What, me worry?
Thankfully, not being used to worrying came in handy. In a moment when it seemed like every little thing was rushing at me with nothing but negative consequences, I took a deep breath and realized a few things.
In every situation that was causing me to worry, I had very little control. I couldn’t control the surgeon’s hands as he worked on my knee. I can’t control the fact that our lives might look completely different very soon. I have zero control over what my insurance decides to cover.
But I did have control over whether or not I decided to have surgery. I couldn’t see a way to continue my daily life without it, so I signed the document saying I would pay the $20,000 if it came down to that. The woman made sure to ask me nicely twice more if I was okay with it. No, absolutely I was not, but I knew that if I had to, I could make payments until it was all taken care of. I couldn’t continue on with more and more pain every day.
*If you’d prefer to listen or watch instead, click here.
When my children were little, we had a favorite book called Wemberly Worried. We read it so many times that I can still recite a lot of it by heart. The gist of the story is that Wemberly, a cute, well-dressed little mouse, was a natural worrier, but as the day approached for her to attend kindergarten, her worrying took on monumental proportions.
Throughout the years, my kids and I have often referred to that book or secretly agreed that someone was a “Wemberly.” Recently, though, I have felt myself drifting into Wemberly territory, and today’s post is an attempt to remind myself and hopefully others who need it, that worry is a useless emotion.
The phrase “worried sick” is real. You can absolutely worry yourself into sickness. For this reason alone, you shouldn’t let yourself become a worrier, but I recognize that there are times when it’s tough to get on top of the realistic ‘what ifs’ floating around inside your head.
I’ll give you an example. For the last three months, I’ve been doing my best to ignore pain in my right knee. I’m a person who deals with stress by working out, and I’m a firm believer that if a person were to do some kind of jumping every other day - star jumps, box jumps, jumping rope, hopscotch, or burpees - we could keep our bodies healthy way into our advanced years. (That’s an entire other blog post and one I can’t actually back with any scientific proof.) But because of my knee, I haven’t been able to work out or even take my dogs on their daily walk for longer than I’d like to admit.
When I decided that the pain wasn’t going away, I began the work of getting it fixed. I saw my doctor, had an X-ray, then an MRI, saw a specialist, and eventually had a knee scope scheduled. I also worried. I’m squeamish about bones, ligaments, veins, and needles.
It’s never just one thing, right?
In the midst of all this, my husband is preparing to retire. While it sounds like the one thing every single person wants to do, the reality of it is quite different. There’s worry that you haven’t registered correctly for Medicare. There’s worry about what you’ll do with your life now that you’re no longer reporting to the same job you’ve had for the last 45 years. And of course, there’s worry that there are only so many regularly scheduled paychecks left.
I’m not a natural worrier. I generally take life one single day at a time, and as my mother has often said, there’s nobody else who can make $5 last longer than I can, and I proved it again and again during my college years.
But the day of my scheduled surgery, I was faced with yet another worry. As I was being checked in, the lady helping me let me know that my health insurance hadn’t yet approved my knee scope. There I was, an hour away from getting my knee fixed, and she was explaining to me that if insurance didn’t come through, I would be responsible for around $20,000 just to pay for the surgical center fee.
Everything hit me at once.
Thankfully, not being used to worrying came in handy. In a moment when it seemed like every little thing was rushing at me with nothing but negative consequences, I took a deep breath and realized a few things.
Deep breaths…
In every situation that was causing me to worry, I had very little control. I couldn’t control the surgeon’s hands as he worked on my knee. I can’t control the fact that our lives might look completely different very soon. I have zero control over what my insurance decides to cover.
But I did have control over whether or not I decided to have surgery. I couldn’t see a way to continue my daily life without it, so I signed the document saying I would pay the $20,000 if it came down to that. The woman made sure to ask me nicely twice more if I was okay with it. No, absolutely I was not, but I knew that if I had to, I could make payments until it was all taken care of. I couldn’t continue on with more and more pain every day.
It was a great reminder that we all get to choose. Are we going to spend every day heaping one worry on top of another? Or are we going to focus on those things we have control of? There are too many situations in our lives where we could get buried in worry. For myself, I prefer to remain optimistic.
While I haven’t been brave enough to check in with my insurance yet, at not quite a full week, my knee already feels better than it did before the scope. I’m also happy to report that my husband has had several offers from people who would like to partner with him after he retires. The beauty of that is that he’s going to get to choose when and if he works, and what every single day is going to look like. With a little optimism and a whole lot of prayer, choice is going to continue keeping my Wemberly side locked deep within.
The Things We Leave Behind
So at the bridal shower I recently attended, when we introduced ourselves and I said I had been the bride’s English teacher, and her mom talked about how her daughter still cries out that she needs Circle Time, I was so proud to hear it.
We all have the opportunity every single day to leave behind a better legacy than the one we’re leaving right now. You have numerous interactions with others where you could be kinder, more understanding, or even a better listener. There’s plenty of room for all of us to improve in this category.
*If you’d like to watch or listen to this entry, click here.
Have you ever heard or seen something and instinctively known it was meant for you? Had one of those moments when it seems like time slows down and you’re looking at something or picturing whatever it is in your mind, flashing at you with neon lights? I had one of those moments this week.
I was listening to my latest audiobook (Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid - it’s so good!) when one of the characters said to another, “I don’t want that to be my legacy.”
That sentence stopped me in my tracks. I had to stop the audio and just think about it for a bit.
We are all aware that any random day could be our last, right? So, I have to ask, if today were your last day, what is the legacy you’re leaving behind?
Some background
The definition of legacy I’m talking about is this - the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, etc. that took place in the past, or of a person’s life.
I’d love to say that I was the best daughter, sister, friend, wife, mom, stepmom, aunt, and grandma I could be, and I really do try to be, but I know that’s most likely not my legacy. I’d also like to be able to say I wrote life-changing books that helped or entertained millions of people, but that’s still in the works.
After attending a recent bridal shower for one of my former students, my legacy clinched into place. If today were my last day here, I can confidently say I would be remembered for Circle Time.
I’ve talked about Circle Time before, but people keep bringing it up, and it falls under the category of being surrounded by neon flashing lights, so I’m pretty sure this is my legacy.
Circle Time came about during the last two or three years of my teaching career. A speaker came to talk to the teachers during an in-service day. She mentioned that often the one element missing from school was that we weren’t taking care of the students’ mental health. There were too many stories about kids dying by suicide and teachers, parents, and family members having zero idea that the person had been struggling.
She had us do a mental check-in activity where we gathered in a circle, sitting on the floor. She asked us how we were doing and we were told to give a thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumb in the middle if we were just okay. We then went around the circle and explained to each other why we were happy, sad, or okay.
For whatever reason, I decided to run with this idea. I knew my kids would think it was cheesy, so I ran with that too, reminding them of how much they had loved having Circle Time in Kindergarten.
Originally, I tried to sell it to them as Tribal Council because we were playing a year-long Survivor game. But my kids loved the idea of calling it Circle Time. They also loved that they were getting out of “classwork” by doing it. So it began.
Little did they know that by the time they graduated, almost every kid needed Circle Time. We shared personal struggles, we laughed with each other, and we cried together. They may not have had to do “work” during Circle Time, but they were doing the work of becoming kind, caring human beings, and it was amazing to watch the transformation.
Back to the present
So at the bridal shower I recently attended, when we introduced ourselves and I said I had been the bride’s English teacher, and her mom talked about how her daughter still cries out that she needs Circle Time, I was so proud to hear it.
We all have the opportunity every single day to leave behind a better legacy than the one we’re leaving right now. You have numerous interactions with others where you could be kinder, more understanding, or even a better listener. There’s plenty of room for all of us to improve in this category.
If you're nervous that the legacy you're leaving behind is less than stellar, and you're alive to read/listen/watch this, you still have time!
If Circle Time is the legacy I’m leaving behind, and it means that I helped some kids feel seen and heard so much that they’re still talking about it several years later, I’m happy with that.
Comparison Shopping
There are those people, and you know who they are, that send you friend requests specifically because they want the inside scoop on your life.
But sometimes, that person doing the snooping is us. We can also get so caught up in what so-and-so is doing, or accomplishing, or must be earning to be able to vacation as often as they do, that we don’t recognize the emotion for what it actually is - envy.
Yes, I’m talking about adults. I don’t think jealousy is an emotion we grow out of.
If you’d rather watch or listen to this read by the author, click here.
Which of you reading this can admit to using social media to compare yourselves to others? I’ve often thought of how carefree the space in my brain would be if I weren’t using part of it to decipher all that I see on social media.
I know, you’re on social media to keep up with local events, right? Honestly, I don’t know how people who aren’t on it stay up-to-date with local soup & pie suppers, fundraisers, engagements, births, and weddings. It seems like every business and church I know has its own Facebook page, and depending on the age of my friends, they’re either also on Facebook, Instagram, and/or TikTok.
In the midst of all that social media usage (searching for news, I’m sure), we also get to see the beautiful side of our friends and often frienemies. I mean, why wouldn’t you ask everyone you know to be your friend so that you can keep up with absolutely everything they have going on?
There are those people, and you know who they are, that send you friend requests specifically because they want the inside scoop on your life.
Let’s get real
But sometimes, that person doing the snooping is us. We can also get so caught up in what so-and-so is doing, or accomplishing, or must be earning to be able to vacation as often as they do, that we don’t recognize the emotion for what it actually is - envy.
Yes, I’m talking about adults. I don’t think jealousy is an emotion we grow out of.
But, after reading a passage in my Simple Abundance book, I think we can recognize it, admit it (at least to ourselves), and learn from it.
The quote from my book is from Glennon Doyle, an American author, activist, and philanthropist. She says, “We’re only envious of those already doing what we were made to do. Envy is a giant, flashing arrow pointing us towards our destiny.”
