Category: personal growth

terror barrier

Today I rode down the rutted hill that had beat me time and time again. One fall and I was scared for months, choosing to dismount and walk down the hill instead of conquering the fear. I had had many opportunities to push past the scared voice in my head, but no matter how much I coached my inner little girl “You can do it, trust the bike”, I would get to the point of no return and stop. I reached the terror barrier.

Anytime we are trying to push past a fear, or to get out of the comfort zone, it starts with a thought. For me, it starts with a floating little thought that I end up latching on to and thinking more about. Thoughts like “I think I want to open another location”, or “I think I want to start running again”, or “I think I’d like to learn to be a speaker”. There are thoughts like these floating around in my head all the time, but until I actually focus on one, and begin to percolate it in my mind, they will float around like clouds in the clutter of my head. Once they have made it into my conscious awareness, they start to nag. They come up and remind me at the most inconvenient times that they are there, times like 4 am. Or 10 pm, as I am trying to get some shut eye.

After I have mulled over a thought, or a great idea I think I have, eventually I say it out loud. I blurt out “I am writing a book”, or “I am going to conquer that hill”, and now it’s official. As long as it was in my head it was safely esconced in the dream category, but once I verbalized it- yikes. The snowball effect. I think about it more, get excited, start researching and doing and planning…then WHAM! Some well meaning friend or loved one plays devils advocate and asks a question that plants a seed of doubt in my mind. I have even done it to myself, time and time again. I am really good at talking myself into AND out of anything subject in the book. My list of pros and cons goes on to infinity for any given idea. This is the inevitable Terror Barrier. It is the point when we reach when our conscious mind rejects the new thoughts that are threatening the status quo. This is where we step back into safety, we decide it is too risky, or too hard, or a dumb idea, or even better, “I never really wanted to do it anyway”. The conscious mind is our ambassador for stagnation. It does not want us to step forward into growth, instead it convinces us to fall back into safety.

We start feeling fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, and we think this is our signal to reverse, turn around, head back to the bunker. What if instead those emotions we are so uncomfortable with that they send us running back to mama instead were the mind’s way of telling us “Hey, get ready! Its time to expand your limitless potential and grow!” This is the beginning, or the middle, or the process of freedom. Freedom from falling victim to fear, freedom to do anything you imagine, freedom to have the exciting life you want. So that hill. Even knowing all this that I know, the hill was a real thing that I had really fallen on and there was a real possibility I would fall again, but I didn’t. I went for it, and I did it again, and I succeeded. And it felt GREAT!

failure pt. 2

“There is no such thing as failure, only results” – Tony Robbins

If you want a different result, change your activities. We all know there is a cause and effect in everything we do, yet it can sometimes be so difficult to get out of the quicksand that we sometimes step into. I keep thinking that somehow as I get older I am also getting wiser, but I find myself falling into the same traps over and over again if I am not careful. I fall into the trap of laziness, and then wonder why my weight creeps up. I fall into the trap of self criticism and wonder why I feel so low. I fall into the trap of complacency and then wake up and see I need to step it up.

I can’t count how many times I have taken control of my eating and exercise, and stepped into the zone of personal improvement. But invariably over and over again, no matter how committed I am at the time, I end up faltering and falling off the wagon. I used to be very hard on myself when I would swing to the right, but what I can see now is that there is a pattern, a swing of the pendulum, a zag for every zig.

Right now I am in a very zig place, I am eating for fuel and pleasure, not boredom and variety. I am intentionally planning out my week to include activities that I enjoy that push my body. I am not going to call it exercise, because that word is right up there with diet for me. They are the poison words that have a beginning and and end. They are the words that define activities that I no longer want to do. I am tired of learning the same lesson over and over again. I am tired of learning that no matter how much you diet, the real test is maintaining. I am tired of learning that if you don’t work your body, your body will stop working for you.

What am I doing differently this time to make it the last time I have to learn these lessons? For one I am writing about it here, and am expecting to be held accountable for my words. I have made a list of my secrets to fulfillment-the things that get me in the zone, and they are in a prominent place to remind me daily of the things I am doing that have me in my happy place:

Feed my mind
Fuel and push my body
Practice gratitude
Pay it forward

unstuck

A grave is a rut with the end kicked out- Earl Nightingale

In my lifetime I have definitely been in ruts as far as my weight and health goes, I have been in ruts where I saw no end in sight to working 7 days a week, I’ve been stuck in thoughts that I would never find the right help I needed in my company. What else…stuck thinking I would never get out of credit card debt, stuck failing to launch a business because I didn’t think I had what it takes, stuck in my own self made thought prison of the loop of hopelessness. Stuck waiting for “tomorrow” when I would have more time, stuck doing a job that was not fulfilling because I didn’t think I could do anything else…I could go on and on.

