Radio silence on the old social media. Can you imagine what communication would revert to if we all took a 21-day challenge? We might pick up the phone to dial it. We might conversate with one another more, write real thank you’s, plan outings with each other, have meals without devices, engage in real hobbies and more of all that “real” stuff where people use eye-contact.  Sounds cray-cray right?

That was the experiment I challenged myself to. I must say the first few “pings” on my phone brought a new awareness. An agitation, almost like an itch you Have to scratch. Do I have to look? The temptation to click! And finding the power to resist. Ahhh! Oh the challenge, oh what will people think? Am I being rude? Hard as hell!! I wanted to post another social blast just to pre-cursor the fact that I’m not being a snob, I swear! I’m just experimenting.

With all that obnoxious, anxious, self-talk going on in my mind, I began to reflect a little deeper. I sought to overcome those feelings and become more in the “present”. After all, that’s what I wanted to accomplish. If by going radio silent, not in the military sense of course, but in a figurative way. I yearned for more connectedness with the people I saw every day. The people in the grocery store, at the gym, at my children’s dance and sports, anywhere. I found instead of looking at my phone to reply and “like” to the same folks I always do, I had real live communications. And it was Rewarding. Gratifying. Almost Tony awards rewarding! Maybe on occasion Oscar rewarding. I re-discovered the art of personal communication.  I found the interests of other people that sparked new friendships. I still responded if someone messaged me personally on social media. However, I made no posts, well wait I just lied… I actually accidentally posted a blog unintentionally to Facebook and had to delete it to stay true to this nutty experiment. Besides that blunder, I made true efforts to seek out my next Real conversations. By doing something as small as these 2 things: finding or asking the names of people, and remember something about what they told me and ask about it next time we met. Never had I felt

My mission was simple, doing something as small as these 2 things : 1. finding or asking the names of people and 2. remember something about what they told me and ask about it next time we met. Suddenly, I gained awareness of multitudes of clues around even me by starting small. I also realized how rusty my communication skills had regressed since social media. By noticing these 2-small things, it always unfolds into more tidbits. Goodies of information about others. Never had I felt truer connections. It wasn’t just a false avatar of me, giving a false accreditation in the form of a “like” or a “love” or a “sad face”.  This experiment generated the immediate gratification of seeing a smile, hearing laughter in real time, and looking into someone’s eyes and almost reading other’s thoughts between what their words said.

I didn’t realize how disconnected I had become until I tried this for myself. I needed to mend how I connected with people to feel more connected to myself.

Try the unthinkable and move across the room to communicate for 21-days.

I dare you 😉

thank you for reading ~

You’re at the fork in the path. That juxtaposed vortex that feels like you could most certainly see horrendous consequences if you choose one path over the other.

If you are that fork and you just wish your Betty Crocker mom could pop into the picture like an easy-bake oven miracle and make you a warm snack, hand you your nicely washed clothes and give you some tender piece of advice before kissing you off to a fantastic day … then that’s called procrastination. Because envisioning a comfortable place, with a mom figure to nurture away all the “adulting”thoughts and responsibilities are your way of forgetting about your big decisions and putting them off yet again.

In almost every temple, church, synagogue, you never hear the story about the doting God who never let challenges touch the world. This world is about becoming who you are by making the tough decisions to not be stuck, to become  more amazing, to test your strength, to tear at your endurance and tenacity, to forego valiant efforts to repeatedly get up after being knocked down. Surely, with every new obstacle we aren’t left just dangling to our peril, but we have to seriously open up all of best “Hunger Games” senses and know when to recognize the lifeboat when it comes our way. Making new decisions has everything to do with taking a deep sensory-filled inventory of who we really are and what  our blood, sweat, and tears taste like after a grizzly challenge.