Sometimes envy comes in the form of comparison. This is often a game where we end up on the losing end.
I’ll admit it
In the past year, I’ve read several books by an author I think is amazing. I’ve found her on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, where she talks about the books she’s published and the ones she’s currently working on. I signed up for her newsletter.
I’m jealous of the life she presents on social media. I want to be the one with that many published books.
Through her newsletter, I learned that she runs a new author boot camp and decided I might sign up after asking her a couple questions in an email. To my surprise, she emailed me back! Then, after I mentioned a blog post I had written, she COMMENTED on my blog!! I was blown away.
Now, as a member of her boot camp group, we meet on Zoom calls once a week. Sometimes she’s on the calls looking professional and polished, but mostly she shows up just as she is - post workout, post dog walk, whatever, much like me and the other members of the camp.
Not only is she handing out great advice, she’s open to calls and emails from all of us. She’s nothing like I pictured from her social media accounts. She’s actually pretty amazing, and I’m excited to be learning the craft of writing and publishing books from her.
That passage from my Simple Abundance book wraps up with this:
The next time you’re tempted to compare your life to another’s, pause for a moment. Remind yourself, over and over, that there is no competition on the spiritual plane. The blessings your nemesis has received also can be yours as soon as you are really ready to receive with an open heart all the good fortune created just for you.
And when will that be? As soon as you can bless the person you secretly curse; as soon as you can give thanks for their happiness and success as much as your own because it demonstrates the abundance of real life.
Excellent food for thought.
The Search
The example the speaker gave was of a man who worked at a Walmart in South Dakota. Customers would wait in line for him to check them out, even when there were other checkers open. The man would ring up their purchases and then come around the check-out stand to hand them their receipt, shake their hand, and say something nice to them. He gave people a personal connection. It was also mentioned that when he passed away, there was a sentence in his obituary that said, “no one was a stranger in his life.”
How cool that he took a job that almost any of us could do and elevated it into something so much greater.
A favorite story of mine was also mentioned in the presentation. I’m sure you’ve heard it, but it bears repeating over and over. A man came upon a child walking along the beach. The child was picking up starfish that had washed ashore and gently tossing them back into the water. The man looked at the child in confusion and said, “Kid, what are you doing?”
*If you’d rather watch or listen to this, click here.
I sat through a presentation this week that really helped me to understand why the idea of being as authentic as we can be is so important. When I first started writing this blog, I thought maybe there were a few people who also liked the thought of finding their authentic voice. But now, as I look at the number of people visiting my blog and watching the videos of me reading it, I think there are hundreds of people - in just the ones I personally know - who are trying to figure out their purpose in life.
Actually, that number is creeping up toward one thousand. Crazy! It’s almost like I’ve hit a nerve or something.
The presentation I saw talked about how there’s an interest in spirituality at work. By spirituality, he was talking about Google’s definition: a broad concept involving the search for meaning and purpose in life, often including a sense of connection to something greater than oneself - be it a higher power, nature, others, or one’s inner self. It is often an individual practice, separate from organized religion, that focuses on deep beliefs, values, and a transcendent dimension of existence.
The speaker talked about how there’s a growing social consciousness in which we are all looking for something more, like a path or a map to our lives.
We want to feel like what we do makes a difference. We want to leave our mark on the world.
Sound familiar?
The speaker mentioned that most people are neither fulfilled nor excited. They’re frustrated.
I get it.
I remember
I can give you an example. I’m a rule follower. But when the rules make no sense to me, I tend to toss them aside. As a teacher, I loved 99.5% of the kids I taught, and that’s what kept me going to work. But some of the rules teachers are asked to follow are absolutely ridiculous.
“There’s to be no food in the classrooms.” I had to ask why. The only answer I ever got was that it would make a mess. Okay, I figured, if I can find some food that doesn’t make a mess, it’s probably okay to offer that to my kids. There’s nothing more embarrassing than having your stomach growl while sitting elbow-to-elbow with other teens. Not exactly conducive to learning.
I always tried to have a jumbo bag of almonds in my desk. Kids knew that if they used their manners, asking me with a please and offering a thank you, I would give them a handful. The kids didn’t make a mess with them either, because they were hungry and they didn’t want me to get in trouble for giving them food.
Back to the topic
During the presentation I was watching, it talked about three levels of meaningfulness at work. Your work can be thought of as a job, a career, or a calling.
I’m just going out on a limb here, but I think if there are so many frustrated people around, most people are probably sitting in a job. But even in a job, we can do something called job crafting.
The example the speaker gave was of a man who worked at a Walmart in South Dakota. Customers would wait in line for him to check them out, even when there were other checkers open. The man would ring up their purchases and then come around the check-out stand to hand them their receipt, shake their hand, and say something nice to them. He gave people a personal connection. It was also mentioned that when he passed away, there was a sentence in his obituary that said, “no one was a stranger in his life.”
How cool that he took a job that almost any of us could do and elevated it into something so much greater.
A favorite story of mine was also mentioned in the presentation. I’m sure you’ve heard it, but it bears repeating over and over. A man came upon a child walking along the beach. The child was picking up starfish that had washed ashore and gently tossing them back into the water. The man looked at the child in confusion and said, “Kid, what are you doing?”
The child answered, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. If I don’t, they’ll die.”
The man said, “But there are miles and miles of beach, you can’t make a difference!”
The child smiled up at the man as he tossed another one into the ocean and said, “I made a difference to that one!”
To me, THAT story is the epitome of what following your authentic voice can do. You may never ever know the mark you’ve left on the world, but if you know what you’re doing is right, and you’re mindful of other people, deep down in your soul, that’s all that really matters.
A Reflection
Think of it this way - when you’re on your phone, you’re in the middle of lots of different voices. If you’re spending time on social media, you might be busy watching short videos that have been known to decrease your attention span. We need attention spans to be able to grow and follow our authentic voices.
Or you’re checking out what your friends are involved in, whether that’s high school sports, or babies taking their first steps, or people running their own businesses. But you’re at arm’s length, literally.
Some of the conversations I’ve been included in this week also have me thinking about my phone. One friend told me she’s on a social media detox, so she’s rarely on any apps right now. Sounds heavenly! Another conversation had us all wondering if maybe the reason we don’t see more people applying for the numerous jobs available is because of the dependency we all have on our phones. A final conversation revolved around the fact that you just don’t find young people in churches anymore.
*You can watch or listen to this post here.
I wrote last week about feeling like I’m constantly running, and I’ve had time to reflect upon that. The things that have been keeping me busy are 70% things I feel like I should do, 20% things I need to do to feel sane, and 10% things I want to do.
The things I feel like I should do include projects that bring in money, keep my husband and I alive and fit for society, like cooking and showering, and showing up for different things I’m involved in.
The things I need to do to feel sane include vacuuming my house, putting things away in the right places, and spending quality time with my husband, family, and pets.
But the number that is lowest is the things I want to do. I want to read the eight books I’ve started. I want to watch the five series that my husband and I have begun. I want to schedule more time to hang out with my friends. And I want to find more time to pursue some writing projects that I feel have future promise.
Notice that in all of that time, there’s never a place for spending time on my phone, and yet I do.
It’s interesting to me that when I have ten minutes before I have to get ready or rush off to someplace, instead of grabbing a book sitting right next to me, I reach for my phone.
Creating a business from scratch means I need to spend some time on social media, promoting the things I’m involved with. But the catch is that I’m a blogger who writes about living a more authentic life, and spending time on my phone seems to be in opposition to living authentically. It’s those moments when I’m by myself, truly listening to my own thoughts, or those thoughts that are spiritually sent to me as guidance, when I feel I gain direction toward my authentic self.
Say what?
Think of it this way - when you’re on your phone, you’re in the middle of lots of different voices. If you’re spending time on social media, you might be busy watching short videos that have been known to decrease your attention span. We need attention spans to be able to grow and follow our authentic voices.
Or you’re checking out what your friends are involved in, whether that’s high school sports, or babies taking their first steps, or people running their own businesses. But you’re at arm’s length, literally.
More to think about
Some of the conversations I’ve been included in this week also have me thinking about my phone. One friend told me she’s on a social media detox, so she’s rarely on any apps right now. Sounds heavenly! Another conversation had us all wondering if maybe the reason we don’t see more people applying for the numerous jobs available is because of the dependency we all have on our phones. A final conversation revolved around the fact that you just don’t find young people in churches anymore.
Could it be that some of the conveniences we use every day have been created as a way of distancing ourselves from other people? We use debit cards to pay, so there’s rarely a reason for someone to count back our change. ATMs? Fast food ordering kiosks? Self check-outs? Have our phones, which are supposed to keep us up-to-date and in the know, created a world where we’re more comfortable not interacting face-to-face?
I guarantee most young people prefer the safety of hiding behind a screen. As the older generations become more comfortable with all the things we do that keep us at an arm’s length, how many opportunities for connection are we losing?
Obviously, I’m still on my phone plenty. But I often wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without these little devices demanding our attention.
It seems fitting to end this with a quote from the book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome, in the second century CE, wrote this advice to himself, and I would argue it’s still valid today:
Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people - unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.
Easier said than done, right?
The Winners Take Naps
I’ve noticed something about myself lately, and I don’t like it. From the minute my feet hit the floor in the morning until the moment I let my feet glide under the covers of my bed, I feel like I’m running.
I rush to beat the clock in the morning, mostly because I straight up refuse to get up during the 5 am hour. (I was not made for being up early in the morning, and I’m okay with that.) I throw breakfast back so fast, it’s rare that I actually remember what it tasted like. When I drive, I have to set my cruise control, or you can bet I’m going to have an encounter with a cop.
*You can watch or listen to this post here.
I’ve noticed something about myself lately, and I don’t like it. From the minute my feet hit the floor in the morning until the moment I let my feet glide under the covers of my bed, I feel like I’m running.
