Still feeling swamped, but this the first week in over a month I felt like there was some routine back in place with all the ins & outs of daily life.
I am choosing to focus on growth & progress, and celebrating those victories.
I can’t wait to start writing longer actual posts again soon.
What am I pretending not to know?
What would the person I intend to become do next?
What are 5 concrete examples of actions steps I could take to leave my comfort zone? In my relationships, in my business, and in personal growth
What am I waiting for?
Why won’t I finish (drafting!) my DMP!?
These are all examples of the questions that have been going through my mind this week.
I just about typed “it’s been a challenging week…” and then I started laughing.
(It’s 11:14pm on Friday night. I’m sitting at my dining room table, with my laptop out. Everyone is FINALLY asleep, knock on wood. And I am trying to get my blog post out for the week. I’ve been writing it in my head for a few days now.)
Who am I kidding, in theory I guess I could say that about every week…there’s a mindset switch that needs to happen surrounding that sentence, RIGHT HERE and NOW. I don’t think I could honestly say I remember a week that HASN’T been challenging, for several if not many years. As in “gosh, this was a pretty easy laid back week.” HAHAHA
Ok- so on that note. I think my approach needs to be expecting and ACCEPTING and EMBRACING whatever variety of challenges come up any given day or week. Just plan on it, and plan to hunt for and discover the growth opportunities, like a TREASURE HUNT.
This week: A got tummy/fever sick Sunday night, and stayed home both Monday and Tuesday because she had to. D’s Monday afternoon class got cancelled due to inclement weather. A wanted to stay home Wednesday morning – I think she was still just feeling a bit beat from her illness though technically she could attend. By 9:30am though, she would not stop asking to go to school, so I took her around 11:15 so she could have lunch with her friends and finish her school day. D had his usual Wednesday afternoon class. Thursday and Friday were already scheduled days off for A for the whole school. What does this mean? It means that the little chunks of time I might normally be able to squirrel away with only the two boys home, or the time D is in school when I only have C (and sometimes C naps), were non-existent. I could feel my frustration and negativity building as the length of my to-do list grew and the opportunities to cross those items off disappeared.
Also, my sweet feline sidekick of almost 12 years started acting funny on Monday around dinner time, and following my gut I got her into the vet on Tuesday morning, accompanied by 3 helpers. Unfortunately, the general exam & and xray revealed an abdominal mass approximately 2″ in diameter on her right side, slightly displacing some organs. She is super furry/fluffy, and that fluff had disguised how distended her poor belly had become. We don’t have a for sure diagnosis at this point, just some possibilities. I am heartbroken.
So, all that might not seem like much, but it was enough of a detour from our routine that it really threw me for a loop.
I am so grateful for my father. He surprised me on Tuesday by showing up with subs and parfaits for lunch about an hour after we got back home from the vet. While we waited for him, the kids & I put in some serious playdough creation time!
Grampa also came bearing interesting pamphlets and info on community activities & events to show the kiddos. And my mom’s bottle of OPC-3 to share some until my order arrives. The kids were so happy to see Grampa. Today I got both a text and an email from him asking if he could come down and spend some time with me and the kids, go on a bit of an adventure. I replied that yes indeed that sounded lovely and also I could really use to grab a shower. 🤣 We skipped part of the adventure in favor of C getting his first decent morning nap all week long (Praise God!) and we went out for lunch instead. I got to see a dear friend of mine, who I haven’t seen in far too long. I was able to fly through a handful of items on my list that were time sensitive to this week and that required me to apply some critical thinking skills to complete while Grampa played with the kiddos. I got my shower in.
I connected with our mail delivery person. Her name is Colleen, and I know specifically how I can help her with her job over the next 2 weeks.
I followed up with a few potential clients that I am confident that I can help with some of the products I broker, and even if they choose not to become clients, I know I am adding value to their lives simply by providing education and resources to them.
I learned something new about social media today from my friend Carrie AND I took action on it right away instead of “waiting for a better, more convenient time.”
I have some pictures i’d like to add in, but I hear someone stirring, and I still have to brush my teeth.
I feel like that moment between knowing what I need to do and doing it is shrinking, that hesitation is there less and less often. The space between the ‘a-ha’ and the action.
