever.

I guess the weather isn’t really small talk after all.

It’s not easy to see yourself clearly and often you don’t.

You resist moving forward and don’t know why, or maybe you are emotional about something without understanding where the emotion is coming from.

You are never “just emotional”. There is always a deeper reason.

We are always the one causing ourselves the most pain, holding ourselves back, sabotaging our progress, and derailing our best laid plans.

It takes effort to get to know yourself. You have to be willing to see how you are the same as the people you don’t like, and what is motivating your actions.

You need to listen to the words your speaking, dig into the emotions you’re feeling, and start to identify your triggers.

We are not random. Everything you feel, and every action you take has a deeper reason. The sooner you get in touch with yourself, the sooner you can begin to create your life rather than have life happen to you.

In my mastermind group a couple of weeks ago, one of our members asked, “if you were going to be gone in 3 months, what is the one thing you would have to do for the world? What’s the thing you would be disappointed if you didn’t teach or share that might change someone else’s lives?”

He was asking about Must-Dos.

I only learned about these this year when my sister and I went to New York in the spring.

She is the planner in the family and had been to New York before so I was happy to do whatever she wanted to do.

One morning she looked right at me and said, “what are your Must-Dos?”

“Uhhh” a little bit of panic set in, “go to Central Park?” Seemed like the right thing to do for a country girl and we were already doing broadway, the Empire State Building and had seen lady Liberty.

The question stumped me.

I always go to the restaurant someone else chooses. I always shop (or not) in the stores someone else picks. I always do whatever someone else wants and I’m usually fine with that.

It was a pretty big deal for me to even be in New York at all.

Until my sister asked me what my Must-dos were, I hadn’t even thought about them. Nobody had ever asked me before, including myself.

If we hadn’t gone to Central Park, I would have been disappointed. They were inside of me, but I wasn’t listening.

Must-do’s. Not the same as a bucket list. The must-dos are the things that make a bucket list feel complete.

They are that little things or the big things you feel inside.

When we start listening to them and we stop numbing them with niceties they begin to have a voice.

Listening to them doesn’t mean that you will become over bearing or controlling… it means you will feel validated, fulfilled and complete because you didn’t leave a piece of you wishing for a little bit more.

It’s worth figuring out because the must-dos are what make you feel complete.

Who do you need to talk to?

What do you need to see?

Where do you need to go?

What experience do you need to have?

What do you need to try?

What do you need to create?

What change do you need to make?

You have to do the thing inside your heart.

That’s where must-dos come from.

“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.

You have to pay your electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.” – Cheryl Strayed

My emotions are always at the surface right now.

There hasn’t been a day go by in weeks where I don’t cry.

That is how I used to be as a child, I considered myself a professional. I’m pretty darn good at it until it turns into an ugly cry…. then it’s just ugly. The red distorted snotty faced crying still needs to be done in private.

I’ve wondered if I should be judging all of the tears that have been flowing.

Is it good or bad that I’m crying so much?

I know that tears soften us. They provide an emotional release, they heal, and they speak a thousand words.

When my sisters baby passed away 13 years ago we had one visitor who came to visit but never cried with us or showed any emotion. And I learned that sometimes not crying is very strange.

I have wondered all of the reasons why my tears flow so easily right now. I feel a direct connection with my heart every single time. Sometimes I’m crying because my heart hurts, sometimes it’s touched, sometimes it’s bursting with pride, and sometimes it’s relating to another’s journey, or trying to imagine what another’s journey might be.

I read this quote by Pema Chodron and finally realized this must be how compassion feels.

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

This was a pretty stark realization for me.

When I learned that I could only love others to the extent that I loved myself I started on a path towards loving myself more.

It didn’t take long to realize I had to learn about forgiveness and compassion towards myself in order to love fully myself.

As I started to work towards forgiving myself, I was able to find forgiveness for others.

But I was still searching for compassion, wanting to lean into it and really understand compassion and how it works.

I’ve been in an intense training program and didn’t realize it.