I rush to beat the clock in the morning, mostly because I straight up refuse to get up during the 5 am hour. (I was not made for being up early in the morning, and I’m okay with that.) I throw breakfast back so fast, it’s rare that I actually remember what it tasted like. When I drive, I have to set my cruise control, or you can bet I’m going to have an encounter with a cop.
My days continue in this can’t-get-there-fast-enough manner. I’m rushing to get interviews scheduled, calls made, articles written, track down the next client.
When my work day is done, an unending list of household chores runs through my brain on repeat.
Vacuum the house.
Make supper.
Water the plants.
Do the dogs have enough water?
You’ve got time - throw a load of laundry in.
Wait, there’s still laundry to fold from last week?
I don’t want to be this busy. I want life to slow down. How are we already a full week into October??
Stop me if this sounds familiar
I know of a woman - I’m sure we all have this person in our lives - who loves to talk about how busy she is. She’ll rattle off all the different things she’s been doing or working on during her day, while I stand there smiling politely, secretly counting how many of my own things are not getting done.
But guess what?
There’s no prize for the person who is busiest. There’s no trophy for the person who did the most things in a day. There’s no reward for those who can’t say no.
The winner of this life goes to the person who learns how to scale back - their time given to projects their heart isn’t in, their money squandered on app after app to be able to watch all the series, even though there’s not time enough in a person’s lifetime, and their energy drained on events that mean nothing.
The winners take the time to go out for lunch with their friends. They know how to take naps, how to take long walks, and that they should absolutely never ever walk by a friendly dog without stopping to pet them.
They look around and appreciate the views. Right now, we have colors surrounding us in great bursts. Have you stopped to look? I have only had time for short glimpses, but that’s going to change.
Always back to this
My Simple Abundance book has the answer, as always…
“When we succumb to workaholism, what’s really happening is that we’ve lost faith in Spirit’s willingness to help us achieve success. We’ve separated the secular from the spiritual. Asking for Grace doesn’t seem as practical as working round the clock.
When was the last time Spirit accompanied you to work?
When was the last time you asked It to?”
Here’s to a week of looking around, sitting in silence (just for a bit), and taking note of the many blessings we take for granted on a daily basis.
That Which Won’t Be Mentioned
The couple has three young children who may not remember their daddy as they get older. He died by suicide.
I don’t know what was going on with him before he died. I don’t know if he was high or drunk or sad. But I do know what being depressed feels like, and I also know the fear of being judged because you’re struggling.
Why is this still a thing? Seems like we can talk about anything except money and the way we’re truly feeling if it’s anything but happy. So I’m talking about it.
(You can watch or listen to this post here.)
This is a heavy, sad week.
Three people I know passed away this week, and my heart is a bit beat up.
One person was a golfing acquaintance. He had a giant smile and gave a hearty greeting. Although I only saw him at golf tournaments, I was always happy to see him. He was a kind, kind man.
Golfers don’t always know that much about the personal lives of other golfers, but we know that they’re out there trying to improve themselves, just like we are. There’s an unspoken bond, much like there must be in other sports. When we arrive at a tournament, there are certain people we hope and expect to see, and it will hit me again when he’s not there. But, lucky for him, he passed away quietly in his sleep.
The next person was my former neighbor. As I was growing up, I was often a bit nervous around him. He was quiet and seemed so intimidating to me. I felt the same way when I hired him as an attorney.
But several years ago, I was finally able to recognize that he wasn’t being quiet to scare anyone; he was just observing. He had a great sense of humor and enjoyed laughing. He had a snickering chuckle, but when he thought something was really funny, he’d throw back his head and laugh loudly.
I grew up with his kids, playing in their yard until dark. Later, I would work with his wife in a cramped hospital office, helping her with public relations duties.
My former neighbor had a tumor and passed away about three months after discovering it.
The final person was a young man whom I had the pleasure of teaching. I remember him as being a little goofy. I liked him. He almost always had a smile on his face when walking into my classroom. As is the case with all of my students, he became one of my “kids,” and I enjoyed watching him grow up after high school through social media posts. When he got together with another of my former students, I cheered them on with multiple thumbs up and heart symbols.
The couple has three young children who may not remember their daddy as they get older. He died by suicide.
Let’s get real
I don’t know what was going on with him before he died. I don’t know if he was high or drunk or sad. But I do know what being depressed feels like, and I also know the fear of being judged because you’re struggling.
Why is this still a thing? Seems like we can talk about anything except money and the way we’re truly feeling if it’s anything but happy. So I’m talking about it.
When my children were young, I became depressed for a number of reasons. All I wanted to do was sleep, and I recognize that now as a pretty positive sign of depression. But I had two beautiful little kids who thought the sun rose and set on me, so ending my life didn’t enter my mind.
I also had a doctor who I felt I could talk to and I hoped, would send me in the right direction to get help. She wrote me a prescription for antidepressants. By the way, this is also something we still don’t talk about, which is crazy. If a pill can legally pick you up so that you have the energy to get through the day, what’s the big deal?
I took the pills for about a year, and they made all the difference. I was able to be a decent parent and get on with my life. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten that prescription.
Later on in my life, after my husband had an aortic aneurysm and had to stay in the hospital for almost a month longer than expected, I became depressed. There were days during that time when I didn’t think he would ever actually walk through our door again. I couldn’t shake that feeling, even when I knew he was going to be okay. I ended up back on antidepressants, but this time it was just for a few months. Again, it made all the difference.
This is not the first of my former students to die by suicide. Each time I hear of this happening, I wish I had stayed in closer contact with them. The social media view is generally pretty rosy and not at all the real story.
I have to wonder if he felt he didn’t have any options. He was a nice guy, and I can’t believe that he would choose to leave his children, unless he couldn’t see any other way out.
Please text!
I wish he had felt like he could’ve texted me. I hope and pray all my former students know that I’m only a text message away.
I’m praying that God wraps his arms around those people closest to the three who passed away. I know a man from the Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe who refers to death as “traveling on.” I like that. I hope that these guys are traveling on down a peaceful, pain-free road and keeping close watch over their families.
I also hope that the world realizes that it’s time to have real conversations about mental health and bring depression and remedies for it out of the closet.
Authentic Success
All of these experiences led to a dream of mine - making a living with my writing skills. Now that I recognize and have achieved that, I can redefine it to becoming wealthy while making a living with my writing skills.
I think the bottom line is that authenticity is going to be different for every single person. I know when I picture myself down the road achieving my current goal, I get choked up. When I hear, read, or am told things about what is certainly (now) possible for me, I feel all the emotions. That level of feeling has never been there in any other capacity.
Last week, a good friend of mine asked how she would ever know if she was following her own authentic voice. I’ve thought about this off and on for about a week, wondering about why I’m so confident that I’m following my own authenticity.
I think the key for me is in looking back. I can look back to when my 5th grade teacher let my friends and I act out a play during the school day that I had written. I was so proud! That was the beginning of writing being tied to feeling good about something that came easily to me and something I enjoyed doing. Writing wasn’t work for me.
As I continued through school, college, and even my master’s degree, writing was never the chore it seemed to be for others. Later, I went to a writer’s conference where my dad lived and I clearly remember him asking me about it at the end of the day. I told him being there had felt like I was home. Which is weird because I was in a huge city, in a huge building, surrounded by tons of people I didn’t know.
All of these experiences led to a dream of mine - making a living with my writing skills. Now that I recognize and have achieved that, I can redefine it to becoming wealthy while making a living with my writing skills.
I think the bottom line is that authenticity is going to be different for every single person. I know when I picture myself down the road achieving my current goal, I get choked up. When I hear, read, or am told things about what is certainly (now) possible for me, I feel all the emotions. That level of feeling has never been there in any other capacity.
As is generally the case when I’m looking for answers to questions, the universe provides. I hadn’t really found anything that satisfied me in terms of my friend’s question, until just a few minutes before I sat down to type this out.
My copy of Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach provided what I needed in today’s entry.
Sarah’s words:
September 24
Authentic Success
Authentic success is different for each of us. No single definition fits all, because we come in all sizes. One autumn afternoon years ago, while wandering through an abandoned cemetery, I discovered a wonderful definition of authentic success inscribed on the headstone of a woman who had died in 1820: “The only pain she ever caused was when she left us.”
Authentic success is having time enough to pursue personal pursuits that bring you pleasure, time enough to make the loving gestures for your family you long to, time enough to care for your home, tend your garden, nurture your soul. Authentic success is never having to tell yourself or those you love, “maybe next year.” Authentic success is knowing that if today were your last day on earth, you could leave without regret. Authentic success is feeling focused and serene when you work, not fragmented. It’s knowing that you’ve done the best that you possibly could, no matter what circumstances you faced; it’s knowing in your soul that the best you can do is all you can do, and that the best you can do is always enough.
Authentic success is accepting your limitations, making peace with your past, and reveling in your passions so that your future may unfold according to a Divine Plan. It’s discovering and calling forth your gifts and offering them to the world to help heal its ravaged heart. It’s making a difference in other lives and believing that if you can do that for just one person each day, through a smile, a shared laugh, a caress, a kind word, or a helping hand, blessed are you among women.
Authentic success is not just money in the bank but a contented heart and peace of mind. It’s earning what you feel you deserve for the work you do and knowing that you’re worth it. Authentic success is not about accumulating but letting go, because all you have is all you truly need.
Authentic success is feeling good about who you are, appreciating where you’ve been, celebrating your achievements, and honoring the distance you’ve aready come. Authentic success is reaching the point where being is as important as doing. It’s the steady pursuit of a dream. It’s realizing that no matter how much time it takes for a dream to come true in the physical world, no day is ever wasted. It’s valuing inner, as well as outer, labor - both your own and others’. It’s elevating labor to a craft and craft to an art by bestowing Love on every task you undertake.
