Category: personal growth

programming

I am still amazed at how this works. It’s almost like magic, really. This is what I have come to determine. I can manifest stuff. I can change my programming. I can make things happen. I can write my own story. I can change my life. I can make things better.

The clincher is that with some stuff, I need to be patient. Whatever I can imagine is possible, but the WHEN is the hard part. The part that I can’t control. But if I don’t put it out there, either by saying it out loud, writing it down, meditating or praying on it, or just keeping it in my imagination, it may never come into being.

When my kids were younger the most heartbreaking thing was when they were not with me. Looking back I see how much of an incredible blessing it is that their dad wanted to share custody. But at that time I hated it. It was so painful to be apart from them. Now, with the perspective that time brings, I see that it benefitted them as well as me in so many ways. They have grown up knowing that both of their parents, though we were not living together, love them deeply. But during those years I prayed, I cried, I did my best to wish them to be with me all the time.

Eventually I got what I wished, as they got older and moved back in to my home, or into the family business. My dreams came true, but in the timeline that best served the greater good. That’s the key. The I wants need to serve more than just me. My job is to dream, to wish, to desire, then to let go. To work on myself, to continue becoming a better and better version of Denica, until the time comes for the manifestation of my dreams.

patience

When you have a vision of how you want things to be it is a lesson in patience for life to catch up with your imagination. One of my weak points is patience, and I am confronted again and again with the opportunity to realize this. Whether it is dealing with my son’s lost headphone meltdown, waiting for the bids I sent out to come back, or losing those pesky 15 lbs, I am being taught patience.

Anything other than patience is my mind wanting to be somewhere else. So how to reconcile setting goals and wanting things to be better with being present? I make a space. A space for dreaming. For me right now this means writing it down. It has taken different forms in my past. Sometimes it’s a vision board. Sometimes it’s the saved posts on my instagram account. Sometimes it’s travelling or being in nature.

But it is in my DNA to want to change stuff. To work really hard to get it to how I see it, only to begin again. Impatiently practicing patience.

meditation

This is one of those things that you don’t realize the benefit until you stop. But I can’t meditate. Oh, I can’t just sit still. My mind just wanders. That’s too hard. It doesn’t work for me.

These had been my mental responses when meditation comes up, either in my feed, or my thoughts, or anywhere in my awareness. With the exception of my most favorite part of a yoga class, savasana*, meditation had been something foreign to me for most of my life. Until it wasn’t.

Committing to myself to meditate daily for 20 minutes was just one of the lifelines that I threw out there in my search for peace. I set a reminder on my phone to meditate, and I was off. I started strong, taking time each morning while the house was quiet to sit with my eyes closed and a timer. Sometimes using a guided meditation, sometimes music, sometimes nothing. And at first, I was right. I couldn’t sit still. I fidgeted and shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, especially as my legs fell asleep or I discovered the irritation of that tag on my shirt. My mind wandered. I would catch myself lost in a rabbit hole of memory or plans for the day or imaginary conversations. It’s too hard. Countless times I was sure I had forgotten to set my 20 minute alarm and maybe an hour had passed only to peek at my phone and find it had only been 7 minutes. It doesn’t work for me. Ok, I checked it off my task list, now I’m 20 minutes behind and I better rush to get ready and pack lunches and get showered. What’s the point?

But something happened. Something that was so subtle and almost intangible. I didn’t notice at first. I became more calm. I started to notice during the day when I was in my rabbit hole. I had more patience, and a different perspective on the life stuff that came my way. The practice, the trying, the act of sitting and “meditating”, though I didn’t think I was doing it right, was working.

But this week I skipped. I forgot, I got busy, I thought I didn’t need it anymore, and I skipped. One day, two days, three days…and I started feeling an undefinable angst. An underlying familiar discomfort, a fear, a desire to control. Tears welled up more than once. It took until day 4 for me to realize that I had stopped meditating. In a weepy rant to my husband that ended with “I don’t know what’s wrong with me” the answer came in a flash. I need to meditate. So I did. And it worked. Peace is again within reach. xoxox

*Savasana, aptly also known as corpse pose, is the part at the end of a class where you lay flat on your back with your eyes closed and it’s quiet.

what you give

I believe that with great success comes great responsibility. Responsibility to yourself to continue to grow, responsibility to your people to have an outstretched hand, responsibility to your earth to make conscious choices for it’s best interest. It can be challenging to recondition yourself to this way of being, because we begin our journey into being human with a very self centered persona. The me, me, look at me that we see in the babies and toddlers and kiddos for many of us gets carried along as part of our identity into adulthood. It’s really just us trying to meet a basic human need for significance, or meaning. I speak of “us” and “we”, but know here I am talking about me. So much of my early motivation was at the deepest, most honest level, me trying to prove myself. Trying to prove to some unknown someone that I was worthy. That I was smart, that I have a purpose.