Stuck is stuck and stuck sucks. Why do we get stuck? It’s almost like we are waiting for divine intervention, some big event or a giant hand to pull us up, something to save us and get us out of the rut. But what it takes is a decision. It takes pulling yourself up by the suspenders, and changing your thoughts. Your beliefs are what drives your behaviors, and if we are not designing our lives, we will be sucked into living our lives by default. The thoughts we think are what generates our emotions. If we are thinking we are stuck, we will feel that pain, that feeling of heavy weights on our feet, helpless to help ourselves. The feelings, the emotions, they control our actions. And our actions are what give us the results we are experiencing.
Thoughts=Feelings=Actions=Results
This will loop and loop, the results just verifying the truth of the thoughts, until we wake up and change the thought. Its a decision. A decision to take responsibility for yourself and to step up, out of the place that started out as the comfort zone, but has morphed into quicksand. Expand your image of yourself, use your imagination, there are no limits to what we can dream, and whatever we can dream we can achieve. Change your thoughts and change your life.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – E.M. Forster

work out

I haven’t always believed in the power of exercise, it was more the opposite, in fact. I was the awkward girl who always got picked last for the team during PE, it was well known I was NOT athletic. It wasn’t just that I had no skills, but also no desire. I could never understand when they said “Keep your eye on the ball”. How the heck are you supposed to do that when it’s flying at you at high speed? Running was always a hated activity, I would beg my mom to write me a note on Fridays excusing me from the laps around the field that were a scheduled part of our physical education. I saw myself as chubby (though I wasn’t), unfit (which I was), and NOT the athletic type.

In my early 20’s I made a brief attempt at riding a bike, which resulted in a spill that left me with road rash on my knees and elbows, effectively curing me of the brief desire to change my image of myself. I set myself firmly back in the “unathletic” category. It wasn’t until my 30’s that I discovered the amazing life changing magic of working out. I can’t remember what inspired me other than a spark of interest in doing something for myself. I signed up at the local community center for an aerobics class and as luck would have it, I found the perfect instructor for me. She was energetic, young, and super fit. Her classes were full of people (mainly women, with a smattering of men) at all different levels of fitness, and she played amazing music as she motivated us to kick and stretch and work our abs to UB40’s Red Red Wine. As I entered my 40’s I was bitten by the desire to run. I began reading about running, and actually began to believe that it was something I could do. I started slow, and before you knew it I was hooked. I was addicted to the endorphins and the schedule I made for myself and the goals of running longer and longer distances. I completed a couple of half marathons and was having fun competing with myself. Then I broke my ankle.

The recovery for the broken ankle was one of the most challenging times of personal growth for me in my life. I was abruptly reminded to slow down as I was restricted to crutches and nothing but rest for several weeks. The independence I thrived on was gone, I could not drive myself anywhere, and my running career was over, at least for a while. What took its place finally is cycling. First on a tandem since I was scared to get back in the saddle, and now with my own mountain bike on steeper and steeper hills.

I just read an article about Richard Branson, the incredibly successful entrepreneur and billionaire where he was asked how to be more productive. His answer confirmed what I believe to my core, two short words that for me make the difference between a good day and an outstanding one. There is nothing like the feeling after you have done something super hard and worked your body, the one and only one we get this time around. It is the perfect way to gain a different perspective on life. “Work Out.”

reputations

“Reputation is what others perceive you as being, and their opinion may be right or wrong. Character, however, is what you really are, and nobody truly knows that but you. But you are what matters most.” -John Wooden

So much of my identity has been tied to my business, maybe because I share the same name as my organization, but I think it is more than that. It used to be so very difficult for me to hear any negative feedback about what we were doing. Although I am not in every location all the time (impossible now with 4 different cities), I keep close tabs on what is going on. I get alerts on my phone whenever we get an online review, and it used to be that the alert would trigger a Pavlovian type response in my gut. I would feel a bit of dread, expecting the worst but hoping for the best. Most of the time the reviews were glowing, sometimes critical, and other times downright mean. I know we are humans, and as such imperfect, so there are bound to be mistakes and failures in our delivery, but that was a hard lesson to accept. I think it is a basic human need that we want to be loved, and when you think your business is you, and someone doesn’t love your business, it can feel very much like a lover’s rejection. At least that is what it felt like to me for many years.

James would remind me “don’t take it personally”, but that was easy advice to hear, not so much to implement. I can’t recall a specific moment where the transition started, it was more a process of learning to love myself and to believe in my own integrity and character as a person that helped me get off the roller coaster ride of emotions. Even if we are not business owners, we have reputations. There are people judging and sorting and putting us into boxes all day long. Just notice it, we all do it. “He is a great dad.”, “She is a go-getter.”, “He is a hothead.” The thing is that whatever box you get put in, your reputation, is based on the other person’s perception and life experiences, it may not have anything to do with you other than you share one similarity to something they have experienced in their past, so they file you there.

