Category: Uncategorized

I know I’ve mentioned a few different books in other posts but if I haven’t said it outright, I will say it now—I love to read. If, when I was in the regular workforce, I could have found a job where I was paid to read interesting books all day, it would be a dream (I actually did have a job where I read all day for five years but I was reading dry, boring legal documents that held no interest for me). Obviously jobs like this do exist but I have shifted my focus to new goals since I left my day job three years ago. The point is, I still love to read. And I know reading expands our knowledge base and helps us grow in many valuable ways.

Far too few people spend any time reading these days, or growing their minds, period. For most people, it is hard to put effort into reading and I believe that is in part because our society doesn’t encourage reading nearly enough. Reading is seen as hard work from a very young age, and when something is viewed as work, most of us try to find ways to avoid it wherever possible.

Just yesterday my dad mentioned that he is trying to find some suitable reading material for a young man he is mentoring. When my sister asked if the young man (he is about sixteen years old) liked to read, my dad said he wasn’t sure but that he needed to learn the disciple regardless of inclination. While I agree with that principle—we all need to disciple ourselves to spend time in exercises of growth even when we don’t feel like it—I also think it would behoove us as a society to find ways to encourage these exercises in growth to be viewed from a different perspective. Because let’s face it, if this young man doesn’t like to read, he will be very unlikely to read any of the books my dad gives to him, regardless of how they might benefit him. And while it is ultimately each person’s choice as to how they will live their lives, it is our responsibility as a society to set up our young people for success (something that isn’t happening enough today). 

If we can encourage reading from a young age, if we can frame reading as a normal and even exciting activity, perhaps it will make a difference in how kids view it. And most importantly, if we as adults and parents model the action of reading in our own lives, our kids will be more likely to do it. How can we expect them to enjoy reading if most of us rarely read more than a few books a year after college?

Reading is hugely important because it helps us entertain new perspectives, expand our minds with new ideas, explore other worlds and hear incredibly interesting stories. We owe it to ourselves to pick up this habit and begin reading, preferably a wide variety of material. 

I feel incredibly lucky that I love to read. I think this love was encouraged and fostered by my parents, but I also know that I was born with a greater inclination to this activity than some. My husband, for example, will admit that he hates to read. He finds it to be a very labor-intensive activity and has explained to me that he often has to read the same sentence two or three times to really comprehend it on the level he desires. He has even joked that he would rather go to the dentist than read, but that is why I admire him all the more for taking on the challenge of reading. As he grew personally and professionally, it encouraged him to take on new challenges, and one of those was reading. To this day, he doesn’t read because he enjoys it; he reads because he understands the value that lies within the act of reading, and he will adamantly agree that reading has increased his knowledge and expanded his mindset. While a majority of the books he consumes these days are actually on audio, he still makes an effort to read hard-copy books because he believes it is important for his own self-growth. 

So I guess my goal for today is to encourage you to add a few new books to your reading list and spend some time pursuing this valuable activity. Yes, it might mean that you have to cut back on that hour or two you relax in the evening with your favorite show but it is completely worth it. And if you don’t feel like you have time to sit down and read a hard-copy book (these are still my favorite way to read but I do listen to a lot more audio books these days because I can wash dishes or clean at the same time), at least take advantage of the extensive online audio book options—either through your local library or sources like Amazon Prime. When we look back over our lives, I don’t think any of us will wish we had watched more t.v. or played more Candy Crush on our phones, but we will wish that we had used our time engaged in valuable activities that helped us, challenged us, and made us learn something new. Reading can do that for us every time. 

This past year was challenging. It was tough. It was isolating. There are many adjectives that could be used to describe 2020 but I’ve been thinking that the events that dominated the media and touched everyone’s life in some way, shape, or form were the same as so many other events throughout history—difficult, dividing, and sometimes heartbreaking. This pandemic is unlike anything most of us have probably faced, but difficult events are nothing new in the world. We cannot control events (unless they are direct actions within our own lives, of course) but we can always control our response to them. I’ve read about how some people have thrived during this past year and I’ve read about how some people have struggled terribly. Both realities are legitimate and deserving of both praise and empathy in turn. Many people are struggling through no fault of their own; they can’t control that they lost their job during the pandemic or that their favorite aunt got sick and now they haven’t seen her in eight months. I don’t want to diminish the difficulties that anyone is going through, but I also want to focus on the ways that some people have managed to succeed and even thrive during the hardships of this past year. (And when I say thrive, let me clarify that this does not mean the person didn’t experience any setbacks or difficulties.) I want to focus on learning from those who have made it their goal to push forward and succeed no matter what. 

