Category Archives: Uncategorized

Are You Still Choosing To Believe The Worst About Yourself?

(You can stop that now)

Photo by Bekah Russom on Unsplash

When I was around 14 years old I shared a room with my sister. It wasn’t a big room but I enjoyed moving my bed and dresser around just to change things up whenever I got bored with the layout. The bed was heavy so it took a lot of shoving, pushing, and pulling to get it where I wanted, but it was always worth the effort.

One time I had spent most of the day rearranging my bed at the far end of the room, closer to the window, which gave me more space in the middle of the room. It was cozier, and I was happy with it. 

When I was done I opened the bedroom door to proudly show my parents what I had accomplished.

My mom nodded and said it looked okay. My dad pointed out that I was blocking the heat from the baseboards because my bed was too close to it. I hadn’t noticed that but I said I was okay with it. We argued back and forth for a minute, and I don’t remember what else was said exactly, but our conversation ended with my dad yelling “Dummy!” at me before storming back down the hallway.

At the time I had a chip on my shoulder so I didn’t think anything my dad could say would bother me.

But my dad telling me I was dumb did bother me. It bothered me so much that I spent the next 40 years trying to prove him wrong, even though I secretly believed he was right. 

I think I doubted my intelligence long before that moment, and my dad’s words just confirmed the thoughts I already had. 

My brain was very good at providing evidence to back up my belief. I consistently got A’s in advanced English, and A’s and B’s in advanced biology, but those were easy to dismiss.

It’s the D’s and F’s I received in math class – everything from basic algebra to geometry – that my brain focused on. I would see “everyone else” around me (and by everyone I mean the 2 or 3 people who were good at math) answering questions like it all made perfect sense to them. Meanwhile, I stared at the jumble of numbers and symbols on my paper, holding back tears, because none of it made any sense to me and I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

I chose the smallest sample of what my brain had to offer and used it as evidence to prove my thought, and my dad’s words, that I was, indeed, dumb. 

But why? Why do so many of us choose to believe the worst about ourselves?

Thinking back now it might have been that I was afraid of being smart. According to my primal brain smart people stood out. Parents and teachers expected things from them. If I wasn’t smart I didn’t have that kind of responsibility, no one would expect anything from me, and I could blend in and not get noticed.  

Whatever the reason, I spent the majority of my life hiding, playing small, and not believing in myself. I never took the time to learn who I was and what I was capable of, so I was left with believing another person’s opinion of me.

Here’s the reality – negative words are just words, they only hurt when part of us believes them to be true. 

Are you also believing – and finding validation for – something negative about yourself, and using select, outside opinions to confirm your internal bias? Have you been hiding and playing small, for whatever reason?

If you are, I can promise it isn’t serving you. And it isn’t serving the people around you who love you.

No one else is like you…no one before you was, and no one after you will be. You are, and will always be the only amazing, beautiful, unique, you. You deserve to know yourself and to share your true self with your loved ones around you.

You deserve to discover how capable you truly are, decide what you want and who you want to be, and then go out and create it. 

Artist, writer, dancer, architect, investor, lawyer, teacher, it’s all open to you.

Discover What’s Possible.


P.S. If any of this resonates with you – I can help! Let’s connect and let me show you how to discover who you are and how to create your full, intentional life.

You’re Born An Individual, And You Die An Individual. You Deserve to Know Yourself During the In–Between


Caution: Tough love ahead

Photo by Hiroshi Kimura on Unsplash

If you’re in your middle age of life you may have been raised believing (consciously or unconsciously) that your value was determined by the opinions of the people around you. Pre-internet that meant your dad, your mom, siblings, friends, teachers, and co-workers.

If they liked you, you were winning. If you served everyone around you well and did all the right things, you could feel like a good person. You could feel loved, appreciated, or valued.

But, what happened when your efforts backfired? When your friends or family didn’t appreciate your help, got upset because you did it wrong, yelled at you, or – worse?

How did that make you feel then?

Looking back over your life, how many years would you say you’ve spent turning yourself inside out to appease others, to “make them happy”, so you could feel valued and loved in return?

If you’re like me, the answer would be: “All of them”.

Changing yourself to make other people happy sounds like a noble pursuit, some of us even became experts. It seemed harmless – why wouldn’t we want to try and make others happy?

I’ll give you 3 reasons why:

  1. It’s a moving target. People are human beings, so what worked yesterday might not work today. And when you don’t get the desired result on your first try, you have to scramble to become someone, or something, else. You have to keep trying different ways to fit yourself into their puzzle.
  2. Technically, it’s mental and emotional manipulation. We try to say the right thing at the right time to the right person, so they’ll feel good and react in a way that makes us feel good in return. Even if we’re doing it with the best intentions, it’s not only inauthentic, it’s exhausting.
  3. And the most important reason: By fitting yourself into everyone else’s puzzle, and becoming who (you think) they need you to be (yes, even to your kids), you will never get to know who you are. And, sadly, neither will they.