I’m learning compassion from the ground up.

It carries a lot of emotion with it for me right now and I’m wondering if it will always make me cry or if I will be able to assimilate the big feelings that comes with it as I learn more about it.

If you see me crying in public don’t panic, rest assured I’m simply taking part in my intensive compassion training.

I was 2 months pregnant with my daughter when my sisters baby passed away.

7 months later when my baby girl was born I was a hot mess.

She was my third child, and my other 2 children were vibrant and healthy. Up until that point I had been a very laid back mom. (Maybe too laid back in some ways).

But when you watch a sweet baby who has had a wonderful start to life, the very best care, and so much love in his life … take his last breath… it changes you forever.

There is no explanation for it. No matter how hard you try you can’t make sense of why a baby who was so healthy could stop breathing.

I was breastfeeding, or should I say I was trying to breastfeed her. My other 2 babies. had thrived from the start. They were born big and gained weight significantly. They were full of decisions baby fat rolls.

But my daughter had lost an alarming 2 pounds by her first 2 week checkup. Things were going the wrong direction and my midwives sent me to a lactation consultant to help me.

I remember feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to calm her down, I couldn’t figure out how to feed her… I didn’t know how to keep her safe.

The lactation consultant was a very beautiful and soul full lady of colour. I loved her instantly. She had a strong, motherly energy to her.

Immediately she picked up on the fact that there was something else going on. And asked me point blank what it could be.

I told her.

Up until that point I hadn’t internalized how I felt about losing my nephew. I wasn’t about to make that about me when my sister had lost her baby. What she was going through was unimaginable to me.

My lactation consultant helped me to see how my baby was ok. And she encouraged me to calm down. And she made me feed her every two hours around the clock to make sure she started gaining weight.

The point of all of this is that feeding my baby wasn’t the problem, and yet that’s how the problem was manifesting.

That’s what happens when we don’t deal with our triggers and emotional pain.

We don’t let ourselves process what has happened to us for one reason or another.

My reason was because my loss seemed so insignificant compared to my sisters loss, I still had my babies… but there are so many other reasons you might not allow yourself to process it.

And left alone, those triggers cause you to manifest mental health issues as you ignore the real issue and control the areas of your life that you can.

Sweeping your fears, triggers, ugly emotions, and triggers under the rug only force them to show up in other ways.

So leave judgement at the door and get talking. Get your people talking.

And know that you are helping yourself and others by just letting the words escape you.

Bring strong doesn’t mean being silent.

I made a bit of history for myself the other day by doing something I have never done before.

I facilitated a magic class.

Sounds fun right?

I called it a Self Awareness class because that’s what we were going to talk about, but that doesn’t even begin to cover all of what happens when you bring a powerhouse group of people together.

It was something I have been wanting to do for a while but couldn’t see my way through it. I am learning that before I can follow my heart, I have to spend a lot of time getting out of my own way. Almost all of 2017 was spent trying to do that.

I had no idea how many beliefs and obstacles I had to unwind, undo, and jump over before I could move forward. I struggled with a topic, I struggled with a location, I struggled with content, and I battled with my own self worth and ego and all of the resistance inside of me that was strong enough to bring me to tears several times.

It’s way harder to do something you care about than something you don’t because of all of the what-ifs.

I waited for someone to tell me what to do… but when they tried to give me suggestions my resistance was so strong I kept telling them why it wouldn’t work.

But guess what? When I got through all of that…it worked.

And it worked better than I could have ever imagined it would. You can’t begin to predict all of the moments, the stories, the connections, and the magic that happens when you bring people together.

In the end, all of my fears were unfounded and all of the resistance was unnecessary.

It wasn’t about me at all… it’s really never about us is it?

I was simply the facilitator.

Self awareness was the subject.

But the evening itself was a conduit to a magical world where energy flows, hearts open, and we all learn a little bit more about who we are, why we are here, and where we might be going next.

