Category: Be Kind

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Authenticity in real life

Confessions-2I’m continuing to think about authenticity, still flowing over from last week. That’s the thing about it, when you set your focus on authenticity, you look for it in all areas of your life. But there’s a balance, I think, between authenticity and showing up well.

Here’s how it played out in my house last night. Long week and before I went home, I ran some errands and stopped by Whole Foods to get dinner for me and my husband. By the time I got home, I was hungry, not a good start. I walked into the house thinking that all I wanted to do was put on cozy clothes and eat dinner. But then I did the house scan. Some of you might know what I mean. The glance around your surroundings where you see every dish, spot, paper and dust bunny that needs to be cleaned up or put away. I’m wired in a way where I can’t relax until everything is done. As part of the scan, I see my husband who got home ahead of me, on the couch, watching TV. And I’m bugged. The conversation in my head was (read at an increasing pace here…) why didn’t he do all that stuff when he got home because it had to get done and how could he just watch TV with all that stuff to do?!?

What came out of my mouth was, “hey,” and then I started to do the stuff. Not gladly, but irritated. And he knew. Oh, they always know. I’d like to say I pulled my head out…but I didn’t, at least not for a little bit. Nice entrance, Lisa.

So I was authentic…but I didn’t show up well. Authenticity is about being who you are, being comfortable with yourself, feeling brave to stand on your feet knowing you’re showing people who you truly are, not who you think they expect you to be. Being authentic is also being human and realizing that we are not perfect. In the same way that we are striving to be our authentic self, so are others around us. My husband and I are not wired the same. He says it would be boring if we were. I know I should agree, but really…what a clean house we’d have (side note…my husband actually is very clean…he’s home dusting for me while I write this…our timing is just different)!

Today, I’ve thought a lot about that interaction last night. Each of us struggle with different things, one of mine is that evenings are a roll of the dice for my mood. I am a morning person through and through, more creative, more energy, more talkative (once I get up and going). Evenings, I’m tired, exhausted, talked out. In thinking about last night, and other similar interactions, I realized that the person who showed up at my house really wasn’t my authentic self. I wasn’t showing up how I believe I am in my heart. And I didn’t like that reality.

What do you do about that? The first step is realizing that it’s even happening. I’m working on being authentic and that means pulling in the true parts of me even when I’m cranky. In fact, I may need to pull them in even more when I’m off center because I need the steadying force that those characteristics give me. And I think it’s also letting go of pride enough to say, “I’m not showing up how I’d like to, forgive me and can we start over.” Your partner, your close friends, they know you’re off even if you don’t say a thing.

I like to remind myself of something I said a few weeks ago, “once you let go of perfection, you can be good.” Authentic is good, but it’s not perfect. Authentic balances with human. Authentic is brave.

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Thoughts on authenticity

authenticityLately I’ve been thinking about what it means to me to be authentic. Through the years, I believe I’ve been a lot of different things. I’ve had the drive to be successful in business and I’ve taken a step back in my career. I’ve been a good mom, likely a questionable mom at times too. A daughter, a wife. A cyclist, a swimmer. A girl who loves clothes, and fashion, and shoes. I’ve been a lot of other things too, I’m sure. But through all of that, to some degree, I was being who I was “supposed” to be.

You see, it was all a front. Choosing to show up and behave, perform, exist like I thought I was supposed to. And that can be a lot different than what my inside was telling me to be. That place deep inside me that whispers, the one that tells me to be brave. Yet a lot of the time, it’s easier to show up like I’m supposed to than how I’m really feeling, fly under the radar. Those times maybe I was a questionable mom, for example? Most likely was when I showed up more like what I felt like on the inside, not what the world was telling me to be, questionable to the world, but not to me.

We all do it, I think. Put on a persona that helps us get along in the world. And yet, somewhere along the way, if we’re not careful, we start to lose track of who we are and what’s really important to us. We lose our grasp on our authentic selves. And think about this…when we’re showing up in a way that’s not the real us, the people around us, they come to know and love that person…the one that’s not really who we are! That is a tragedy.