So, big deal, right? What does that even mean?

I believe we are put on this earth to help others, to love and support the people we come in contact with every day. But I also believe we are meant to discover what each of us is capable of, individually.

I believe every one of us has been gifted with different abilities and talents. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if we lived our whole lives never finding out what we were capable of? Of finding out what our gifts and talents were that might allow us to help so many MORE people than we could even imagine?

You don’t have to stop loving and serving the people around you. But I would like to offer that you could be so much more to them by being more to yourself.

Start by getting to know yourself like you would a new best friend…what do you like? What do you not like? If you were suddenly on an island with no one else around would you know how to act? Or who to be? Would you feel freedom, or terror?

I’m not saying you have to quit your current life and become someone different (you were already doing that, remember? 🙂). And you don’t have to come up with some grand plan or make drastic changes to your current lifestyle.

I think a lot of us are afraid of finding out who we are, or who we could be. We mistakenly believe it’s better to let everyone else around us steer our ship for fear that we might make a mistake.

But the real mistake is never giving our true selves a chance.

Get to know yourself.
Then become accepting of yourself.
Then become loving to yourself.
Then become true to yourself.

Once you do that, you can be accepting, loving, and true to everyone else around you.

Be the example of what it means to be your own person, to live your life on your own terms.

Discover What’s Possible.

Lost in Negativity: Rediscovering the Habit of Positive Thinking

Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash

We all know the benefits of maintaining a positive outlook – lower blood pressure, less stress, better mood, etc.

I even teach others how to improve their life by managing their thoughts.

Unfortunately, my bouts of positivity can sometimes be short-lived.

All might be well for a few days or even weeks at a time…I feel productive, I have a great attitude, I’m in happy hustle mode getting all the things done.

Inevitably, the “ick”, or negative thought loop, will start to sneak in:

“You know you’re doing this wrong. You didn’t finish what you started last time, what makes you think you’ll finish this? And even if you do no one will notice, so why do you bother?”.

My happy hustle mode quietly begins to wane and the negativity sets in. The next thing I know I’m sitting on the couch binge-watching Northwoods Law for hours, crying over lost hikers and injured baby animals.

It takes work for me to keep positivity in the forefront of my brain and I’ve turned that work into a daily habit. It’s when I break that habit that the ick starts to take over. As a result, I can sit in apathy and inactivity for days or even weeks. 

Thankfully I’ve learned now how to recognize that pattern within myself. And while I can’t always stop it from happening, I can drastically shorten its effect.

Here are 3 steps I take when I need to get my brain back on track.

Step One – Stop the “ick”.

As they say, the first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging.

So the first thing I do when I find myself in a negative thought spiral is to stop beating myself up for being in a negative thought spiral. 

If someone I loved was down or in a slump, I would never even THINK of layering more negativity on top of that, because that’s not how we treat our loved ones.

But that is how we treat ourselves.

So I think of something I would normally say to someone I love, and I say it to myself. Statements like “I love you and it’s okay to feel however you feel. It doesn’t make you bad, or wrong, or mean anything about you.” “You’re not doing life wrong.” I sometimes even give myself a little mental hug, just like I would hug one of my kids.

One thing I DON’T do is try to force myself out of the negativity. If I decide I want to feel bad for a few days, then I give myself permission to do just that. When I decide I’m tired of sitting on the couch I get my journal out and get back to doing some simple thought work.

Second step, write down your intentional thoughts. Every day.

Journaling needs to be a top priority for me if I want to stay in a positive thought cycle. 

Every time I find myself in a downward spiral you can bet it started when I stopped making journaling a daily habit.

It doesn’t have to be anything involved or elaborate. My daily journaling takes maybe 10 minutes in the morning, depending on whether or not I do a full thought download (aka “brain dump”)..

Since journals can sometimes be pricey and complicated I started making my own using a small, plain, college-ruled notebook. 

Each entry starts with a list of the “5 Things I’m Grateful For” that day (big or small). That prompt immediately takes my focus off of myself and puts it towards the good things I have going on around me, even if it’s just a really good, hot cup of coffee.

Next, I make a list of the “10 Ways I’m Living My Fullest Life”. These are 10 ideals I want to maintain daily to help me achieve my goals. It’s the same list every day, in order of importance, and written in the present tense. Here are the first two as an example: 

  1. I treat myself with love and respect.

This is a decision I committed to about a year ago, and I still have to write it down every day or I will forget it. When I’m treating myself with love and respect it’s impossible to also hold the belief that I’m not good enough. Writing this simple phrase is a sure-fire way to pull myself out of a spiral, I can feel a shift in my body as soon as I remind myself of that commitment.