One person who I’ve seen thrive first-hand is my husband, whom I’ve always admired for his tenacity, drive, discipline, and focus. To name just three of his accomplishments, in the past ten years he has competed in three natural bodybuilding competitions (i.e., sans steroids), worked his way up in his company to a position where he has a high level of trust and responsibility, and started two companies of his own. He will be the first to acknowledge that it took him longer to, as Simon Sineck would say, find his why (see Simon Sineck’s book Find Your Why), but he was always looking for opportunities that might lead to its discovery. That seems to be one shared characteristic of those who find success and thrive—the desire and the willingness to search for opportunities. 

Another characteristic of those who thrive is the ability to endure setbacks without giving up. My husband is an entrepreneur at heart, but the first two businesses he tried to start never got off the ground. Back when he was twenty-nine, he spent a lot of time trying to open nutrition/health store with a friend of his. They wrote up plans, discussed their roles, created logos, and even talked to a few potential investors, but in the end it just didn’t work out. Fast forward a few years and he once again decided to try and start a business—this time in construction, the field in which he is still employed now. For various reasons, it once again didn’t work out. But those experiences taught him lessons that he was able to use when a third opportunity arose to start a company with a trusted friend. That company has been in business for four years and is still doing well. 

The third characteristic I think is especially relevant to those who thrive is this: they don’t make excuses. This ties into the theme above because they not only have the ability to endure setbacks but they also don’t blame others for those setbacks and they don’t make excuses for why they can’t succeed. Of course even strong people gets discouraged from time to time and might allow themselves moments of doubt and frustration, but then they get on with their lives and continue to look for ways to succeed.

My husband also started a second company a few years ago, but when the pandemic hit in March it took a toll on the business. By May, his main client decided to restructure their own business, which meant they no longer needed to use my husband’s company’s services. They were going to benefit from a million-dollar government grant but it meant breaking a contract with my husband’s company. While he could have panicked and blamed the pandemic, the other business, or the government for a fairly significant loss of income, my husband merely accepted the fact that sometimes events take place that are out of our control. He didn’t blame others and he didn’t blame himself, but he also didn’t make excuses for his poor fortune and allow it to keep him down. At the moment, he is actually in the process of starting yet another company (because he is always looking for new opportunities). 

I do think it is important to note a final characteristic here. Those who thrive make intentional choices that set them up for success. I noted how my husband didn’t panic when he found out that he was going to lose a hefty stream of income from his second company and that is absolutely because of the intentional choices he made since the inception of the company. For example, if we had been living above our means, or if he hadn’t paid off his business debts, or if he simply hadn’t handled the business finances responsibly, the loss would have been cause for significant stress. He was very intentional about making smart choices when setting up and running the business and that allowed him to thrive—and it also saved him from potential disaster when he did lose a huge client.

In summary, while events from the past year have definitely shaded the landscape of our collective view perhaps, we can take a lesson from those who still found ways to thrive through it all. We can continue to search out new opportunities; we should realize that setback are not failures and be willing to endure them and learn from them; we must refuse to make excuses for why we can’t succeed—because while there are reasons that some things don’t work out, it is not productive or helpful to blame or make excuses that will keep us stuck; and we need to be intentional about the choices we make because the choices we make today will affect our tomorrow.  

Responsibility. I never used to think that this word could conjure up the idea of freedom, but as I am reading The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, it does just that. Taking responsibility for my every action has made me step back and question what I do and why I do it, and then go further and ask myself if I want to change my actions. 

I have spent a lot of years thinking that life was happening to me. The truth, of course, is that my life is taking shape based on the choices I make every day. This is actually empowering. It means that I have the ability to go where I want to go and become who I want to become. (Of course, figuring that out can be a whole other thing but that is for another post.)