But when asked who we really are, who is our true, authentic self, we sometimes don’t know. We’ve spent so much time doing, performing according to what other’s expect (or what we think they expect) that we can’t really identify who we are.

I’ve been working on having my outside actions match my inside thoughts and it’s been a process. As any of you who read my blog know, it’s required pushing myself to challenge what I know and look for different answers. Truer, authentic answers. I’ve done that in a lot of areas, but one that’s lagged behind is my home. I’d like to say it represents me, but it doesn’t. It only represents snippets of me. It’s like I have decorated with reminders of who I want to be, but without the boldness of who I know I am. I haven’t allowed myself to fully step into who I am at home. My designer friend described it by saying it’s like I decorated a dorm room, sort of. Don’t have crazy thoughts, no band posters or memorabilia from my adventures, but I’ve played small. And as soon as she said that, it clicked for me and I knew it was true. I love my house, but have not really felt like it was pulled together in a way that matched me. It wasn’t authentic and that made it not as comfortable as I’d like it to be.

But that’s going to change, we’re going to work on it. Though I know that’s not the only area to be authentic. Most important is being authentic in my relationships, with my husband, my children, my family and friends. It’s that idea of letting my outside match my inside. It requires challenging myself to be true and honest with who I am, what I believe, and letting that be the person I share with the world. It requires being brave.

Is there any area of your life where you could be more authentic? Where your inside doesn’t match your outside? You only have to answer that question for yourself, but if that’s true, what are you going to do about it? Life is too short, relationships too important, to let them be less than authentic. Take the step with me towards living for who you truly are, being stronger, living out loud. I know you have it inside you. Be brave.

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Clear Vision

IMG_4141I like being crafty, creative, artsy…whatever you want to call it. For me, it’s taking time to let my thinking brain wander. To use it in a different way, exercise the other half. When I get into that space, I find myself losing track of time and feeling ‘filled up.’ It feeds something in me. So when I asked a couple girlfriends if they had interest in creating vision boards with me – because creating is more fun with friends – I was excited when they said yes.

I hadn’t created a vision board in a couple years and I led us through a warm up of sorts. Doodling – loosening up the creative mind – followed by pondering a few different areas. What do you want more of in your life? What are areas that bring you joy? What do you want to experience this year? Questions intended to get each of us thinking about the types of things we may want on our boards. What was interesting to me is that the ideas that came to me were nearly the same as what came up for me a couple years ago.

That, in and of itself, tells me something. Let’s take relationships. It’s been a focus IMG_4140 (1)and is still a focus even though they look dramatically different today than they did then. There’s been movement, but it’s still an important area for me. Another was body image, seems like that’s always a focus, but with a twist. Deep sigh.

And that’s the thing that happens in life. We sometimes think that if we just put energy into a certain area, or make changes that we can move on. But we don’t. Well…we do and we don’t. Maybe we move forward from that current dimension of the issue but like many are, it’s an onion. You have to heal, examine, or understand one layer before we can move to the next.

It’s like that with people. You can meet someone, maybe even spend a good amount of time with them, and still not fully know them. There are behaviors that you see, but that’s only the outside layer. Inside, there are beliefs, life experiences, family ‘leftovers,’ and the motivations that drive them. We can get a ‘vision’ of them from the outside, but that won’t necessarily let us ‘see’ them. It happened to me just the other night with my husband. I heard his words, saw behaviors, but didn’t understand his heart. When we finally got there, I felt like I really knew him in that moment. Behaviors and words can be a smoke screen, they don’t tell the whole story.

So, what if we had vision boards, so to speak, for the important relationships in our lives? We could focus on the layers of the onion we want to understand. Areas we want to focus on, and to learn more about. We could focus not only on that other person, but on what the relationship looks like for each of us, and what we want it to look like. We could also desire a vision of where we want to go in that relationship.