This week one of the notable concepts we covered was “The Dash”.
If you have never read this poem, you’re in for a treat. (I’ll copy the text at the end in case this image won’t enlarge/zoom well.)
Rather than avoiding thinking about or talking about death, by embracing the certainty & reality of it, we are freed up to seize each moment and make every day we are given, count.
And this in turn can help move us closer to those goals and the life we imagine and our intentional future selves.
I’ll be 40 in December this year. And if a allot myself a generous 80 years on this earth, that means I’m nearly halfway there.
Close your eyes a minutes and imagine your favorite season. Summer? Spring? Fall? Winter?
What do you love most about it? Can you smell the smells you have tied to it? Can you picture the activities & people that are there with you?
How many of those do you have left? Of course, we never really know- I believe only God knows. But if you could guess just based on average life span. How do you want to spend those seasons?
When will you begin spending them the way you want to, with the people you want to? If you are already, fantastic!!! What else could you add to it that you would enjoy and delight in?
The Dash
I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning…to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time that they spent alive on earth. And now only those who loved them
know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own, the cars…the house…the cash. What matters is how we live
and love and how we spend our dash.
So, think about this long and hard. Are there things
you’d like to change? For you never know how much
time is left that can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough to consider what’s
true and real and always try to understand
the way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives like
we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect and more often
wear a smile, remembering that this special
dash might only last a little while.
So, when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s
actions to rehash…would you be proud of the things
they say about how you spent YOUR dash?
by Linda Ellis
1996 Copyright Inspire Kindness, LLC
Every Sunday afternoon, our fantastic leaders blast out another amazing 2 hour webinar and mastermind, covering the coming week’s Haanel lesson and concepts. I rarely have the chance to participate live, to be honest, and find myself waiting eagerly for the replay to be posted so I can get cracking on listening to it in 5-30 minute increments. I cue it up, and since it’s via Safari on my iphone, it doesn’t play in the background or while I have any other programs running as primary. It demands sole attention, which is good I suppose but also kind of a pain, convenience-wise. I put it on while I am running my son to & from school, in the rare moments of silence while the 2 boys are occupied and playing as I tidy up the kitchen after breakfast or lunch, during naps and at night, and with earbuds, once the boys are in that zone of asleep enough not to be curious but not asleep enough yet to have me vacate the room without having to start routines over again. I get it in bits and pieces and bite sized chunks of information and revelation and a-ha’s.
We’ve also been reading one scroll each month from Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World. The question was posed to us, “What would make someone the greatest salesman?” And the answer boiled down to being sold on ourselves. Having enough belief and confidence in ourselves to be 100% all in on our own value, goals, dreams, etc, that no one else’s opinion (really) matters.
(the above two paragraphs were written last week Thursday, 2/8…and now that I am back on my laptop again, (my keyboard case for my ipad stopped functioning again…send good vibes! I aim to finish this post today, 2/12)
We unexpectedly lost an amazing family friend mid-January. He was only 72. As I sat in the service to honor him and celebrate his life, I was struck by the fact that there was SO MUCH I didn’t know about him. He lived his life to the fullest. He had a huge grin and ready laugh and sharp wit that was contagious to anyone within 10 feet of him. He served in the military, he gave back to and was involved in community organizations, he was an entrepreneur through and through. His loved his wife and children and grandchildren fiercely, with every bone in his body. His daughter, a childhood friend of mine who is now an incredible wife, mom, and youth minister in Colorado, performed her father’s service. It was an incredible message of hope and truth and joy beyond present circumstances.
Tim Mangless, Len, fast track business commitment
I made an angel food cake from scratch this week. My father in law turned 75 on Wednesday, and we had my in laws over for dinner to celebrate. My mother in law is recuperating from an ongoing respiratory illness- pneumonia with significant asthma complications that earned her a hospital stay.
I had every intention of using a box mix, given the busyness of the week and the limited amount of time I knew I would have to get it done. My MIL had mentioned that my FIL’s mother had often made him angel food cake and that it would be a great choice for his birthday cake.
However…the store I went to for my other errands (one stop shop with the two boys) did NOT have a box mix. Lol. So, we decided to do it from scratch…and D is always up for a baking experiment project!
