finding_centre_

As humans we have such a habit of setting arbitrary start dates. Mondays, beginnings of the month, beginnings of the year.
But the best day to start isn't when we are ready. It isn't at the beginning of the day, the week, the month, the year. It's now. Action creates clarity.
What's one small step you can take towards your goal today?

Sometimes I think the answer to what we want most is most easily found by looking at what scares us the most! 😬
That thing we think we have to have JUST RIGHT in order to finally do it. For those of us who are perfectionists, the one we keep planning and learning about...but find it really hard to take the first step on.

I've had the idea for a podcast on my heart for a long time. But it was only when I made the decision to stop thinking about it and start acting that everything started falling into place. I almost accidentally ran into .fitzgerald Intro to Podcasting course, and it has been a game changer. So this week, my podcast She is Enough launches! I'm so excited (and nervous), but the universe listens to brave. What's the thing you really wanted to do and then finally took the step forward and it just seemed like the universe was just waiting for you to take that step so it could help you along?

Today I just want to celebrate the beautiful women in my life, those I have yet to meet but will surely bring joy, and those I will never meet but who make the world a better place with their determination, talents, and love.⁠⁠
Thank you to the phenomenal women who have transformed my belief in humanity. It has been the great privilege of my life to make these transformational relationships, to meet women who help me to grow and to love myself and others more than I even knew I could. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

I collapsed into absolute tears not long ago. Over something so small, the main thing going through my mind was that I had no real idea why I was crying.⁠⁠
What I figured out was that I had been doing a LOT of personal development. Which was great! But the message so often was about how keeping positivity was the key to everything. And I'm pretty sure I completely misinterpreted it...or if I didn't, then the positivity culture I was ingesting may have had the best of intentions but was becoming toxic.⁠⁠
See, what I was doing was burying anything that didn't feel good under a layer of positive thoughts. I didn't process them, just bought the lie that if I smiled it would all be ok. It wasn't.⁠⁠
I'm all for positivity, I really am. I work daily on keeping a positive mindset, and I believe strongly in keeping in mind that hard times aren't the end. But ignoring the reality that sometimes life is hard is not the answer.⁠⁠
So, if you're happy - smile. I hope you're happy. But if life knocks you down - sit with it a minute. You'll get back up, lovely, but it's ok and even healthy to process, not bury your emotions, even the not so fun ones.⁠⁠
For more on the tyranny of relentless positivity and how to process your negative emotions in a healthy way, check out the blog.⁠⁠⁠⁠

So, I was stressing hard over a project the other day. I was busy convincing myself that I didn't know enough, wasn't good enough, yada yada yada. And then I rocked it.⁠⁠
I didn't just rock it, I also took steps I never would have believed I could. I pushed past the edges of what I thought were my boundaries and found I had so much more in me than I thought.⁠⁠
Writing in my journal that night I realized that this isn't even close to the first time this has happened. And only two things have ever happened when I've pushed past my perceived and self-imposed limits: I blew past them and found a new level or I failed, but failed closely enough to know I could reach it if I wanted to.⁠⁠
In other words, I win or I learn. One of my favorite phrases, one that keeps me going.⁠⁠
Today, I hope you and I have the good fortune to find ourselves in a position to find out just how far we can go.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

I was on a meditative walk last week, and even though it is cold, as I was appreciating how good it felt to feel the brisk wind and sun on my face despite having had a hard couple of days, and a butterfly 🦋 landed on my face. And I couldn't stop smiling.⁠⁠
And because I couldn't stop smiling, I also couldn't stop thinking about how some of the hardest times in my life have also forged some of the parts of myself and the opportunities that I most treasure.⁠⁠
We all go through periods of darkness, and this past year (and the beginning of this one thus far) there were few of any of us that were untouched by at least some of that. That butterfly reminded me that one of the things I can do to center myself in times of crisis (or just times when I'm feeling blue) is to remind myself of times before where I have seen the darkness and emerged into beauty.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

As I am thinking through what I want from this year, I am keeping this one in mind. Hope is not a strategy.⁠⁠
Hope helps us to define what we want, but action is what gets us there. The two are intertwined, and both are necessary. But sometimes we get so caught up in what we are seeing in the future that we forget we play a part in getting there.⁠⁠
So while setting my intentions for the year, I am keeping in mind that each intention needs to be broken down into the most important steps to get there and then those steps need to be scheduled.⁠⁠
While I will give hope its free reign for this year - and boy don't we all need it - I'm going to support those hopes (goals) with defined strategy.