Sounds interesting? Wonder how to start? Think about what you know and what you want to know. What do you want to bring to the relationship, understand about it, learn from it? What experiences do you want in the relationship, what emotions, feelings? Here’s a big brave move…create a vision board for an important relationship and have the other person in the relationship do the same thing…and then compare them. What do you notice? Where are the differences? Similarities? Have an honest conversation about it. The vision you once had for the relationship may have changed, and that’s normal. It could change as you both change. But talk about it…that’s your brave move. I can’t wait to hear about it!

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Find your tribe

My tribeIt’s no secret to anyone who reads my blog that it’s often a tangled mess of whatever is going on in my head. Today is no different.

Life has phases…there’s the early phase when you’re still living at home, in the cocoon with your parents. Then the college/early 20’s “dumb” phase when you (maybe just me, but I doubt it) think you’re all that and a bag of chips. Living large, late nights, and FAR more…let’s just call it excitement… than anyone should ever have. For me, I dove right into marriage and motherhood right after that phase. I’d say those two things stopped the dumb phase. Thank you Jesus!

With the family comes responsibility, which means work. And I did, a lot. Climbed the later, jumped off, took a different path. Somewhere in the midst of all that though, I forgot to develop female friendships.

I had friends, but I skipped the step of staying in to dig deep. Honestly, I was the easy breezy friend. I still have a couple friends from high school and college that I could call and we’d pick right back up, and I cherish those. But the day to day, in the trenches, see me messy kind of friends, yeah…not so much.

And now…I feel the gap, and I don’t like it. I’ve spent time thinking about it and I could say that I was busy, or that I was doing ok on my own. I had enough interaction to feel connected.  But the truth is that real friendship, especially with women, requires vulnerability. THAT is something I wasn’t a fan of.

Vulnerability is what allows people to see the real you. Is it scary? Yes. But here’s the flip side. If you don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable, you can live in a space of thinking you’re alone. You’re the only one, for example, experiencing heart ache, or who have a struggling marriage, or who have feelings you don’t understand about your stage in life. And you also are alone as you experience joy.

This is where finding your tribe comes in. Yes, you have a spouse, your children, family. They are always there for you, support and love you. But your tribe hears the ugly, the crazy, listens to you lament about the state of your aging body, let’s you talk through the crazy thoughts in your head about life, laughs with you…let’s you practice vulnerability so that you’re better at it when it matters most.

In the last few years, I’ve felt the lack of those friendships and I’ve been intentional about changing it. I’ve worked to foster a couple friendships and those people are my tribe. So if I have those people, why am I still thinking about it? Because this life phase seems to need more support from my tribe. Maybe that’s just because I didn’t realize how important it could be in those earlier years, but I can sense the need to support and have support from other women at this time in life.

That’s the takeaway from all this…this obviously tangled mess of thoughts that have been rolling around in my head? We’re not made to do this life on our own. We need  our family, and we need our people, our tribe. The support and encouragement we give each other makes us stronger. Talking through the crazy helps us stay sane. Vulnerability is worth it. Find your tribe, lean into it, and be thankful for it today.

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Shining light into darkness

lightintodarkness-jungI don’t like haunted houses. They’re dark, spooky and filled with a whole lot of unknown. Plus, being scared or startled is not my idea of a good time. To all of you that like them, more power to you, but I’m taking the big ol’ pass. I think the darkness is a big part of it. I just don’t know what to expect, I can’t see ahead.

That’s a little how I was approaching 50 this week. In reality, Tuesday I was Lisa who was 49 and Wednesday I was Lisa who was now 50. It wasn’t a catastrophic change. But my mental lead up to it was. Literally the last 6 months it’s been on my mind. Not in a mid-life crisis aspect, per se, but a ‘what’s next’ standpoint. When I was thinking about it earlier this week, there was so much unknown, like the haunted house. A darkness of sorts.

Except it wasn’t. Once I did nothing more than wake up Wednesday morning, magically 50, the thought in my head was, “well…alright, this is it, game on.” I wasn’t depressed, didn’t suddenly feel old, I felt the same as the day before. If you’ve already hit the magic number, I’m sure you experienced much of the same.