The second item on my list:

  1. I believe in myself and my clients

It’s another thought that I decided to adopt a long time ago, and another one I can easily forget if I’m not reminded daily. Just like my first affirmation, when I remind myself that I believe both myself and my clients have what it takes to show up for ourselves and improve our lives,  I can’t also hold the belief that “this will never work so why bother”. 

Last, but not least

The third step for living my fullest life is to move my body every day.

This can be anything from going to the gym and working hard for an hour, running a 5K, or just walking for 15 minutes.

Committing to moving my body can also be a double-edged sword for me…I love working out at the gym and I equally love getting outside and walking, hiking, running, kayaking, paddle boarding, you name it. It clears my mind, gives me a better perspective, and reminds me how strong my body is.

But it’s also something I can, and will, use against myself if I don’t achieve it (I’m looking at you damn Apple rings). I would also rather work out than do other things, like talk to other humans or try to craft the perfect blog post. So I just need to make sure that the reasons I’m moving my body that week are in alignment with the first two items on my daily list.

These are just 3 steps out of the 10 that I use to get my brain back into a positive thought habit. It would be wonderful if I could just wake up every day and have all these great thoughts and feelings generated automatically, without having to put in any work, but that’s just not how it is for me.

And that’s okay. 

I don’t believe we’re meant to have “only good vibes”, or “no bad days”. I think life is more like 50/50 – 50% positive and 50% negative. And when my life is turning out to feel more 70/30 or 80/20, I know what steps I can, and need, to take to get my life back on track.

And now, so do you.

Discover What’s Possible

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Your Thoughts Are Not Facts

Learn how to tell the difference

Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash

Many of us mistake our thoughts for actual facts:

“I’ll never make that much money” (thought).

“I’m fat” (thought).

When we believe those thoughts to be true, we feel locked into our current circumstances: 

“I’ll never make that much money” = “I’ll always be struggling financially”.

“I’m fat” = “I’ll never lose weight”.

But thoughts are not facts. They’re negative thought loops in our brains that we’ve believed for so long that they feel true in our bodies.

My own go-to thought is “I’m not good enough” = “Life will always be like this”.

It’s one of the top 3 lies my brain tells me every day.

The trick is to notice these negative thought loops and question them.

How might that thought not be true?

If you could make more money, how might you do it?

What could you do for yourself to make losing weight easily obtainable?

How might I already be good enough? How am I even defining “good enough”?

Recognize the difference between a thought and a fact.

Question the thought, is it serving you?

If not, change it.

You can learn to manage your thoughts.

Discover What’s Possible.

How To Stop Controlling The People You Love

(It’s killing your relationships)

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Usually, I write about people pleasing.

Why we do it, how it started, and how to stop.

Today is a little different perspective, however. Consider it a deeper dive.

As you may already know, people-pleasing is a skill we develop in childhood, as a means of self-preservation. We try to behave the “right” way to please others and control their emotions and reactions to feel safe and to keep the peace (you can read more about that here).

Theoretically, we should evolve out of people-pleasing as we get older because we no longer need to try and control others to feel safe. We’re more independent and have more agency over our own feelings.

Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case. If you grew up people-pleasing there was probably no one teaching you how to manage your feelings.

So, even as adults, we still believe we need to control the emotions and behaviors of others to achieve our desired emotions. We need them to behave or react in the “right way” in order for us to feel happy, loved, or accepted.

And this my friends, is called ‘having a manual’.

When we’re in a relationship with someone we (subconsciously) have a manual for that person with rules about how they need to act and what they need to say in order for us to feel our desired emotions, whether it’s love, appreciation, or respect.  

And we apply those manuals to all of our relationships, friends, partners, parents, or children.

We tell ourselves:
“If my husband remembers my birthday or buys me something I really want, then he loves me. If he doesn’t, then he clearly doesn’t love or understand me.”
“My mom or dad needs to tell me they’re proud of me or that they love me so I can feel appreciated and loved”
“My grown kids need to text me or spend time with me so I can feel appreciated and believe I’m a good parent.”

What do all these examples have in common?

  1. We’re giving control of our feelings over to someone else.
  2. The people we are entrusting our feelings to are living, breathing human beings with free will

That is not a winning formula.

I love my kids unconditionally and with all of my heart, as I’m sure most parents do. 

Now, ask me how many times I’ve let my children down…the times I forgot an important date or something they were supposed to have for school, or didn’t buy the right toy at Christmas or their birthday. My kids are grown adults and I still let them down.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t love them, or value them above anything else!