How often have you been talking to a friend who does something you want to do but then your mind jumps in and offers you a convenient reason why you can’t do what they do? Well, I don’t have the money to spend on a personal trainer like they do. Well, I can’t get get together with my friends anymore because I work too much. Well I can’t attend that seminar because I have a baby. Well, I can’t lose weight like her because I’ve been heavy-set all my life.

Whatever our reasons (and they are usually excuses, aren’t they?), whatever MY reasons, at least if I start taking responsibility for the fact that these reasons aren’t happening to me, but because of me, it is a start. 

Years ago, I spent a really long time trying to process the breakup I went through with my fiancé from college. At first I blamed him—for a number of reasons. Then I blamed myself—for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons were valid and needed to be examined for me to process and then move on in a health manner. But the problem is that I got stuck in a very negative space for quite a long time because I was so focused on placing blame somewhere. And blame is different than responsibility. Blame is actually the opposite of responsibility. When we place the blame on someone or something else, we usually do it to relieve ourselves of having to take any responsibility or action.  Even as I blamed myself for certain things and wallowed in my apparent inadequacies—“I was too emotional,” “I didn’t assert myself enough,” and so on—I never thought about taking the next step and actually working to improve those inadequacies and thus improve myself as a person.

That is what responsibility is all about—owning our thoughts and our actions.  Responsibility is recognizing when something isn’t working and then doing something about it. While not everything that happens is within our control, the way we act in any given situation is within our control. That thought is empowering and uplifting. While taking responsibility gives us power, throwing blame at others strips us of that power and leaves us unhappy. I can tell you that during those few years where I was in a vicious cycle of blaming (mostly) my ex-fiancé and then myself, I was very unhappy. I felt paralyzed and unable to move forward. 

We can be in control of our own lives. We can choose our future. It is a mantra worth repeating every day: “I am responsible for my own happiness. I am responsible for my own life.”

So we need to ask ourselves this question: Where do I want to be in life? What are my goals? What is holding me back from achieving my goals and how can I take responsibility to start moving toward them today?

During my second pregnancy (I am currently in my third trimester), I haven’t work out nearly as much as I did during my first pregnancy. Yes, I am busier because I have a little one to take care of now, and yes I am more tired because he still gets up every night (at least once). But this is where I can either blame the circumstances in my life or I can get brutally honest with myself and admit that my workouts have not been at the top of my priority list—in other words, I can take responsibility for the fact that I haven’t worked out as much. When I do this, it empowers me to ask how important this priority is to me (and don’t feel bad when you discover that some things don’t make it into your list of top priorities—not everything can). Since exercise is a top priority for me, I committed taking just fifteen minutes (I am busier these days but I certainly can carve out fifteen minutes) out of my day to exercise, and that has helped me rekindle the habit. 

I am responsible for my habits, I am responsible for my happiness, I am responsible for my life. Every day I repeat this to myself, and every day I feel stronger.

I am writing this as my sons sleeps. Most of my posts are written in the pockets of time that he sleeps, which is sometimes and hour and a half and other times a mere thirty minutes. In truth, right now I would rather be doing anything but writing; ideally, I would like to be curled up on the couch reading a good book with a cup of hot coffee and a bowl of dark chocolate pretzels (I love anything dark chocolate). Lately, I have been struggling to dedicate a solid chunk of time to my priorities. Having a ten-month-old baby does make it harder to devote large chunks of time to, well, anything, but I don’t want to be one of those people who just makes excuses and gives up on any and all things most important to me.

But I have to question: How do I set goals for myself when I never know what my week will look like from one day to the next? Since my baby is now walking all over the place, I can’t leave him alone for two seconds or I’ll catch him trying to go up the stairs or thwacking our peacefully sleeping beagle on the back with his blocks. If he is awake, I can’t write—or do much of anything. And during his (usually short) naps, I am often catching up on household chores, like washing dishes or making a meal or doing a load of laundry.

Perhaps I just haven’t figured out the chaotic dance of motherhood yet, but I do feel discouraged that some days I get nothing done. I’ve always heard that is how it goes, and many mothers just resign themselves to having no life outside of their kids for the first five years of life, but I guess I am still fighting against it.