The unknown is often like that, darkness. Think about it…

The conversation you need to have but are dreading…darkness…

The decision you need to make but avoid…darkness…

A move in your life or career that you’re procrastinating on…darkness

Once you make the decision, have the conversation, you wonder what you were avoiding! Here’s another perspective, once you shine the light on it, it’s no longer unknown, no longer scary.  “The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5. It’s the same in life. The light takes a lot of forms but in reality, it’s truth.

Truth is powerful. Truth tells you that you and your spouse are on the same team, not opposing parties. Truth says that the conversation you need to have will have benefits for both you and the other person, that’s there’s nothing to fear. Truth helps you got past hurt to see what actually happened in that long ago argument. Truth says you’re beautiful when the scale or your pants try to tell you otherwise. The light is truth so why don’t we believe it?

What would it take you to believe it? To look past the darkness and see the light? What belief from the past are you bringing forward that limits how you look at your circumstances today? What assumptions are you making that give you tunnel vision? What does the voice in your head – not the voice of truth – the other one that keeps you small – what does it try to tell you? What if you looked at each of those and asked yourself, what is true? What is the truth? And from there you made decisions…

Essentially…turn the light on in the haunted house…see the truth and embrace it…shine the light on it.

That…my friend…would be brave.

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Here it comes…now what?

Live a life of loveI make no secret of the fact that I turn 50 next week, and I’ve been doing a lot of reflection. I’ve heard life over 50 called the “Second Half.” That seems appropriate. But what’s in that half? If you think about it, the BIG stuff that created your memories, your experiences, essentially created who you ARE at 50, it happened in the first half.

If you’re me, you lived your childhood in Yosemite. You spent three months in the hospital at 4 and came out of it with a love for doctors and nurses who showed love to a whole group of young children there alone. And you returned, shaped by your experience. You played in meadows, stayed outside past dusk with your friends, walked to school in kindergarten – alone…because it was a different era. You skied for PE, ate hot dogs and drank red dye…aka Kool Aid…and lived.

The first half included slumber parties, good friends, selling Girl Scout cookies, dances, BIG hair, bad fashions…ones which I have no desire to wear again now, even though they seems to be back…not going there again. There was young love, dumb love. And you had college and all its shenanigans. Then came the big stuff, you married, had two amazing kids, climbed the career ladder – jumped off it… And you also had your share of pain, divorce. The beauty of getting married again…

And I thought about all that first half stuff yesterday, as I swam what I called my “birthday yards.” My years x 100’s. As I got tired around yard 4,000 and wondered why I hadn’t chosen 50’s instead of 100’s, I had the big epiphany.

What I DO does not make who I AM.

I kept swimming, but thought about that. The way I’ve lived my life, really the way any of us live our lives, represents what’s inside of us. It’s an extension of what’s inside. But ultimately, our life’s experiences, those created who we are on the inside. It’s a little bit of the chicken and egg theory. We’re born, clean slate. Everything we experience shapes what’s inside which drives what we do outside.  And it shapes what we think we need to do.

By the second half, most of those shaping experiences have happened. Truthfully, a lot of them happened when I was young. Now I have a choice of how I’m going to use them, how to show up, how to love, live, what’s important.

Here’s what is important in the second half.

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Loving more, loving deeply. Not being a roommate to my husband.

My family…time with them…relationship.

Knowing what I believe in my heart and being brave enough to say it, even when it goes against the grain with those close to me.

Helping other people. Serving them with the gifts God gave me and developed in me.

Making mistakes…I’m far from perfect, it’s time to embrace it. Time to be silly.

Close girlfriends…we’re walking through this part of life together, understanding w

hat being a woman really means now.

Do what I love. Tryouts are over, I know what I like and it’s time to stop wasting time of stuff I don’t.

Never stop learning. Some of the most impactful learning and growing I’ve done has been in the last year.

Be brave… I have nothing to prove. This has been one of the hardest to learn, and I’ve done a lot to try and prove I’m worthy…of love. Now I know that I am worthy. What I do doesn’t make me worthy. That is the truth for each of us, we are worthy of love, from

others and more importantly, from ourselves.