Authentic success is knowing how simply abundant your life is exactly as it is today. Authentic success is being so grateful for the many blessings bestowed on you and yours that you can share your portion with others.
Authentic success is living each day with a heart overflowing with gratitude.
Back to me
THAT is the best definition of an authentic life I’ve ever read.
And yes, my friend is certainly an outstanding example of being an authentic success.
What do you intend to do?
Do you do anything intentionally, as opposed to just floating through daily life? Is there any certain thing you set time aside for every single week because you WANT to accomplish it?
Being intentional about anything seems difficult. It means that you must plan a time for it, keep people from running over the top of that time with other activities, and then, of course, you actually have to show up and do the thing you planned to do in the first place.
To be honest, it seems much easier to just spend any little free time I have surfing around on my phone.
This is life now.
Do you do anything intentionally, as opposed to just floating through daily life? Is there any certain thing you set time aside for every single week because you WANT to accomplish it?
Being intentional about anything seems difficult. It means that you must plan a time for it, keep people from running over the top of that time with other activities, and then, of course, you actually have to show up and do the thing you planned to do in the first place.
To be honest, it seems much easier to just spend any little free time I have surfing around on my phone.
This is life now.
I remember that during the last few years of my teaching career, it finally hit home to me that I was a role model to high school kids. Not that I ever wanted to be. Even when I didn’t think they were paying attention to me, they were. I decided to deliberately do things that I wanted them to do. If there was a piece of trash on the floor, I picked it up and threw it away. If a book were across the room instead of on the shelf, I would pick it up and take it back to where it belonged.
When I noticed them repeating my actions, I made a big deal out of it.
Did it make a difference? I’m not sure. Maybe it didn’t change the way they did things, but it did change things for me. Just this week, I happened to see some piece of trash on the floor. Before making a decision about what I was going to do with it, the thought - who are you when nobody is watching - went through my head. And I picked it up.
By the way
This seems like a good time to let you know that I am far from perfect, hence the reason I never wanted to be a role model to high school kids. But intentional? Yes. I am intentional, and I hope that is a word that comes to mind when people think about me.
The idea of scrolling on my phone at the end of each day seems lazy, especially when I want to…
Write a book
Finish painting the inside and outside of my house
Meet a friend for lunch (seems so easy, right?)
Finish the articles I need to write
Fold the laundry
Create some videos for a local group
Meal plan
Do my bookkeeping
Find better insurance
Work out
Read one of the ten books I’m currently reading
I WANT to do all these things, but I know that if I don’t break them down into smaller pieces, I’ll never even approach them.
To be as intentional as possible, I have to pencil things out in my planner. When the end of the day hits, and it would be super easy to just sit on my couch and scroll, this is when I need to look at my planner and challenge myself to accomplish one thing. Who doesn’t love a little challenge?
Maybe I can set a timer and work on my bookkeeping for 15 minutes. Perhaps I could find photos on my phone that I’ll use in the videos. Maybe I’ll read one chapter in one of the books. Whatever it is, I know it’s moving me forward toward one of my goals.
It’s important for me to be known as someone who is intentional. When I say I’m going to do something, I plan to do it, and I like that people can bank on that fact.
Not to veer off course, but…
Did you know our attention spans have shortened to right around 8 seconds? I did a Google search and found that answer, according to several sources. The average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. Oh, Lord!
But there are people who exceed that 8 seconds on a regular basis - musicians, athletes, highly educated individuals, bookworms, artists, scientists, nature lovers, gamers, deep thinkers, and meditators. The meditators have an increased attention span of up to 20 minutes, as reported on Sedona Sky Academy’s website, sedonasky.org.
Meditators are also more tuned into their authentic voice. The very act of meditating is listening to what is going on inside your head. It’s been known to relax the body and allow important information to cut through all the noise.
As my daily You are a BADASS calendar says, “If you want to be a real rock star in the manifestation department, get to the point where you have both unwavering faith and unwavering gratitude for that which you desire. This is when the real magic happens because mixing faith with gratitude is the High Holy Moly of Manifesting.”
Faith, as I’ve talked about here, and gratitude, as I’ve talked about here, seem to be the recipe for moving forward on the authenticity scale. Once you know where you’d like to end up, breaking down your intentions into smaller, bite-sized pieces and walking away from the little screen controlling your every move might just triple your steps on the path to being your truly authentic self.
Your Intuition Wants to Help
There was a character in this one who was blindsided by another character. For me, the reader, I kept finding myself talking to this idiot - DUDE! What about this, this, and THIS?? Of course, he kept missing clearly obvious red flags, and I would have to walk away for a bit before my blood pressure skyrocketed to the point of no return.
It made me think about how many of us do the same thing with loved ones. How often are we duped because we care so much about that person that we completely overlook the screamingly obvious flaws?
One of the things I think people struggle with when following their own authentic path, or at least I have, is learning to trust their intuition.
When you’re ready to begin listening to your authentic self, tuning into the voice that gets louder with each meditation/introspection/moment alone, you’ll notice you begin listening to your intuition more, too.
Or at least, that’s been my experience.
You may already be listening to your intuition with no problem. But it’s been a learning experience for me.
There are no coincidences
In the past, I know I’ve excused certain coincidences, no matter how often they jumped up in front of me. Now I find myself much more aware and open to recurring messages.
There are weeks when I’m carrying around a particular thought, and it keeps coming up, and I know that’s what I need to write about in this blog. To anyone not looking for a weekly blog topic like me, more than one occurrence should open your eyes to something you should be paying attention to.
Then there are other times, like today, when Wednesday rolls around and I still haven’t a clue. But if I spend time listening to what’s going on in my head, I find the topic easily.
Today, for instance, as always, interesting thoughts come to me when I’m in the shower. It generally happens when I don’t have music playing, I’m just paying attention to my own thoughts, and am away from my screens.
I stayed up late last night because I really wanted to finish the book I was reading. It was a doozy! The author, A. R. Torre, has become one of my favorites. She writes books that usually have a twist I never expect.
The one I just read, called The Last Party, made me so angry that I thought about throwing it against the wall and walking away several times. The only thing that kept me reading was the fact that I enjoyed a couple of her other books so much, I didn’t think she was going to lead me astray.
Yep, I’m a nerd
Sidenote: One thing I always do with the books I finish is read through the acknowledgements. Hers were at the end of the book, and she flat out said, “To my readers, thank you for sticking with this roller coaster of a story. It was dark, one of my darkest yet, and I appreciate you trusting me with your time…” So she apparently knew there might be people who wouldn’t make it that far. That made me chuckle.
There was a character in this one who was blindsided by another character. For me, the reader, I kept finding myself talking to this idiot - DUDE! What about this, this, and THIS?? Of course, he kept missing clearly obvious red flags, and I would have to walk away for a bit before my blood pressure skyrocketed to the point of no return.
It made me think about how many of us do the same thing with loved ones. How often are we duped because we care so much about that person that we completely overlook the screamingly obvious flaws?
I ran into a friend today who I hadn’t seen in a long time. The last I knew, she had just gotten married and was living the dream. Talking to her today, it was clear that she was beating herself up for trusting someone she shouldn’t have. Someone had cashed in on the trust she offered them on a silver platter.
One of the things she said to me was, “I guess I knew enough to not do THAT.” I pointed out that her intuition must have been second-guessing things. She agreed. Now she’s made some changes and will keep herself guarded and protected for a bit.
When I returned home, my daily calendar also had a message about intuition. Trusting your intuition regardless of what anyone else thinks and doing what it says is about as authentic - and self-loving - as it gets. That’s the shower message, the friend message, and the calendar message. Boom - there’s my blog topic. God, or the Universe, usually has your back if you pay attention.
Listening to your authentic voice might help you to listen more clearly to your intuition. Those arguments you keep hearing in your mind aren’t just your Negative Nelly trying to mess with you. It’s your intuition second-guessing your choices, and that’s a good thing.
‘Bout to Get Uncomfortable
He developed a cough that he couldn’t shake. As a patient who had recently been split open eight inches down his chest, he was given a pillow that volunteers made specifically for heart patients to hug when they cough. He used it frequently.
One day, as I was sitting in his room visiting with him, he began to cough. He squeezed the little pillow to his chest and coughed and coughed until he passed out! Then his body began shaking like he was having a seizure. I quickly ran into the hall and hollered for a nurse, who just sat there looking at me. I yelled, “He’s having a seizure!” She quickly followed me to his room, and his body was already shaking less than before.
*If you’d like to watch or listen to this blog, click here.
When my husband and I first began our relationship and marriage, we talked every now and then about God. We were both believers, but I never felt as if his faith was very strong. He said all the right things, but I wasn’t completely convinced.
I can certainly identify with wavering faith. There have been times in my life when I wasn’t sure God existed, and if He did, why wasn’t he doing the things I was praying for him to do?
Sarah Ban Breathnach says in her book, Simple Abundance, “Want to make God laugh? Tell Him YOUR plans.”
I don’t remember when or what happened for me to decide that God was real. I do know that ever since my husband’s Ascending Aortic Aneurysm, neither of us questions much anymore, including each other’s faith.
Once he made it through that initial surgery, which you can read about here, we were so excited that he’d be going home in just a few days. Then we realized that his insides hadn’t woken up with the rest of him, and it became almost four more weeks of an extended hospital stay while the medical staff worked to figure out what was wrong.
It was great news that he got to move out of the ICU and into the cardiac care rooms. But things happened there that almost had me convinced he wouldn’t be coming home ever.
He developed a cough that he couldn’t shake. As a patient who had recently been split open eight inches down his chest, he was given a pillow that volunteers made specifically for heart patients to hug when they cough. He used it frequently.