I am going to do this same class again on Monday, February 5. It’s better if you sign up early. I send emails with challenges leading up to our 2 hours together. The challenges give us a common thread and bring our energy together before we meet, it’s part of the magic.

I hope you’ll join us as we make history again. You can sign up using this link.

I hope you find a way to move forward in your life. To make a piece of history for yourself. To do something that challenges you to overcome your limiting beliefs, jump your hurdles, remove your obstacles, erase your what-ifs and find out that in the end it was never about you.

Because that is what the journey is all about.

Before I started this blog, I had another blog about our family.

I enjoyed telling the stories and sharing our experiences, but it was difficult to upload pictures, we didn’t have iPhones back then.

Life was busy and I always back burnered all of the things I wanted to do.

I went through a lot of soul searching before starting this blog.

I asked several questions… What did I know?  What was I good at?  Where was my value?  What lit me up?

All of the answers I was given at that time pointed me back to personal development.  I had been voraciously learning and working on becoming a better version of myself for as long as I could remember.

At that time I knew I wanted to teach what I was learning.  The changes I was making were nothing short of miraculous.  It would be selfish keep all of the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding I had gained to myself.

I held 3 separate self awareness groups.  Two groups met only once, and the third group continued to meet for 2 years.  That group was instrumental in helping me see how this work could make incredible changes in other peoples lives.

They saw the world differently, they became aware of their patterns, beliefs, and values and some of their lives did a complete 180 in the process.

In the two years of teaching that group I have learned so much new material, because for me, the learning never stops.  This workshop has the most powerful of those lessons in it.

I am thrilled at the way the work has come together, it has stretched me in new ways and taught me at a whole new level – I am positive that it will change lives.  And that is my goal.

Our society has been built on scarcity, fear mongering, mistrust, greed, and every man for himself.

But I refuse to live in a world that operates that way.

So this workshop has been intentionally built with as much heart, love, generosity, and and wisdom as I could bring.  These 8 weeks will change us in ways that none of us can predict or can imagine.

I literally can not wait to see what happens.

Don’t be fooled by the name of the workshop, you don’t have to be broken to join.  You just have to be curious about where your life can go from here and what you are capable of.

Don’t put yourself on the back burner, give yourself these 8 weeks.

Registration ends tomorrow www.starpasser.com/workshop.

P.S.  If you don’t think you need to do this kind of work, maybe go read this post.

It’s June 1st. What has happened to us this year?

Like really. What is happening?

Talking with a good friend last night who has a story similar to mine and he said, “I’ve been through so much that I have confidence I can get through anything”

I would have said the same thing at one time.

Life is a rollercoaster of ups and downs. And boy haven’t we had our share of those this year?

I can’t even remember all of the things but I remember talks of war at the beginning of the year, then a pandemic, NASA reported aliens, now racial wars and looting in the states.

I’m not going to lie, it’s affecting me. I’ve been here before, and yet I’m full of anxiety.

The good news is I have the tools. I can be uncomfortable and keep moving forward.

I can be afraid and keep my heart open.

I can be uncertain and brave at the same time.

Because I know it’s all going to be ok.

I am just overwhelmed and over stimulated. But I can evidence and know that everything is ok because everything is always ok. Even if it doesn’t feel that way.

Just for today I want you to know that everything is ok, and everything is always going to be ok.

The situation, the circumstances, and the environment might be telling you different sometimes… but we are built to survive – and thrive.

And everything is ok.

Happy June 1st. Let’s do this.

Progress brings us happiness.

It’s how we are hardwired. We are happy when things are moving forward.

How that shakes out for you might look different than it does for someone else, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that you are consistently moving forward and making progress.

That alone will bring you happiness.

Just for today take a step forward. You don’t have to know every step, and you don’t need to see the whole journey. As things unfold they change, so trying to plan everything is a waste of time.

All you need is a new idea to move forward. That might come from a conversation, a video, an interview, or a book.

Then you take the step

Continuously be looking for the next step and you will make progress.