The second half…you’ll find me showing more compassion to myself. Embracing who I am and sharing that with others. It took 50 years for me

to get here…

hopefully it didn’t take you as long…be brave with me…let the years ahead of you be filled with compassion, with family, friends, and most importantly, with love.

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Trusting my inner voice

trust yourselfSometimes I wonder how much I actually trust myself. My own wisdom. I have days where I question myself, flip flop my decisions. But I think if I were to be still, my inner voice would lead me. Truthfully, I’ve been working on being more in touch with that inner voice. Paying attention to what comes up, what I’m hearing, sensing, feeling. Acting on it has been a little slower, until recently.

Last week my husband and I had a trip planned for my upcoming BIG birthday. He was indulging me with tickets to see Celine Dion. Now, I had a friend say “you either like her…or you don’t.” I do. She doesn’t. You might not. That’s ok because when Celine hits those big, dramatic, building notes, I’m all in. My poor kids had to listen to Celine ALL the time in the car when they were young. They could do a mean sing along if the moment presented itself, but also did not hold back in mocking me.

Right now, the only place Celine is playing is Las Vegas. And we were scheduled to fly out this past Monday morning. On Sunday, I was anxious all day. No known reason. We had a great day celebrating our grand-daughter’s 3rd birthday. It was an afternoon of relaxing and hanging out with family and friends. But I had anxiety. Any of you who have anxiety know that sometimes you don’t know why, it’s just there and Sunday was one of those days.

Monday morning, we woke up early to get ready for our trip and heard the news of the horrific tragedy that unfolded in Las Vegas the prior evening. It was awful and sad…blocks away from where we were headed to celebrate. A trip we’d planned and paid for months ago.

And this is where trusting myself came in. I really don’t like losing money. But in that moment my gut was telling me not to go on the trip. I was reminded of the anxiety the day before – and could see it was intuition, God whispering to me. So I asked the question, “if money weren’t an issue, what would we do?” And we stayed home.

For so many reasons, I knew that was the right decision. Primarily, it did not feel right to go there with the intent to celebrate when so many had lost their lives, senselessly. The tragedy made me incredibly sad. And yet, even thought I knew it was the right decision, I second guessed myself for the better part of the day, even after cancelling the flights and hotel. That’s when the competing voices in my head came up. The ones that get in the way of trusting myself.

Those voices are certainly not mine, but represent the doubts about myself that carry forward from the past. The ones that remind me of all the decisions I’ve made that were, shall we say, less that optimal. We all have them. What I now know is that our ability to trust ourselves is related to identifying exactly what comes up for us in those moments. We all have those things we think are true and right that have evolved in our minds over time (whether they are actually true), but that hold us back from making decisions in the present. Those are the things that scream at us in our minds. But you can choose to ignore them. And I did.

And we all can, and should. Choose to look at what’s in front of us today. The facts of the situation we’re currently faced with. Not the voices in our head telling us that we can’t, or shouldn’t, or even worse, that we’re not good enough, not worthy. Those voices aren’t true. They’re not our friends. We CAN trust ourselves and our own inner wisdom.

I would be remiss if I didn’t end with a moment about the tragedy in Las Vegas. It was incredibly sad and we should have systems and rules in place to prevent it. It’s a time when each of us needs to dig down inside ourselves and be brave enough to voice our true concerns about how this happened. But right now, in this moment, we can use that voice to pray. Pray for the victims, their families, the witnesses, and all the first responders. My heart goes out to all of them.

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Moving past perfect to good

View More: http://mercarty.pass.us/lisa_kirby“Once you’re done being perfect, then you’re good.” I was listening to a podcast the other day with Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Doyle and felt socked in the gut when I heard Glennon share those words. Because I got it. Deep in my heart I understood what she was talking about. Having spent the majority of my life striving for perfection, I am tired. And the thing about it is, you never really reach perfection, because it’s based on someone else’s standards. I’ve learned you’ll never meet those. It’s impossible.