The only thing that really matters is who you are, how you act and the things you do in public and in private. I can see clearly now that my business is so very much more than me. It has grown and blossomed through the people that I have working with me every day. I am humbled and blessed to see the love they bring to our communities and the people we serve, without me being there. Its still a bummer when we sometimes blow it, but we are human, and what matters more is how we respond when we do make mistakes. This is where the test of our character comes, when we have the opportunity to learn, to show extra love when we failed to make someone happy, and to grow.

You are not your reputation, you are much more than that.

gratitude

I spent many years of my life in search of happiness. I read books, searched online, tried to find it in other people and see if they could share some with me. There are books on my shelf that spell out at least 10 different secrets to finding it. My husband, who I am so attracted to for many reasons, one of the strongest of which is his eternal positivity, would tell me that happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it the more it escapes you, but if you just stand still, it will land on your shoulder and there you are. I loved the poetry of this secret to happiness, but I could not seem to translate it into real life.

I could not understand why I had such a struggle with dissatisfaction. I had so much to be grateful for, yet there always seemed to be something missing. Its not like I was never happy, but for me happy had an opposite, and the opposite was despair. It was a feeling that I was not worthwhile. It stemmed from some deeply limiting beliefs that I was not smart, that I was weak, that I was selfish, that I was unlovable. I was extremely hard on myself, it was like I had a strict headmistress in my head who followed me around all the time, beating me with a paddle over the head every time I made a mistake. She was always giving me instant feedback, things like “you are so stupid, why would you do that?”, and “you are so needy, no wonder you have no friends”, or “you should have known better, you are so lame”.

Over a period of time, I began to not just get tired of the despair and dissatisfaction, but to question where it came from. I began asking myself, why do I feel this way? What began is my journey to discovering what true happiness is to me. For me, happiness has no opposite when it is tied to gratitude. No matter where you are in your life situation, there are always things that you can find to be grateful for if you look. I began writing down as a daily habit 10 things I was grateful for. At first this seemed silly and compulsory, as I listed the big, easy things first, like my home and family, but as time went on, I began to notice the little things as well. It began the habit of looking at how much good there is in my life, no matter how much “stress” I created. I learned to appreciate the things that matter, to become present and notice the small things such as a drop of dew on a leaf, or the fog, or a small ant carrying food to his home. To be grateful to be alive every day to enjoy this world one more time.

The first words out of my mouth each day are thank you, a prayer to say thank you for another day. I am here in heaven on earth to enjoy this life, to help others along the path, to give love.

“Each day I see Jesus Christ in all of his distressing disguises.” Mother Theresa

who you are

The process of becoming self aware requires us to unlearn so much of what you thought to be true. It’s like deconstructing a wall, brick by brick. We may not even know the wall exists, it’s just the result of years of reacting and conditioning and modeling behaviors and opinions from the people around us. The bricks are the beliefs that we have picked up and taken as gospel, most of them when we are very young and as such a blank slate. We come into this world with a fresh start, although some babies I am sure bring some baggage along with them. There are babies who are jolly and happy and easy, and then the ones who are cranky, demanding and opinionated. We get here and we are helpless little bundles of cuteness, and our parents and well meaning caregivers get to work protecting and teaching us the rules of survival. What we don’t realize is that these people that are loving and caring for us all have their own fears and beliefs that may or may not be founded in any reality we will experience in our lives.

When my parents were growing up, they were raised with a scarcity mindset. Their parents had lived through the depression, and had endured periods of hunger and lack. My mother grew up in poverty in another country, at a level hard for me to imagine, but easy to remember for her. Somehow, although you would think this would have made them miserly, the opposite was true. They give more than they have, although they still remain frugal in so many things, as evidenced by my dad’s garage, the car he drives, and the things they choose to save.

The scarcity mindset was the most challenging brick to remove for me, I have never gone hungry, I have always had a roof over my head, and even if money was tight, I was always blessed with enough resources and support to have all I needed for survival. Then why did I fear not having enough? This is what I needed to unlearn. It is a process and a decision and a constant reminder to myself that I will always have enough. I can lose everything and I will never lose myself.