One day, as I was sitting in his room visiting with him, he began to cough. He squeezed the little pillow to his chest and coughed and coughed until he passed out! Then his body began shaking like he was having a seizure. I quickly ran into the hall and hollered for a nurse, who just sat there looking at me. I yelled, “He’s having a seizure!” She quickly followed me to his room, and his body was already shaking less than before.
This happened frequently enough that the staff began keeping closer tabs on him. But the coughing just got worse.
I remember so many of my conversations with God at that time, where I was absolutely incredulous that He would bring him through his Triple A, only for him to die because of a cough.
Time to come clean
I don’t think I had admitted to anyone yet that I was beginning to think he’d never come home when our oldest daughter called me. I was driving home from visiting him, and she told me that her brother had been talking to his dad on the phone when he started coughing, saying things that didn’t make sense, and then it sounded like he had dropped the phone.
I started crying, which caused her to cry, and I admitted that I didn’t think he was going to make it through this cough, combined with whatever was going on with his insides not waking up. We agreed to pray and pray.
Eventually, his cough got better, thankfully. But not before it had gotten much worse.
The important part
He told me about a time when I hadn’t been at the hospital, and he must’ve started to cough and passed out. He said he felt his body rising up off the bed, and everything around him was blindingly white. Then it was like the sky started to clear, and it was a beautiful blue.
He turned and looked down, and realizing how high up he was, he started flailing his arms around, but felt God - and he instinctively knew it was God - pinning his arms to his sides to keep him from struggling. He calmed and was gently lowered back down to the bed. He also knew that his body was being worked on while he was experiencing this. After this experience, his cough got better.
Later, he came home and one day saw our minister eating lunch in the city park. He joined him, and at one point, he admitted what had happened because of his cough. Our minister asked if he would be willing to give his testimony during a church service, but my husband told him he didn’t think he would be comfortable doing that.
A few weeks after that conversation, he began waking up at the same time each night. Every single time he woke up, he was thinking about the offer to tell his story in church.
He finally admitted to me that he didn’t think God was going to let him sleep through the night again until he agreed to speak and talk about his experience.
As scared as he was to get up in front of a packed house during our church service, he knew he had to do it. It was amazing, and he had so many people come to him with their own stories because of it.
Moral of the story is…
I no longer question his faith.
My own faith has grown a thousand times stronger since living through all of this, and especially while following my authentic journey. People have questioned my sanity. How could I possibly leave a steady job with a decent income as a teacher to follow some crazy dream of being a writer?
I have a great daily devotional book called A Little Me Time with God, and a recent prayer I read really hit home:
Good God, I trust you to guide me into your goodness, even though I don’t know how things will turn out. Settle my heart with your peace and help me to take each step you reveal to me.
I personally believe following your authentic voice is probably going to mean that you lessen your grip on control and allow your faith in God to grow, as you learn to trust that He knows how to get you to the point in life where you’re supposed to be.
My Personal Guarantee
I was listening to Channel 1 on Sirius/XM one afternoon this week, and I heard the DJ telling a story about his daughter, who is a senior in high school. He started out by saying that this year in her school, they are locking up all cell phones from the moment they get to school, until the last bell rings, “they’re literally cut off from the rest of the world,” he said.
“So she bought a burner phone. In the morning, when she enters the school building, she places the burner phone in the bag that gets locked up, and keeps her actual phone with her.”
At this point, I’m ticked off with this man. For me, eight hours away from my phone sounds like heaven. What a gift they are giving these kids to be able to retrain their brains so they can learn to focus again. But he’s not done.
He goes on, “So she and I have this deal. When she gets caught, as we all know she will, and the school calls me to tell me that they’ve caught her with this burner phone, I’m supposed to act completely shocked and offended. I’m going to assure them that she’ll be punished for this atrocity.” And he laughs.
Now I’m furious. This is why teachers can’t get anywhere with their students. Parents like this are what’s wrong with education today.
I’ve been wrestling with the idea that this blog is supposed to be about helping people find their authentic calling, and yet you may think I’m continually throwing random ideas at you. They’re all connected, I promise.
The blog starts with entries about being authentic. But interspersed throughout is seemingly unconnected material. In my mind, it makes perfect sense, but looking at the various entries from an outsider’s eyes, it also looks a bit off the wall.
An explanation
For me, the Triple A - or Ascending Aortic Aneurysm - that my husband lived through was the biggest factor in changing the way I live my life. Realistically, he shouldn’t be here today. That was enough for me to reevaluate my goals, values, and faith. To read more about that, you should check out the You Never Know entry.
Right upon the heels of that, we had Covid. You can believe whatever you want about it, but all of our lives changed drastically because of it. I’d never taught class using Zoom before that or tried to conduct a lesson while wearing a mask. For the record, I hope to never have to do that again.
But it all changed me. It all made me reevaluate how I want to spend my days and where my focus should be, just in case my time here is limited.
Steve Jobs said something in a Stanford commencement speech I used to show my students that I can’t forget. He said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
I see the connections with all that I’ve done in my life that have led up to this moment in time. I trust that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
Along with following my authentic path is the idea that I didn’t just teach high school kids for 17 years for no reason. They were teaching me too, and crying out for help.
In the conversations I had with kids about where they felt called to go in life, there were so many who had absolutely no inkling.
But if you think about it, everything you do on your phone takes all your focus. Ask most teens to pull up their phone usage stats, and you’ll be amazed that they have time to even brush their teeth. They’re on their phones so much that their authentic voices have been pushed aside and silenced. These kids are our future.
I was listening to Channel 1 on Sirius/XM one afternoon this week, and I heard the DJ telling a story about his daughter, who is a senior in high school. He started out by saying that this year in her school, they are locking up all cell phones from the moment they get to school, until the last bell rings, “they’re literally cut off from the rest of the world,” he said.
“So she bought a burner phone. In the morning, when she enters the school building, she places the burner phone in the bag that gets locked up, and keeps her actual phone with her.”
At this point, I’m ticked off with this man. For me, eight hours away from my phone sounds like heaven. What a gift they are giving these kids to be able to retrain their brains so they can learn to focus again. But he’s not done.
He goes on, “So she and I have this deal. When she gets caught, as we all know she will, and the school calls me to tell me that they’ve caught her with this burner phone, I’m supposed to act completely shocked and offended. I’m going to assure them that she’ll be punished for this atrocity.” And he laughs.
Yep, I’m going there…
Now I’m furious. This is why teachers can’t get anywhere with their students. Parents like this are what’s wrong with education today.
I’d love to call him and mention a few of the statistics from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation. I’d tell him that the ‘Great Rewiring’ of children’s brains began to be noticeable between 2010 and 2015. During this time, the increase in major depressive episodes increased nearly 150%. It affected all races and social classes.
This was BEFORE Covid.
Haidt and another man asked teens a series of questions during these years, about mental health. Many of those kids answered yes to questions such as have you experienced a long period of feeling sad, empty, or depressed, or a long period in which you lost interest and became bored with most of the things you used to enjoy?
Boredom is GOOD for you. That’s when your brain comes up with all kinds of ideas that perhaps you should pursue and create a crazy, amazing life for yourself. That’s why the entries I add to this blog make sense to me, and I hope to you, too, my faithful readers. I promise, authenticity is at the core of every single entry.
What will you remember?
It’s also important because it’s terribly difficult to try to enforce something when you’re the only one doing it. Telling your child they aren’t allowed to have a smartphone when every single kid in their class already has one sucks. But it sounds like more of us are starting to see the light.
I’ve been encouraged by the videos of teachers talking about how locked in and fully present their students are without the distraction of their phones.
I saw a video of famous singer Ed Sheeran, who said he had a phone from the time he was about 15. He kept the same number and probably had around 10,000 contacts once he became well-known. He talked about trying to have a conversation with someone and feeling his phone go off. His concentration was instantly gone because he kept wondering who had just texted or called or whatever. He says that once he looked and saw who it was, he was able to focus on the current conversation with whoever he was with.
He became irritated with apps that demanded his attention whenever they decided to notify him. So he got rid of the phone and got an iPad. Now he sends emails once a week, and he checks them “whenever the f@#$ I decide to. I’m not interrupted when I’m out for dinner with my wife or my dad or whomever.”
Being in charge of your technology seems brilliant to me.
The end of summer is always hard on me. I have such great memories of summer as a kid that when school starts again, I always get this sad, homesick feeling inside (it was worse when I had to go back to work as a teacher).
But what about…
It makes me wonder about all the kids who have spent a ton of time on their phones during the summer months. What are they going to remember about their summer? Maybe the comparison game we all play when on our phones - oh, how I wish I looked that cute in a swimsuit, or they go on so many trips, why can’t that be my life, or if my backyard looked like that, I’d spend my whole summer back there.
When I was a kid, my sister and I knew there was about a three-block radius where we could freely roam with the blessings of our parents. We would meet up with our neighborhood friends and make up games to play until it got dark, when Mom or Dad would holler that it was time to come in.
I’d be willing to bet I could say “Dracula” to our neighbors at that time - Jeff, Trina, Grant, and Claire - and they’d know exactly what I was referring to and how to play it.
I’ll admit, though, that we lived in a town of around 2,100 people at that time, and it felt like we knew all of them. Not a place where too many scary things happen, although I know there’s potential in every single town, big or little.
But back to today
After getting the book The Anxious Generation, I also signed up for emails about updates with kids, and parents, and their technology by Joining the Movement. You can sign up here, at the bottom of the page. My kids are adults, but I worry about our grandchildren and, honestly, just kids in general.
The email I got today includes a poll in which they asked more than 500 kids ages 8 - 12, how would you rather spend time with friends? Almost three-quarters said, “I would spend less time online if there were more friends in my neighborhood to play with in person.”
When asked how they’d prefer to spend their time, in-person free play came in at 45%, while in-person organized activity earned 30%, and online activity brought up the rear with 25%.
