"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.

What are you leaving in hearts?

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

It might sound odd but I like to go to cemeteries. I feel like they represent the "boiled down" version of a person's life; the recap, the summary, the last whisper of what they were and how others see them. 

.......how others see them. Notice, that phrase isn't in the past tense.

What are we, if not what is left behind in the hearts and minds of those we leave behind?

I believe that it's the ONLY thing we are.
And yet, I believe it's NONE of what we are.
 

Me: You shouldn't care what others think. What others think of you is none of your business. The only reality that exists is the one in your mind.
Me, again: Yes, but part of how I want to show up in life is about how I interact with others, what I am to them. When my mind no longer exists, theirs will carry who I was.

                      Which camp are you in? 

                                                               To care or not to care?

Don't Be Dumb

I finally got around to straightening my garage yesterday. It had been getting increasingly messy since I moved in 9 months ago. I was tripping over shoes trying to get to my car.

The cleaning took much longer that I had anticipated. Well, I also had a visit from my neighbor's two year old. He had wandered over and hesitantly sat at the end of my driveway watching me clean. I finally enticed him to come closer by pulling out some bubbles, the kind with the big wands. Once I showed him what to do, he was determined to cover me with bubbles and eventually just started dipping the wand into the soap and then tapping it on my head. It was at that point that I suggested that we switch to chalks. I have a big ole box of sidewalk chalk that's actually mine because I love to chalk but he didn't seem too interested in those. I finally pulled out the liquid roll on chalks - it's just like paint. You used a roller brush to paint the surface with chalk. Eventually, it just turned into fingerpainting. We sat there and chalked until he had to go in for a nap and I returned to cleaning my garage.

As I went back to my cleaning, I started thinking, "I don't feel grown up. I wonder if most people feel grown up."


I really enjoy Gretchen Rubin's (author of The Happiness Project) fb page where she asks Happiness Question of her readers and she always gets enthusiastic responses. I started thinking that I would love to hear her reader responses to the question of whether they will ever be grown up.

Then I thought, "Well, I think that I'm just going send an email to Gretchen and propose the question for her readers. It couldn't hurt to ask and would be fun if she responded. I COULD do it........I wonder if most people would give themselves permission to ask her. I wonder if they think that she wouldn't respond to an ordinary person, so they'd abandoned the idea before they even got started.................Ya know, everyone should remember to ask. Just ask for what they want. I'm going to ask her."

I walked inside, found Gretchen's email address on one of the sites and sent her my suggestion.
Forty minutes later, my question was posted on her fb and readers were busily responding and I was happy I asked. And once again, I was reminded that you should always ask for what you want. 

Do you know what you want?
Are you going to ask for it?

Gretchen's info
Here's Gretchen's fb page: http://www.facebook.com/GretchenRubin?ref=ts
She also has a website for her book: http://happiness-project.com/

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