Skimming through decision making topics looks a lot like a recipe for failure! Instructions like, take the path of least resistance, weigh out your consequences and risks, evaluate the decision you just made and weigh out its specific risk. Really, the decision to become a firefighter versus a quilt-maker, let’s just say, also has a lot do with your personality, your genealogy, your natural inclination and skill sets, and a whole host of other inventories about You. Not the decision. Every awakening decision process that defines a new chapter in your life should feel like it sets your on fire inside, so much so that you don’t envision the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the “love, mom” note attached. When you make the decision, to Make the Decision already, start by writing down your plans to make it happen. Who to talk to. What network you need to be a part of. What resources do you need to make it happen. Write down every rejection you encounter for future entertainment. And find what your red carpet attire will be.

As mentioned earlier, God usually isn’t portrayed as our mom, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t hide the keys somewhere in hopes we’d take the road trip of our dreams.

“There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be the person who makes things happen.”

-James A. Lovell, NASA Commander of Apollo 13 mission.

~thank you for reading~

In Real Life. 30 days of it.  This isn’t just a challenge, it’s a test to change your life. Starting now. This minute. This second.

For the love of Pickles, what’s happening to us?!  When did life become so tied up with everything? “I’m too busy to do that!” When did this become the prevailing thought when approached to trying new things? Or getting our health on? Or home making meals? Or joining a fun new group?

If I said, “Your life depends on it,” would you start living In Real Life instead of just being an avatar on social media? Recent statistics, according to the CDC, are a staggering wake-up call. We are in the 21st century and have our own lack of health and wellness to blame for most of the “preventable” diseases. The following is a report of the top 15 reasons for death as reported in the U.S in 2014 according to CDC website.

‘The 15 leading causes of death in 2014 were: 1. Diseases of heart (heart disease) 2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer) 3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases 4. Accidents (unintentional injuries) 5. Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke) 6. Alzheimer’s disease 7. Diabetes mellitus (diabetes) 8. Influenza and pneumonia 9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease) 10. Intentional self-harm (suicide) 11. Septicemia 12. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis 13. Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (hypertension) 14. Parkinson’s disease 15. Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids’

Sorry, the above report isn’t sugar coated. It shouldn’t be. This kind of information makes me ask why are we killing ourselves? Many items are these list are “preventable”. We have the option (within our means and our own immediate environments, of course) to make our health and wellness our goal. Taking a serious inventory in our own personal self is the first test in life we, myself included, have got to change right now. Stop worrying about everyone else and let it fall into place after you care for yourself. Feel the butterfly hatch from the cocoon.

Here is your 30-day challenge, to be taken in any order, Social Media Hiatus is a Must! (Get off your phones already):

1.Plan healthy meals for the month. 2. Join a new fitness class. 3. Make all of your dinners (or lunch/breakfast) from scratch. 4. Write 10 thank you cards. 5. Take a relaxing bubble bath. 6. Join someone for a long walk. 7. Take your camera out for an adventure.8. Make a catalog of your favorite songs. 8. Hiatus from Social Media. 9. Close your eyes, pick out a map point, and go site seeing. 10. Walk someone’s pet. 11. Call up a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. 12. Start to read a biography or meaningful book. 13. Write some poetry. 14. Go to a local sports game. 15.Hiatus from Social Media. 16. Movie night with friends. 17.Start a daily journal for reflection. 18. Help plan an event or join a new group.
19. Start a food drive or clothing drive. 20. Downsize your belongings. 21. Visit a nursing home or pet shelter. 22. Hiatus from Social Media 23. Organize a room. 24. Rehab a piece of decor or furniture. 25. Paint on canvas. 26. Start a garden. 27. Plan a picnic. 28. Visit a museum. 29.Plan a new 30-day goal list of things you’ve always wanted to do.
30.Reflect on your 30-days of In Real Life.

Changing how we look at life and acting on our ambitions starts with living your life to the fullest until your cup bubbles over and floods you in your pants.

Be adventurous with your wild self.

~Thank you for reading~

Is it making you whole, or breaking you down? We aren’t truly defined by just what we look like, even though media campaigns would like us to think so.

Ponder this – What defines you Right now? Does is make you feel whole?

If we were married to ourselves our lives would look uncharacteristic. However, we have a union with our environments, careers, habits, routines, diet and exercise, partners, children and the close circle of our people. The culmination of these factors are the sum of our parts. But is it making us whole??