We decided to do all the prep work before D went to school that afternoon…mixing the dry ingredients, separating the eggs, watching #AltonBrown ‘s how-to video.
It seemed that once the dry and wet were folded together, there was no turning back…in the pan and into the oven…so I decided to tackle that part of the recipe after I dropped D at school and was back home with a *hopefully* sleeping C!
As I tackled that, in the rare silence that I was enjoying, the phrase “honor the process” kept going through my mind. This was one of those undertakings that I knew there were no shortcuts, no rushing it, no cheating, IF i wanted it to turn out. IF I wanted to see it through beyond doing it for doing it’s sake. IF I wanted this to be a gift from the heart. So rather than worrying about how it would or wouldn’t turn out, I just took it step by step, followed the directions and tips, and didn’t stress about how it would turn out, or if it would be done in time. I decided to enjoy each step, to learn as I went, and honor the process.
How in the world does this tie in to the Master Keys Experience, you might wonder?
Well, in short, I am realizing more and more, to trust and honor the process. To not stress out about not getting every little thing done, to not do the requirements and steps simply to check them off my checklist but to learn as I go. To have this whole 26 week experience (and beyond) be a gift from the heart, TO ME, to my FAMILY. To follow the directions and tips from our leaders and guides and mastermind alliances. To not get caught up in the end result or hard and fast deadlines, but to focus on the steady, consistent progress.
The cake was gorgeous when I took it out of the oven. And though I followed directions, it fell flat shortly after. LOL. But it tasted delicious!!! And it was still a lovely dessert and awesome celebration of this wonderful man’s life and years! We are blessed to have him as a FIL, Dad, Papa.
Happy Birthday, Len. We love you.
This week on the webcast we watched this incredible Ted Talk by Aimee Mullins,
(Aimee Mullins is an American athlete, actress, and fashion model who first became famous for her athletic accomplishments. She was born with a medical condition that resulted in the amputation of both of her lower legs.)
We also highlighted “what is a hero?” So often people might imagine a hero being “not them”, when really, we all have the opportunity to step into that role of being a hero. By the definition below, much of it depends simply on how we choose to handle adversity, and which character traits shine through us time & time again despite our circumstances.
The image above outlines a classic trope we see in storytelling, whether in literature or in tv/movies. It is a formula we know well whether consciously or subconsciously.
According to Wikipedia, In narratology and comparative mythology, the monomyth, or the hero’s journey, is the common template of a broad category of tales that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.[1]
This journey into the unknown this past 18 weeks, to change the #worldwithin, has definite been an adventure for me.
It has required courage to peel back the layers. For once you see the truth and have those “a-ha” moments about yourself, it becomes impossible to unsee them. And then you are faced with a choice, at every juncture. It can be something as seemingly insignificant as creating a new habit of finishing a mundane, household task every week to program the subconscious that “I finish things.”, to those painful realizations of “this is a terribly hurtful pattern I have in how I handle conflict, that needs to stop NOW.”.
The journey has demanded self discipline, creativity, and resourcefulness from me. It has required me cutting through a stack of my excuses, mostly personally but in business too.
There are only 2 months left in this course and I am determined to make the most of the journey and the support from guides and my companions/classmates. No turning back, no easy way out. There is only forward.
Every so often a product comes along that is a game changer for many, many people. There are a ton of great products on the market in general, from reputable companies, that help provide a solution to a challenge someone is facing. What we don’t see quite as often is the product that is SO REMARKABLE that it addresses multiple challenges and has a variety of benefits for people from all walks of life, ages, health conditions, etc. And, also very cool- is backed up by a double blind placebo 10 week controlled study on top of an abundance of personal success stories.
I’m talking about TLS Trim Tea! It’s a gluten-free, thermogenic slimming tea formulated to promote a multifunctional approach to weight management support. Trim Tea sold out twice … when it was first released it sold out in a few days, at its second release, within minutes.
Here is a 12 minute clip of amazing testimonies of Trim Tea users! 🌟🌟🌟Worth the listen! 😲💪🏼🎉
To order: HTTP//:bit.ly/TrimTeaSarahB
Two ingredients- black tea extract and Welltrim IG (African Mango Seed extract).
It IS NOT some magic wand or a substitute for conscientious choices when it comes to how you fuel your body with food or a replacement for moving your mass. It IS, however, a support product that is demonstrating its value in spades!