In the last year, however, I’ve been working on giving up being perfect. Straight up truth is, I’m not. No one is. We’re all one step away from a hot mess, and half the time, I feel that’s where I’m squarely sitting. That’s what life is. We go through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff. And that’s what I’m starting to experience. Living in full awareness of my messy life and not trying to ignore it or get away from it. It leads to so much more, the good in life.

I think that part of getting away from perfection and towards good is moving away from feelings of shame. Shame is something that we’ve all experienced it. Brene Brown studied it, speaks on it, writes about it. Her work helped me understand that shame is the feeling that you’re a bad person versus having done a bad thing. I was pondering that this morning and had another sock in the gut moment.

One of the worst things anyone could ever say to me is that they were disappointed in me. It is crushing to me. Causes me to lose all sense of self confidence, self-esteem. Today it dawned on me that I interpret someone being disappointed in me as “I think you are a bad person.” It clicked…and when it did it was as though another layer of me was shed. A deeper understanding of myself and my wiring was reached. So what do you do with that? With the past messages you may have received? For me, I’m trying to reframe them. Thinking that in those instances I may have done a bad thing, but I’m not, nor was I, a bad person.

I also realized this week that part of perfectionism for me was really not trusting myself. Constant striving. Always doing what I thought I was supposed to do to color within the lines, to follow every rule. There’s very little independent thinking or reasoning when you’re sticking to the plan. So now, I have to ask if I really trust myself. My own decisions. I think I do trust myself when it’s something I know well, like work, but personal things are a lot harder. I question myself a lot and have a hard time getting to an answer at times.

So what’s so good about all this? Well first off, I’m realizing it. I’m making my own choices. Living in my mess knowing that good is going to come from it. Letting go of the impossible burden of perfectionism. Learning to trust myself and in the process trusting others more. And the truth is, I don’t believe I’m alone. I believe that the experiences I’m having, the realizations, are the same that others have…once you’ve lived for a while.  The challenge is to not only be aware of the messages that have been programmed, but to choose different to think differently. To make decisions for my life based on what is good for me now – not what I think should be good for me now. To listen to the truth. As with anything else in life that’s worth it, I’ll have to work at it. How about you? Are you ready to believe in yourself? Trust yourself? Get to the good stuff? Let’s do it together, be brave together.

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A Rite of Passage

love yourselfI feel like I should issue a spoiler alert. To all my young friends, I’m going to throw down a bit about middle age. If you don’t want to know what’s coming, proceed with caution. I’ve been thinking about middle age and all the “joy” that comes with it, particularly menopause. I’ve heard menopause described as a “rite of passage.” Wondering if that could really be true, I decided to look up what that actually means.

Rites of passage have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So let’s think about it for a minute…yep, perimenopause, then you’re in the thick of it, and I’ve heard afterwards you move into a new phase. So, yeah, it does sound like a rite of passage. And it’s something all women go through one way or another. Truthfully, men go through it too, alongside the women in their lives and they have their own rites of passage.

So if it’s a nature process of life, I wonder why it’s so hard? At least it’s hard for me and my friends in the same boat. As I think about it, the hard part is all the physical symptoms that seem impossible to control. I did not ask for whiskers to randomly sprout from my chin; or for the hot flashes that make sleep elusive; or, let’s get honest, the uncontrollable weight gain – I think they call it the middle age spread. Let me just say…I am not amused.

But I’m wondering if there’s a different way to look at all this. The truth is, it’s inevitable. No woman can escape it. Some have fewer symptoms or are propelled into it, but we all go through it. I haven’t even mentioned the emotions that go with it, but they can be extreme. My husband can attest to the crying that came with the early stages for me.  Where is all that coming from???

What if, instead of fighting it, or resenting it, we embraced it? Leaned in to it. Accepted the fact that our bodies are changing rather than being angry about it? Accept that we have no control over it…that is a big issue. As women, we’re used to having a lot of control over what’s happening in our lives. We have taken care of our homes, our families, jobs…juggled our hobbies and things that bring us joy…for the majority of our lives. This should be something we’ve got covered. We (and I include me in that), want to continue controlling our bodies…and we can’t.