It just means I’m human. I’ve never been perfect and I will never be.

So why is it we expect other people to be perfect, and to not disappoint us? To say and do everything the right way, otherwise, we can’t feel loved and appreciated? 

The real reason we feel disappointed

Most of us blame our feelings of disappointment on someone else because they didn’t say or do something that they ‘should’ have. 

But that’s not the real cause.

Our disappointment comes from expecting them to act differently than they did.

For not following our manual.  

When I first met my late husband, Craig, what drew me to him was that he was the most easygoing, laid-back person I’d ever met. He could get along with anyone and rarely ever got upset.

After roughly ten years into our marriage, however, it was that same laid-back trait that I started resenting.

I became frustrated that he never had an opinion about what we did. He would always leave it up to me: “Whatever you want to do”, or “Whatever you think”. 

Fast forward twenty-four years into our marriage, fourteen years after his diagnosis of primary progressive MS. By then he was confined to a bed and I had been caring for him for several years. 

As his condition worsened I became more angry and resentful by the day. I felt like he wasn’t “trying hard enough” to care for himself, and that he was leaving all the work and decisions up to me. He was being too laid back. 

My manual for him was that he needed to make more of an effort to care for himself so I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.

I blamed my husband for my feelings. I was angry at him, at our situation, and at myself. I felt miserable and I was making everyone else around me miserable as well, including my husband and my kids.

A few months before my husband passed, when I began doing thought work, I finally saw what I was doing.

My husband wasn’t causing my anger and frustration.

It was my thought that he should be acting differently than he was.

That he should somehow be different than he had been in the almost thirty years of our relationship. 

He should have taken control of the situation and been the one to make all the decisions and fight for a longer life.

The realization that I was angry at him for not following my unwritten, unexpressed manual was the most considerable relief I had gotten up to that point. My anger and resentment dissolved almost immediately.

Once I realized my husband was only being the same person he had always been, I could step back and look at our situation more objectively. I could understand he was doing the best he could and that he was only being the same person he had always been. The same person I fell in love with almost thirty years before. 

By letting go of my manual for him, and how he “should” be handling his illness, I could let go of the manual I had for myself, for how I “should” also be handling it. I was able to give both of us grace and let go of my expectations. Each of us was handling the situation the best we could.

Losing my anger and resentment allowed room for the compassion, and also the grief that I had been stuffing down for that whole time.

Who are you holding a manual for?

If you grew up as a people-pleaser you probably have a manual for most of the relationships in your life. Sometimes it’s the only way we know how to connect with other people.

But I’d like to offer that you can let that manual go. It’s not serving you and it’s certainly not helping your relationships.

You will never get your mom to act how she’s never acted, or to (authentically) say what she’s never said.

You will never get your husband to do what he said he would do when he said he would do it if that’s not something he’s ever done.

You will never get your kids to act how you think they should act.

Trying to control our feelings by controlling other people just doesn’t work. Plus it’s exhausting.

Instead, learn to control what is within your power to control.

Look inside yourself. Get curious about why, why do you need someone else to act a certain way?

And what will you get to feel if they do?

Will you get to feel validated? Loved? Accepted?

My dear you don’t need someone else to make you feel that way, these are feelings you can give yourself – you can believe in yourself, you can validate yourself, and you can love and accept yourself.

That’s the work. 

We are the only ones who can fill those buckets inside of ourselves, and it’s an option available to all of us, no matter where we’re starting from.

The more love and acceptance we have within us, the more we can share with those outside of us.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Discover What’s Possible

Emotional Independence: How to Let Go of External Validation and Own Your Feelings.

In other words, how to stop being a chameleon.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

How it started

If you were a child that was raised in a volatile household you may have learned to adopt certain habits as a means of self-preservation…

Habits like trying to behave the right way, say the right things or even make yourself invisible in order to avoid unwanted, negative attention. The kind of attention that might result in anger, fear, or pain.


As children we obviously didn’t have the power to change our circumstances.


So instead, a lot of us became masters of changing our thoughts and our actions in order to avoid that negative attention, to avoid ‘rocking the boat’.

We learned how to think and act in order to control the only thing we thought we could – other people’s actions and emotions. 


In the process, our brains developed an equation: Act the right way = achieve the desired result:


Be the good girl = feel seen.
Get good grades = receive positive attention and praise.
Make someone else happy = feel loved and appreciated in return.


Through years and years of that repetition we developed the belief that controlling other people’s emotions was the only way to control ours.

How it’s going

While these behaviors may have served us when we were kids, many of us are still holding onto them as adults. 


