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The Story of your Past

As humans, we like to tell the story about our past. It can be useful when trying to explain to the other humans and to ourselves just why we are the way we are.

We point to our past experiences as the basis for our reasoning.

We are the way we are because of what we observed, what we were directly taught and most importantly how we interpreted it. There were a multitude of variables that could not be predicted or controlled but it was up to our very young brains to make sense of it.

In case your are wondering or you care, this is the nurture side of the nurture/nature controversy.

Back in the caveman days, there were fewer variables and life was likely simpler. Good v bad, warm v cold, scary v safe, etc.

Our current world is far from simple. Yet the crazy part is that while times have changed, 12-year-olds today are still dealing with the same brain that their cave-child ancestor dealt with.

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The Benefit of the Doubt

How often do you give people the benefit of the doubt?

You might believe there are people or groups of people in your life who ‘don’t deserve it’. We make assumptions. Our brains naturally want to sort and classify all the other humans and we choose to believe generalizations and that allow us to see how we differ on a superficial level.

You might have people in your life where you have assumed you know ‘where they are coming from’ based on past actions or words. Your brain likes to create rules about the other humans, even if those rules are based on our interpretation of their behavior. Offering the benefit of the doubt to those people would mean having to re-think our rules and your brain has an innate resistance to the extra credit work.

Consider the person who cuts you off in traffic or who is driving too slow in the left lane. You assume he is an asshole and that he has no respect. Or that he is too self-centered to care about anyone else.

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Practicing Life

What are the life skills you practice when no one is watching?

A strange question perhaps, but we all know that if you want to get better at something, you need to practice, right?

Look at the basketball players that shoot 500 free throws each day or the hours a baseball player might spend in a batting cage.

But what if you wanted to get better at general life skills. Skills like the ability to respond as opposed to react.

Let’s pretend you deal with anger as a regular emotion. Let’s also assume you would like to learn how to not get triggered. You could force yourself to spend time with someone who pisses you off and see how long you last without exploding… but I wouldn’t suggest it.

So how do you do it?

One way I practice is through meditation. Stay with me….

I have meditated daily for over 7 years, but my goals have never been about reaching nirvana. Or being able to sit for hours at a time.

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Boundaries

A boundary is an act of self-care, self-respect and self-love.

It is something we decide to do for our own benefit. It is not about trying to control the other humans. It’s about getting clarity on what we believe needs to happen and making a decision on how to take care of it.

Far too often we allow things to perpetuate in our lives because we don’t want to offend. Or we don’t want to seem selfish. Or we want people to like us.

The pivotal moment is a realization that someone needs to stand up for us. And that we are the person for the job.

It begins with taking responsibility.

It is a declaration that we have allowed something to happen in the past that we do not want in our future.

It is not about blame. It is about creating the power to change it.

There is a simple formula I use when speaking with the person I am setting the boundary with.

When you do _________, I am going to do _________.

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Getting Organized

What would your life be like if you actually did all the things you ‘planned on’ or ‘wanted’ to do?

Perhaps you have lofty thoughts like, “Someday I would like to clean out the garage” or “I’ve always wanted to get more proficient with Excel” or “I know I would feel better I could just stretch more”.

Or more pressing things like, “I keep forgetting to make an appointment with my doctor” or “the check engine light has been on in my car for weeks now” or “I have a presentation at work next month and I have nothing prepped yet”.

And we think – maybe this weekend I will find time to do (fill in the blank). Except the weekend comes and goes, and (as per usual) your closet still looks the same.

It’s not that we are lazy. So often it is because other things come up that feel as though you should do them right away. They feel urgent in the moment and since you don’t really have anything else specifically planned for that time, you dive in.

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Getting to Work

Making changes, improving and working towards a goal all include an unavoidable process of putting your head down and doing the work.

I heard someone the other day jokingly say that they didn’t want to lose weight, they just wanted to be thin.

I laughed too – we can all relate!

We know where we are, and we know where we want to be but far too often we get thwarted by the ‘muck in the middle’ (MSPS)

But In order to achieve our dreams, we need to get a little scrappy.

Improvement is a new effort every day.

We have all probably dreamed about winning the lottery but we have all heard about those rags to riches to rags stories that come along with instant wealth.

We look at the person who has excelled at business or at their sport or in a relationship and we want what they have for ourselves.

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Dealing with Conflict

My husband and I have recently dealt with some issues in one of our businesses. There were some personal conflicts within the partnership and our value in the resolution of the problem, was to act as Switzerland.

My favorite.

Whether you are helping to mediate a situation between other people or whether you are attempting to mediate your own actions, stepping forward with strategy and intention is always wise.

Just for the heck of it, I have compiled a list of 6 things I think are extremely effect for when conflict exists.

1. Strive to have the lowest heart-rate in the room. It isn’t always easy, but it will always help you to see things with more clarity.

2. Listen carefully to what is being said. Be curious instead of judgemental. Seek to discover not only what a person is saying, but also how they are saying it. The trick is to listen without allowing your brain to go to what YOU want to say in response.

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Experiencing Joy

How do you experience joy?

Joy, at first glance, seems to be a lot like happy. But there are many differences.

We are told that happiness is something we need to chase, where joy appears to be a state of being. Merriam Webster tells us that joy is an expression of happiness, but I would argue against that being the only way to experience joy.

If you compare the words technically, joy can be used as both a noun and a verb, whereas happy is an adjective. (so there lol)

And why am I going down this rabbit hole?

Because in a few traditions, joy (along with love) is thought to be a state that exists fully in each of us, 24/7. I could get a little woowoo and describe it as our essence.

So, stay with me and just pretend.

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Compare and Despair

How often do you compare yourself to others?

Perhaps you have inspiring people in your life, and you have encouraging thoughts of wanting to emulate their positive attributes.

Or… maybe you look at others and all you can see is how they are clearly doing life better than you are.

The buzz word(s) these days are ‘compare and despair’.

Comparison was so much a part of my life, I thought it was normal.

Something everyone did.

Sadly, that is likely an accurate statement.

I still might argue that in small and heavily regulated doses it can be worthwhile. I remember as a new mom, trying to figure out if I was doing okay. There were many times where I looked to and learned from other moms. And comparing my kids progress to what their experience was seemed helpful at the time.

Until of course when I would find myself in a panic because my kid seemed to be not measuring up to others. Or when other moms seemed to be handling things so much better.

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Leaning into our Best

We have all made mistakes.

Times in our past where we said or did what we now see as the ‘wrong’ thing.

It may be something personal or we may have hurt someone. We may have inadvertently created a mess for ourselves and/or others. Or maybe we ‘stumbled’ in a public setting and feel as though we did ourselves harm.

We apologized. We asked for forgiveness. We did whatever we thought we needed to do to make amends. Perhaps we feel as though we learned something from it. And we have given it time to soften.

So why the heck do we still torture ourselves about it?

I am well aware of the list of things my brain goes to when I, for some unknown reason, have the need to make myself feel bad. Some of them are from 30 years ago! Heck I even have one from the 1st grade.

Sometimes they sneak up on my unguarded mind when I am (or should be) asleep.

Is this really the ‘normal’ working of our brains?

Sadly, yes.

Our primitive brain is designed to keep us alive.

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