Kids are telling us that they don’t want to spend so much time on screens, but we’re not listening.
I will admit that the first school I taught in that tried to limit phone use, I resisted. I was teaching Information Technology and English, and we did pretty cool stuff with our phones. Looking back, I would say that there were only a couple of activities we needed the phones for, everything else we could do on a laptop.
Tightening up with phones came up every single year after that, and I began to see I had been wrong. One school said phones were okay in the passing periods, but we shouldn’t see them out during class. The problem with this is that kids kept them in their pockets and could feel them vibrate. I know adults have trouble not looking at their phones when they know there’s a notification; how do we expect kids to resist? Kids solved this problem by asking to go to the bathroom. What teacher is going to deny that? Certainly not me.
Jonathan Haidt goes on in the email I received to say that:
37 states have passed policies regulating phone use in K-12 schools — 19 of which have implemented our model bell-to-bell policy.
74% of U.S. adults now support banning phone use during class, up from 68% last year.
The fact that adults are now supporting banning phone use is important because shortly after teachers were hailed as heroes during Covid, they quickly became the bad guys of the world. Parental support of their kid’s teachers plummeted, and it was hard to deal with kids' poor behavior because there was no support from home. I hope it’s not still that way.
It’s also important because it’s terribly difficult to try to enforce something when you’re the only one doing it. Telling your child they aren’t allowed to have a smartphone when every single kid in their class already has one sucks. But it sounds like more of us are starting to see the light.
I’ve been encouraged by the videos of teachers talking about how locked in and fully present their students are without the distraction of their phones.
I saw a video of famous singer Ed Sheeran, who said he had a phone from the time he was about 15. He kept the same number and probably had around 10,000 contacts once he became well-known. He talked about trying to have a conversation with someone and feeling his phone go off. His concentration was instantly gone because he kept wondering who had just texted or called or whatever. He says that once he looked and saw who it was, he was able to focus on the current conversation with whoever he was with.
He became irritated with apps that demanded his attention whenever they decided to notify him. So he got rid of the phone and got an iPad. Now he sends emails once a week, and he checks them “whenever the f@#$ I decide to. I’m not interrupted when I’m out for dinner with my wife or my dad or whomever.”
Being in charge of your technology seems brilliant to me.
It’s so difficult
But, just like handing your child a giant chocolate bar and telling them they should only eat one square, self-regulation doesn’t come easy. That kid is probably going to end up eating the whole thing, and to be honest, I would too.
One way to help kids find other things to do is the Free Play Friday Challenge. It’s a challenge to families, and I would add that everyone try it, to spend one hour each Friday without screens and let kids lead the way. It helps develop confidence and creativity. You can check out the Let Grow Toolkit with ideas, right here.
It truly will take everyone to make the changes we need to make with our phones. I am encouraged by the number of children living one block away from me who certainly spend at least one hour, probably more, each week outside riding bikes, running through sprinklers, playing basketball, and building snowmen.
We just need to find ways to encourage more people to do the same.
Let’s Jump Together
If you’re not willing to take on the crazy idea, God may move on to the next person and offer the idea to them. How sad to see your idea out in the world, knowing you had a chance to run with it and decided an evening on the couch scrolling was exactly what you needed instead.
I know I’ve had some nudges that I’ve done nothing about. I’m fairly certain God dropped a couple of ideas for inventions in my lap, but I’ve never acted on them. I like to tell myself it’s because I don’t know how to go about creating them. But I know that’s a copout.
After days and days of giving yourself a bit of time away from screens, you’ve finally heard your authentic voice. Yay! But what you heard just isn’t going to work for you. I mean, it’s a cool idea, but it’s nothing you would ACTUALLY do. Right?
The voice suggested you open a store, write a book, share and sell some of the paintings you’ve been secretly working on, make moves to bring your invention into reality, go back to school, or start a food truck. By the way, my authentic voice would never suggest I start a food truck because she’s seen me in the kitchen. She knows we eat to survive around here. No frills involved.
What the voice is suggesting is absolutely ridiculous. There’s no way you could ever do that, right?
I will tell you that listening to that voice and following the voice’s advice are two incredibly different things. Once you start listening (you should quit teaching), it leads to doing (now let’s start writing for a living), and pretty soon you’ll find yourself pushed out of your comfort zone on a regular basis (now let’s start a blog for the world to see and what the heck, maybe create a couple TikTok videos while we’re at it).
The voice is probably suggesting something that scares the crap out of you. You’re right, there’s a chance that people will laugh or make fun of you. That used to bother me, until I realized those are the people who are absolutely never, ever, ever going to step out of their comfort zone. They’re judging others so loudly that their authentic voice never has a chance to be heard. And that’s okay for them, but not for us.
Your authentic voice is going to keep poking and prodding you until you start to imagine what life might be like if you follow the advice. One day, you’ll wake up and the idea doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. You’ll also become aware that your fear of being made fun of isn’t as great as your desire to follow the thought of what if.
You really gonna ignore that?
I want to caution you, though, about what happens if you decide NOT to follow your authentic voice. I believe my authentic voice is directly connected to God. That voice is simply a push from Him, encouraging me to do what he actually put me on this planet to do. But I’ve often wondered what happens to those ideas you decide to pass on.
Reading my Simple Abundance book this week has confirmed what I suspected. An excerpt:
“Sorry, find someone else.”
And Spirit will.
To be fair, sometimes we don’t literally use those words. Sometimes we say, “Sorry, I just can’t get my act together right now. Come back later.”
So the Great Creator moves on until a willing artist with an open heart offers to become the creative conduit.
What???
If you’re not willing to take on the crazy idea, God may move on to the next person and offer the idea to them. How sad to see your idea out in the world, knowing you had a chance to run with it and decided an evening on the couch scrolling was exactly what you needed instead.
I know I’ve had some nudges that I’ve done nothing about. I’m fairly certain God dropped a couple of ideas for inventions in my lap, but I’ve never acted on them. I like to tell myself it’s because I don’t know how to go about creating them. But I know that’s a copout.
When you decide to follow through on something you’ve been gently pushed to do, it’s amazing how things start to fall into place to help you. You may randomly overhear a conversation while waiting for your morning coffee, or you might see a book title pop up on a commercial that could hold the answers you need.
One last push
I haven’t convinced you yet? Here’s a bit more encouragement from my very well-worn Simple Abundance book. This is a quote from William Hutchinson Murray, the deputy leader of the Scottish Himalayan expedition team that scaled Mount Everest in 1951:
“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”
I guess if I’m pushing you to follow your authentic voice, then I have to follow mine too. Looks like I have a book to write.
We Can All be Life-Long Learners
I recognize so much of what he describes in his book. We had several issues at different times with our five children and their phones. A couple of them spent their entire teenage years walking around depressed, sad, and absolutely glum. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and fix all the mistakes we made as parents back then.
But the great thing is that when we know better, we must do better. I understand now where we went wrong. Phones should never be given to kids. As much as they’re going to enjoy it, there have to be limits. Phones are able to change kids’ brains. Read that again: the phones can change their brains!
I put together and presented a program last night to a group I’m in, and got to thinking that it might be beneficial to others, too. You all, as readers, could also make a difference, so here goes.
The program
When I was teaching high school English, the teachers at my school were encouraged by one of the speakers who came to fire us up before another school year to do some sort of daily check-in with our students. She mentioned something about how teens’ mental health was declining (this was even before Covid hit), and checking in often seemed like a good way to keep tabs on our kids.
Checking in became Circle Time in my classroom, and looked like this: we all sat in a circle on the floor, no phones allowed in the circle (because they were allowed in my school at that time) so we could respectfully listen to each other, and I began by asking them to give me a thumbs up, thumbs down, or sideways thumb showing me how they were feeling that day.
I’d ask for volunteers to explain why their thumb was in a certain position. If people didn’t want to speak up, they didn’t have to.
Circle Time - the seniors thought it was great that we were doing something they had first done in kindergarten - became more than a way for me to check in. The bonds between us grew tighter and stronger. The kids, who were freshmen through seniors, knew they could tell me almost anything and it would stay between us, unless I thought it was something that would put them in danger. It was just good, honest conversation between a bunch of people who trusted each other.
Each class got to do Circle Time about once a week, and the kids got pretty testy if there was a week when we didn’t have time to fit it in. Almost every single week, our conversation turned to our phones.
After listening and advising and empathizing with my students year in and year out, the one common denominator, said in so many different ways, emerged as, “I don’t want to be a prisoner to my phone, but if I’m not on every single app, I’ll miss out and won’t be popular.”
How sad is that?
A name you should know
During this part of my presentation last night, I paused and said I needed to show them a short video. It’s a conversation with Jonathan Haidt, a college professor and social psychologist. He’s responding to a caller’s question about how to get their child off their phone. In his response, he first explains slow dopamine and explains that we want our kids to have this. He says that slow dopamine is what happens when we practice and practice and practice a basketball layup, and when we do it correctly, we get a shot of dopamine throughout our system, it makes us feel good, and we want to do it again.
He explained that the tech companies figured out a way to hack dopamine so that the kids experience fast dopamine. All they have to do is like or swipe something, and they get a hit of quick dopamine, which is really bad for them because it changes their brain. Dopamine isn’t such a big deal then because it comes so easily.
But, he goes on to say that, much like an addict, if you take the kid’s phone away, after three or four weeks, their brain goes back to normal. Because honestly, the kids are addicts. Aren’t we all addicted to our phones?
This is what we’ve done by handing over our screens to our babies and grandbabies, and letting them get hooked on the technology. It IS a great pacifier. We know it works because you can watch a wild child stop everything that they’re doing and just become a zombie staring at the phone/iPad/laptop screen.
I remember when our family was much younger and we’d take our three youngest kids out to eat. They didn’t have phones at the time, and they were obnoxious, squealing and laughing, poking at each other, and having a blast.