How many of us as parents look to our kids for validation? While they’re young we want them to feel happy, “fit in”, or get good grades. Not just because we love them, but because we believe it means we’re good parents. If they seem happy and love us back then we’re “doing it right”.

And what about those of us whose children are grown and no longer live at home?


How many of us have had the thought “They’re not talking or texting me enough. They don’t want to spend time with me, which means they don’t love me. I did it wrong. I must have been a bad parent” –?


We apply that same thought process to our spouses and even our friends.
A lot of us also carry it into our jobs. We believe the more we do, the harder we hustle, the more appreciated we will be. And appreciation = validation, right? The feeling that we’re doing it right, that we’re worthy.


We’re repeatedly applying that same equation, that same thought error, to the people around us now, just as we did when we were kids, in the hopes that we’ll achieve the same results. 

But what served us then does not serve us now.

How Do We Get to There?

Imagine if we no longer gave other people power over our feelings of self-worth.


What if we were the only ones responsible for how we felt and acted?


What if we were the only ones who could provide ourselves with feelings of worthiness and “enoughness”?


(Okay spoiler alert – we are. We totally are).


No one else can give us something that we are unwilling or unable to give ourselves. 


No amount of external affirmation or validation, from anyone, could ever fill the void if our internal belief is that we’re not enough.


I am willing to die on that hill, my friends.


So how do we go about changing our internal dialogue? How do we turn off that negative belief of “not enoughness”?


I don’t believe that we should, or even could, ban negative thoughts completely. Mine have been running in the background of my primal brain for 50+ years, so that neural pathway is well-worn my friends. It’s become a part of who I am.


But we can develop new thought loops, new neural pathways (because, science). And, now that we’re adults, we get to choose those new thoughts.

On purpose.


I’m not talking about repeating daily affirmations about being worthy and enough (although I would highly recommend journaling them as part of the process).


I’m talking about taking a step back, looking at your current thoughts – without judgment – and just getting curious.


Discover the unintentional, negative thought loops that are running unchecked through your brain, thousands of times a day, and see how those thoughts are currently affecting your life:

  • Do you constantly second-guess everything you say and do?
  • Hustle all day to prove your self-worth?
  • Obsess over the reactions of others to determine what they might mean about you?

The thoughts running unchecked in my brain sound like this: 

  • “I’m not good enough”
  • “I did that wrong”
  • “This isn’t going to work anyway so why try”


Instead of ignoring my unintentional thoughts and pretending they don’t exist, I try to choose a thought that makes me feel a little better, one that feels true in my body: 

  • “I’ve gotten myself this far”
  • “What if there is no right or wrong way?” or “I can learn how to do it better next time”
  • “But what if it does work?” or “What if I just try it another way?”


 And I won’t lie, it takes work and commitment to change the thoughts you’ve been holding on to for most of your life.

It takes looking at the unintentional/unwanted results you’ve achieved so far, and deciding to do something different going forward to achieve intentional results.

Intentional thoughts = intentional results.

The only thing holding you back from living your fullest life is your thoughts. 


But I believe you can change that. 


Because you are beautiful and you’re worthy of an incredible life. 


We all are.

Discover what’s possible

Breaking Free From People–Pleasing

Choosing the Art of Authentic Connection

Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

At face value, people–pleasing may not sound like a problem.

There are times we may choose to do something nice for someone out of genuine appreciation or love.

Not a problem.

But sometimes we do it in order to gain something in return — and that is a problem.

People pleasing goes deeper than just wanting to be loving and supportive towards someone else. The line gets crossed when we focus on another person’s wants and needs because we’re hoping to get back something in return, usually a sense of belonging, validation, stability, or even lovability.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that.

The truth is that no one can give us something that we are unable to give ourselves. If we lack the inherent belief that we’re worthy of love, acceptance, or belonging then those feelings will never stick, no matter how often someone else tries to provide them for us.

The results we create when we’re stuck in a people-pleasing loop are:

  • We relinquish control of our feelings to someone else (“If I can make them happy then I’ll feel better about myself”)
  • Our motives in the relationship become disingenuous
  • We have to become chameleons, constantly changing who we are to ‘fit’ someone else’s mood, temperament, or personality
  • We will never get to know who we are, or who we can become

What is Connection?

I think of having a connection with someone as “finding their humanness”, or a common ground. 

It’s appreciating them for who they are, and the story of their life that brought them to where they are today, just as our story has brought us here.

It’s seeing ourselves and them as individuals, each with our own set of thoughts, wants, and feelings based on life experiences, then comparing and contrasting them. It’s an equal give and take where both people benefit from the relationship, vs people–pleasing where we’re just trying to fit into some mold of who we think we need to be in order for someone else to like us.