Don’t get me wrong—I feel privileged that get to stay at home with my son! While many women want to go back to work after having children, some would prefer to have the option to stay at home and can’t. And for those women who do choose to stay at home with their babies, I have always felt that it is every bit as noble a calling as those who choose to go back to their jobs, whether it is as an attorney at a prestigious law firm or a receptionist at a car dealership. In fact, I have often seen stay-at-home moms shamed for their decision to leave the workforce and that is unfair (but that is another post for another day).

Despite the fact that I am happy to stay at home and raise my son, I still am left with the question of how to balance my care for him and ultimately, for myself. I do believe that his care and his needs come before my own, but I also don’t think it is beneficial to anyone in my life to completely neglect myself. 

It is important to create space for me to continue to expand as a person. Growth and expansion will look different from one woman to the next but it is important nonetheless. For example, some of my top pleasures before having a baby were reading, writing, and working out. I still want to create a little room for those things in my life. I still want to find ways to generate success. 

The question—which seems obvious (and might be too easily answered for some)—is this: What does success look like for me? What does it look like for you?

I think my husband has a really good handle on what success looks like for him, and what his priorities are. Recently we were talking and he mentioned how he thinks it is important to work your life around your priorities, not your priorities around your life. When I asked him to clarify this point, he said it means being crystal clear on what your priorities are and creating your day around those. For example, one of his biggest priorities is spending as much time as possible with his son, making sure he is there every evening for his bath and story time. To ensure that happens, he doesn’t schedule late afternoon meetings (unless it is absolutely necessary) and he often does work after our son goes to bed so he can sit on the floor and play with him during his awake time.

Exercise is also a top priority for him, and has been for many years. Even though he could make the excuse that he is too busy now, he chooses to work his life around that priority by getting up at 4:45am and going to the gym. He could just as easily go after work, but that would conflict with his priority to spend time with our son so he makes a sacrifice and gets up early. He could also just as easily say that he doesn’t have as much time to work out now that we have a baby—and that would actually be true—but that isn’t what you do with your top priorities. You find a way to make them happen.

It sounds simple, but if he wasn’t intentional about this priority, it would be too easy to do that work as soon as he got home and our son was awake, or to say yes to later meetings, or skip his workouts; but then he would also be dealing with frustration over not experiencing success as it looks to him.  

I have realized over and over lately that intentionality is so crucial to a life well lived. So many people are paddling furiously to just stay afloat in their lives but they have never stopped to ask themselves what a life well lived looks like to them. It doesn’t matter what it looks like to your best friend or your mom or your coworker, but so often we base more of our decisions on their opinions than we would care to admit. 

One financial book I read recently (I Will Teach You To Be Richby Ramit Sethi) talks about how we all need to get intentional about our spending. He was quick to explain that this doesn’t mean cutting out everything you enjoy in your life—it means examining your life and cutting out the things that you don’t value so you can have more to spend on things you do value. 

It is the same in all areas of life I think. We need to examine what we value—in other words, figure out what our top priorities are—and create our life around those things. Some people in your life might make you think you should value a high-power job that requires 10-12 hour work days, but what if your dream is to be a real-estate agent who only works part time and doesn’t do any showings after 4pm? With intentional choices, I believe we can each work toward creating that life we want. But we will never get there if we don’t stop and ask ourselves what it is that we truly value and how we want to live. 

After that begins the journey to make it happen.

“You have complete control over the direction that the rest of your life takes.”

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

Both of these quotes are simple, yet quite powerful. Both are taken from the first chapter of The Slight Edge (though the second quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson). I don’t know about you, but I have spent a lot of time stressing over the direction my life did not take. Beating myself up over the mistakes I’ve made and the successes I could have had, if only….

If only I had started contributing to my retirement fund sooner, I could have a lot more money now.

If only I had chosen a different major in college, I could have found a job I actually enjoyed rather than bouncing from one dead-end job to another.

If only I hadn’t been so reserved and shy all the time, I could have made more connections and had more friends at this point in my life. 