For a better illustration, let’s cue up Captain Fantastic. An indie-dramedy movie, 2016 directed by Matt Ross. The main character, Ben Cash goes through a journey that encompasses the discovery of realizations of what truly made him whole. You piece together that he and his wife, lawyer Leslie Cash, left the capitalist cycle of society and brought their six children into the wild to live on and sustain themselves in a naturalist lifestyle.  By observing the family and how they live naturally, how they intelligently educate their children (oldest gets accepted to all the top schools),  it opens your eyes to how they drastically changed parts of their lives to make a difference in their family unit. They became completely self-reliant,  hunting and foraging for their food. Educating their children to an impeccable degree through unconventional means. Small rations or books were procured from a small store in a nearby town. However, it seemed like their new philosophy of life was more a success than the so-called “American dream”. Then a phone call comes.

Then a phone call was made as Ben checks in at the local store. Ben discovered Leslie (had been in the city for a while due to illness) had killed herself. For Ben, things continue to proceed as normal at first. He tells his children, they will proceed as they always have. But slowly things unravel. Ben and the 6 kids have to travel to the city for funeral arrangements, make family visits, and be back in the city. A lot of brash comparisons come to light. Leslie and Ben’s family didn’t get along, they had called her a bitch for her strong will and ideologies on life. And Leslie’s Dad and Ben have a colorful and amusing distaste for each other and how he raises the kids. Ben’s second eldest child leaves him in search of a normalcy. He hurls hateful comments to Ben on how he just begs to feel normal, celebrate Christmas instead of philosophers and be in a school with actual peers. Ben discovers his eldest has been accepted into every prestigious college in the nation. On a Ben-style mission to rescue the 2nd eldest son, his daughter falls from a rooftop. Listening to a doctor’s prognosis on how his daughter almost died (in addition to his wife), he hits the ultimate low point. Ben gives up his children and leaves them with grandparents. He hops back into his Patridge family bus and you feel the weight of loneliness and true emptiness. Sitting in front of a fire by himself created a powerful imagery. He, now bare and alone, deeply contemplating all he knew and believed to be fantastic about wilderness living and how it spiraled into unchangeable live events.

Ben does a full reversal here. He gives up his children and leaves them with grandparents. He hops back into the Patridge family looking bus and you feel the weight of loneliness and emptiness. Sitting in front of a fire by himself created a powerful imagery. He, now bare and alone, deeply contemplating all he knew and believed to be fantastic about wilderness living and how it spiraled into unchangeable live events.  He had realized to feel “whole” he needed to accept compromises and accept the give and take of life he shares with his counterparts to yield a more complete balance for him and his children.

The end of the movie is where you see the best of all worlds come together. A person does think we should all change, but there is place in between that takes self-journeying to discover. Finding the balance to become whole, and fantastic.

See this movie.  It illustrates its worth on the message of becoming whole.

Go, set out on your own journey! Even if it starts small. Jump out of your fish bowl.

~thank you for reading~

Put the dang phone down! Do you just want to yell this out loud sometimes? We are all victims and perpetrators in this offense people. I can’t let my entire experience in this 21st century be totally ruled by the land of social media, smart phones, minipads, and the like without saying something.

Man, I sound like a grandparent.

In all honesty, I will be the first person to say how convenient a phone or tablet is, but there are times when you need quality time. Call it a “hippy” revival. Call it being “old fashioned”. I crave a real conversation with my kids at times! I love seeing their faces and hearing their voices. I set the table, I cook their favorite meal and I tell everyone it’s time to eat. The giddy rift of excitement builds through my body as I think of looking deeply into their eyes and having a meaningful conversation! Then blah. Everyone brings their phones, or is too busy in the middle of their binge watching to sit down to a real dinner.

It’s mom’s and dad’s against the world sometimes folks. The ball is in our court and the challenge is here. What is it going to take to repeat the request to put down the device, the video game, the online streaming, so that we can enjoy one another?  Our world will survive if we don’t check every message ding. And slowly but surely we will rediscover how much we can actually do in one another’s company!

