Category: Stuff in my head

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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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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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Listen to me!

bodily-wisdom-quoteHow often do you have someone in your life say, “just listen to me.” Maybe they yell it at you, or maybe you’re the one saying it.  With all the space I’m making in my life, to just be, to rest, to be creative, I’ve noticed that I’m hearing that phrase more often. Not from anybody else, but from my own body. I’m not kidding. When I slowed down enough to pay attention, I started noticing what my body was feeling, what it said to me.

It said, I’m tired, quit beating me up, I need rest…it also told me that the shape it’s in now, well that’s where it needs to be. That’s a tough one because for probably the last 35+ years, I’ve felt like I was in a diet battle with my body. The weight it would hold onto made my body an enemy. If I lost weight, we weren’t quite friends, but had reached frenemy status. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop and eventually, it did. We’d go back to battle.

And that wasn’t all, I pushed myself to do all kinds of crazy, albeit fun, adventures. If I did something wildly athletic all day, I could eat without guilt. While those time truly were awesome, my body got more and more tired. The fatigue never actually went away. Now, I’ve slowed down, but less by choice and more by necessity. But in the midst of what would otherwise be lamenting for that life, the crazy adventures, I’m finding myself feeling still, content.

Once I got to that point, that’s when I really started tuning into what my body and my intuition. What it was telling me was a crazy thing. I felt more peace. I realized that my body has wisdom, it knows what it needs, rest, food, fun, love, comfort. And though I don’t always do it, when I listen and respond, when I’m actually kind to myself, my body responds favorably. I realize it’s not actually the enemy. I spent all those years essentially fighting my true self. Instead, my body has so much to say, it’s done so much for me, it’s been through life with me. Even though my brain thinks it’s my true self, it’s not, it’s just part of it. My body is the one feeling, sensing, being.

So what’s the point in sharing this with you? I’d ask you to think about how you treat your body. Are you in a battle? Enemies? Do you ignore it altogether? Any of those responses would be normal. The question is where do you want to be? I know that for many, many people, especially women, our body is a source of contention. Our image of ourselves is formed from countless sources over the years. If you grew up when I did, ultra-thin was the goal, but was it realistic? After all these years of trying, I can tell you that it’s probably not – at least for me. We need to learn to love ourselves, to listen to ourselves, just as we are now. If you were meant to be thinner, or a different shape, tune in and you can get there. How you are now, it’s where you need to be, for now. It doesn’t mean you’ll always be that way, but maybe you will. Take the brave step of putting down the sword you’ve yielded against yourself for so long.

You are not helpless in this, your body is not the enemy, you don’t have to be made at it. You can show it love and compassion, and it will reward you – with joy, peace, abundance, creativity and love. Today, be brave for yourself and always remember, be kind to the one you’re closest to, the one you’re living in, you.

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Are you in your lane?

stay in your laneThis weekend we drove to Bakersfield to visit my mother-in-law. Long, long holiday weekend drive. You know the kind. Crazy insane traffic, people everywhere, cars everywhere. At some point you just want to tell someone to stay in their lane. To relax, I like to listen to podcasts. I’ve recently started listening to Oprah’s Super Soul podcasts, love them, and one of many I played on that drive was Oprah talking to Joel Olsteen.

Now, I’m not a regular listener of Joel Olsteen, but their conversation was interesting on many levels, and one area that struck me was discussion about staying in your lane. Appropriate for what we were experiencing in that moment! Joel talked about Hebrews 12:1 “…Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Doing that requires that we stay in our lane. Our lane.

That begs the question. Do you know your lane? Because it’s hard to run your race well if you don’t even know what your lane is or maybe even the race you’re in. Or if you’re always looking into someone else’s lane thinking it might be better. Strike a chord? It did for me.

For a lot of my life, I believe I’ve been running someone else’s race, without really being clear on what race it was. That’s what happens when you try to live your life trying to meet someone else’s expectations. And you might think you know what the other person’s expectations are, but chances are you really don’t. In my case, the expectations I’d chosen to believe, and probably had enhanced in my mind, were impossible to reach, and worse yet, they probably weren’t even legit.

All trying to meet someone else’s expectations is going to do is leave you empty. Aching. Knowing that there is more you’re being called to do, but not knowing how to break out from the wrong lane you’re in to get there. I know, I’ve been there. I was in the wrong lane for so long, and in reality, I wasn’t that far off track, but off enough to feel the ache. Enough to know that there was more that God was calling me to do. It looks like unhappiness, it feels a little like depression, life feels flat.

And I searched, mainly within myself. I looked deep inside at my beliefs. At what was holding me back. I questioned a lot of things in my life. A spiral…so many false beliefs …assumptions…based on what I thought I should be doing, or what I thought other people wanted me to do. Things I believed, and when I finally realized they weren’t true, that I didn’t have to feel restricted by them anymore…well then what??

That’s when I found my lane. Stepped into the me that I was created to be. And all my wiring finally started coming together. I remember feeling like I was stepping into my life, into confidence in how I was created and what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t exactly what I thought, because that’s other thing. Sometimes we think we want to be in a particular lane and it’s not where we belong. We can force it, muscle it, but only for a while. But when it’s wrong it will exhaust you.

What about you? Whose lane are you in, yours’ or someone else’s? If you want to run your race, get into your lane! Don’t think the person next to you has a better lane, more glamorous lane. Know that your race is just that, it’s your race, unique, and specially created for you. Only you and God know what that race is supposed to be. When you find it, or if you’ve already found it, you’ll know that it is an amazing place to be. Life clicks. You have to be brave to get there, to stay there. I did, it’s still a journey, but I’m staying in my lane while I do it. I hope you’ll join me.