If only…

This could go on and on for many of us, each of us with our own personalized list. But the first quote above notes something very important: no matter where you are right now, you can choose how tomorrow—and the rest of your life—will look. You can’t change the past and you can’t get back time lost, but you can change course. 

As I read this book I appreciate how clearly Olson explains his philosophy, the philosophy of the slight edge. So often people are looking for a quick fix to a problem that took months or years to create. It is an important lesson to remember—there are no quick fixes and no shortcuts for creating a great life. A great life is created by the little things we do each day. It is the little things we do every day that make a huge impact on our lives over time. 

Consistency is Key

For example, if I only have a small amount of money in my retirement account, that isn’t an issue that happened overnight. It happened because of choices I have made over the last twelve years of my working life. Thus, it won’t take only a month or two to correct this issue. It will take consistent effort over the next twenty-five years to get my retirement account to where I want it to be. And just say I had done everything right and started contributing aggressively to a 401K in my first job out of college; that effort would make a big difference only if I did it every month. It wouldn’t have helped that much if I only did it for a year and then stopped. 

Over and over again as I read this book I am reminded that consistency is key. In any area where we want to achieve success in our lives, we must maintain consistency. The people who have beach bodies don’t work out a few times a year. The people who have a successful business don’t just work on it a few hours a week. The people who become bestselling authors don’t write just a few times a month. All of these accomplishments—a beach body, a successful business, a bestselling book—take consistent effort over many months and even years.  

This leads me to look at my own life and question where I need to implement more consistency, and how I can do that. It is all well and good to read these principles and recognize their truth, but we each have to figure out how to set these truths into action in our own lives or they will be essentially worthless. 

Recently I heard someone revise the old adage that “knowledge is power,” and instead say that knowledge put into action is power. This was powerful to me because I have spent years listening to and reading inspiration material but I haven’t always thought intentionally about how I can apply the principles to my own life in a tangible way. 

Having a baby has made my routine life rather unpredictable. Four months ago I was feeling completely overwhelmed, like I would never have time for anything again besides cleaning blowouts, breastfeeding, laundry, and trying to soothe a fussy baby down for naps or bedtime. How could I find time to exercise or read or cook healthy meals or clean the house or send my loved ones birthday cards or even dress in regular clothes every day (and not my oversized sweatpants)? These are just a few of the things I still wanted to be able to do but they felt nearly impossible. The if only question began circulating in my head at that point. 

If only my baby took better naps, I could get more done.

If only he didn’t fuss so much when I put him in his bouncer, I could get in a workout.

If only I’d had a baby earlier in life, I would have more energy to get things done.

But those if onlys will inhibit my ability to find positive solutions for the challenges I am facing in my efforts to get things done. So I made a pact with myself to stop thinking in those terms. Instead, I’ve done a few things to shift the way I think about these challenges.

Reframe Challenges

First, I accepted that my life is going to look different than it did before I had a baby. This sounds glaringly obvious but in the first weeks after I had my baby I struggled to accept just how much my world had changed. You hear that it’s going to happen; you know that it’s going to happen. But nothing fully prepared me for the reality of it. Over many weeks of struggling I realized I needed to embrace my new normal and not expect life to look like it did before. I wouldn’t always be able to clean the kitchen immediately after we ate a meal. I wouldn’t always be able to go to bed early because sometimes my son had bad nights. I wouldn’t always be able to go to the gym four days a week because sometimes my husband would get home later than planned and my window of opportunity would be gone. 

Sometimes we need to step back from a situation and ask ourselves what we can change but also what we need to accept. Accepting the reality of a situation does not equal defeat. Just because I realized my main focus had shifted to my baby didn’t mean I could never find time to do anything for myself again. It did mean I had to readjust my expectations and look for ways to still focus on myself from time to time.

Second, I identified what issues would be most important to address. For example, as the weeks passed by I saw a pattern where my son was napping less and less during the day. I knew that until I got him in a good pattern with his daytime naps, I wasn’t going to have time to do anything productive. And he wasn’t rested. It was a lose-lose situation. So I began reading up on sleep training and gathering advice from multiple moms on the topic. For the past three months I have stuck to a consistent nap schedule for him. 

