Simple, happy moments accumulate into a spectacular happy life.....

While I was recently chasing the Happy Cloud, I found myself admiring the green of the cornfield and contrasting it to the green of wild weeds - both we're beautiful and both made me smile. Greens.

A few moments later, I found myself asking whether it was ridiculous for Greens to make me smile. What a silly thing to smile about. There's nothing grandiose about the green of a field. It's not Important to the world. It's not Fashionable. It's not Intellectual. Michele, it's a cornfield!!

Fast forward a couple of days. Driving and the sky was beautiful. Blue. Damn it. Here's another simple thing; a simple moment making me smile.

Then I started to do math. One moment + one moment + one more moment + lots of other moments.........all those moments matter. They all add up to make a life and the more simple, happy moments you can find in your day will lead you to a spectacular happy life.

m

Happy Cloud

Yesterday, I was driving down the highway, admiring the green and I saw this happy cloud - a sole cloud in the sky. I told my daughter to look up.


She said, "Isn't it cute?" lol.

It WAS cute.....all by itself in the gorgeous blue sky. I wanted a picture, so took the next road and found myself in the country, on a road that seemed like it could have gone on forever. Imagine the the road stretched out in front of you, the sky bright blue, and surrounded by green corn fields......undulating.

I kept driving - saw horses, cows, black birds.......and then stopped. I told my daughter to listen - to the wind and the birds and the nothing. Look at THAT green & THAT one.

Then I was amazed that this unplanned 20 minutes on a country road gave me energy & made me smile.

Never did take a picture..........

What do you worry about?

Worrying is like hoping.

Stop worrying
Stop hoping
Do.
Be.

Living Poetically

I always thought that poets were people that write poems. From thefreedictionary.com:


Poet
1. A writer of poems.
2. One who is especially gifted in the perception and expression of the beautiful or lyrical

On Sunday, I realized that I am a poet, not because I write poems, but because I think I'm especially gifted in the perception of the beautiful or lyrical.

It stops me in my tracks, forcing me to pay attention. I see it everywhere and in almost everything and definitely in everyone. I even see beauty in ugliness. It makes me giddy, smile, gleeful and it makes me appreciate.

and it makes me want to share so that everyone can see it.

What's in your backpack?

Finally watched Up In The Air last night.

The moment that Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) talks about comparing your life to a backpack and that sometimes, in life, we fill our backpack with so much that we can't move.

We get stuck.

And that's how we live the rest of our lives.

When's the last time you dumped your backpack out? What people and things would you purposefully put back into it.

Last night

The storm arrived.
I watched as it snuck up.

It was exquisite indigo, the kind you could sink into.
It took its time. Willing to sit with itself.
Without an announcement.
Calm, but undeniably present.

It started with silence belying the lurking force.
The landscape hushed.
The birds grew louder in comparison.

Next came the soft pitter patter tip-toeing across the pond.
A harmless messenger.
Just a warning.

But then the sky unraveled.
An opening statement.
Declarative and beautiful.
Dancing light.
With idiosyncratic booming.
Unveiling.

The wind and rain swept in, erasing all previous notions of hesitancy or tentativeness.
Replaced by boastfulness, bravado, strength.
Unleashed.

Hello.

What else matters? bliss, blooming & knowingness

Just imagine having the combination of these three things:
being happy - knowing that what makes you happy should be making you happy - AND flourishing and shining

deep breath.

bliss: 1 : complete happiness 2 : paradise, heaven
 
knowingness: 1 : having or reflecting knowledge, information, or intelligence 2 a : shrewdly and keenly alert : astute b : indicating possession of exclusive inside knowledge or information 3 : cognitive 4 : deliberate

bloom :1 a : to produce or yield flowers b : to support abundant plant life 2 a (1) : to mature into achievement of one's potential (2) : to flourish in youthful beauty, freshness, or excellence b : to shine out : glow 3 : to appear or occur unexpectedly or in remarkable quantity or degree  4 : to become densely populated with microorganisms and especially plankton —used of bodies of water

Follow your bliss - a birthday wish

I have to share these words from a magnet given to me on my birthday.

• begin.
• attempt.
• expand.
• transform.
• imagine.
• create.
• vision.
• dream.

Yes.

Are you feeding YOU in the ways YOU need to be fed?

What are you doing right now?
What did you do today?
What are you doing tomorrow?

Dedicate some time to feeding YOU in the ways YOU need to be fed.
Unfiltered by shoulds, what are your wants? Start with the wants and then apply the shoulds. SPARINGLY.
Because they'll stomp all over the wants every time.

Don't think that you can keep neglecting parts of yourself.
There are no parts; there is only the whole.

It's about opportunity costs.....

The cost of an opportunity forgone (and the loss of the benefits that could be received from that opportunity); the most valuable forgone alternative.

Aren't we incurring opportunity costs every day of our lives? Every minute of our day? We're choosing how to spend our time and where to put our energy. We're forgoing other opportunities when we make our choices. How do you know if you're choosing correctly?

Create knowingness: figure out what you want you and your life to be.

• Do you know who and how you want to be?
• Do you know what things you want to have?
• Do you know what things you want to do?

 Once you have knowingness, the opportunity costs become easier to give up - only the items that help you get to YOU will get your resources.

C'mon - borrow mine

Hold your hands out.
I'll hand one over.

Or open your mouth and I'll take a spoon and make airplane noises and pop one into your mouth.