Excuse me?
My husband would always get fed up and announce that this was the last time we were ever going out to eat again. Then I would look at him with one eyebrow raised and shake my head no because he was wrong. In order for me to get out of cooking every single night for the rest of my life, 24/7, until I die, we would continue going out to eat every now and then, regardless of how the children behaved.
But today, if you look around a restaurant, you’ll notice children are not sprinting between tables, laughing with each other, or squealing in delight. They’re on the screens their parents gave them. Sad.
I introduced a book to my group and mentioned that they’re lucky I’m only about 20 pages in, or my presentation would be much longer. The book had been recommended to me, and I wanted to recommend it to them. It’s called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Its subtitle is How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness and he’s right.
He talks about how parents became afraid of giving their kids too much freedom, because someone could snatch them up. It’s a valid worry. When phones came along, parents could offer one to their child, and they’d stay inside, right under their parents’ noses. But as the parents were limiting their outside freedoms, they unknowingly were giving them free rein in a digital world that allows kids to go where they might not be ready to venture.
Did you know that to get into many porn sites, all you have to do is check a box that says you’re 18?
I recognize so much of what he describes in his book. We had several issues at different times with our five children and their phones. A couple of them spent their entire teenage years walking around depressed, sad, and absolutely glum. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and fix all the mistakes we made as parents back then.
But the great thing is that when we know better, we must do better. I understand now where we went wrong. Phones should never be given to kids. As much as they’re going to enjoy it, there have to be limits. Phones are able to change kids’ brains. Read that again: the phones can change their brains!
Even as adults, we don’t know when to put our damn phones down. How can we possibly expect kids to do it without being told to?
It’s a scary world. We, as a society, have made huge mistakes. But I believe that we’re on the right path to correcting some of them. All you readers are influencers of your own families. You can make a difference just by having a conversation. Or you can jump in with both feet and help Jonathan Haidt change the world. If you’re going to be on your phone anyway (and you know we all are), give him a follow on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.
How’d You Do?
I read something this morning in my Simple Abundance book that really hit home for me. “There’s a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time this expression is unique,” modern dancer Martha Graham advises us. “And if you block it, it will NEVER exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
Today’s blog entry marks FIVE months of creating a new post each week. I’ve tried creating a blog at least twice before, and each time, I gave up after just a few entries. This time had to be different, or I would fail again. I must’ve learned something from those first couple attempts because I’m still here. I’m proud of myself!
F.A.I.L.
Maybe you’ve heard the acronym of fail? It’s the First Attempt In Learning. I would have to agree, as far as blogging is concerned.
However, remember last week I challenged you to try to stay off screens for a measly ten minutes each day? I failed. Out of seven days, I completed two. What have I learned? That I need to try harder.
Not being able to follow through on my own challenge has me wondering about it. What is so hard about walking away from screens for ten minutes?
Partially, it’s that my jobs revolve around screens. I’m on a computer about 75% of the day. Even when I’m not working, I’m often on my laptop.
The goal of the challenge was to get us away from screens and focus on our authentic voice. It’s difficult to do because that other nagging voice is often so much louder than the voice we should be listening to. I believe the way to get your authenticity to come forward is to focus on gratitude.
I’m going to be more intentional this week about my free time.
One of those days last week, my authentic voice spoke up loud and clear. Most of the time, when I take a shower, I have music playing and I’m either whistling or attempting to sing. One day, when I wasn’t rushed, I heard my authentic voice telling me to make a TikTok telling people about the no-screens challenge.
My initial response was to push that idea aside.
That’s ridiculous. Aren’t only kids on TikTok? Who’s going to watch me talk about a silly challenge I made up?
Guess which voice that was? Yes - the nagging one that doesn’t want me to try anything new because new is scary and uncomfortable and people might make fun of me.
I recognized which voice was which and decided, what the heck? Maybe I could create a TikTok and get 100 people to watch it. If even 50 of those people took on the challenge, that’s 50 more people listening to their authentic voices and attempting to do what they were put on this earth to do. How cool is that?
Just a Smidge Over That
As of this moment, 861 people have watched at least part of my TikTok. Woohoo! Not one of them has made fun of me. One person I don’t even know saved it in their ‘Favorites’ folder. That’s the power of your authentic voice.
I read something this morning in my Simple Abundance book that really hit home for me. “There’s a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time this expression is unique,” modern dancer Martha Graham advises us. “And if you block it, it will NEVER exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
Don’t let what you were put on this planet to do be lost. Give your authentic voice the chance to come out and push you into something that’s probably not within your comfort zone. At the very least, you’ll be growing. It’s scary as hell, but I think you’ll find that once you get a taste, or a glimpse, of the person you could become, you’ll continue chasing them down.
The Actual Issue Might be You
Breathnach suggests that “perhaps we don’t hear the whispers of authentic longing because we don’t want to hear.” Yes, because listening might mean that we set our phone down and we pick up the paintbrush, pen, spatula, or any other item that leads to a creative activity.
She continues by asking what would happen if we were simply honest with ourselves? If we stopped the excuses and quit putting things off until the kids are back in school, we have more money, and our phones aren’t quite as interesting.
She suggests learning to say to yourself, “I haven’t learned yet how to put myself on the list of priorities.” Note that she isn’t suggesting you put yourself first (Heaven forbid!), just get yourself on the list.
If you’ve been reading my blog regularly, you’ve probably figured out that my goal is to help you live a more authentic life. But let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room, shall we? If you have a smartphone - and who doesn’t - you don’t actually have time to discover your authenticity.
I wrote ‘smartphone’, but what I really mean is any form of technology that you use on your own. It could be your tablet or iPad, your phone, a laptop, your smartwatch, or a desktop computer. Anything that takes you away from what’s going on around you and puts you into your own little technological world.
I’m not above this. As a matter of fact, I currently have a war going on inside myself about this. I hear every one of my excuses.
“It’s the way I relax.”
“I’ll just get on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, or TikTok for a minute.”
“How am I going to know what’s going on if I don’t spend time on social media?”
I’m sure you have your own excuses, and maybe you even still believe them.
Embarrassed to admit this
The sad truth is that the way my husband and I spend our evenings, each in our own little world with a screen in our hands as well as a larger, mostly ignored screen playing on the wall, has become the norm in each of our families.
I tell myself that because I run over to him every now and then to share a video, that we’re spending quality time together. But we’re not.
Your authentic self is screaming at you to pay attention to the voice inside your head, and you’re ignoring it with screens, among other things.
In the book Simple Abundance, Sarah Ban Breathnach talks about the fact that we often don’t set aside any time, just for ourselves. If you have a job, a family to feed, clothes to wash, friends to entertain, a dishwasher to unload, or floors that need vacuuming, you most likely believe that all those things should come before you spend any time on yourself.
Becoming who you’re actually supposed to be gets pushed to the bottom of the pile and is never added to your ‘to-do’ list.
Breathnach suggests that “perhaps we don’t hear the whispers of authentic longing because we don’t want to hear.” Yes, because listening might mean that we set our phone down and we pick up the paintbrush, pen, spatula, or any other item that leads to a creative activity.
What if?
She continues by asking what would happen if we were simply honest with ourselves? If we stopped the excuses and quit putting things off until the kids are back in school, we have more money, and our phones aren’t quite as interesting.
She suggests learning to say to yourself, “I haven’t learned yet how to put myself on the list of priorities.” Note that she isn’t suggesting you put yourself first (Heaven forbid!), just get yourself on the list.
I could go on and on, begging you to spend less time on your phone, and believe me, I have so much to say about this and what we’re doing to ourselves as a phone-addicted society, but I have to work on myself first. I have my own love/hate relationship with technology, and watching what we’re allowing to happen to our children scares me to death.
But I need to work on myself first. I can’t very well give advice I’m not willing to take.
I’m going to start with giving myself just a bit of time every single day to truly listen to what’s happening inside my head. I’m going to think about what brings me joy, what I’m proud of about myself, and all the experiences and people I’m grateful to have in my life.
I’m taking ten minutes each day to do this, and I hope you’ll join me. Together, we might discover amazing things and unearth just a bit more of our own authenticity.
Are You Living Authenti-cally?
Today, I happened to see a TikTok where a woman was saying that if everyone likes you, you’re not trying hard enough to be who you really are. When you become that person, she went on, there are going to be people who don’t like you, but at that point you won’t care.
I’m there. I think when you become who you authentically are supposed to be, you become okay with the fact that you are not everyone’s cup of tea. Not every single person has to support the ideas you get behind, the people you love and encourage, or the way you live your life.
I can still see the image in my head. My friend and I were walking somewhere, and the wind was blowing. I had been coloring my hair at the time and wasn’t sure if she was.
The wind chose that moment to blast us as I turned to her to answer something she said. I saw that the wind had picked up a section of her hair, and there was gray underneath. For whatever reason, that image is still a snapshot in my head.
I didn’t color my hair again. Seeing the truth about her and knowing I was in the same boat, helped me realize that if I wasn’t staying on top of keeping my hair colored (and let’s be honest - it’s expensive, takes a long time, and you really need to do it often), the same thing would be happening to me. It felt fake, and I wasn’t okay with it.
I realize millions of women color their hair. Men, too. I stand behind every single one of them. You do you. I just couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t for me.
Just Let it Go
Letting that one thing go started a movement for me. I started thinking about other things that just “weren’t me,” and letting those things fall by the wayside as well.
I used to try so hard to get certain people to like me. I hadn’t yet encountered Mel Robbins’ theory on friendship that I wrote about earlier. I realized that it was time to stop trying so hard. Not everyone is going to like me, and that’s okay. There are people I don’t like either. It’s just life.
Today, I happened to see a TikTok where a woman was saying that if everyone likes you, you’re not trying hard enough to be who you really are. When you become that person, she went on, there are going to be people who don’t like you, but at that point you won’t care.