Focusing on creating a connection with someone, instead of trying to please them, also takes away our pressure to perform. We no longer have to change who we are with every social interaction, we get to take control of our own feelings, INDEPENDENT of how another person acts, or what they say or do.

But People–Pleasing Is All I Know

Here’s the biggest reason a lot of us are afraid to stop people–pleasing: 

It means letting go of familiar behavior patterns and facing our feelings of insecurity and not–enoughness. 

When we present our people–pleasing self to someone, and we don’t get the reaction we were hoping for, it’s not like they’re rejecting us personally because we’re not showing them the real us. The real us gets to hide behind a persona. The pretend us will simply pivot and figure out a different way to please.

So just like finding a connection with someone else means getting to understand their humanness and life story, we also need to get curious (with compassion) about understanding OUR life story, who we are, and how we got here.

We all have a past that has shaped who we are now, but that doesn’t mean we’re incapable of change, or that our past has to define us.

If you’re like me you might feel like you have no idea who you are because you’ve spent most of your life trying to become who you need to be for others…including parents, bosses, partners, even kids. You’ve probably spent almost no time discovering who you are.

It’s why we feel so lost and panicked when our kids grow up and move out, or when we lose a loved one. 

We don’t know what we want.

We don’t know how to act.

We don’t know who to be.

And, sadly, some people never figure out how to – well – figure it out.

They never learn how to help themselves.

In order to discover who we are we need to learn how to be with ourselves.

It means being alone with our thoughts, our feelings, and our emotions.

You Are Here

In case no one has given you permission before, let me be the first: It’s okay to feel alone. It’s okay to feel scared. It’s okay to feel confused. It’s not only okay it’s downright human.

What’s NOT okay is for us to beat ourselves up for feeling any of these things.

We can never move forward until we consciously decide to stop shaming ourselves for feeling ANY emotion.

We’re humans, we’re wired to feel emotions. 

Feeling our emotions, the good and bad, is the only way to have an amazing life!

The fact is that all the feelings you’re trying to avoid, you’ve probably already felt before at some point in your life. 

And you’ve survived.

You will feel these emotions again, and you will survive them.

Emotions are simply vibrations we feel in our bodies, they cannot hurt us.

Only our reactions to them can.

Constantly trying to obtain what we need from other people, instead of providing it for ourselves, deprives us of the opportunity to connect to ourselves. To understand what we need, what we like, what we don’t like, and who we are

We owe it to ourselves to find out.

And we owe the other people in our life the opportunity to get to know – and enjoy – who we really are, instead of trying to be the person we think they want us to be.

So take the time.

Make the effort.

Get to know yourself so you can begin to truly connect to others, instead of people–pleasing

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Discover What’s Possible.

Hustle, People-Pleasing, and Overwhelm

Here’s why you’re killing yourself at work, and how to stop.

Photo by Nubelson Fernandes on Unsplash

I became a full-blown workaholic at the age of 18.

I had started working in fast food jobs at the age of 15 (I had to fake my application to say I was 15 ½, which was the minimum age to start working in California). I worked in a few different fast-food chains before starting a corporate job in the real estate industry at 18. 

And I’ve been in that same industry ever since, 37 years.

But my job/life balance looks drastically different today than it did back then.

It’s not that I loved working. It was more like every day gave me a new chance for me to prove my worth to my managers, bosses, and co-workers.

I would go into work early, stay late, work weekends, and even bring files home. Sometimes I wouldn’t log my time because “that’s just what it took” to prove my worth. Unfortunately it also meant sacrificing time with my newly born daughter when I was a single mom, and, later on, my other kids and my family.

I’m not proud of that. 

I’m only thankful that I had the opportunity later in life to re-build, or build, that relationship with my children as we all got older. 

Once, when I had been working my ass off in corporate for about 8 years, I had a meeting with our office manager to go over my yearly performance. I had established myself as a hard worker at that point, so I was expecting a good review.

We were sitting in his office, him seated behind a big mahogany desk in an over-stuffed chair, and me sitting on the other side of the desk in (of course) a chair that was smaller and lower to the ground. 

He knew who I was and I knew who he was, but we had never really had a conversation before.

During our meeting I remember him looking at me without speaking for what seemed like an uncomfortable amount of time. He finally said he appreciated that they could put me as an assistant with anyone because I seemed to get along with everybody, even the hard-noses that no one else wanted to work with. Then he tilted his head one side and asked “Are you a middle child?”. 

That was around the time The Birth Order book came out, and apparently this guy that I had never really spoken to before had me all figured out.

I remember feeling very uncomfortable and resentful at his question. I had never considered my birth order up to that point, or what it even meant, and I certainly wasn’t expecting that question as part of my review.