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Creating Time…to Think

Slow down and Focus

I’ve been on a quest this summer to slow down. Life feels so incredibly busy all the time and I’ve been working on being more present, instead of working ten steps ahead in my head with no time to actually think. Except the more I do that, the more stuff seems to come up. It’s the proverbial peeling of an onion. My obsessive cleaning friends will get this…it’s like when you’re cleaning your house and the more you clean, the more stuff you see to clean. Next thing you know, you’re on baseboards, windows, and look out garage, you’re next.

That’s how it’s been trying to slow down my brain and life. This week, I’ve continued to work on doing one thing at a time instead of multi-tasking.  I’ve also started thinking about screen time. I consider myself a moderate to low phone user. I use it at work, there’s a little time spent on social apps, I research and diagnose myself with diseases on it (just sayin…Mayo Clinic is a reputable site…my doctor said so), ok, I can see the list is getting a little long. And yet, I think I don’t use it as much as others I know. But…I could use it less. Although, full disclosure, I think I’ve picked up my phone five times in the short time I’ve been writing this post, because I could not live without know the hour by hour weather today? Or sending a picture to my friend of something that struck me as funny?

I listened to a podcast my friend sent me this week exploring how spending so much time on our mobile devices can actually limit our creativity. Our brains stay occupied with what everyone else is saying and doing and we don’t spend time in our own creative genius space. At the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, speaker Juliet Funt spoke about the concept of White Space (check her out on YouTube). Creating time to think strategically, not meditation, but carved out time to let your mind wander – in a strategic way. I loved this concept – completely aligned with my focus in the last couple months.

I remember when I did a half-Ironman a couple years ago (first and only – kinda a bucket list thing), we couldn’t use headphones, so basically, no phone use the entire time – which for me was quite a while considering I walked the run portion. Oddly enough, it was amazing. My brain wandered all over the place…I spent a lot of time with God…I saw things in my life clearly…I felt calm and at peace. I can see now that was White Space. In the Bible, Jesus left to be alone with God and pray. Time for clarity. Leaders go on retreats to get away from day to day…to get clarity. Clarity is a White Space concept.

So how does all that fit into slowing down? If I look at the goal of slowing down, it’s really to feel rested and have clarity on the things that really matter. Get into my creative space, think and plan strategically, and gain energy. What stops me? Me. If you’re trying to find more time in your life, what stops you? You.  Sometimes we might feel like we’re along for the ride in life because we’re bombarded with doing. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There’s a choice to make and it’s a choice I’m making. If I don’t start making time to slow down and create that White Space Juliet Funt spoke about, I’m going to keep feeling like I’m jumping from one thing to the next – like changing channels. Each of us has the ability to take back our lives from the fake need to keep up with everyone else’s lives. Let’s make the choice to live and be in our own lives. Our lives are definitely worth showing up and being our best for. Are you in? Let’s do it…be brave.

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You have choices

Choose the positiveMy air conditioning has been working marginally, if at all, for two months. During a summer with a record number of days over 90 degrees, many over 100. And now, our water heater is leaking. Yesterday, in the midst of house failures, the heat and a long afternoon, I told my husband I thought we should come up with a name for the summer, like newscasters do around hurricanes, or natural weather events. Like…Summer of living on the sun…or the even more charming…summer in a fiery cauldron.

What he said to me made me think. He told me he wouldn’t attach a negative word to this summer. Wait what??? He doesn’t want to think of it that way. You see, this is the first summer we’ve spent together since we remarried. The heat, the adversity, certainly tested us. It’s very easy to turn frustration that arises in the heat towards each other. But that didn’t happen, at all. And believe me, there have been some tense moments, especially when you wake up tired from sleeping in a hot room, think surface of the sun, all night. Instead of turning us on each other like rabid dogs, it brought us closer together. So, no, he wouldn’t attach a negative name to this summer.

I was thinking about this the other day as I attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. Our organization was a host site so I was able to “attend” with 300 of my work friends. The Summit featured fantastic speakers, many of whom stood out to me for a variety of reasons. During one session, Andy Stanley shared an interesting perspective. He said that we should be students of success, do autopsies on success. We often spend our time focusing on what when wrong. So what does that do? Keeps us circling the drain. Keeps us in the negative space. Don’t get me wrong, there is some value to figuring out what when wrong to prevent it in the future, but staying there is not productive.

Focusing on success, studying what went right…now we’re getting somewhere. Studying success helps us…wait for it…be more successful. In life, at work, in relationships. Spending time truly understanding the aspects that were successful, in addition to helping you replicate it in the future, puts you in a positive space. Helps you look back on situations and see the good, not pick apart the one thing that didn’t go well.

Do you naturally look for the positive? I want to say yes. But at the same time, I know that I can have a critical eye. I look for the flaw. My heart is to help make it better, but that overlooks the 99% that’s awesome. I’m quite sure that is not the most helpful, or encouraging. Even though I see the flaws, I also see the positive. I want to see the positive. It doesn’t always hold my attention as long though. That’s something I’m working on.

So back to my summer of…laughter…joy…memories. Yes, I’m choosing the positive. You see, I choose if I want to sit in negative or positive energy. Whether I want to let life and my perspective on it be shaped by what’s going on around me, or take an active, thriving role in it.

Is this an area where you struggle? You too have choices. Start looking for the joy in your life. Don’t worry as much about the flaws. Spend your time looking at how to replicate your success. You’ll feel the shift inside you, and others will notice it too. It may take some time, but it’s worth it. Choose the one thing, the one area where you want to be positive and start…right…now. I’m right there with you, we can do it, we’re brave.