I recently saw my husband come back from work and put his phone down to play with the girls. He let them do his hair, and I almost cried. With laughter!! It was priceless. It involved quality time and I won’t soon forget it! He was in an imaginary high-end salon, with 2-toddler stylists at his every whim. I enjoyed every little minute!

I refuse to be the parent at the park or the baseball game with my phone out. I refuse to have my phone anywhere near the dinner table. This may never catch on — but I don’t want my loved ones to suffer 2nd hand from my texting.

Thanks for reading this rant 🙂

Let’s enjoy this summer the right way~

Never was there a person who didn’t have to leverage. Parents know this all too well.  You are in the middle of a diaper, and I mean the big #2, and the cooking timer goes off. You are faced with two options: a) those cookies can burn, but you managed the diaper logistics and the cookies all by yourself; or b) you can holler for someone to grab the cookies and they come out perfect and you can tidy off that baby’s bottom with the full routine. I can’t for the life of me, find it easy to leverage. And it can make all the difference. Your cookies can turn out being the delicate version of heaven, or hard-baked crap. Freeing yourself up of the control. It sounds easy. Why isn’t it that easy?

There are tons of reasons we don’t give up control. I watch my children and observe their madness to make myself feel better about this. Evy wants to take all the crayons, but Isla wants to color too. They both want to  control the entire project, but they can’t. So Evy ends up managing the color book art projects and Isla takes it to the table and goes on top of it actually with her color pages and all. She literally, hopped up and thought if we can’t share lets separate and do two different projects that we each control! Madness right? It’s no different from adults. It breeds competition. Sure there are healthy psychological and physical advantages going on in all that crayon project chaos; however, they might one day leverage each other and make a project that beats all crafting history.

When we let go of control, we also let go of having it be our very own. Getting all the credit. The most successful projects and events I’ve done have included the brainstorming, ideas, and co-work of others. Sharing and leveraging can also be great when it comes to cleaning and managing your household. How Great does a clean house feel?! It’s one of my favorite natural highs. But honestly, how the heck else can 1 parent possibly make every baseball game, dance rehearsal, track meet, and bake the cookies for tomorrows potluck? Let’s be serious, true happiness comes from enjoying the best of what we have in front of us and making the very best of it. It’s not about “having” the very best and doing it all.  Juggling 10-balls in the air, to be everything to everyone. For what?

Dont’ let your cookies burn like I did.

Isla leveraging nicely:)

I’m resolving to be better and leverage when necessary. Just as my kids’ favorite Sprout network jingle goes, “Do it together, D.I.T.”! Letting others shine “with you” and discovering their own new talents is a gift.

Happiness beats madness any day.

Thank you for reading~

The small, big, of things is you just seriously have to seize your moment. You might be the underdog, you might feel like you won’t matter. But trust me, if you do something as small as just step forward, sometimes you make a big impact.

My two girls, for instance, are highly competitive. In fact, their goal in these few recent years, has been only to get each other’s goat and one-up the other. It makes their play time more productive. It also causes them to think outside the box and be creative and do something incredible that they might not have otherwise done had they not had the drive to out-do the other. It also gives my husband and I some major headaches. But it’s all for the greater good. They are still in discovery-mode with life.

Isla (younger by 17 months) has recently made her small contributions and yet made big impacts. Her sister and her can be picking out outfits from their shared closet and want the same pants. Isla has learned she can quickly grab it from Evy and just take off running like a rocket. She’s tiny, but she has developed  an unsurpassable sprint.  They also fought the other day over making a fort. Evy wanted a specific blanket all to herself. It was plenty big for the two of them, but she wasn’t going to share. Isla got fed up with arguing and took the tiny pillow out from under Evy’s head and suddenly Evy stopped caring about the blanket. My recent all time favorite was when Evy wouldn’t share the signing time on the karaoke machine. She wouldn’t share the microphone, so Isla danced instead. She danced until she heard enough of Evy and then just walked over and disconnected the microphone. She looked over to check her big sister’s reaction as she did this. Isla with all her 21 months under her belt, wanted to do a small but big thing that would get back at her 3 year old sister. And it worked. Evy couldn’t figure out what happened and she was so upset. Isla however, was not sad. She found a way around big sister.