Before this decision, I didn’t really have any structure to my day. I had always naively assumed that babies would start to fall asleep on their own when they were tired. That might be the case when they are three weeks old, but that is not always the case when they are three months old. Now, even though my son still doesn’t take long naps most of the time (I am still trying different techniques to increase his nap times), I know that I have a routine for him and it is helpful for both of us. He now knows that when I read him Happiness Is and sing “You are my Sunshine,” it is time for a nap. Granted, he still fights me some days, but we have made progress. 

Third, I made a commitment to focus on the little things I could do every day to make my life better, easier, and more successful. For example, I made a commitment to myself to exercise at least five times a week. That exercise commitment might look different from day to day—for example, some days I am able to get in a full hour workout, including a weight session plus abs and cardio, while other days I do a twenty-minute HIIT session. (This is where I draw from lesson one—accept that my life is going to look different than it did before having a baby.)

Yesterday, my son was more fussy than usual and half of my workout was done with him in my arms. I would do a set of squats with him and then set him down to do a set of dumbbell rows. I would do a set of lunges with him and then set him down for a set of should presses. Rather than focus on the length of my session, which used to be roughly an hour every time I exercised, I focus on the doing of it, period. If it is the little things we do every day, if it is the commitments that we make to ourselves, then actually doing my sweat session is the most important part.

When I shifted my mindset, everything else began to feel a little easier. I have decided that I don’t want to look back someday on this period in my life and say if only to any situation I am facing right now. If only I had started that blog. If only I had made time to exercise. If only I had made time to read during some of my son’s naps. 

I want to look back someday and feel grateful for the little things I did every day that brought me greater happiness, health, and skills.

Sibling Rivalry – A Great Motivator

In all honesty, this blog was prompted in part by sibling rivalry. Yes, that can be a great motivator. After all, who wants to be upstaged by their young sister?

My younger sister has been thinking about starting a blog for a few months. I have been thinking about starting a blog for years. But you know how it goes with people. They want to do something new. They talk about doing something new. They might even make plans or write a resolution to start something new. But for most of us, it is so hard to follow through on these promises to ourselves. Time is a precious resource and there never seem to be enough hours in the day. Inspiration—or lack of inspiration—can impede the process. Lack of focus also contributes to our inability to start something new. I think that is probably half the battle for all those wanting to blog but hesitating to start—they lack focus and don’t know exactly what they want to say. They are afraid they will run out of things to say after a few entries, or, once they do find a topic of interest to them, nobody else will be interested. I know I’ve let all of these of excuses stop me. 

No More Excuses

But I don’t want excuses to stop me anymore. I love to write. I have wanted to start a blog for years. From the time I was thirteen years old I knew I wanted to be a writer. But somehow, somewhere along the way, life happened and a writing career didn’t. And let’s face it, when I say that life happened, what I mean is that I was too afraid or too lazy or too unfocused (maybe a little of all) to make that life, a writing life, happen for me.

So when my sister told me that she was actually going to start a blog, that it had moved out of the “someday that would be cool to do” phase and into the “my goal is to have a domain name by the end of the week” phase, something came alive in me and I knew it was time to put my own long-held desire into action.

Sometimes we need someone or something to kick us in the pants and push us out of our comfort zone. My younger sister’s decision to take action has served as an inspiration for me to refocus my desires and take action as well. I think we need to be aware of the times we are pushed outside of our comfort zone and see the opportunities present in those moments.

Now, I am thirty-five years old. I have a lot of good things in my life and plenty of reasons to be grateful. I live in a place I like. I have a roof over my head and food on my table. My husband and I have a good relationship. I just had a baby boy in January (our first). I am close to my parents and three sisters.  

And yet… I still feel like something is missing. I have felt this for years. It is this nagging sense in the back of my mind that I could have more, do more, be more. Most of all, I feel as if I am not living up to my full potential—and never have. It seems like a lot of people feel this way but it is hard to know what steps to take to live up to your full potential. We all have different dreams and goals so our journeys will all be unique, but if we have the right tools, we will have the ability to remain focused on our goals rather than feel like we are drifting in the wind.  

