"Chance favors the prepared mind."

So, are you prepared?

For the moment?

The moment in the morning that you wake to the life that you're living.
The moment someone disappoints you yet again.
The moment you walk by a homeless person.
The moment when it's easier to do nothing than to speak up.
The moment you could "settle" for your boyfriend/girlfriend.
The moment when it seems like everyone else has more stuff than you.
The moment your child asks you to explain something you've done.
The moment you are rejected.
The moment that you could decide to take the job because it's the "right" thing to do.
The moment that someone cuts you off in traffic.
The moment you need to decide if you are going to stay safe or jump outside your safety zone.
The moment your body won't do the things you want it to.
The moment your friend needs you and you feel like you have nothing left to give.
The moment you realize that sacrifice will be required.
The moment that the sun sets; gone, never to be recaptured.
The mention you have to say yes or no.
The moment that a person you love is gone.
The moment you're told that time is running out.

The moment your time has run out.

Prepare your mind.

Start with KNOWINGNESS. Ask yourself:
Who and how you want to be?
What do you want to do?
What do you want to have?

Write it down. Revisit it often.

And you'll find that, in the moment, chance won't win.

5 Short Steps to Achieve FOCUS

Are your days passing and you find that you are busy but you aren't busy doing the right things?

1. Brainstorm for 5 minutes - "What am I trying to accomplish in my life?" WRITE the answers!
2. Circle the 3 most important things.
3. Review the list at the beginning of each day. 
4. Review the list at the end of your day. Did your activities drive the 3 things?
5. Adjust. Repeat.

                                                   

How To Stumble Upon Yourself

I went bike riding yesterday for the first time in about six years. Besides the fact that my butt is sore, which isn't a surprise, I'm still thinking about a moment that happened. I stumbled upon myself. I was riding and I looked up and there, in my memory was the picture of me sitting alongside the football field. The memory came to me instantly and just as instantly brought tears to my eyes.

I was sitting and waiting for my daughter to finish cheerleading clinic put on by the high school. I was reading "Happy for No Reason" by Marci Shimoff. I had gotten to page 39 of the book where Marci challenges you to do an exercise:

The Exercise
Get out a piece a paper. Create two columns with the headings Expansion and Contraction. Under each column, list things that expand you or contract you. Things expand you if they make you feel more lightness, openness, happier. Things contract you if the make you feel fear, pessimism, low energy.

At that moment, I realized that my marriage would go in the Contraction column.....that choosing to stay in my marriage was choosing something that contracted me. It was choosing unhappiness. Somehow, that exercise simplified what I had complicated. It delivered "new" information to me. So, now I had to decide if it was okay for me to live an unhappy life.

I closed the book at that point. I couldn't go on. I had to give that new, simple fact time to sink into my brain. I certainly didn't know what I was going to make of it once the processing stopped. I didn't open the book again until years later; not until a year after I had moved out and moved on. I was finally ready to process some more.

So, when I stumbled upon me, the tears were to grieve for the person that lived in unhappiness at one time and were to celebrate and acknowledge the person that I have been since.

What CONTRACTS/EXPANDS you? What are you going to do about it?

M

The 10 Ways a Hill of Sand and Life Are the Same

First, let me say that when my 14yo son, Ben, told me to stop the car because he HAD to get out and climb the sand hill, I had a proud parent moment.  We had just taken a turn off the main highway hoping to find a road closer to the Mississippi River. I was trying to turn a short, simple trip into a longer, something worth remembering trip. There, out in the middle of nowhere, was a huge hill of sand. Well, when you see that kind of thing, you just have to stop.

I had just picked Ben up from his first week-long camp. He was full of stories and the promise that it was the best time he's ever had, beating every vacation we've taken. (I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess it's good.) It was a beautiful day. Sky was bright blue and evening was approaching, so the sun was shifting lower, extending the shadows.

We got out of the car and left the music blaring. We took the camera with us. Ben immediately set about climbing to the top of the huge hill. He had to stop a couple of times, amazed at how much harder the sand made the trip. Eventually, he made it and yelled from the top, "Mom, you should see it up here. There's a whole field."

I was still at the bottom. I hadn't made it past the warm sand on my feet and the unexpected discovery of gorgeous shimmering shells polka dotting the hill. I had also discovered that Ben's motion was creating small avalanches. I sat watching sheets of sand release themselves and streams of sand create crevices and sand waterfalls off the ledges.