In a deep moment of introspection and awareness, it became very clear to me that there is no magic “purpose” for me. My job is to bring purpose to everything I do. To create a purpose in my business beyond capitalism. To remain in touch with this truth, and to use my voice and my blessings to continue to help change the world. One word, one interaction, one person at a time.

frenzy

fren·zy
noun
  1. a state or period of uncontrolled excitement or wild behavior.
It can be hard not to get caught up in it.  We have such a strong instinct to fit in and be like everyone around us that when we see everyone standing in line to get the newest iphone or the last cabbage patch doll or at that hot new restaurant and we don’t want to miss out.    Sharks go into feeding frenzies, and the situation at the mall or Target or on the roads today may be the same.  The search for the perfect gift that is thoughtful and in your budget, that will show the special someones in your life that you are thinking of them can cause the most stoic of individuals to break out into hives.  Trust me, I am speaking from experience.
As we head into the last day, the last hours before the stillness of a national holiday descends, I am reminded that the urge to spend, to shop, to buy, is made more urgent by not only the media, but by our collective energy.   I am doing my part to remain calm and not get pulled into the frenzy.  The compounding self induced stress of getting the right gift or creating the perfect holiday is just that, self induced.  The best gift is not at the mall or online or even at the jewelry store, it is right inside you.  It is the gift of your presence, your undivided attention and love, of unconditional acceptance.  Practice giving that.

watch your words

“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” Confucius

Listen to what you say, especially in your head. Eliminate the words that are not empowering you.
embrace these…….eliminate these
can                              can’t
will                             won’t
we                              Me
yes                             no
excited                     stressed
curious                    frustrated
relaxed                    exhausted
Other words to cut out of your rhetoric… “but”, which negates what you said before, and “try”, which, as Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is no try.” I will try invariably invites failure. The words we use are what shape our experience.

One of the most inspiring people I know is a man who is helping me develop our leaders in our organization, and whenever I ask him how he is, his answer, almost without fail, is “FanTAStic!”. The tone he uses when he says that powerful word, with extra emphasis on the “TAS”, brings me up a notch, and his positivity is contagious. Your words have power. Change up your answer to the question, “How are you?” and see what a difference it makes, not only in your own mood, but in those around you.

Great answers to “How are you?”:
Spectacular
Awesome
Excited
Amazing
Better than excellent
Blessed
Blissed
Couldn’t be better
So incredibly grateful
Outstanding
Perfect
Great

better late than never

Here I am, forgiving myself for a late start and writing nonetheless at 6:01 pm instead of am. Sometimes life gets in the way in the form of a puppy up all night or an early morning conference call or the alarm that doesn’t go off. All part of being human, and remembering that no matter how many times you stumble and fall, the secret is to get up and keep going. It’s just another lesson for me and opportunity to let go of my need for perfection, to stop comparing myself to anyone else, and to always be kind, especially to me. I’ll be back at it with nary a hiccup in the early morning, with some fresh inspiration brought on by a good night’s sleep. Until tomorrow!

the danger of shortcuts

If you are hoping to win the lottery, or get what is owed to you, or the settlement, the payback, the inheritance, the pension…you are waiting for the shortcut. The easy way, the risk free way, the short game. If you fall into the habit of asking for handouts, or demanding what you think you deserve, waiting for some better future, you are trapping yourself in an endless loop. A perpetual cycle of belief that drives your actions and also as such determines your outcomes. The belief that you need to wait to get. That you need to demand to receive.

Living in this place limits your perception. You close off the awareness of opportunities to make your own success. It takes you out of the present moment and out of touch with your own abilities to create your life. It gives the power to someone else, some future event or magistrate or law. It puts you in a waiting place. The way out of the waiting place is to take a risk. To bet on yourself. To take the power back that you have given away so freely, and to make your life happen by putting in the work.

the first step

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

You don’t remember it now, but when you took your first steps as a small child it was a big deal. Many of us think that we need to wait to follow our dreams. We need to wait until we have more time, more money, are more successful, we get to a certain age, we retire, we are famous…None of these things are necessary, they are all just excuses. The only thing you need to do is to take the first step. You can’t go anywhere sitting still, and you don’t have to have a big idea to start small.

My first step was small, when I decided to take some classes at a professional cooking school while I was a young mother with a baby girl. Little did I know that this first step of following my dream would lead me on a forward trajectory to where I am today. The first step of acknowledging out loud to myself that my lifelong dream and passion could be a career, a business, was a small thing. But for me it was huge. It was the first step in a journey that lead to a special order cookie and cake business from my home, to a small bakery in my hometown, to a bigger bakery that evolved into the 4 bustling restaurants that I am so privileged to lead today. If I had not taken that first step, my life would have been very different today. If I really admit it to myself, I would never have dreamed that I could achieve the life that is currently mine. The me that took that first step didn’t know the challenges in front of her, but neither did she know the successes. She knew just enough to take the first step.

“Our real freedom comes from being aware that we do not have to save the world, we must merely make a difference in the place where we live.” -Parker Palmer

be a follower to lead

As the leader I am here to offer support to those that are following me. I am not here to tell them where they are wrong, instead I am here to stand beside them and work together to see why something is not working. I am here to share with them my vision of a better way. A better product, better service, better world. I am no smarter, no more creative than them. I simply have an awareness that the best way to solve a problem is together. I know that what is needed from me by the people I lead is always changing. There are times when they need me to make the hard calls, and there are times where they need me to give them the reins. A big part of my becoming the best leader I can be is continuing to learn myself, to continue getting in touch with my internal guidance system, my intuition.

Know when to lead and when to follow. I have followed, I have led, and it is clear that it is never either/or if you want to continue to grow. It is just as vital that you follow, follow someone or something that is gifted where you are not. Listen to different voices, get out of your invisible walled world and see what others are doing or thinking or making happen. No one believed a human being could run faster than a 4 minute mile, but once that record was broken once by Roger Barrister, it kept getting broken again and again. What was once impossible became possible, and we followed.

I follow so I can lead. I follow and learn from people who are making a larger impact than I am, I follow and learn about living a healthy lifestyle, I follow and learn from my children as they bring me fresh outlooks from minds less cluttered with history. I follow great leaders, present and past, who have changed the world by delivering the same message, in different voices. The message to love, to accept, to give, to embrace, to be kind. That we have free will, we are the creators of our world. Look around, look up, look upward. No matter how gifted, how skilled, how aware we are in an area, we all have some things that we are not so good at. Don’t be blind to them, and follow when you need to. Check your ego at the door.