You don’t have to do a complete overhaul of your life if you aren’t thrilled with it.

Often a complete overhaul sounds too big and risky and the idea leaves you feeling overwhelmed and trapped.

If you aren’t ready to make a big leap, just start with small upgrades.

You can remove items from your house that you don’t use or love.

You can clean out your closet.

You can have a conversation that will clear the air.

You can journal until your head clears.

You can food prep for the week.

Upgrade on a small scale.

Every time you make things better, things get a little better.

Sometimes just feeling better is the only upgrade you need.

I am ok with being asked a zillion questions everyday. It’s part of my job, and lots of days the door is revolving all day long with a new person and a new question. This typically doesn’t bother me.

If one person asks me a question that triggers me, I might try to squash the uneasy feelings. As the day goes on and I’m being asked more questions, my knee jerk reaction might be to stop all of the questions and the story in my head might be “I can’t get my work done”.

I probably can’t get my work done and that is typical with my revolving door.

But the real truth is once I’ve been triggered by something, I’m not ok, and all I want to do is hide in my office doing my paperwork.

There are all sorts of triggers when you work in a family business. (The good news is, we do pretty well at family dinners and holiday gatherings because we are clearing all sorts of issues all of the time and now have a pretty healthy relationship with each other.)

It never helps to hide from it, squash it, or run from it. If you squash it, and pretend you aren’t triggered, you are asking for it to resurface again and it will probably do so at a very inopportune time.

It’s always better to take a few moments to understand your triggers and why you’re feeling the way you do.

Once you bring light to why you felt so strongly, you will feel better. Light heals, and understanding helps you make better, less reactionary, choices.

Next step is the underlying beliefs that cause the trigger.

Added perk? You will be triggered less often and understand others better. This creates healthier relationships.

It’s not fun, but it’s all worth it.

You won’t be able to predict the outcomes.

You can’t possibly know what other people will choose, what will resonate with them, or what is going to work.  It is too complicated and has too many moving parts.

Trying to figure out the best option before you start will paralyze you and send you into a spiral of self doubt and fear.

You can’t know what you don’t know.

There are endless options, variations, and things you can do.  Don’t let decision fatigue set in.

Make a choice.

Then take action.

The only way to know what is going to work is to try it and see if you get the results you are looking for… just make sure you know what you are looking for and how you will know if its working.

Shortly after my husband and I separated, my son had his annual hockey tournament that we had always attended as a family and made into a little holiday.

This time I was taking the kids by myself, we were flying there and taking a rental vehicle to the resort where the team stayed.

I was a nervous wreck. We hadn’t been able to afford many holidays outside of hockey, so this was only the second time the kids had even been on a plane. Even though I was a stay at home Mom who looked after the kids, venturing out into the world with them was daunting and I was so afraid of everything that could go wrong.  I can very clearly remember the pit in the bottom of my stomach and my shaky legs for most of the trip.

I was so not ok, but I knew the only way through it was through it.

One morning the boys had hockey fairly early.  We loaded up the rental vehicle in the underground parkade and as I backed out I turned the wheel and scraped and damaged the whole side of the vehicle down a support pole that was at the back corner of my parking stall.

It was one of those moments where you are barely able to do life as it is…and one more thing goes very wrong. On top of that, I opted out of insurance when I took the rental (there is no good explanation for why I did that).

Oprah calls these God whispers.  You get a little nudge here that you didn’t listen to, and a little nudge there that you don’t pay attention to, and it happens over and over until finally something big enough happens, some sort of ‘accident’ that gets your attention.

I missed all of the little nudges because I was barely functioning… that in itself was a sign I should have been doing some inner excavating.  But I didn’t know how to feel ok then.  I had lived in turmoil, fear and anxiety for so long by that point that I had completely lost my sense of connection with myself and feeling at peace in my own skin…my North Star.