As I mentioned, even from the time I was thirteen years old, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to become a writer. I distinctly remember being outside one day and just watching the clouds float by overhead. Being a dramatic kid, I remember closing my eyes and letting the warm breeze tease my hair while I pictured the life I intended to have as an adult. I saw multiple best-seller books and book tours and lectures in my future—I saw the life of a writer for myself.

For most of my teenage years, I wrote like crazy. When I got to college I still wrote sometimes, but I was so wrapped up in my boyfriend that I mostly wrote gooey, romantic poems. After he and I broke up, I stopped writing.

While that breakup might have been a catalyst, the truth is that as I got older I became more insecure about my writing. As I became more insecure, I became less inclined to write because everything I wrote sounded like crap to me. Rather than push through the crap, rather than clean up the messy sentences and shine the paragraphs until they gleamed, I decided that maybe I wasn’t meant to be a writer after all.

My writing ambitions sat dormant for a long time. And then a big event happened in my life recently that really made me re-evaluate what I want for my life and how I can fulfill my full potential. Most of us probably have experiences or events that shake us up and cause us to reassess our goals and desires. Mine came in the form of a 7 pound 13 ounce baby boy.

Game Changer

My baby boy is incredible on every level to me, but having him definitely jolted me into a new reality. The first two months were overwhelming as I slogged through diaper changes, constant spit up, sleep deprivation, and breastfeeding issues. The third month seemed to start out better as I got into a bit of a routine and could sometimes even brush my teeth and change out of my oversized baggy sweatpants (which my husband would like to burn) before the baby woke up. But then I hit a wall—hard—and I began experiencing depression, fatigue, and a strong sense of anxiety and inadequacy.

It was because of this wall that I began to do something I haven’t done consistently for quite some time—I began listening to audio books and inspirational or educational videos featuring people like Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Simon Sinek, Mel Robbins, and others. In desperation, I began devouring as many audio books and videos as I could in spare moments because it helped me feel sane. Everywhere I looked was evidence that other mothers were doing a better job than me. I felt overwhelmed and then I felt ashamed for feeling so overwhelmed. I would listen to videos as I prepared breakfast and my son sat impatiently squirming in his bouncer. I would listen to audio books as I took him on walks in the morning. I would listen as I worked out during his naps and when I was preparing dinner. 

Slowly, I began to realize that even though being a mom is a full time job, I still needed to find ways to connect with myself and challenge myself in meaningful ways. I started to give myself room to feel a wide range of emotions and trust that it didn’t make me a bad person or a terrible mom. This whole chapter of life was new to me—still is new to me—and it is okay to still be finding my way. It was rather unrealistic to expect that I would have it all figured out in a matter of weeks. When I started shifting my mindset about the whole situation, I found that I was much happier. I was also better able to face difficult moments when they arose.  

In addition to listening to audio books, I began carving out time to read books again, something I didn’t think I would have time to do once I had a baby. One of the books that has had a big impact on me is The Slight Edge, which talks about how imperative it is to do little things every day to move toward your goals—and how that can make all the difference between a mundane life and a great one. 

In all honesty, it is sometimes disheartening that I am still not living up to my full potential at this stage in my life. The very fact that I am reassessing my goals makes it obvious that I don’t have a clear vision for my life at the moment. But then I think about my book on self-acquaintance and I am reminded that part of life is exploration. And perhaps it is in the questioning that I will find answers. It is through curiosity that we gain new insights. Those who just plod along in life not asking questions will never discover new ideas or create new visions. 

This life was not meant to be just dull and decent. This life was meant to be great. Each one of us are on a journey and even if we aren’t where we want to be at this moment, I believe we can each find greatness in our lives. We can all create greatness in our lives.

This blog is meant to inspire intentional living. It is meant to explore purpose. It is intended to help us all find and fulfill our full potential. So let’s get started on this journey to great—together!

Self Acquaintance is a Rare Condition

Hi, my name is Mandy and I am an eternal self-explorer. Every since I was a teenager, I enjoyed exploring my internal self. I have always been a deep thinker and a sensitive soul. From a young age I was always questioning things and always trying to understand myself. For my seventeenth birthday, one of my friends got me a small book titled The Book of Questionsand I loved it. In fact, I remember harassing some of my friends with questions from the book after that (unfortunately, most of them didn’t enjoy pondering questions the way I did). 