I'll send one next day FedEx. Open the package feverishly.

It's my savior in moments of despair. It forces me to put it into perspective.
It's my mechanism for turning good into exquisite.
It unleashes, expands.

Sense of humor.
Laughter.
A smile.

How much of the important parts of your life can you see?

msangie@jammdanceco.com  - this is for you....

Apparently I'm finding inspiration in song lately.
Sam Sparro - Black & Gold
"if vision is the only validation then most of my life isn't real"

So much of our life goes on in our heads and our hearts. There is nothing to see.
If you change one of those things, you change your reality.

It's simple. Right? It's simple.
You can just decide. It IS all invented.

But it's not always easy, is it? I'm laughing because I don't know how many times I've had this conversation, not just with other people, but with MYSELF.

Life isn't what you see. It's what you feel, think, know......it's faith, love, fear, hope, wonder, appreciation, perception, compassion, perserverance, curiosity........add yours.......

Phenomenal.

Who, in your life, expects you to be somebody?

From Brandi Carlile:
All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to

The book Vital Friends asks who, in your life, expects you to be somebody?

What are the vital relationships that keep you "tethered" (my word) to the world, that keep you connected & engaged because they have expectations of you? What relationships keep you motivated and give your life context? Without them we wouldn't contribute to the world in the same way - we'd lose meaning.

So while you're figuring out how you invest in yourself, you have to realize THAT investment doesn't happen in a vacuum. The outcome of that investment depends on your relationships with others.

Soooo, who EXPECTS you to be somebody? And what do they expect you to be? And how has it effected you?

My daughter once told me, "Mom, I want you to be happy." I want to work hard to live up to that expectation.

The marble jar

I love this.

The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, people live about seventy-five years. If you multiply 75 times 52, you get 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that you may get in your entire lifetime. How many of yours have already passed?


The marble jar:... Get a jar. Put a marble in it for each Saturday you have left. As every Saturday passes, take one marble out and throw it away. Watch the marbles diminish as a reminder that you should focus on what you want to do, what you want to have, and who and HOW you want to be – what YOU decide is really important in life.

Who are you letting in?

We've been conditioned to believe that feedback is a good thing, intrinsically good.

BUT I've found that it's not always good. Be careful about where you're getting feedback.

I give my trust away. I give it and it's up to the person to lose it. I don't make them earn it.
I give away second chances and third chances - sometimes too many chances.

Proceed with caution when you feel like someone:

1. doesn't seem to have the right intention
2. makes the process of receiving feedback so toxic that it drains your core
3. has fundamentally different beliefs or perceptions that you just can't make it make sense

Decide if you're going to let them in anymore. Maybe what they have to say just isn't valid.

Defensiveness

Think back. Was there ever a moment that you felt defensive? I'll bet there was and I'll bet if you really thought about that moment, you'd find that you were protecting some belief that was center to you - your essence.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if in that moment of defensiveness, we could express what was at the root core of our apprehension? Instead of talking all around it, we could admit what was truly driving our reaction.

So stop the next time you feel defensive and ask yourself what you're really trying to defend.

Promises we make to ourselves

I made a promise to myself that I would blog today.

I hadn't thought about what to write, so here I am.

And now I'm wondering about the promises we should make to ourselves. How on purpose are we about the promises we should make to ourselves? Would it just be that easy? I promise myself.....and then we I would hold myself accountable to it?

I'm going to steal promises that we make to customers and employees - I'm going to just throw them out there - as a starting point for promises I need to make to myself.

1. I promise to respect, value and encourage your opinion.
2. I promise to be welcoming, respectful, and inclusive.
3. I promise to enpower you, enable you, and help you grow.
4. I promise to recognize and develop you.
5. I promise to listen to you, resolve your issues, and take action.

Seems like a good place to start.

Speechless and appreciating

To all those people who leave me speechless.

.......when you leave me speechless; brain going a million miles an hour but not fast enough to process what you said.

You put me off balance, physically shifting my position. Leaning back. Taking it in. My eyes looking up - trying to see how the pieces fit together.

WOW. Really? Did you just say that? Did you just do that? What does that mean? You surprised me and I'm surprised that I'm surprised. I'm appreciating.

I heard what you SAID and I HEARD what you DID. I didn't just listen. I HEARD.

Now I'm challenged to make it part of me. Give me a minute, a day, or a year. It may take that long.

I love the challenge. Thank you and please keep doing it.

Loan me your glasses

The world becomes blurry sometimes and I've figured out to surround myself with people that can remind me.

They remind me that the way I see the world is not the only way - they loan me their glasses for a while. They wake me up.

My friend Heather said to me a couple of weeks ago, "Isn't it funny how life gives nods and winks?" and I added, "and shouts but you find out you need a hearing aid."

I've gotten lost in the past. AND I will get lost again (lost, blind, and deaf) AND sometimes it was on the way to a dream. AND it will be on the way to a dream again.

BUT now I know to ask people to loan me their glasses. I won't wait.

AND I also know that getting lost isn't getting lost at all because sometimes when you're on your way to a dream and you get lost, you find a better dream.

We are all........

We are all teachers.
We are all students.

We all have wisdom.
We all have ignorance.

We are all human.

Give me the opportunity to be curious.
Give me the opportunity to share.
Give me the opportunity to listen.
Give me the opportunity to hear.