Unfortunately though, his theory was right, I was a middle child. And, although I never read the Birth Order book, I definitely grew up with an urge to make sure everyone else around me “felt okay”. I learned early on that was the best way to keep the peace and avoid unpleasant (and sometimes angry) confrontation. 

It was my way of making myself feel safe.

I have no idea how my boss had figured out so much about me, since I didn’t even understand it about myself at the time. 

But my review was favorable, and they rewarded me by making me the assistant of one of the mangers that was such a jerk no one else wanted to work with him. But I played my people-pleasing game and made it work out. 

I continued to be a workaholic and feed off of the attention and the accolades until I eventually burned out from it. 

And now, in spite of all the blood, sweat and tears I gave my job over roughly 30 years, I’ve learned that it could never give back to me what I desired most. It could never give me the love, attention, and value that I wasn’t able to give myself. 

Anyone who has ever worked in a corporate job knows the more work you do, the more work they give you to do. It’s like trying to dig a hole in the sand at the beach, the more you dig, the more it fills itself back in.

And when you burn out, it’s not your job’s job to save you. The Powers That Be will simply move on to the next hustler, and then you end up back where you’ve always been.

Responsible for your own feeling of self-worth and value.

And that, my friends, is a good thing,

You’re the only one that responsibility SHOULD belong to. You’re the only one who can control how you feel, and it’s because of the thoughts you’re thinking. It comes down to your beliefs.

You don’t need a job to feel worthy.

You need to believe you’re already worthy.

You don’t need a job to feel valuable.

You need to believe you’re already valuable.

And no job, no person, can give you that value, but they also can’t take it away. It belongs to you and only.

And once you anchor yourself  into that belief you will be able to establish boundaries to protect it. 

You will stop hustling to prove yourself. You will stop allowing others to dictate how you feel by what they say and how they act. You get to own your boundaries, your own self-worth, all of it.

THAT’S the work you should be focusing on. 

It will change your life.

Discover What’s Possible.

You’re Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places

It’s time to finally break the cycle

Photo by Kyle Broad on Unsplash

It was one of the lowest points in my life.

I had parked my SUV in an empty parking lot near a train station, and I was lying in the back seat, curled into the fetal position, sobbing. I had my arms wrapped tightly around myself, trying to keep my body from falling apart.

I was an adult at the time, in my late 30’s, and I had gotten myself into a horrible, self-destructive relationship that I couldn’t seem to get myself out of, after several months of trying.

At the time I prided myself on being a strong person. even a smart person. So I couldn’t understand how I had gotten myself so deep into this situation, and why I couldn’t get myself back out.

And the kicker was, I found myself in almost that exact same position again, years later.

I wish I could go back in time to the girl I was then, hold her, and tell her what I know now.

That it wasn’t her fault.

And that she was seeking love and validation from a person who never had the capacity to give it. 

At the time I didn’t understand that I was looking for something that I could only get from myself. It was never going to come from someone, or something, outside of me.

Our Childhood Programming

We were all taught how to love from what we experienced while growing up. 

Some of us learned how to encourage and nurture. 

Some of us learned to stay quiet, or “under the radar”. 

Some of us learned how to please others in order to try and control our surroundings.

Some of us learned we had to behave a certain way in order to get the attention or love we craved.

From a young age, we were given a script to follow…’If we were “good”, we got a reward (usually love, attention, or validation). Conversely, If we were “bad”, we got an unwanted result (anger, fear, intimidation).

So we learned to adapt to our surroundings, to read the room. We became masters of manipulation. 

Back then we were too young to understand that we could never be truly happy while living out that model.

The good news is, we’re adults now, and it’s entirely possible to re-wire our childhood programming. We didn’t know what we didn’t know back then, but now we do know, and now it’s within our power to change.

Re-Write Your Script

It starts by figuring out what it is we’re looking to get – to feel – from that other person, and asking how we can give that very thing to ourselves.

Are we looking for validation? We can validate ourselves. Sit down at the end of the week, or the end of the day, and write down what you’ve accomplished that you can be proud of. Did you keep our kids alive another day? Feed yourself? Get some sleep? Earn money from a job? Do something you told yourself you’d do? – Acknowledge your accomplishments, big or small.

Are we looking for security? Write down 5 ways you had your own back last week. Did you stand up for yourself on a decision that you made, and stuck to? Have you created a roof over your head? Have you created a reliable income for yourself? Have you said No to something that you truly didn’t want to do? (Hint: If you can’t find 5 ways you had your own back, then write down 5 ways you WILL have your own back for next week).