So, how is life like a sand hill?

1. When something surprises you, you should be willing to shift gears and tune into it. Ben saw the hill and demanded to stop. He wasn't willing to pass it by.
2. The trip up is hard work, but the trip down is fun as hell. Learning life's lessons can be hard but the wisdom is sublime.
3. Sometimes it takes a messy butt to get down the hill. Ben slid down the hill on his butt and his shorts ended up looking like he had an accident. In life, I think you have to be willing to loosen up sometimes, let things not be easily explainable, let it be messy.
4. Go with the wind. Pick up momentum. Go with the flow. Don't fight what the universe is telling you. The wind's force was a creative force in the face of the hill.
5. There were crevices in the hill and life has crevices. We become entrenched in our thoughts and habits. We have to notice when we're in them and work to get out of them. They're hard to get out of. 
6. Unexpected beauty is everywhere. Look for it! We found a sand hill in the middle of nowhere because we went looking for it.
7. Things aren't always what they seem. It was a hill of sand but it was also a moment, a metaphor, an enabler of a broader view.
8. You can get buried quickly if you stand still. Sometimes you just have to move, do something. The sand buries things quickly.
9. Truth depends on your point of view, your perspective. The experience at the top of the hill was very different from the one at the bottom of the hill.
10. Life is constantly changing even when it seems the same. From far enough away, that hill just seemed like a hill sitting there, but when you looked close enough, it was constantly changing. Structures that look permanent are fragile. A single distance vibration can result in a cataclysmic change.

Go out and find your sand hill now.

Remembering

My parents had hard childhoods. They didn't have much, which, I think, contributed to the two parental goals they established. The first goal was that they wanted us to realize that life was about more than what you see around you every day. In order to teach us that, we traveled. Now, please know that my parents were blue-collar, hard-working people, so traveling didn't fit easily into our budget and it was considered extravagant by friends and family.

To put it in context, my mom worked at a meat-packing plant and then went on to shovel steel shavings for years in a manufacturing plant. I can remember her coming home from work from both jobs. From the first, she'd smell of meat - can't even say it was a pleasant smoke smell - it was a MEAT smell. They unloaded and killed the animals there by electrocuting them and my mom used to talk about how horrible it was to work in that environment. When she shoveled steel shavings, she came home filthy. Black, head to toe. I can't imagine what it was like to step into the shower like that with the goal of washing away that stubborn layer but never really being able to be successful because those tiny shavings had a way of digging themselves into your skin and hiding in places that made it impossible to feel free of them.

My dad worked in the foundry and on the manufacturing line. He was union. I can remember the strikes and the UAW meetings and seeing the local TV personalities at the meetings (Dr. Max & Mombo). I also remember him working third shift and stubbornly fitting classes into his life because he was determined to get his B.A. - I think for a lot of reasons: (1) He wanted to prove to himself that he could do it, he was good enough. (2) He had a strong belief that education opened doors in your mind and in the world. (3) He wanted us to know that education wasn't optional. (4) He wanted "management" to know that he wasn't just a cog in the wheel.

Back to the goals.....their second goal was to ensure their kids had better lives than they did. I think I can say they achieved their goal........

WELL. all of this was just a long introduction to my "a-ha" moment yesterday. I realized that I haven't clearly defined my parental goals. Of course, I had this "a-ha" moment while someone was sharing their life with me. I find part of the beauty of people is that they remind me of so many things.

I think I'll adopt my parents' goal of teaching that life is not what you see around you every day. I haven't done a good job of that. Yes, my kids have traveled but I don't think they've truly been exposed to the radical differences in the way people live. I'll need to be more purposeful about that.

I think the other goal I want to set is making sure my kids live life consciously. I want them to really be on purpose about knowing who and how they want to be, what they want to do, and what they want to have. It's only when they know those things that they can truly ensure that each moment is dedicated to the pursuit of those outcomes - or if it's not - I want them to be fully aware of the choices they are making. I want them to know when they're sacrificing their dreams, what they're sacrificing them for, and think about whether it was worth it.

So, dream journals will become a regular part of our lives and our discussions. In fact, I'm going to put it on the calendar. Maybe I'll make it a monthly event. We'll plan something special. We'll have a sleepover together or we'll go out to eat, but it'll be part of us.

I want to create knowingness and blooming.