Is it bad when I laugh at these moments?  I do try and make things better, but I can’t help but sit back a moment and separately cheer them each on for what they accomplish. You don’t have to be the big guy to win something. Just do something small.

Thank you for reading.

When it comes to growing and experiencing new things it’s all about trying. Making attempts until you succeed. I recently read an article that talked about all the failures of highly successful individuals like Thomas Edison, Vincent Van Gogh, Steve Jobs and so on. A long list of people that messed up first, but didn’t give up. Some of their “failures” are in the upwards of thousands. Some of their so-called failures were in not being famous until they were passed on from us. No matter which way you dissect a success, make sure no matter what, you at least gave it a handful of attempts.

Try things, at least 5 times. Why 5? It’s just seems like a healthy effort was given, doesn’t it? And, because that’s how many times it took my horrified little Grace to go to the ear piercing parlor until she didn’t run screaming (I’m laughing right now, sorry, that’s awful of me).  She wanted her ears pierced so badly. She was truly obsessing with requests multiple times a day. I would bring her to the ear piercing place and she would watch some other little girl, and she would start screaming. Curdling screams. This trial process of her insistent requests, me driving her there, and then resorting to screams until we left was 4 times. Months went by and I told her, I swore to it in fact, that I would never bring her back to such a thing ever again. Then one day she truly convinced me. Or she wore me down. We went back there one final time, she closed her eyes, and Bang! She had pierced ears. We didn’t revolutionize the world, but she did revolutionized something inside herself – She Did it!

She made it worth it. And she had something amazing to show for it.

There are going to be so many times in our lives when we aren’t sure of the outcome. There will be multitudes of times we fail, and I’m speaking from that experience. It might take 100’s of tries or attempts at something until we succeed or listen to someone’s pleas and we give it a try. Moral of this story is that success always follows failures. It might sting, it might cost you, but you will never know unless you don’t give up.

Grace’s new, 3rd Piercing

Thank you for reading.

I’m not going there. So quit looking back!

A little bit of inspiration I have had to give myself more than once. Ok, maybe more like 100 times. It’s like the tough, self-love, jolt I tend to need from time to time. A slap to that old “me” ego. It’s like a monkey on my shoulder. And a cute one, with symbols and a cute little marching band outfit on. Even if the past was seriously over-the-top-magnanimousness. To not look back is hard! Things are never the same. Not day to day, not year to year. Do we walk backwards? Do we talk backwards? There’s a reason.

There’s that programming in us that looks back to a mental “snap shot”. And the reminiscing sparks these amazing feelings. Sometimes I remember the most vivid and real moments. Times that made me feel proud, and times that sting. Times that give me incredible comfort, and happiness. But also times I felt let down by myself, times I regretted my actions or was just mad at life. So many things make me smile (and cry) when I think back. Times I had with friends, ridiculous moments of goofiness, so many events, so many memories. Emotions of sentiment, pride, and even anger have been what have helped me construct who I’ve become.

But there’s more. It’s not so much that I can’t envision the future, it’s that at times I’ve felt stuck. At some mid-way point.

It’s my own worst distraction to stay in the sentiment too long. We have new fantastic stories to create. New horizons ahead! The journey to the eminent future is unpredictable. That much I know. An expedition lies ahead that even Map Quest can’t get you to. There’s so much more to do, inspire, and champion within ourselves and others.  Maybe we just need to grab the present “me” by the cojones and roll out the red carpet, one foot at a time.  I know Tons more is on the way. And it has plans in store that we’ve never even conceptualized.

The reality is, our future is going to be full. So Full. I need to start seeing what’s in front, not what’s behind.

This beautiful picture was taken by my mother at a game of Drew’s a couple years back (my only son). It always reminds me of a happy moment. To glance back is ok. But there’s so much more ahead.

thank you for reading~

“I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.” – Abraham Lincoln