When someone tells you to follow your joy, it can sound like an empty platitude. What does it even mean to “follow your joy”? Life is hard, we have responsibilities, we can’t all just quit our jobs and play all day.
And it’s true that we all have parts of our lives that can’t always be joyful. But following your joy doesn’t mean giving up on your daily life. It means steering your life and your choices toward the things that light you up inside.
There is no “right” way to find meaning in the world. And that is why I try to expand past only “religion” and “spirituality” as avenues for connection.
Yes, those are wonderful ways to feel connected and open, but they are only two of the endless options.
I’m a huge fan of goals (it’s kind of what I do), but New Year’s resolutions aren’t always my favorite. This is because, like so much else in our culture, New Year’s resolutions have been turned into vehicles for selling us things; and how are we sold things? Through shame. Here are some healthy and helpful ways to ring in the new year and set your 2022 goals…
The key to continuing your progress isn’t to never stop or falter. The key is to remember that you can always start again, and that when you do start again, you’re not starting from scratch.
Incorporating regular movement into our lives can feel impossible. I know it did for me. I didn’t have time for that. I didn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t do it. I truly believed it just wasn’t for me. That’s because I was thinking of “exercising” and whenever I did, all those shameful associations popped up alongside it. Shame makes us tired, unmotivated, and self-doubting. Those emotions don’t exactly help us start something new and different. But changing my perspective helped me get to a point where I’m moving my body every day. Here’s how…
Though many of us don’t even think about what we do first thing in the mornings, if we start to pay attention to how we approach them, it is often very telling what we see. That first move we make, the first thought we have, sets the tone for how we move through the rest of the day (unless we take the time to reset at some point, which is also incredibly helpful)…
Surviving is simply maintaining your existence. Thriving is reveling in your existence. Thriving is grabbing onto every moment of joy, every opportunity for empowerment and growth, and letting it carry you to something greater than you’d ever let yourself imagine. Thriving is living the life that you know you deserve, that you know you can have, if you’d only let yourself live it…
Humans have always been social creatures who thrive among community. The last year was difficult for just about everyone for a myriad of reasons, but particularly in how it isolated us from the people we rely on for connection.
How many times have you felt judged this week? I’d imagine at least once. Judgment and criticism pop up all the time, often without us noticing. We make a mistake and feel flooded with shame, thinking “what is wrongwith me?!” We see someone doing something we would never do and think, “what is wrong with them?!” It is almost as if we believe that critical judgment is just the natural state of our thoughts, and that there isn’t any getting away from it.
What if there was a different way to move through resentment? That’s what I asked myself a while back. I don’t like being resentful. It doesn’t feel good, and I don’t really like who I am when I’m full of resentment. It’s like having an angry little demon taking up space in my head. So, in order to change the way I related to resentment in my relationship (and in turn in many of my other relationships), I decided to take a look at what I could do differently…
Here are the things I wish you could know now, Teen Me, so that you wouldn’t have to learn them the hard way…
You know the feeling, when you can’t seem to keep your focus and you start a million tasks but can’t seem to finish any of them. When you are just so tired, so bone weary that even a full night’s sleep doesn’t completely cure it. Maybe, like me, you’re becoming more and more irritable with your partner and/or your kids. By bedtime it can feel like you don’t have one ounce of patience left and you’re about ready to erupt…
Self-esteem has become such an overused phrase in recent years that we often forget just how central it is to how we feel on a daily basis. It’s not just self-esteem, though. It’s self-worth, a sense of who you really are. More than anything else, knowing oneself and honoring the truth of oneself allows an incredible freedom. When we are constantly trying to figure out who we are supposed to be, rather than delving into being in touch with you we truly are at our core, we cannot ever truly feel confident in our work or relationships…
It happens to the best of us. Heck, I bet it happens to all of us. You’re trying, you really are, but there are so many sounds, so much whining, so many frustrations on top of one another, and you snap. You yell. You say something mean. You do what a “bad mom” does; what you never thought that you would do….Let’s talk about what you can do next…
As we approach the one-year mark of being at home, it’s impossible not to reflect on everything we’ve been through, and how we’ve gotten through it. We are all unique, but we have all gotten through to this point. Wherever you are, if you’re reading this, you’ve made it to today. That is pretty amazing when you think of it. Here are some of the ways I made it through…
So here’s the deal: if you work with me as a Coach, you’re probably going to end up talking to me about boundaries. Very rarely is there a topic that always comes up with every client, because each client has their own needs and wants and goals, and each client uses different strengths to get there. What I can tell you, though, is that I have yet to work with anyone who didn’t need to make boundaries a part of their work with me.
I’m six months pregnant with my second child the first time I have to do it. This terrifying, anxiety producing thing. I have to attend my eldest child’s first ever parent teacher conference…
Mothers are responsible for a lot in this world. We are expected to raise a whole generation of humans, and many are expected to do it alone. On top of that we are expected to force our bodies to fit into a mold that only serves to contain us, to use our bodies as tools of shame and subservience. But here’s the thing, we have agency here. We can challenge ourselves and each other to stop this cycle one brave moment at a time.
We all know the feeling. You’re around people. Your kid starts doing something that the other grown-ups don’t like. They’re being loud. They say something like “I don’t like you! I only like Paw Patrol!”. They hit their sibling. They are being, dare I say it, childish. You have that combined feeling of exhaustion and shame because, not only do you now have to deal with the behavior, but you also have to deal with the opinions and judgements of the people around you.
I can’t tell you what to take with you from this year, though I have some suggestions for our leaders. But I can share the lessons that I’ve learned, the ones I’m taking with me in hopes that I will be better prepared for what lies ahead in the unknown of 2021 and beyond. So here are some of my 2020 learned lessons, for what it’s worth…