Just look at these numbers!
Much of the illness and disease we encounter can be traced back to systemic inflammation and gut health…and our body being taxed by excessive inflammatory load, that is, more inflammation that our body can stay on top of managing. Inflammation can be caused or increased by everything from chronic stress (physical, mental, emotional), to not enough sleep, to illness, to eating poorly- refined sugar, simple carbs, or simply not enough good fuel, to hormone imbalance, to a sedentary lifestyle, you get the picture. One of the best ways to help our body balance itself is to look for ways to reduce inflammation, via food or supplement or lifestyle changes. (C- Reactive Protein is one of the values on a lab test measures the amount of inflammation we have.)
Even people who are not overweight, or seem physically fit, or who are making great choices overall can still be carrying a higher inflammatory load than is ideal for their bodies.
To order: http://bit.ly/TrimTeaSarahB
Check out these results from the 10 week controlled study I mentioned above!
(Note: 3 boxes of Trim Tea are needed to correlate to results in the 10 week study- 90 day supply breaks down to only $1.33/day)
Some additional benefits you could expect to see include:
Search #trimtea on FB or IG to see what people are saying about their results!
For more science, reviews, and details and to start YOUR daily tea party, click HERE!!
Ah, this week. This week has held its own share of victories and challenges. And it has given me glimpses at the bigger picture, the bigger reason, for what I am working for. In the same vein as the Kindness “experiment” from last week, we are working on what has been dubbed the Franklin Makeover…picking a virtue to focus on each week, noticing it, finding ways to contribute to more of it ourselves, etc. I don’t know if there is a proper term for it or not, but this week my focus was on creating space/ holding space. (I love this post explaining more what holding space could mean.)
This included physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It even encompasses time. My dear friend Naomi L used the term in a FB messenger conversation with me recently, while my whole family was caught in the crazy web of assorted illnesses, “mental margin”. As in, this mama needs some mental margin. Some head space just to sit and be still and have the room to process and get caught up mentally, instead of the running running running stream of consciousness to do list take a number queue that begins when my eyelids go up and ends, momentarily, when my eyelids close.
Sidenote of AWESOMENESS: I am working on my iPad mini, with a Bluetooth keyboard case. Said case had been dropped ever so gently and accidentally by moi some months back, and several keys in the bottom rows including but not limited to space bar, b, m, v, c, n, f, g, h, worked not at all or very intermittently. My laptop is pushing 9 years old, and stores many important things, and i still use it when I need laptop functionality. But it is NOT speedy to say the least. I need my iPad mini for speed and portability for my business. With the keyboard out of commission, my writing access and opportunities had become more limited. I had been holding off, thinking I would need to just buck up and buy a new keyboard case. I just discovered in the past week that a miracle has happened! ALL the keys are working just fine! I don’t know what changed, but I don’t need to know. I am SO GRATEFUL to have the ability to use a keyboard versus just my hunt and peck on my phone to type entire posts or emails, and my 39 year old eyes are especially thankful for the larger screen on the iPad mini for composing a post. Hallelujah and thank you Jesus!
One of our coursework exercises is that every Thursday, we are to visualize having a conversation with a dear friend, but in that conversation, we are to picture ourselves as our future selves, as when our DMP (definite major purpose, definite chief aim) has already been actualized. And we are telling our dear friend about life, and catching up, per se. The idea is to make it as tangible and real as possible, to get super familiar and acquainted with our future self in our mind, so much so that our current self (subconscious) perceives our future self not as a stranger but as a friend, and in doing so, will go to work that much harder to make that a reality.
In doing so, we “hold space” for our current selves, allowing a gap in all that fills our minds and our days to create a pause, as well as holding space for our future selves. A chance for her to show up, fill the room, become a little bit more real every week. Allowing confidence to grow. Allowing the timid and fuzzy “what if” to be replaced with a clarity of heart and mind so sharp its unthinkable that it won’t become reality.
This week I’ve also been intentionally looking to identify what physical belongings I can let go of and taking action to clear that physical space.
There is more I’d like to add- I dislike leaving my thoughts so unfinished, but I hear my youngest waking up. So maybe I’ll leave this as for Friday night…to be continued….