And the biggest one of all: 

Is it love that we’re looking for from someone else? I’m not only going to say we CAN love ourselves, I’m going to implore that we NEED to love ourselves. 

We simply cannot get ANYTHING from someone else that we’re not willing to give ourselves. We literally can’t accept it because we don’t believe we deserve it. We’ve been told for too long that it’s something we need to earn.

Love is not something we need to earn. 

I’ll say it again for that beautiful woman in the back – LOVE IS NOT SOMETHING WE NEED TO EARN.

It’s inherent, it belongs to every one of us.

But no one can make us believe it if we can’t believe it for ourselves (trust me, I tried for most of my life).

But we’re adults now. We get to write our own script, and it can look like whatever the fuck we want it to.

We can validate ourselves, we can make ourselves feel safe, and we can make ourselves feel loved (okay, now I have that Miley Cyrus song in my head “I can buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand, talk to myself for hours…” you get the idea). 

We owe it to ourselves to stop trying to be the someone everyone else needs us to be, and become the someone we were always meant to be. 

Discover What’s Possible.

Calling All Women Over 50…

Looking for your (honest) opinion

Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

Normally my posts discuss the importance of thought work and intentional living for women over 50.

This one doesn’t.

Consider this post more of a poll. As I’ve never been in my 50s before, and my brain doesn’t typically work the same as others, I’m really curious about what other women in my similar situation are really thinking and doing.

Other than a few Facebook groups here and there, I don’t see a concentrated “community” for women over 50.

Why is that?

Is it because we’ve sort of dispersed and quietly become part of other people’s lives…our spouse, our children, our grandchildren?

I know it’s not exactly new that women in our age bracket seem to be “dropped off the map” when it comes to being represented in mainstream media, marketing, and especially movies and tv.

And I can guess why.

Teens are marketed to because they spend a considerable amount of their parent’s money. Twenty, thirty, and even forty year old’s are marketed to because that’s where the disposable income market is. And I’d be willing to bet that Moms are marketed to most of all because let’s face it, moms tend to direct most of the spending in the family (at least that was my experience).

At one point we all existed in those age brackets, they were, and still are, publicly defined communities.

So where did all we go once we turned 50?

We obviously didn’t physically disappear, so why did the representation of our community disappear — except in AARP or medication commercials, or maybe as the secondary role of a mother or grandmother in some movies?

It’s not like we’re posting selfies in our bathing suits on Instagram.

When I do see older women in tv, movies, or commercials, I see someone who is supporting their husband or their grandchildren. I almost NEVER see a strong, independent woman over the age of 50 who is still living out her intentional purpose (except for that bad bitch Caroline Warner on the show Yellowstone played by Jacki Weaver. *Goals*).

I don’t know about you but I still buy groceries. I still go to the movies, watch tv, travel, buy cars, do home improvement, etc. I’m still making my own decisions. I didn’t stop spending money once I turned 50, if anything I’m spending more on myself now that my kids are grown than I ever have.

That’s not to say I necessarily want telemarketers calling and trying to sell me stuff, but women over 50 still exist.

We matter and we have money.

So why aren’t they selling us their cars, their hotels, or renting us their Airbnbs? And did we disappear once we fell out of those publicly defined communities, or because of it?

I’m currently 55, I still do CrossFit, I play drums, I like to run, walk, and hike, and I’m starting a new business. I didn’t retire my life when my kids moved out, or when my husband passed away a few years ago. And I have seen glimpses that at least some other women my age enjoy some of the same things, but not very often.

That’s not to say relaxing and enjoying a slower-paced life after 50 is a bad thing, to each their own, I’m just saying that’s not my path, and I’m wondering if I’m really that far outside the norm?

Or maybe I’m just looking for validation.

As I said I’ve always felt that my brain does not work the same as the general public, especially others my age. So I’m taking a poll.

If you are a woman over 50 I want to hear from you.

Where are you hanging out, either online or in real life? Do you spend a lot of time at home, or do you go out?

Do you still work? Are you looking to slow the pace and maybe work your current job until you’re ready to retire, or are you looking to switch jobs and work towards something you’ve put off until now?

Are you and your partner looking for a relaxed lifestyle and are happy with your day-to-day routine for the most part? Or are you setting goals that you’re looking to achieve before you’re ready to retire?

Do you still try to stay physically active, whether that means dedicated workouts or walks with friends or loved ones?

Is there something you’re looking to still achieve at this stage in your life? If so, what is it?

Are you happy with your daily routine, or are you looking for something more? And if you are looking for more, do you know yet what that is?

This isn’t a sales pitch, and you don’t need to provide an email, contact info, or anything like that. I’m just curious to see where our community lies, or even if there is one?

Please post your comments below. I’d love to get your input