I’m there. I think when you become who you authentically are supposed to be, you become okay with the fact that you are not everyone’s cup of tea. Not every single person has to support the ideas you get behind, the people you love and encourage, or the way you live your life.
It’s Not Just Me
Before writing this, I did a quick check on Google to see what authenticity is made up of and found an article. It’s titled Authenticity is Made Up of These Three Parts. Those parts are a low level of self-alienation, a high level of authentic living, and a low level of accepting outside influence.
I think this psychologist is onto something.
Self-alienation happens when you don’t know yourself. That can take some time figuring out who you are and what makes you happy. I know some people my age and even older who still don’t know the answer to that.
He defines authentic living as “behaving in ways which are true to one’s core self in most situations.” In other words, those people who are doing their own thing and not caring if the rest of the world is upset about it or not.
A low level of accepting external influence means that you’re not driven by others’ expectations, but rather moving forward according to your own. You dance to your beat, follow your heart, and maybe even whistle a lot. Just kidding, that last part is just what I do.
What difference does it make if you’re living authentically or not? I can tell you it makes all the difference. You should have a reason to get out of bed each day. You should have a goal you want to achieve. You should have a list of things you’d like to do before your time on this planet is over.
They don’t have to be big, giant things. Maybe you want to make sure your mother is taken care of in her old age, or perhaps your dream is to become a parent, or possibly you have a goal of visiting another country one day.
My wish is that you find a way to achieve everything on your list. But mostly, I simply hope you’re happy with the person you are, and without comparing yourself to anyone else, can look behind you and be proud of the person you are today.
Self Reflection Can be Rough
Recently, I was completely humbled by a situation I was certain I knew inside and out. Ages ago, I had a boyfriend who would hang out with this girl when I wasn’t around.
The girl was beautiful. But because I knew she’d been hanging out with my boyfriend, I wasn’t her biggest fan. Actually, I know I called her some very ugly names when talking to my friends about her. I never took the time to get to know her because I knew she’d be awful.
After not seeing her for many years, I recently glanced around the room of the restaurant I was in, and there she was, talking to one of my friends. I decided that it had probably been long enough. I wanted to see what she was actually like, so I went over to say hello.
Think back to when you were young and had all the answers. Remember that?
Recently, I was completely humbled by a situation I was certain I knew inside and out. Ages ago, I had a boyfriend who would hang out with this girl when I wasn’t around.
The girl was beautiful. But because I knew she’d been hanging out with my boyfriend, I wasn’t her biggest fan. Actually, I know I called her some very ugly names when talking to my friends about her. I never took the time to get to know her because I knew she’d be awful.
Another chance
After not seeing her for many years, I recently glanced around the room of the restaurant I was in, and there she was, talking to one of my friends. I decided that it had probably been long enough. I wanted to see what she was actually like, so I went over to say hello.
My friend introduced the two of us, and I told her I remembered her. She smiled warmly at me and said I hadn’t changed at all. That wasn’t so awful.
My friend was asking her where her husband was, and she smiled, but looked a bit sad. She went on to explain that he’d had a stroke and one side of his body was completely paralyzed. Their entire married life, she had been the introvert and he’d always been the extrovert, and their roles were immediately reversed the day of his stroke as they were in the emergency room.
She talked about how she had to be the one stepping up and asking questions and finding answers as she nursed him back to health.
My friend and I expressed our sympathy, and she asked if he was doing better. The woman explained that she thinks he’s made leaps and bounds in terms of recovery, and she can see the old him struggling to be who he used to be. But he’s different now and doesn’t come out of the house much.
She is still a beautiful woman, but now there’s also an air of sadness that I’d never seen before.
As my husband and I went home that night, I felt terrible. I told him what had happened and the history between us that caused me to think she was a bad person. She wasn’t, and I was wrong about her. If we had lived in the same area, we might even have become close friends. I was extremely humbled.
Do you give second chances?
I think one of the reasons I was so affected by this was because of the way I approached kids when I was teaching. I thought of teaching as a solitary profession. Yes, there are meetings that everyone attends, but the day-to-day instruction teachers are doing in their classrooms is generally just led by the one adult.
However, anytime there was a child coming to my room for the first time who’d had behavior issues with someone else, that teacher would want to tell me all about it. I ran from these conversations. That child and I were getting the chance to start a brand new relationship, and I didn’t want any baggage coloring the way I treated him or her. I knew that kids grow and change, and I wanted to give the teen the opportunity to show me who they were going to be in my class.
But, maybe it was because I was certain I knew what kind of lady she was, as my brilliant teenage self, that I hadn’t bothered to offer the same chance to her.
I’m not telling you anything new. We see this every single day. We make snap judgments or believe whatever the rumor is that’s going around, or base our opinions on one single act we may have witnessed and misinterpreted.
When you’re living the life you’re meant to live and being as authentic as possible, I think it’s okay to admit you’ve made a mistake. It’s okay to be real and open and honest and not only give others the chance to prove themselves, but to give yourself some grace as well.
When Projects Become Giants
It’s like when you’re little and you go to the local swimming pool. You’d really like to jump off the high dive, but once you climb up there and take a look around, doubts start to creep in. What if I get to the end of the board and the board snaps in two? What if my body twists as I’m jumping, and I end up doing a belly flop and can’t get over the pain to get back to the surface? What if I jump in so deeply that I run out of air before I can swim back up?
All totally irrational, but once the thought is there, it’s not leaving anytime soon.
I have a project that I’ve been hoping to find time to work on for months. I’m shocked to even write that word - months. It’s embarrassing to admit to myself that I’ve let it go that long because I’m not much of a procrastinator. There’s nothing I love more than a to-do list with every single item crossed off.
This project has been sitting in my mind for what seems like a long time. I think about it several times each week, but with summer upon us, it’s easy to spend my free time outside taking care of my tomato plants, watering my flowers, hanging out with our critters, or spending the day golfing with my husband. I just don’t know when I can fit it in right now.
The thing about it is that this project could turn out to be a fairly big deal for my writing business. I think that might have something to do with my inability to move forward with it.
Is it just me?
Have you ever had an idea, a chore, or a project that you let sit too long? For me, it seems the longer I stew about it, the bigger the thing becomes.
This doesn’t only apply to life-changing plans, I can do this with minor things too. For instance, we have glass doors on our shower. After every shower, we either squeegee them to get rid of the water droplets or spray on a cleaning solution. I found the cleaning solution recipe in a magazine, and I really like using it because it’s quick and easy. But the bottle I mix the solution in will sit empty for weeks as I *think* about refilling it. What the heck???
You’d think the solution was a complicated mixture of 16 different items that I have to search for weeks to find. Nope. The recipe calls for FOUR different things, and one of them is water, all of which I have readily available underneath our kitchen sink. Sheesh!
Good podcast alert!
I listen to a podcast by a lady named Marie Pier-Tremblay called Self-Growth Nerds. She writes a wonderful email talking about the different projects she’s working on, and one of her latest podcast episodes caught my eye: The Overwhelm Barrier: What’s Really Stopping You.
She’s divided this topic into two episodes because she intentionally breaks down what is happening in your brain to paralyze you from moving forward. I recognized myself in so much of it.
I’m not one to do shoddy work, but I notice that when I dive right in, without hesitation, projects actually get done.
Remember this?
It’s like when you’re little and you go to the local swimming pool. You’d really like to jump off the high dive, but once you climb up there and take a look around, doubts start to creep in. What if I get to the end of the board and the board snaps in two? What if my body twists as I’m jumping, and I end up doing a belly flop and can’t get over the pain to get back to the surface? What if I jump in so deeply that I run out of air before I can swim back up?
All totally irrational, but once the thought is there, it’s not leaving anytime soon.
A couple of years ago, I worked with a financial planner. She would give me assignments between our weekly or bi-weekly Zoom calls, and I would do my best to get them done. One of the things she asked me to do was to use Dave Ramsey’s app EveryDollar. She wanted me to type in every single transaction I had with money.
At first, it was interesting to do. When you write down every single transaction, you quickly get to the point where, even though you might want to buy yourself a candy bar, your urge to forego it just so you don’t have to write it down later starts to win out.
I had been putting off keeping track of the transactions and had managed to distract her with other questions and conversations for several weeks. Finally, we had a call where she started with the question, “How are you doing with keeping track of your transactions?”
I had to come clean. I told her originally I had been doing it once a week. Then it got to be a couple weeks before I would sit down and do it. Then it became this giant monster of a project, and I hadn’t done it in at least a month.
“If it’s become that big of a deal, let it go. You don’t have to do it.” I was shocked! I had done all I could to avoid talking about it (and doing it), and she was just telling me to LET IT GO? What a relief!
The funny thing was that once she told me I didn’t have to do it, I actually felt it become a much smaller project again, and it seemed perfectly doable. Go figure.
Back to the point
But back to my current project. Now that I’m admitting I haven’t done anything on it in such a long time, the wheels in my head are slowly moving forward. It wouldn’t be THAT hard to set a timer and just work on it for ten minutes. Ten minutes might even turn into twenty or thirty!
I could also text one of my friends and ask her to check on my progress every few days. I don’t like disappointing people, so that would be a lot of help.
Often, the best way for me to get something done, much like climbing up the high dive and jumping off before I even have time for objections to form, is simply to start. Starting is really the hardest thing.
That also helps me remember that AI is a great way to break projects down into smaller pieces. If you haven’t already, create an account on www.chatgpt.com. Type in: Can you break down staining my deck/planting a rosebush/learning how to play pickleball into several easy, doable steps? You’ll be amazed how simple the project becomes. But if it still seems like a giant task, ask ChatGPT to break it down into even smaller steps.
If all else fails, you can always take the advice of Elsa from the movie Frozen, and my financial planner, and just let it go.