We accuse, we blame, we fight our own bodies. And we’re tired. What if you tried to hold off a car rolling down a hill? You likely wouldn’t be successful and you’d get rolled over in the process. If you just stepped aside and accepted what was going to happen you’d save a lot of blood, sweat and tears. It’s the same thing with menopause. Our bodies want to be loved and we’re the primary person to do that. We may have grown humans in our bodies, climbed mountains, risen in our careers – whether in or out of the house. We have put our arms around others to comfort them, loved on others…but we’re failing to do that for ourselves. We fight what we need and it’s a fight against ourselves.

So if we’re in the midst of a rite of passage, why don’t we lean in? Accept what’s happening. The struggles we might be facing in the midst of the transition are ones we’re bringing on ourselves. Stop the battle. We need to love ourselves, our bodies and not abandon them during this time of transition. Know that this process is taking us to another phase in our lives.

If you’ve stuck through this post and are not in this phase, I encourage you to look at what you may be going through in life. Are you fighting an unnecessary battle? What do you really need right now? Listen to yourself, your body, your inner voice and follow it. Today, let’s choose to love ourselves as we are. We’re here for a reason…lean in to learn what that reason is. Be brave.

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A Return to Vulnerability

VulnerabilityEver had that conversation that you knew you needed to have but you were avoiding it? Maybe with a spouse, a close friend, a family member? Yeah, me too.  What happens is that instead of having the conversation, I create a story in my head about the other person’s motives, what they must be thinking, or the why behind what they’re doing. I create their side of the story without giving them a chance to chime in. And, invariably, my story is far worse than what is actually happening.

In my story, I am being hurt, slighted, or ignored. My feelings are being smashed down. It’s never a version where it all works out. It’s a version where there is conflict. And in my story, I’m upset, and crying. What does all this storytelling do for me? Well, my brain swirling about it usually leads to me actual crying, getting anxious, feeling upset…even though the conversation never happened!

Been there? Most of us have.

This was the topic of conversation with my friend/coach the other day. It started off as just chatting and next thing I know, we’re smack in the middle of it. How did that happen?? And yes, there was crying, by me of course.  There is a HUGE bonus to having a friend who started as my coach. We float in and out of that mode at times. So she knows me. We’ve gone there. And when she sees it, she gently calls me on my crap. Those are friends everyone should have, in my opinion.

She pushed up on me and I’ll spare you the gory details but it came back to vulnerability. Rather than having a conversation, I was creating story. So the bigger question is why not just have the conversation? Well that was scary, full of unknowns, had the potential for me to get hurt. Then again, was it hurt, or was it that the other person wouldn’t see things from my perspective. The truth is, they might not. So what was really keeping me from having that conversation?

Vulnerability. I’d have to be vulnerable, share what I was thinking. Open myself up to those unknowns. Now that was scary. But was it worse than what I was doing to myself? Creating the stories in my head. If you also create the stories, think about how much free brain space you’d have if you skipped that step and just had a conversation.

The thing is, I’d done the vulnerability thing. Moved past it. And now I had to do it again?? I think I’d always known it, but vulnerability is not a one and done thing, it’s a practice. It’s part of life. It’s what keeps you from spinning yourself into victim mode. Or from creating stress and strife – in your head – about your relationships. Being vulnerable lets you speak your truth. Let’s you be your true self, and how the other person responds is up to them, but if you speak from a place of vulnerability, you’ll know. Instead of the story, you’ll know the other side.

I’m not going to lie, the thought of being vulnerable makes me queasy. But I have to do it. We have to do it my friend. It’s not a one shot deal. We can’t say “oh I’ve done

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vulnerability,” and move on to something else. So, are you in? Are you with me? This is one of those be brave moments. I know we can do it. Trust you heart, guard your heart “…it determines the course of your life.” (Prov. 4:23). Your heart knows the way to vulnerability, trust it.