A few months later, I bought a book titled Self-Acquaintanceand it was also full of questions; it was formatted like a journal but with questions on every page meant to help you delve deeper into yourself. I remember one page had a quote that has stuck with me throughout the years: “Self-acquaintance is a rare condition.” I was determined to be among those with this rare condition. I spent many hours going through the questions in that book and writing out my responses (though I had to use a separate notebook because the three to four lines provided for each answer was never enough for me). 

At seventeen, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of naïve enthusiasm. Trying to figure out myself and my place in the world was a top priority. But like many young people, I didn’t even really understand what that meant—it was important to me, but it was also illusive. Each time I thought I had figured it out, something in my world would shift and I would be confused all over again. Turns out, this whole self-acquaintance stuff was harder than I thought. The older I got, the more I understood why it was such a rare condition to know oneself. 

Even though I spent years trying to figure out myself, it was only over the past few years that I discovered the field of positive psychology. Reading books about this topic helped me see how much growth I needed in my life, and each new book encouraged me to dig a little deeper into myself and uncover weak spots in my character that needed improvement. I realized that while self-acquaintance is a worthwhile goal, it is only a piece of the larger puzzle. It isn’t enough to know ourselves if we don’t improve ourselves. This new world of discovery was exciting for me, but it shouldn’t have felt so novel.

Growing up in a small town in the Southwest with my parents and three sisters, I was given a strong foundation for living well. They were living the principles of positive psychology before it became a big deal. In the money arena, my parents taught us the importance of saving, living on less than you make, and giving. And when it came to core values, they taught us to treat all people with kindness and respect. My mom especially, drilled home the principle of having a good attitude. She really believed that having a good attitude could change your life. Perspective and personal responsibility mattered on a fundamental level. 

Despite my strong foundation, I didn’t always put her philosophy into practice in my own life. Near the end of college, I went through a difficult experience that really tore at my mental and emotional well being. I became more and more negative, tending to see the bad in situations rather than the good. I would place blame everywhere but at my own doorstep for the things I was unhappy about—my boring job, my small income, my missed opportunities. I whined a lot. I complained even more. It took me a lot time—years, really—to find my way back to my mother’s philosophy. As I began to read more and more books on positive psychology, I saw my mom’s philosophy over and over again. Yet even as I saw it, I struggled to put it into practice in my life.

That is often the way of things, I suppose. While I have always admired my mom’s kind heart and positive attitude, I didn’t realize how far my apple had fallen from her tree until I began to explore the world of positive psychology for myself. And I came to see that she had been right all along (something I’ve said over and over in regard to advice my parents gave me as a child, and something my parents never tire of hearing me say: “you were right”). 

My knowledge of her philosophy had not translated into living that philosophy. I have discovered this reality in many areas of my life over the past few years—possessing knowledge is not enough. It is only by applying the knowledge we have that change can happen. When our actions begin to align with our philosophy about life—and that philosophy is grounded in our core values—that is where we will be happiest. I believe that is where we will find our purpose and move into our best life, the life we were meant to live.

I have spent years asking questions that led to a deeper understanding of the self. I have spent years experimenting with different techniques to help me improve my habits and understand what works and what doesn’t. What I have discovered is that we all have different “best practices” and what works for me might not work as well for my husband or my best friend. But there are core practices that help drive us toward our best selves, and those are the ones I want to explore and share with you. 

I am starting this blog to share my learning with others. I believe that when we share, it helps others and it helps us. We are communal creatures and we were meant to help each other along the way in life. Many times I have found encouragement and inspiration from a blog or book or video, and I hope I can pass along that same level of encouragement and inspiration to others. 

I have always felt that it is a worthwhile endeavor to have a written record of the important events and moments in my life. It is my hope that this blog will serve as a catalog of lessons learned, growth strategies obtained, habits formed (and shed), failures overcome, and goals reached. And being a writer, one of the best ways I can do that is through writing and documenting my journey.

I would love to hear from you. Please share if you have topics you’d like to read about here or if you have tips to share from your journey of growth. I look forward to building a community of individuals who are all working toward the same overarching goal of creating a meaningful and purpose-driven life!