I look back at the person I was 5 years ago, barely functioning, always on high alert, constantly on damage control and in an acute state of stress and I’m so glad I chose her.  I’m so glad someone finally told me life isn’t supposed to be lived like that. I’m so glad I believed happiness was out there.  I’m so glad I finally decided my life was important enough to create one that feels right for me.

Being brave and showing up for life, and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is possible and fun when you are coming from a place of peace and calm inside. When you know your North Star and can always find your way back, then growth and adventure is terrifyingly exciting, instead of horribly terrifying.

If you don’t know where your North Star is anymore, I promise you it still exists and it’s worth seeking out and staying aligned with it.  The cleaner and clearer you live, the easier it is to align.

If you are lucky enough to know it and are aligned with it, then now is the time to experiment.  Try new things, do what scares you, live a life that’s larger than you, work on your legacy, share your voice, meet new people, learn something new, take a class and let yourself be changed.

Once you know your way back to your North Star you know that you can always find connection, inner peace, and okayness inside yourself no matter what happens.  It will always guide you.  There is no greater power than that.  You will be unstoppable and can begin to create the life you have always dreamed of.

Last year for April first I played a fun April’s fools trick on my readers. We all had a pretty good laugh. (You can revisit it here if you want).

I am not going to lie, I wish March was a giant April fools joke.

I am not afraid of sickness, in fact I believe it makes us stronger. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy being sick… I’m a terrible stick person.

But every natural recovery builds a stronger immune system.

A stronger immune system means a faster recovery every time.

Stronger is always better.

Our society as a whole has been warned about obesity, and the rise of diabetes, and heart disease. We have been warned about our poor health.

And we haven’t listened.

We eat too much processed foods, we get too little exercise, and we live far away from our roots and the land.

The joke is on us this year.

We all know that what we focus on expands, so it makes me wonder why we are texting for sickness, reporting infections, and counting the deaths.

If everyone had been focusing on wellness before now their immune systems would be strong and things would be different.

We can’t change the past, but we can start right now to improve the moment we are in.

If we are seeking health and wellness, that is what we need to focus on.

Could we be testing for health and wildly reporting those numbers instead?

Who do we talk to about this?

I think it would make all of the difference.

The question is, would anyone listen?

In her book, A Path Made Clear, Oprah talks about the doubters that tried to tell her she wouldn’t be able to pull off her Leadership School for Girls in Africa.  She replied to one particular reporter who was giving her a hard time about it, 

“Don’t bet against me.  You can not defeat someone who knows who they truly are.  I know who I am and why I am truly doing this, so I would not bet against me.”

You can not defeat someone who knows who they truly are.   I believe this to be true.

The storms of life teach us who we truly are.  You don’t figure that out when life is easy and things are rolling because you are deceived into thinking you have everything figured out.  

You sort yourself out when things are hard, but when the stakes are so high that giving up isn’t an option.

That is when your beliefs, your conditioning, and your behaviour programs are showing up in full force.  

That is when everyone else is trying to tell you who you are.

That is when you get to choose who you want to be and how you are going to show up.

And when you figure out that you have a power within you that is guiding you, and you align your intention (why you are doing what you are doing) with it, you can not be defeated.  

And once you get a taste of it, you can apply it everywhere in your life.

The stakes are always high, you just might not see it yet.

If there was something covid taught us it’s that we don’t like too much uncertainty in our lives.

A little bit is good because if everything is predictable we get bored… but it doesn’t take long to tip the scale and be too much.

No matter what else is happening in our life and no matter how much we want what is happening… everything becomes overshadowed if there is too much uncertainty.

And then we start to become resistant to life.

And while we are resistant to life, we don’t realize we have almost everything we want. Its all hidden by the uncertainty we are feeling.

In order to combat this it’s good to take inventory of the things in your life that you have and want.

You will find that almost everything you have, you want to have.

Say yes to all of those things.

Open your heart and yes to life.

Say out loud, I want this over and over until you feel your energy start to shift.

The energy of yes is so much lighter, willing, and accepting than the energy of no.

Want the life you have and want the things you have in your life and the life force will begin to flow through you.