In order to continue to grow, you have to get to know yourself. We have layer after layer, and just when you uncover one thing, there is another one right below. It starts with looking inside when you get triggered. You know when it happens, when something brings up emotions you don’t like to feel, like anger, sadness, depression, apathy. These are all signals that there is some work to do. They are the puffs of smoke billowing from the fire you tried to put out, signalling that there are still coals smoldering in your deep unconscious. The only way to put those coals out completely is to look at them without resisting them or pushing them away, understand that they stem from fear, and then dunk them in the water of your acceptance and realization of what they are really telling you. I’d like to say then you are done, but the moment you think you have figured yourself out, there will come a test of your new beliefs, and another layer of the onion. It’s ok. That’s life. It’s the process of letting go again and again, no matter what life brings your way.

motivation

“Every leader will hit a series of plateaus in their lives. The key is not to say there, because settling on a plateau can easily lead to an elongated season of comfort. Being comfortable is one of the leader’s worst enemies”
― Gary Rohrmayer

When you are first learning something new there is a tremendous growth curve, its new and exciting and you go from knowing nothing to so much in a short period of time. Then inevitably the momentum slows and you reach a plateau. If you are working out, learning to play a new sport, starting a new job, losing weight, your progress and excitement will slow. That alarm ringing at 5 am so you can get the early morning run in will want to get snoozed and the healthy feeling you have from eating better will become so normal that you will yearn for a hot fudge sundae or hot pizza or snickers bar just to see if its as good as you remember. The motivation that was so strong when you started may waver, and you may want to give up. But where does the motivation come from? Its a by-product of doing something. It is the benefit you get, the payout, for the work you put in. The only way to be motivated to get up early and work out or write or plan your week is to feel or anticipate the reward that comes when you are just doing it. You can think something to death and talk yourself out of any idea your imagination comes up with by waiting to feel motivated. Nike coined it just right with their “Just do it” catch-phrase.

The plateaus are gonna happen, and the true test is handling them when you reach them. I think of plateaus as the landings on the stairwells that we are climbing towards being the best version of ourselves. They present us with the perfect opportunity to turn around and look at the progress we have made thus far. Realize that although you are at the landing, you are still one floor or 5 floors or 20 floors up from the last plateau. Take a breath and remind yourself of why you started on the climb, celebrate your progress, and get moving.

open your ears

Open your ears and listen more. The whirr of the air conditioner, the high pitched sound of the elevator, the dog rolling over and breathing deeply. Steps? Birds chattering and car door closing. Clicking of the keyboard and the beating of my heart.

How is it that all of this and more is happening in the background at all times? There are so many things going on concurrently that our minds have to filter out the stuff that is clutter. We don’t even realize that its happening, that the mind is deleting stuff that it doesn’t focus on, what becomes clear are the things we lay our attention on. I can look around and see the weeds growing through the cracks in the cement, the crease beginning to form on my brow, the stack of papers on my dining room table/desk that should be filed away. Or I can see the beauty of the flowers and the sunny day, the pile that is a work in progress on creativity, the plates in the sink that say “someone lives here” and feel joy.

There is no place that is perfect, the only perfection is in the moment we are in. When I stop and listen it quiets the chatter. It opens the blinds. It allows in the beauty and variety that is here and there and in each person to come into your awareness. Quiet the mind and open your ears. Listen more.

it’s a process

There are no shortcuts along the way to self improvement, and as a leader you must be focused on always improving yourself in order to improve anything outside yourself. It can be really hard when faced with the reality that you may not be operating to your fullest potential. I like to think of myself as the type of person who handles her stuff, I went into business for myself partly because I like to be in charge of my own actions and not be managed, or told what to do. Although I am confident now in my leadership and ability to create positive change, it wasn’t always the case.

For many years I put myself in the position of follower. My husband and partner is a strong, natural leader, so this was easy and not a bad thing, most of the time. Some of the qualities of a great leader are that they see the untapped potential in those they lead, set the vision bigger and clearer than most can imagine, and inspire others to grow and improve themselves. For a long time I was firmly stationed in a place where I believed, “This is how I am. I can’t help it. This is all I have.” Luckily for me, James loves me enough to not buy that BS, but I resisted. Each time we opened a new location, he was the driving force that made the lease negotiations, remodels, and openings happen, with me acting as his assistant, doing the support tasks that he needed. Each time we faced extreme tests on our relationship as partners and a couple, and I would often fail to rise to the level I needed to in order to maintain the momentum. When he would bring this to my attention, my reaction was to get defensive, to withdraw, and to want to quit. Emotions were high because we always have a clock ticking to get the locations opened before we are too far in the hole financially and have to pay rents with no money coming in, so our talks were rarely calm and reassuring.

It has only been as I focus on improving myself by working to overcome a life controlled by emotions and reactions that I have found my place as the leader of our organization. Improving yourself is not a destination, you cannot be satisfied with doing just enough to get by, or by quick fixes. Improvement requires a daily commitment, daily habits that work to rewire and rebuild your inner workings with intention. Many people underestimate the little things, but it is the little things, done daily with consistency that make the biggest impact. Change happens with or without our involvement or awareness. The question for us is will will grow and learn with the changes? Improvement is not “one and done”, it’s a process, day by day, decision by decision.